My US Visa got denied - <AUTHOR> http://20minus.com/wp/2012/03/06/my-us-visa-got-denied/

<comment><USER3> The OP claims to be an entrepreneur . And then I read this in the blog:

 _I had such a long waiting period, that all my energy and momentum was drained. A man with no face, trapped, with no freedom to move or express, waiting for a (seemingly at the time) life-scale type of decision to be made for him._

Really? As an entrepreneur, one shouldn't be so disheartened by the outcome of a process that is totally outside your control. Entrepreneurship is about taking risks, suffering setbacks, and getting up quickly after these setbacks. Not getting a visa isn't something I would consider a huge setback; in this day and age, it is possible to start Internet-based companies almost anywhere. And Europe isn't some backwaters area.

I don't want to sound mean, but to the OP: getting your visa denied isn't a big deal. Just start your company there, and when it becomes big, open an office in the US and stroll in like a boss.

<comment><AUTHOR> While internet means international network, the internet industry isn't really international. The sooner one realizes that the sooner he/she can get in the right path to success.

While there are always exceptions that prove the rule, there is the rule. And the rule says that the internet industry lies in the SF Bay area.

Examine it under any metric you wish, quantitative or qualitative and you will end up in the same conclusion.

I have gotten more into this matter in a past post of mine: [http://20minus.com/wp/2011/03/20/how-lean-startup-forced- me-...](http://20minus.com/wp/2011/03/20/how-lean-startup-forced-me-to-leave- my-country/)

cheers

<comment><USER4> That's rubbish, and if you think that is true then you have been watching The Social Network movie a few too many times and brainwashed by Hollywood.

And the way the USA is acting right now trying to pass draconian laws and police the internet for everyone, every sane company will/should be moving their operations to a progressive thinking nation.

I also don't understand why you are so upset. Just because someone else got the visa is no guarantee you would. You know that saying, "don't count your chickens before they've hatched"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the regs:

 _(12) Investment . An investment is the treaty investor's placing of capital, including funds and other assets (which have not been obtained, directly or indirectly, through criminal activity), at risk in the commercial sense with the objective of generating a profit. The treaty investor must be in possession of and have control over the capital invested or being invested. The capital must be subject to partial or total loss if investment fortunes reverse. Such investment capital must be the investor's unsecured personal business capital or capital secured by personal assets. Capital in the process of being invested or that has been invested must be irrevocably committed to the enterprise. The alien has the burden of establishing such irrevocable commitment. The alien may use any legal mechanism available, such as the placement of invested funds in escrow pending admission in, or approval of, E classification, that would not only irrevocably commit funds to the enterprise, but might also extend personal liability protection t o the treaty investor in the event the application for E classification is denied.

(13) Bona fide enterprise . The enterprise must be a real, active, and operating commercial or entrepreneurial undertaking which produces services or goods for profit. The enterprise must meet applicable legal requirements for doing business in the particular jurisdiction in the United States.

(14) Substantial amount of capital . A substantial amount of capital constitutes an amount which is:

(i) Substantial in relationship to the total cost of either purchasing an established enterprise or creating the type of enterprise under consideration;

(ii) Sufficient to ensure the treaty investor's financial commitment to the successful operation of the enterprise; and

(iii) Of a magnitude to support the likelihood that the treaty investor will successfully develop and direct the enterprise. Generally, the lower the cost of the enterprise, the higher, proportionately, the investment must be to be considered a substantial amount of capital.

(15) Marginal enterprise . For purposes of this section, an enterprise may not be marginal. A marginal enterprise is an enterprise that does not have the present or future capacity to generate more than enough income to provide a minimal living for the treaty investor and his or her family. An enterprise that does not have the capacity to generate such income, but that has a present or future capacity to make a significant economic contribution is not a marginal enterprise. The projected future income-generating capacity should gen erally be realizable within 5 years from the date the alien commences the normal business activity of the enterprise._

I can understand the desire for a start up visa (I would support one) but it doesn't currently exist. Just because you have a friend in France who slipped one by the USCIS doesn't mean that anyone else will be able to.

If you can get $1,000,000 together, check out the EB-5 visa. Another common tactic is to get a business started in your own country and then use an L to open a branch in the United States.

<comment><USER6> Actually, this is a box-checking exercise, and doesn't stand in the way of setting up a startup. I went through the same process in 1999, and have renewed ever since - and I did all my own paperwork (which is a huge pain), so I'm pretty familiar with how it works.

Initially, I talked to a lawyer about 'doing it right' - but concluded that I would have spent as much time describing it to the lawyer as writing the application myself.

One key point : You must be planning to create a company, not 'do a startup'. Have a business plan, with milestones. Quantify the investment, and project how it will pay back. Rent some office space, and have a contract. The embassy isn't in the business of understanding the Lean Startup experimentation process. They are interested in definite plans to grow a business (and employ Americans, too).

Of course, some of these points in the business plan may have a large 'error bar' on them. But you need to show to the Embassy that you're not crazy - <USER2> that they could not be labelled a 'soft touch' for granting the visa. There's no point trying to "slip one by the USCIS" : If that's the way you're thinking about it, that's the way it will appear.

To get the visa, you have to satisfy the regs. To satisfy the regs, you must have documentation that proves that each point, and subpoint, is satisfied. Each of these pieces of evidence needs _at least_ 1 official piece of paper or a whole bunch of other justification.

Hope this makes sense.

<comment><USER5> It makes plenty of sense and it matches my experience. The UCSIS wants people that are going to come with substantial amount of money and set up a business.

They don't want someone coming in to go to San Francisco and network, pitch to investors, rapidly iterate till you find market fit, etc.

I think they should allow educated, motivated people to come into the country and give it a shot, but that's just not how the law is right now.

<comment><USER6> I agree that they should be more flexible (i.e. if someone can prove that they would earn more than the US average wage, it would be a net benefit to the US for them to be allowed in).

Further to the idea of coming over to SF and couch-surfing while iterating : The UCSIS wants to see 'CEOs' coming over. So that's what you need to give them. Your friends/fellow hackers may be surprised at the suit and distinguished haircut : But the picture you have to present at the Embassy (and through the documents) is one of business success being a forgone conclusion.

It goes beyond what you might do to impress a VC-like investor (who may also take a casual approach as some kind of signalling too). The UCSIS person is also getting 'invested' in your company. And they want to know that they're going to get their money back for sure. There's no equity upside for the UCSIS : They're much more like a debt investor/bank manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A good time to remind Americans how insanely difficult it is to get into the U.S. legally:

[http://reason.com/assets/db/07cf533ddb1d06350cf1ddb5942ef5ad...](http://reason.com/assets/db/07cf533ddb1d06350cf1ddb5942ef5ad.jpg)

<comment><USER8> This is crazy. IMHO, The main draw back is that you can only go thru one lane. Either family, skills or money. Canada has a system that allows you accumulate points in several categories. It is in the best interest of the US to have a system that works.

<comment><USER9> There's a lot of complexity and nuance around why the US immigration laws are the way they are. There are _a lot_ of people that want to get into the US. _A lot_. I cannot emphasize that enough. The process has a lot of issues, but you have to understand why it got that way. The US's goal is to ensure that anybody who garners entry to live and work in the US is a contributing member of society. The three ways it does that is that (a) you have family here that are presumably productive members of society, (b) you have a set of skills that makes you a valuable asset to the US, or (c) you have a ton of money and can create jobs in the US. If you have only some money and average skills, you're not nearly as valuable as if you have either (b) or (c). Since the US has an incredible number of applicants, it only selects the best they can.

You wouldn't find it insane if colleges or employers made the same decisions. The decision of his visa isn't made in a vacuum--it's made with regard to everybody else who applied for visas, too. And that's a lot of people.

<comment><USER7> _The three ways it does that is that ... (b) you have a set of skills that makes you a valuable asset to the US ... You wouldn't find it insane if colleges or employers made the same decisions._

The problem is that there's a major disconnect with what the comfortable middle and upper-class people who make decisions about the immigration system think of as a "valuable asset to society" and the actual economic incentives for most people who want to immigrate to the United States. To use your corporate analogy, it's as if the hiring committee of a major corporation decided that there were so many applicants for jobs that everyone the company would hire should have the same skills and credentials that the people on the hiring committee have -- master's degrees and continuing education credits -- even though what the company needs to hire is janitors and security guards.

You don't think that people who come here illegally (or, best case scenario, who come here under agricultural visas that give them temporary residence and no stake in the country) to work in the fields or construction are contributing anything? Well, enjoy it when your food doubles in price, then. Or, more likely, enjoy your food staying the same price but the people who grew it don't have any labor protection laws or real roots in this country.

My point is not that we should just open the borders willy-nilly. But we need to have some kind of process for people who want to live here that doesn't result in decades of limbo, and doesn't cost tens of thousands of dollars to someone who's going to take up a minimum-wage agricultural job. And the process should help them become Americans. You know, like the process did for most of this country's history up until the 1930s or. That process did all right, as near as I can tell.

<comment><USER9> To clarify, I was stating the reasons the immigration policy in the US is the way it is. It's not insane. That doesn't mean it's devoid of unintended consequences, inefficiencies, and issues, though. Immigration is a very hard problem to solve for, especially given the heated emotional discourse about it on a political stage.

The process up until the 1930s didn't do all right--you're being naive in your nostalgia. It created an entire underclass, gave rise to ghettos, and forced people to give up their names in order to take more anglicized names. Moreover, there was a huge strain on infrastructure with the influx of poor Southeastern Europeans immigrating (mixed in with an incredible dose of racism and xenophobia). Wikipedia has a good summary of the laws and why they were passed [1].

There are a lot of problems with the immigration policy, and there are a lot of reasons that it's the way it is. My point is that this particular case of a guy being denied a visa could hardly be thought of as insane. Unfortunate for him, yes. Insane, no.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ok, I know you have your reasons but why the US ? Why don't you start your startup in your own country or in another European country ? Any good reason for not staying there ?

As an european I sadly see everyone from this side of the world trying desperately be part of the new startup gold rush in the US. Fund startup, get VC money, sell it, ???, profit.

Not very long time ago, I was like you too. I wanted so much to move to SF and build my startup or be part of one. But now, I don't care. Why ?

1 - I can incorporate my company in Delaware right from my living room.

2 - I can have hire good professionals from around the world to work with me (looking at 37signals as a role model)

3 - And quite frankly, the position of the US regarding european citizens that want to live and work in the US is too restrictive and amazingly elitist. Not even Mordor is that hard travel to. I just wished other countries had the same mesures/restrictions as they do for US citizens that want to live and work abroad. Europe (although lots of americans couldn't even put it on the map) isn't made of third world countries.

4 - Also, lots of good startups are operating in this side of the world.

So, why are you giving the US all the credits for your work ? If they don't want you, screw it. It's not the end of the world, and your can pretty much do the same thing here as you would over there.

As a developer and founder of a new born company, I feel like we need to show the world that europe is a good place to fund a startup, we might not have the YC or other popular investors, but if more and more startups got created here, maybe they would start looking for us.

<comment><USER11> Upvoted but I'm not so sure about your number 1. I always thought that you need to have a US bank account (hence US citizenship) to incorporate the company in Delaware. How would you achieve that as a non-US citizen?

<comment><USER10> You don't have to have a US bank account, it's not a requirement. It's always a plus to have one, specially if you want to use US payment gateways, but that's it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are there surveys of what are the most startup-friendly non-US countries?

I suppose that the things that matters are mostly monetary and boil down to "how much money do I need to pony up in the beginning stages?". On the other hand, if I had to move, I'd move only to a country where I know that I will not refused medical care for any reason and it is unlikely that I can end up in jail or being detained for wearing the wrong t-shirt. Oz?

PS: the website has a .com domain. Ah, irony of being refused a visa from the US while still being somehow under their legal reach.

</comment><comment><USER13> One word: Berlin.

<comment><USER14> Another word: why?

<comment><USER15> Om Malik wrote an article about Berlin - check out this link:

[http://gigaom.com/2011/12/27/why-berlin-is-poised-to-be- euro...](http://gigaom.com/2011/12/27/why-berlin-is-poised-to-be-europes-new- tech-hub/)

I hope this helps!

Greg

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Except maybe for funding, I don't get the obsession with wanting to base a startup in the US. If you have a good business model and great marketing skills, you should be able to create a successful business anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have a question:

How might accepting a US citizen co-founder impact such a visa process? Does ti improve the the chances for success and if so why?

</comment><comment><USER18> Why did you apply in the first place? Is there a particular reason why you can't just get a tourist visa & cross the border every few months?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not a tourist. My intention is [was] to stay in the us and make this startup work. Uninterrupted.

This can take from 2 up to 10 years or who knows how many... Can't do that on a Tourist visa, it's a "half measure".

<comment><USER19> Half-measures avail us nothing. :-)

You are right to reject the tourist visa option: it might work for a few quick visits to network and meet people, but it is not the best way to go if you are serious. And I have seen that when I behave in a serious and business-like way, I get serious and business-like results. (Off-topic: when I started being rigorous about claiming business expenses only for real business expenses and stopped telling half-truths on my tax returns, then I started making a lot more money. Correlation, not causation? Maybe. I put it down to an attitude adjustment.)

Back on topic. Did you prepare the E-2 visa application yourself or did you hire a U.S. immigration lawyer to do the work for you? Immigration work is 80% technical knowledge, 80% procedural skills, and 80% immaculate paperwork. That's why getting someone with deep experience counts.

(Disclosure: I have a vested interest in selling the concept of "hire an extremely experienced professional").

(Disclosure: I am not an immigration lawyer; that stuff scares me.)

<comment><USER19> Follow-up.

Think about the category "L" visa. Executive of foreign corporation transferred to work at the U.S. branch. Set up a Swedish corporation. Create a U.S. subsidiary corporation. Decide to assign yourself to the USA to work.

Devil. Details. Etc.

These visa applications can be completed in 6 weeks or so -- this is what my immigration lawyer friends tell me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the tips philip!

Of course i had an experienced lawyer that took my hand throughout all the process... And we also examined all available options...

L type visas are not as simple as you describe. The criteria that have to be met are not suitable for a startup company. The killing requirement is that you (the employee that will be assigned in the US subsidiary) has to work in the mother company for at least a year.

... And let's not get into what the requirements for the mother company are...

<comment><USER19> Good all around. It sounds like you did everything correctly. Consulate officials are known to operate in a non-uniform fashion in processing visa applications. That is all I will say in public. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to send emails without hardcoding them in source code? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The large transactional email sending services (sendgrid, mailgun, postmark, ...) support email templates, e.g. [https://sendgrid.com/docs/User_Guide/Transactional_Templates...](https://sendgrid.com/docs/User_Guide/Transactional_Templates/create_edit.html) and some have online editors. Then in your code you call an API method with placeholders. [https://postmarkapp.com/developer/api/templates- api](https://postmarkapp.com/developer/api/templates-api)

</comment><comment><USER3> Populate a template using a list of recipients, a subject, a body, which could be in a database or a file.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is where I would start: [http://bfy.tw/JMKG](http://bfy.tw/JMKG)</comment>


Oculus hints of issues shipping (or billing) Oculus Rift CV1 on Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4crwxt/mr_palmer_i_know_youre_reading_these_threads_come/d1l2dm3?context=10000 <comment><AUTHOR> And a likely Oculus insider hints at a vendor/partner problem here:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4csc3e/certain_part...](https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4csc3e/certain_partners_when_they_screw_up_disallow/)

PL tried to solve it with his own money.</comment>


Show HN: I made a web-app to help me keep track of the books I'm reading - <AUTHOR> https://www.booklog.club/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just thought I'd share a little something I've made over the last week while learning React and Node JS.

Hopefully I finish more books now and I opened it up so you can too.

Cheers!</comment>


Ask HN: What suggestion you can give me to improve my article? - <AUTHOR> Hi, HN I have started writing a blog with my friends. I would like you to give some suggestions to improve our blog's quality such that It can be helpful to others.
First article: https://hackeregg.github.io/2020/06/03/Implementing-a-Simple-Redirection-Analytics.html
Any constructive criticism is welcomed. <comment><USER2> I didn't read the entire blog post, but from the first few lines I can tell that English is not your native language. It is pretty good, but there are enough mistakes that it stands out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, English is not my native language. I think I can tell someone to proofread it and correct my mistakes. Thanks for your feedback.</comment></comment>


Ex-Cons Create 'Instagram for Prisons,' and Wardens Are Fine with That - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-06/ex-cons-create-instagram-for-prisons-and-wardens-are-fine-with-that <comment><USER2> Pigeonly is a YC company. They stood out to me as one of the company's that can do good and do well.

</comment><comment> vertex-four A county prison decides to ban cheap postcards in favour of a commercial service and this is a good thing actually.

<comment><USER3> I just looked at pigeonly pricing and unlimited postcards is $3 a month. At $0.50 per postcard that ends up being way cheaper if you send more than 6 a month.

That's outside of the actual reason prisons are banning postcards, which is the prevalence of lacing postcards with drugs, which is a safety risk.</comment></comment>


Netflix Inc. May Have Found the Magic Bullet to Kill Comcast's Connection Fees - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/29/netflix-inc-may-have-found-the-magic-bullet-to-kil.aspx

<comment><USER2> I don't think P2P is a real solution.

With no Net Neutrality, what's to prevent Comcast from blocking P2P traffic? They already like data caps, they could also shrink the upload cap to make it too expensive for users to be able to afford.

Then you have the catalog problem. That works well for when the new episode of Orange is the New Black comes out, but what about smaller shows and old movies that may only have a half-dozen people watching them at any given time?

I'd say Netflix's best chance in all this is to mobile their customers to complain to regulators with some sort of banner in the Netflix apps.

Remember when the internet blacked its self out for a day a year or two ago over Net Neutrality? Remember how big companies like Comcast complained that Google and Facebook and others were "cheating" in getting users to complain about the issue?

That's where their power lies. Netflix has a _ton_ of users. Either doing that or putting up messages during buffering like "Having problems? Comast isn't working hard for you." from time to time.

<comment><USER3> > With no Net Neutrality, what's to prevent Comcast from blocking P2P traffic?

Encryption.

> but what about smaller shows and old movies that may only have a half-dozen > people watching them at any given time?

A user could distribute things that they're not watching.

> I'd say Netflix's best chance in all this is to mobile their customers to > complain to regulators with some sort of banner in the Netflix apps.

That's a good idea too.

<comment><USER4> Encryption doesn't matter, all they need to do is traffic shape everything that's not "web" (by that I mean strictly 80 or 443) and they can effectively kill any peer-to-peer thing that netflix could possibly come up with, while still maintaining an illusion of good service for 99.9% of the rest of their customers' traffic. It would deprioritize bittorrent too, so two birds with one stone as far as Comcast goes.

Let's face it: almost _everything_ an average internet user does, measured by number of packets, is on 80 or 443 (except bittorrent, but comcast very likely already deprioritizes that.) Maybe a sprinkling of email traffic here and there for the few who don't use a web mail provider. I'd actually be quite shocked if Comcast _didn 't_ have traffic shaping in place that deprioritized non-web traffic. It would make smart business sense.

Which means the only way Netflix could do P2P is to put peers behind port 443, which can only work for one connection per peer. (And good luck teaching all netflix subscribers how to get NAT working on their routers.) Or they'd have to do a nat busting service, which wouldn't be peer to peer any more, and would open them right back up to Comcast's throttling.

At the end of the day, if nobody's forcing Comcast to stay neutral, they can deprioritize whatever traffic they want. Who's going to stop them? What are you going to do, sign up for a competing ISP?

<comment><USER2> Comcast knows what addresses are theirs. They could easily apply traffic shaping on intra-network traffic. Allow enough that some games and things like Skype would work OK but any decent bandwidth application could be throttled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article seems quite naive. Painting P2P traffic as something "which Comcast cannot block" ignores both history and the reason why Netflix paid for direct peering with Comcast in the first place. It's not that their traffic was being "blocked", just that it was coming in on the same overloaded pipes as other general Internet traffic. While Comcast customers might not notice a web page taking a few milliseconds longer to load, they certainly notice the difference in video streaming quality, and hence why the new peering arrangement made a difference.

Shifting all the traffic to P2P most likely would send Netflix traffic back into the overloaded slow lanes again - and if anything makes it all the MORE likely to be further slowed down and deprioritised for reasons. Phrases like "Internet traffic of a type often used for piracy" are all that needs to be said to justify whatever further shaping, blocking, and other indignities could be applied to it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not reskin popcorn time, add login/auth system to verified you're a paid netflix member, and you're done. Make app versions that work on all platforms.

Or netflix could use anonymous ip's/domains for their servers --who says netflix needs to broadcast to comcast--hey it's me netflix sharing some movies w/ my customers, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone have any idea what the usage rates are for mobile Netflix vs. desktop/console/set-top Netflix? Skype has been moving away from a p2p architecture because of a surge in the number of mobile users.

<comment><USER8> Not sure but I strictly use a mobile device but only to cast to my ChromeCast (so only on WiFi). So I guess the Wifi vs data is more important than desktop vs mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Something like 13% of comcasts outgoing data is bittorrent already. The issue is most people won't like the idea of having their upload bandwidth being without their knowledge or permission.

<comment><USER10> You're giving people too much credit, most won't even know how Netflix work. Nobody complains about Spotify, and they use (used?) p2p too.

What Netflix neet do do is to use some smart protocol like utp and have sane limits by default to not saturate the uplink and make other services slow. If they manage to do that, then most users will be happy. Slap in there an on/off checkbox and a manual bandwidth limiter for the advanced users, and even most of those that know how p2p works will not complain.

<comment><USER9> Spotify doesn't do that anymore because while it makes sense technically it did not make business sense. Most users would not appreciate this even if it had no appreciable affect on their bandwidth.

<comment><USER11> Spotify had to stop P2P because it makes no sense on mobile devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Connection limits coming in.. 7... 6... 5.. 4.. 3.. 2. 1 BOOM!</comment>


Use vi editor in shell - <AUTHOR> https://worldofprasanna.github.io/using-vi-in-zsh <comment><USER2> This fails to mention the most vi-in-a-shell-yness:

Press "v" and launch your currently typed command into a vim (or whatever $EDITOR is set to) editing buffer.

Very useful for adhoc-but-long if or while statements.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi .. I couldn t do this .. Pressing "v" enables visual mode and only the text is selected.

[https://dougblack.io/words/zsh-vi-mode.html](https://dougblack.io/words/zsh- vi-mode.html)

Above link explains the usage, but I couldn t use it for some reason even after setting EDITOR variable.

<comment><USER2> not to leave you hanging there; this is what I found in my .zshrc to enable the functionality.

      autoload edit-command-line
      zle -N edit-command-line
      bindkey -M vicmd v edit-command-line

... could've sworn that was included more default-y

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks yoo1l. It worked like charm ...

PS: Blog updated !!! [https://worldofprasanna.github.io/using-vi-in- zsh](https://worldofprasanna.github.io/using-vi-in-zsh)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Economic benefits of being beautiful - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/7/16/5905533/the-benefits-of-beauty

<comment><AUTHOR> In case you miss it, like I did, the header image is an animated infographic. Press the play button on the left.</comment>


glTail.rb - realtime logfile visualization - <AUTHOR> http://www.fudgie.org/

<comment><USER2> That is surprisingly easy to get running and fun to watch. The logfile I hooked it up to is not nearly as active as the one in the video, but it's kind of cool because my attention drifts away and then it starts suddenly jumping around.

It would be pretty awesome for a monitor-in-the-lobby sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> It'd be nice to watch a higher res video & read the text.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love it. Look like the kind of program you see in CSI.</comment>


Show HN: Cowyodel – Easily move data between computers with cowyo - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/schollz/cowyodel <comment><USER2> This is amazing (or at least seems to be).

Yesterday I installed a tool called piknik to help me move things (basically copy-pastes) between my home computer and my VPS, but it is so complex to use, not to mention the bizarre setup, having to keep a server running and so on.

This one looks clearer, easier to type and it comes with a server already!</comment>


New Experiments Show Consciousness Affects Matter – Dean Radin Ph.D (2016) - pierre-renaux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRSBaq3vAeY <comment><AUTHOR> Pseudo-science. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin).</comment>


ProjectFlow and the Hard-Learned Lessons from Building a Product - <AUTHOR> http://www.barrelny.com/blog/projectflow-hard-learned-lessons-from-building-a-product/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. Useful to my burgeoning little community of lifestyle business enthusiasts, so cross-posted here: [http://lifestyle.io/stories/362-the-hard-learned-lessons- fro...](http://lifestyle.io/stories/362-the-hard-learned-lessons-from- building-a-product)

I'd be interested to see some less big picture, more in-depth posts on each of the lessons you learned. Get crunchy for me. Get specific.

See, for example [https://medium.com/who-what- why/c744d79a6e76](https://medium.com/who-what-why/c744d79a6e76). Lots of hard numbers there make me get a clearer sense of what's going on.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks josh, definitely agree with you on the hard numbers. i wrote another post on our WordPress theme product a while back and had hard numbers, which readers appreciated: [http://launcheffectapp.com/2012/04/launch-effect- premium-the...](http://launcheffectapp.com/2012/04/launch-effect-premium-the- first-4-months/)

with the projectflow post, i was trying to talk more broadly about the challenges of a client services business trying to squeeze out a product and how the projectflow experience made us realize that we really needed to focus on our core business. hope it's something other web design companies could relate to.</comment></comment>


Writing Apps in Go and Swift - <AUTHOR> https://youngdynasty.net/posts/writing-mac-apps-in-go/ <comment><USER2> _I still find it hard to write maintainable multi-threaded code for macOS or iOS [...] without having to worry about the minutiae of parallelism (threads, semaphores, locks, barriers, etc.)._

I find this surprising, as GCD does insulate you from that low-level stuff. When you need to work with mutable data, just create a dispatch queue, and only ever access the data by dispatching a function to the queue. Both Swift and Objective-C have friendly syntax for anonymous functions that makes this lightweight and easy.

<comment><USER3> This reads like someone who purposely missed that part of the documentation just to write this article.

I think I would have less hang ups if the author just came out and said I wanted to try using Go for multi-threaded code with Swift instead of trying to make GCD sound so confusing.

<comment><USER4> Even so, I'm glad it's been written. I didn't know you could call Go code from C code (new feature since Go 1.5 apparently) or that Swift could access compiled files with these "module map" things. I'm really glad to see they've both evolved to include useful interoperability and play nicely with other things now, and I'm glad this article shows how in a practical way.

<comment><USER5> > Swift could access compiled files with these "module map" things

That's been the case since it was released – all Swift C / ObjC interop happens at the "module" level. You write a Clang module map (if you're not using a system library which already has one), point the map at the relevant header(s), then you can import that module into your Swift code.

That said, not everything is capable of being imported (variadics, complex macros, VLA structs, and a few others).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Give Emporter a try and let me know how it compares to an Electron app.

I don't see how this technique is comparable to Electron. The article does not describe anything related to a cross-platform user interface, which is what Electron addresses. You can write non-UI logic that is cross-platform in half a dozen mainstream languages and another dozen less popular ones. That's not a big deal. It's the UI component that is harder to achieve, and that is what Electron offers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. Honestly, I was just being sassy. It probably is like comparing apples to oranges. This technique does not concern itself with a cross-platform interface. It only makes it possible to keep the logic cross- platform so that the "only" difference is the UI implementation, which can be done using native SDKs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just wanted to say that module maps are absolutely not necessary to have static libraries (.a file author compiles his go program to) in your project.

All you need is an objective-c bridging header where you do an #import "name_of_header_.h" for every header. After that, the headers are visible to all of your swift code. It's no different than mixing objective-c and swift, except here you're mixing your language of choice, compiled to callable C functions inside a static library.

To recap - drag .h and .a files the same way you have .swift files into your xcode project. Add a BridgingHeader.h file, go to it, fill it with #import "name_of_header.h" statements. Lastly, the project needs to know you're using a bridging header, that's done in the project target's Build Settings tab, under "Objective-C Bridging Header" you need to have the value set to the filename you chose for your bridging header.

This is not unique to calling Go in Swift btw - any language that can be called from C, can be called from Objective-C, and therefore Swift. One thing to be aware of is memory management - unless you're passing things by value (copying), making sense of when things can be safely deallocated across languages is non-trivial.

</comment><comment><USER8> Go has great crypto library, so I've wrapped it for use with Swift: [https://github.com/lastochkanetwork/EasyPGP](https://github.com/lastochkanetwork/EasyPGP)

</comment><comment><USER9> Heads up: you made this error at least twice, once in the article and once in the repo. [https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/31/complement- compliment/](https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/31/complement-compliment/) It's complementary instead of complimentary. The word "complimentary" is rarely used, but could be used if you were to mention books related to complimenting people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't find GCD difficult to write for, maybe if you are used to Go it is different enough. Not sure what exactly you would use Go for in an iOS/Macos app unless maybe you have a Go framework you want to include.

<comment><USER11> I consider GCD to be a bit of a smell - not because its difficult to write for, but rather because its difficult to port such code elsewhere. And really, this seems to be the only rationale for Apple having maintained it as a component of the architecture for iOS - to be relatively different, or just different enough, from other systems to dissuade porting the code elsewhere.

<comment><USER12> [https://github.com/apple/swift-corelibs- libdispatch](https://github.com/apple/swift-corelibs-libdispatch)

<comment><USER11> Sure. The solution to not wanting to be dependent on Apple's software is .. to use more of Apples software.

Not really rational.

<comment><USER2> It's open source. You can use it on Linux rather than being tied to MacOS or iOS. What's your objection?

<comment><USER11> Lets try this a different way. Whats so great about GCD that other processor resource management systems get so wrong, that using GCD is the only thing that makes sense to you?

(Hint: its koolaid, kid.)

<comment><USER2> It's not a memory management system.

<comment><USER11> Right, brain fart on the train. But the point still stands, why should we use GCD when there are other more portable means out there - which are also supported on iOS - to do the same thing? It's just different for the sake of being different.

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia says GCD and Go are the same age (both released 2009). Is Go also different for the sake of being different? Why is Go good and GCD bad?

I imagine we're not going to convince each other of the technical merits, but I personally think GCD is a very nice programming model. I'm less of a fan of Go but plenty of people love it so clearly there's something there. There's room for both.

It's a valid criticism of a lot of Apple tech that it's very locked down, but given libdispatch is open source (as are the Clang changes to support block syntax in C) I don't think that criticism is fair here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Swift Strings can transparently map to UnsafePointer<CChar> when necessary; is there a reason why this doesn't work in this case?

</comment><comment><USER14> I found your article particularly interesting, because lately I've been experimenting with calling Swift from Go.

The approach is based on the same principle: cgo as bridge between Go and a C library. The C library is build by the Swift package manager. Blog post on Dev community with details:

[https://dev.to/gerwert/calling-swift-from- go-5dbk](https://dev.to/gerwert/calling-swift-from-go-5dbk)

</comment><comment><USER15> How well does this work? Can you call a Go library function that spawns goroutines?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! I've shipped an app, on the Mac App Store, which uses Go in a non-trivial way (including spawning goroutines). The link is in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for sharing this! As someone who writes in Go every day but stopped following it a while back, I had no idea you could even call Go from C much less Swift.

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone that doesn't know how to write Swift, tries to find faults at all costs.

Go, horrible as it is, doesn't lack cultists.

<comment><USER13> I don't see the author pointing out any faults in Swift. There's a passing comment about GCD being complicated, which I personally disagree with, but this isn't specific to Swift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am go ahead and say it: Go is a replacement for Perl. It is nice for process and machine administration automation. Can you write your app in go? yes. Could you also write your app in perl cgi? sure. Did many people wrote perl cgi apps? yes. did they regret it. yes. Will people writing apps in go will regret it? who knows. Probably yes.

This comment is not about the language per-se. it is about the current goals of the people with money and weight behind the language right now. I guess the regret will come or not if those goals keep or change.

<comment><USER16> They couldn't be further from each other. Just from browsing code, they are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Go is easily readable, but at the cost of brevity. Perl is -typically- unreadable, with a lot of one liner magic. If you are stating merely can a person write a web app in both, well, I think that goes for any language in existence.

<comment><USER18> I know. Perl was all that at the time. daunting! modern! no compiler OMG! text transformation on the code itself! it was the bee knees.

All that Go delivers today, over the medium, is very similar to what perl also delivered yesteryear, on top of yesteryear medium. But also like perl, it is being born from a bunch of old unix system engineers :)

<comment><USER19> Are you sure you're not confusing Go with some other language?

> daunting!

Go is often praised for being simple.

> modern!

...and criticized for being _too_ simple, ignoring modern advances in programming language research.

> no compiler OMG!

The compiler and its careful tradeoff between fast compilation and fast programs is a key characteristic of Go.

> text transformation on the code itself!

Go doesn't have macros. Instead people fall back on code generation, just like Java.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Impact of the US government shutdown - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_government_shutdown_of_2013#Impact

<comment><USER2> Was this known to happen? Somehow I didn't see this coming at all and it sounds greek.</comment>


Ask HN: Does Y Combinator support Black Lives Matter? - <AUTHOR> Netflix recently stated on its Twitter account: "To be silent is to be complicit. Black lives matter. We have a platform, and we have a duty to our Black members, employees, creators and talent to speak up."
Stripe: "Racism is antithetical to Stripe's mission. We stand with the Black community against discrimination and police violence."
Google: "We stand in support of racial equality, and all those who search for it."
Amazon: "the inequitable and brutal treatment of African Americans in the U.S. must stop..."
Intel: "Standing on the sidelines is not an option. Today we are pledging $1 million in support of efforts to address social injustice and anti-racism. #blacklivesmatter"
Does YC? Do the views of members of the HN community reflect those of YC? These are honest questions intended to promote discussion. <comment><USER2> I see this as a passive aggressive question, not a question to promote discussion. You ask a question to which no one would answer NO. Yet you imply that by not making a public statement, YC's default answer is NO. Hence tricking them into follow suit like the firms you listed to do the same.

<comment><USER3> > You ask a question to which no one would answer NO

Lots of people would answer no. Lots of people would answer that not only do they not actively support Black Lives Matter, they actively oppose BLM.

> Yet you imply that by not making a public statement, YC's default answer is > NO.

Passive indifference is not support, and not making public action (of which a public statement is the most minute example) is passive indifference.

<comment><USER2> >Lots of people would answer no. Lots of people would answer that not only do they not actively support Black Lives Matter, they actively oppose BLM.

Cite some examples.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/cajr- sif1018...](https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/cajr- sif101818.php)

"The study used a nationally representative sample of 2,114 people from 33 states and the District of Columbia to study opposition to and support for BLM. Data were collected in 2016, with researchers asking people how much they had heard about BLM. Those who said they had heard a lot or a little were asked a follow-up question about their level of support for or opposition to the movement. People who were unfamiliar with BLM were excluded from the study, as were those who said they didn't know or declined to answer. In all, 31% of the people interviewed opposed BLM."

<comment><USER2> Thanks but I was referring to answers more in terms of OP's question where known people or companies would NEVER make statements opposing BLM. Anonymous users and people in surveys have no accountability but companies and famous people have users/fans that could be lost.

<comment><USER3> Well, among the biggest non-anonymous entities to have attacked BLM have been police unions, e.g., [https://www.sanjoseinside.com/opinion/blue-lives-matter- sj-p...](https://www.sanjoseinside.com/opinion/blue-lives-matter-sj-police- union-miss-key-moment-for-change-by-attacking-black-lives-matter/)

A whole lot of known people an organizations have actively supported one or both of Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter, both of which are hostile responses to Black Lives Matter, and have often done so attached to direct condemnation of BLM, including frequently (by as notable a known person as then candidate and now President Donald Trump) explicitly calling BLM a racist movement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I kinda used to , but seeing the increasing amount of identity left content , I decided the step out and not post anything supportive.

I really couldn't understand that 'hey you white do this' style but that was nothing against the fact that people calmly asking why using this were firmly opposed.

What I really don't accept is that I can't debate because I'm white.The inability to debate is something I really can't and of course that wasn't explained to me.

I tried to read some new 'educative' content but I really keep seeing a generalized anti-white tone across everything I read.

Heck I also read that white should shut up if someone tell them that something is racist or homophobic , as gay white if someone would say something that would homophobic and I would tell them but if it wasn't mean or if it was unintentional I would gladly explain them what the problem is.

I guess that among BLM or everything related there are certainly a lot people who want to talk but in my web social environment I don't want to side with them.

But I'll be glad to speak bout it here , in a more anynomous environement.

</comment><comment><USER5> Y Combinator Core's CEO [1] is African-American, and he posted this to HN in the past 2 days (as well as submitting the main article):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23380748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23380748)

I know from having been in the YC community for over 10 years, that a lot of effort goes into identifying and supporting startups founded by PoC and/or servicing particular needs of PoC communities, as well as raising awareness and providing education with a view to increasing startup participation and success among PoC in the long term.

I know they wish they could do more, and that they keep working to figure out ways they can do more.

Individual partners are supporting the cause in their own way (YC chairman Sam Altman posted in Instagram earlier).

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

<comment><USER5> Further to my comment above, I can see from the internal YC discussion forums that the issue is being actively discussed within the community, with some of the discussions being initiated by the most senior YC partners, and others by YC company founders. A sincere intent to bring about tangible change is evident. It would be inappropriate to share more details publicly, but I can attest that support and action is evident in the YC leadership and community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I cannot support any organization that opposes use of body cams: [https://m4bl.org/policy-platforms/end-the-war-on-black- peopl...](https://m4bl.org/policy-platforms/end-the-war-on-black-people/)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is pointless.

Because you didn't mention white lives, does that mean you want all white people killed?

All lives matter; the lives of police suspects, the lives of police, the livelihoods of shopkeepers and their employees, the livelihoods of customers of those shops who now face higher prices to pay for the theft and higher insurance premiums.

Don't be drawn in by those who foment unrest, be suspicious of their motives.

</comment><comment><USER8> I believe black lives matter in the grand scheme of things. I don't care about the group, if anything they've only done harm to their cause.

Due to recent events and seeing all the footage coming out, I can say it has all proved the value of the 2nd amendment. So many cases where innocent bystanders are simply at the mercy of rioters and looters and cops not being allowed to act due to fear of racism accusations and sparking more violence. On the other hand, there are also cases where people with guns were able to defend themselves and their businesses from these streetwalking ghouls.</comment>


Teleportation across Calgary marks 'major step' toward 'quantum internet' - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-teleportation-quantum-networking-city-hall-1.3770440?cmp=rss <comment><USER2> For those thinking that this is a step towards faster-than-light (FTL) communication: As far as I know it's fairly certain that quantum entanglement will not allow for FTL communication. Basic principle is that while measurements between both sides will be correlated, it's not possible to tell _how_ they are correlated until both sides compare measurements.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superluminal_communication#Qua...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superluminal_communication#Quantum_nonlocality)

[http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/203893](http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/203893)

Given that, it seems like the touted benefit of using quantum entanglement here is in securing communications, since your measurements will no longer correlate if a third party is also measuring? At least, that's what I gathered.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't follow. How is it teleportation, if they used a fiber optic cable to transmit the photon?</comment>


Tumblr and SEO: A Case Study in Rapid Response. - <AUTHOR> http://seokeywordsnews.net/2008/05/22/tumblr-and-seo-a-case-study-in-rapid-response/

<comment><USER2> Kudos, they used a 301 redirect from old URL's to new URL's.

[http://blog.merricklozano.com/post/35818832/tumblr-is-now- se...](http://blog.merricklozano.com/post/35818832/tumblr-is-now-seo-friendly)

<comment><AUTHOR> It was even more impressive to see the rate at which they responded to issues raised, i.e. [http://datainsightsideas.com/post/35695346/tumblr-why- cant-y...](http://datainsightsideas.com/post/35695346/tumblr-why-cant-you- embrace-search-engines) (Tracks the entire day's events).</comment></comment>


Blockchain meetup - <AUTHOR> http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Blockchain-Meetup/events/224057012/

<comment><AUTHOR> Greetings,

Guys, I'm hosting the blockchain meetup - FREE to attend, food, drinks and fun

Right next to caltrain, Soma

Would love to chat about that, feel free to RSVP if interested</comment>


Google Apps Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status <comment><USER2> Google has written some great incident reports in the past [1]. I look forward to reading their war story on this event too ;)

[1] [http://googledevelopers.blogspot.ca/2013/05/google-api- infra...](http://googledevelopers.blogspot.ca/2013/05/google-api- infrastructure-outage_3.html)</comment>


Dennis Ritchie Day - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/10/dennis-ritchie-day.html <comment><USER2> I don't think we should have a Dennis Ritchie Day, just because California has a Steve Jobs day, and they passed away in the same month, in the same year, and the whole world that time seemed only mourned the passing of Steve Jobs and ignored Dennis.</comment>


Even years later, Twitter doesn't delete direct messages - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/twitter-direct-messages/ <comment> B-Con A lot of the article focuses on DMs sent from eventually deleted/suspend accounts being accessible from the receiving account.

When you send a message to another account, it's in their account now. Of course it's not going to disappear along with your account.

This had been the canonical behavior of messaging clients for forever. Email obviously, but also IM, chat find, etc. (Trying to remember about BBSs.) Once you press send it's not yours anymore.

This should 100% be the expectation of users anywhere they go. Once you press send, do not count on being able to withdraw it under any circumstances.

Does this genuinely surprise people or is it a slow news day at TechCrunch?

<comment><USER2> As an example, you can delete your messages in telegram. Even in Slack. I think it is reasonable to allow user completely erase its own history from the server.

<comment><USER3> Nope, "your messages" once they have been received by someone now belongs to that person too. If you say something crazy to me, you shouldn't get to deny it by deleting your messages. If I levy an accusation, I should be able to prove it by showing my message history...

<comment><USER4> How would you prove your message history was not adulterated? The easiest way would be to check the logs of the service itself, but what if those were deleted and only your local copy remains?

<comment><USER5> The judge would decide. If the app was on a secure platform (android/ios, non root/jailbroken), you could argue that the logs are genuine because the platform prevents you from manipulating the logs. The onus would be on the other party to prove that the logs were fabricated. I wouldn't count on it to secure a criminal conviction, but it would suffice in civil cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the hardest concepts to explain to non-programmer friends/family is that deleting anything in an app is usually flipping a boolean flag in the database from False to True. And even for the rare cases of actually deleting the record or updating the field value, it likely exists in backups somewhere.

It's never gone.

<comment><USER7> Twitter actually tries to delete stuff: [https://twitter.com/en/privacy](https://twitter.com/en/privacy)

> We keep Log Data for a maximum of 18 months. If you follow the instructions > here (or for Periscope here), your account will be deactivated and then > deleted. When deactivated, your Twitter account, including your display > name, username, and public profile, will no longer be viewable on > Twitter.com, Twitter for iOS, and Twitter for Android. For up to 30 days > after deactivation it is still possible to restore your Twitter account if > it was accidentally or wrongfully deactivated.

And they require developers to delete them too:

[https://developer.twitter.com/en/developer- terms/agreement-a...](https://developer.twitter.com/en/developer- terms/agreement-and-policy.html)

> If Twitter Content is deleted, gains protected status, or is otherwise > suspended, withheld, modified, or removed from the Twitter Service > (including removal of location information), you will make all reasonable > efforts to delete or modify such Twitter Content (as applicable) as soon as > reasonably possible, and in any case within 24 hours after a request to do > so by Twitter or by a Twitter user with regard to their Twitter Content, > unless otherwise prohibited by applicable law or regulation, and with the > express written permission of Twitter.

When I worked at Gnip this requirement was a constant headache for customers, precisely because deleting data is so hard.

<comment><USER8> And that only reaffirms and proves correct, the comment to which you have replied.

When the user deletes something, it is not destroyed instantly. Instead, it is rendered inaccessible to a broad class or ordinary users. Meanwhile, the systems do still retain the ostensibly deleted data, even if for an hour or 30 minutes, while other, more powerful actors might still have the ability to access and read something the individual thinks is destroyed and gone forever.

<comment><USER9> It's not like throwing something in the garbage makes it immediately stop existing.

"It goes in the recycle bin, it'll be gone for good in a couple weeks" is perfectly intuitive, even if database flags are confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Skype too. Skype stores your voice mails and video messages forever[1]. I'm not sure about text messages, but I wouldn't be surprised if they store all messages even if both the sender and recipient deleted them.

[1] Details: Clicking on Preferences -> Privacy -> Delete history (OS X), or Options -> Privacy Settings -> Clear history (Windows) pretends to delete the voice/video messages but it merely hides them from your view. If you re- install Skype on the same computer or run Skype on a different computer, all those "deleted" voice mails and video messages re-appear. The delete and clear buttons don't do what they claim.

</comment><comment><USER11> I recently learned to my surprise that Exchange has a feature that allows you to recall emails from the recipients inbox.

<comment><USER12> That pretty much only applies to emails sent within the same organization/network. If you send an email outside your organization/network, you generally can't recall those back.

<comment><USER13> I guess it can be configured to send a "retraction" e-mail to the recipient? I've received some of those at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a bit disingenuous to expect Twitter or any other social media to actually delete deleted data, except perhaps through a GDPR request or similar. Plus, if your account gets hacked and deleted, or if you delete the account and rejoin, you might be very happy that they didn't actually delete anything and are able to restore your account. (I'm not a fan of social networks or what they do with our data, but the database administrator in me tends to side with them on that front. Keeping data around is a lesser evil than losing it.)

<comment><USER15> Your instincts are correct. I happen to know that DMs at Twitter are (and most likely still) stored in a sharded MySQL store[0]. Deleted DMs and tweets are "tombstoned", and not actually deleted via a DELETE, which has pretty terrible performance characteristics in MySQL

[0]: [http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/12/19/how-twitter- store...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/12/19/how-twitter- stores-250-million-tweets-a-day-using-mysql.html)

<comment><USER16> I wonder what they use to generate IDs! /s

Man that comment popped up a bunch in that blog post, lol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think anyone using these social media networks expects perfect privacy, therefore I have no idea why this article is so popular. We'll have close to perfect privacy in some networks running on Ethereum, 10 years from now. You can quote me on this one.

<comment><USER18> Good luck with having your hopes for anything on Ethereum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't it pretty safe to assume that nothing will ever get really deleted? I wonder if the GDPR will change this.

<comment><USER20> My first thought when people bring up deleting things is backup tapes. Sure it might or might not be "deleted" from the live data set, but it's almost always gonna live on in backups for probably forever.

<comment><USER21> GDPR affects backup tapes too

<comment><USER22> It does, but not like you'd think. If the backup is dormant, the right-to-be- forgotten portions can remain there. Once it comes out of cold storage, those RTBF requests have to be processed over the restored data. Although, in most cases, the dormant backups will expire and be deleted as per a data retention plan.

<comment><USER23> That does not seem to be entirely correct: [https://blog.quantum.com/backup- administrators-the-1-advice-...](https://blog.quantum.com/backup- administrators-the-1-advice-to-deal-with-gdpr-and-the-right-of- erasure/#.XGfzF6TnvDu)

<comment><USER24> Which part isn't correct? What op described sounds like a good and easy way to do it (as long as you have sane retention periods) and doesn't seem to conflict with the article you linked in any way (in fact, they agree).

<comment><USER23> In addition you have to tell the customer how long you retain your backups (and only retain them for a reasonable time) and only restore for purely technical reasons.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Unhappy and I don't know what to do. - <AUTHOR>

I'm unhappy and have been unhappy for years. Pressure landed me in a field I have absolutely no interest in. I'm far into further education, have many more years to go and will be in tons of debt soon. Dreams of being a hacker, working in the valley at a young age with relatively few responsibilities are quickly vanishing. I see Facebook pages of high school friends who are living the life I wished to live. Regret settles in, optimism is brushed aside by reality, and I realize there's really no feasible way out. I've sought to find the "brighter" side of this, but there really isn't one. I'm deep in a hole, absolutely unhappy with the path I'm on, and jumping ship would put me in a worse situation. What's frightening is that suicide has been a thought I've always jokingly entertained, but as time goes on, I find myself lending the idea more validity. I don't know what to do. <comment><USER2> First and foremost, suicide is not the answer. The number for the suicide hotline is 1-800-273-8255 and you should either talk with them or someone you know that is truly looking out for your best interest (this might be exclude a friend a family member sadly).

Second, this is just my advice that has brought me a lot of happiness. And I have no idea if this works for other people. But as time has gone on, I have learned to do things that make me happy. Which is often goes against conventional wisdom. A good example, I bought tickets to a movie one night with a friend. We went out to dinner with other friends before hand. We were having such a good time, we just skipped the movie even though we had both already paid 10 dollars for tickets. I scaled this idea to high profile decisions in my life. Like leaving a job everyone thought I was foolish to leave because of the money, etc.. Its your life, you have limited time to live it. You have to make decisions right now to make you happy. If you don't like getting your degree, just stop doing it and do something else.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Disable your Facebook account. ASAP.

2\. Stop comparing yourself to other people, especially your high school friends. They also have problems, probably just as unhappy as you, and dislike the smell of their farts. To conclude their level of accomplishment based on their wall posts is never going to work for your self-esteem.

3\. I don't condone suicide, but a death wish helps put things into perspective.

4\. What do you REALLY WANT in life? How do you get there? Imagine getting there (through meditation, writing, whatever), are you really going to be _genuinely_ happy?

5\. When you find out what you want, plan your way of getting there. Spoiler: it's not going to be easy, may not be fun at all, but if you are entertaining suicide at this point it would definitely be worthwhile.

6\. Next time you go out, stop to smell the flowers.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was in a similar situation:

I was almost 26, in law school. wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew being a lawyer wasn't it, I went to law school out of panic and pressure. I panicked when I realized I didn't want to work in finance after undergrad and felt pressure to please my family. I was envious of my friends that seemed to have it all figured out, depressed and piling up student debt. I thought there was no way out. Then I had an epiphany- what's the point of being pressured to do something that you don't want to do? Why chase potential status or money when this is a sure-fire way of waking up at 35 and being miserable with what you do? Most of us are smart enough to be able to succeed as long as what we're doing makes us happy. I decided to figure out what makes me happy- what do I enjoy doing in my spare time, what interests me? For me, it was a mix of business and technology. I found a conversion tech degree program, dropped out of law school (finally manned up and confronted my parents that I was responsible for my life), completed a MS program in about than 1.5 years (I did it in the UK) and never looked back. Flash forward 3 years from my dark days in law school- I'm in a rewarding job that I love, I'm happily married (I met my wife through a friend that I met in the MS program) and loving life.

Takeaways for you: 1\. if you're not happy with what you're doing, stop, I know it is scary, but believe me, the rewards are worth it. You don't have to completely drop out of your program, you can take a year off (most schools offer that option) and spend that year figuring out what makes you happy and pursuing that goal!

2\. don't be pressured into unhappiness- if it is your parents, confront them. Yes, it is difficult, the convo I had with my parents was one of the most difficult things I have ever done up to that point- but you have to live for yourself, not for anyone else. Confront the pressure.

3\. My education (mis)adventures left me with about $100-105K of student debt. That is a scary number, but is manageable. Make sure your debt has a fixed interest rate, you can apply for income based repayment plan which will give you plenty of breathing room.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know what to say other than that it never seems like it will get better when you're in a funk, but nothing could be further from the truth.

If you want someone to talk to, please call 1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline).

</comment><comment><USER6> Been there. I feel for you. What helped me was this. Be single-minded, think about nothing else. Get a pair of running shoes and go running somewhere, preferably nice (a park, a trail). Start very slow, only aim for 10 minutes of more of a jog than a run at first. Slowly increase. Every single day, no matter what, its your top priority.

Its supposed to hurt and be uncomfortable and that is to get your mind off your current programming. Exercise has been shown over and over to be equivalent to anti-depressants.

As you increase, push a little. It should always be just this side of uncomfortable. At some point, for me at least, and others that have shared the same experience, something just "gives." It may be very emotional, it may be just a huge weight lifted, it may be subtle. For me just breaking down sobbing on the trail was not uncommon.

Once you can break down your current programming, you are free to rebuild as you see fit. Try to not compare to others, just think about baby steps you can take to get to where "you" want to be. Good luck and you're not alone.

</comment><comment><USER7> You mentioned pressure pushing you into your current field. Is this from family, peers, yourself?

Perhaps taking a short break away from this influence would allow you to assess the long list of options you have without clouded judgement.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. What would it cost long term to put your education on hold for a year? Or a summer, or 54 hours while you participate in a Startup Weekend. How does that cost compare if you stay in education for the next x number of years.

If you're fuelled with passion for your new ventures you're not making a transition into the unknown.

If you jump into something new without testing it, it might not be what you expect.

For a serious life decision, you need to have all the facts to hand, try and remove all the risks you can envision while still making the change you want.

If you do want to talk, I'm my username on gmail.

</comment><comment><USER8> Please don't go down that route, my brother committed suicide about a year ago and its wrong on so many levels, surely there is at least one person that would be devastated and it would adversely affect their life for a long time, if not for the rest of theirs. As far as getting into programming, its not as hard as you make it out to be, I don't have a degree in computer science or anything but was able to break into the field, it just takes an interest and work studying / working on projects. I'd be happy to exchange emails / talk sometime if it can help

</comment><comment><USER9> It's good that you're reaching out for help, but what you need is advice from a psychologist/therapist/psychiatrist, not random hackers.

Go get some help. I wish you luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Therapy will just try to get me to settle with where I am, and I'm certain it won't work. I've thought about going for some time, but hearing of experiences my sibling and friends have had, it doesn't seem worth it. Thanks, though.

<comment><USER10> CBT is _definitely_ not about getting you to settle. Seriously. I've been there. Go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey, I am not a programmer (yet), but I do know exactly how you feel (in terms of feelings of failure, contemplating suicide etc.) I like to help people so send me an email (in my account) with a throwaway email address if you would like. I think I can help you out.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can empathize.

Looking back at this period, you might have wished you got a life / career coach to help you regain your control and happiness.

After all, that is the meaning of life, to do what you love.

</comment><comment><USER13> _I'm unhappy and have been unhappy for years._

It sounds like you want to be happy, so you made this post. That's a good step.

 _Pressure landed me in a field I have absolutely no interest in._

You did <a>, <b>, and <c> to get where you are now, <d>. There's nothing you can do about <a>, <b>, or <c>, so forget about them. There's a lot you can do about <d>, and it sounds like you want to. Good.

 _I'm far into further education, have many more years to go and will be in tons of debt soon._

You can change course at any time, regardless of how you got here. That may (or may not) be the right thing to do.

 _Dreams of being a hacker, working in the valley at a young age with relatively few responsibilities are quickly vanishing._

I don't know a nice way to say this, so I'll just say it: So what? I have been a hacker for many years and have never worked in the valley. Most great hackers I've ever known have never been there either. And you'd be surprised how old they were when they really got into it (a lot older than anyone who follows popular opinion would believe). There are many paths to happiness in hacking and there's no age limit, believe me. Forget about what has happened to get you to this point and focus on where you are and where you want to be from there. If you look back, you'll find a way to be miserable. If you look ahead (and do something about it), you may be surprised how attainable the wonderful life you want still is.

 _I see Facebook pages of high school friends who are living the life I wished to live._

 _Never_ compare yourself to others. _Ever_. There will alway be someone "better" and someone "worse". Know what it means? Nothing. So don't waste one more nanosecond of brain time thinking about it. OK?

 _Regret settles in, optimism is brushed aside by reality, and I realize there's really no feasible way out._

You _believe_ , not _realize_ , that there's no feasible way out. There's a huge difference between belief and realization. You're confusing the two and must stop doing that. You need to find a way to _believe_ these's a feasible way out. Once you make that leap, all things will once again become possible. I don't know what it will take for you to get that belief, that's a task at hand for you to complete. Find help with that task if you need it.

 _I've sought to find the "brighter" side of this, but there really isn't one._

Then maybe it's time to stop "seeking brightness" and start putting together an actionable plan to get where you want to be. Again, I don't know what that plan would be in your case, but resources are available all over to help you get started.

 _I'm deep in a hole, absolutely unhappy with the path I'm on, and jumping ship would put me in a worse situation._

"Changing Course" != "Jumping Ship". Again, it may (or may not) be best for you. Don't decide prematurely whether or not a changing course is wrong.

 _What's frightening is that suicide has been a thought I've always jokingly entertained, but as time goes on, I find myself lending the idea more validity. I don't know what to do._

Speaking up, even with a throwaway account, was a good first step. It proves how much you really care about yourself. Listen to some of the advice here and take advantage of other resources at your disposable. You are not alone. And you certain not the first (by a long shot) to be going through this. Keep speaking up until you find the help you need. If you want to talk me email me. See my profile.

Thanks for speaking up. Keep at it. And best wishes. We really do care.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1) Pick up "What color is your parachute?" Do some of the exercises. Contemplate if there might be a shorter path out of your mess than the one you are currently on. Look for other appropriate resources that might help you get there from here faster. Maybe contemplate where exactly _there_ is, which might not be what you think it is now.

2) Do some volunteer work. Preferably pick an area where you can identify with the people being helped in a "there but for the grace of god go I" manner. Perspective can be a wonderful thing.

3) Stop and "count your blessings" and find some pleasant things to do (aka "stop and smell the roses"). In other words, do a little living _now_ , grab a little gusto *now", and stop waiting for some future date to "be happy".

4) Change your people, places and things. This is a paradigm from drug rehab circles. I've never been a drug addict but did much the same in the process of overcoming some serious personal challenges.</comment>


Facebook | Engineering Puzzles - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php <comment><USER2> Many of these seem pretty easy.

I like that there are two submission-testing tests at the beginning, including the thinly-veiled fizzbuzz.

I do wish there were longer samples, though. (I'm much more interested in the puzzles than applying for an engineering position.)

</comment><comment><USER3> To me this seems ridiculous. A real programmer would not answer stupid time- wasters like that, as should have a sense of pragmatism. Want to show how good programmer you are? Show me what you did just for fun of the problem. Show me a problem others have not recognized yet and tell me how you can solve it.

Programmer is not meant to be a problem-solving machine, unless a narrow one that loves a life in a cubicle, as a mad scientist. Those days are over.

Don't give me ridiculous puzzles that do no good to anyone - I use my time to do greater things. A challenge to me is not an algorithm, but turning something difficult in something easy. An idea, not algorithm is what should be taken in consideration. An engineer doesn't know everything about everything, but knows enough to recognize and quickly learn more on the topic. Solving a problem like this is just a time waster, and the one who created on the other side just thinks he is so cool because he is creating puzzles. Solve a real problem, not made up to show how good you are. But I guess those puzzles comply with Facebook values...none..

These puzzles seem to me just as if they want to hire people who are desperate to work for them. It seems it's the new trend in recruiting.

</comment><comment><USER4> I dunno, these problems aren't very puzzle-y, they look like job interview questions. I'd rather do top-coder questions or wu riddles.

</comment><comment><USER5> I tried sending them an email with a build.xml file, and a java src file. But they've sent me an email stating that the build failed, even though the build works on my machine.

The src file is called hoppity.java. The build file compiles the class in the current directory, and copies the file in the same current directory.</comment>


Christian Churches vs. the Lightning Rod - <AUTHOR> http://www.miltontimmons.com/ChruchesVsLightningRod.html <comment><AUTHOR> I did a bit of Googling on this.

Washington post article supports the original post narrative: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather- gang/po...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather- gang/post/old-ben-and-his-franklin-lightning- rod/2011/06/01/AGGaNRGH_blog.html?utm_term=.229ce6d994c7)

Original research by Christian blogger claims delay in lightning rod adoption was not because of clergy: [http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/lightning-rods-and- the-church...](http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/lightning-rods-and-the-church- john-loftus-resurrects-a-hoary-old-myth/)

If you have a research supporting or contradicting original post, please comment below.</comment>


HN Suggestion: "add comment and upvote" button? - <AUTHOR>

I often comment on a submission and forget to give it an upvote.  Implementing a button at the bottom of the comment form that said "add comment and upvote" would allow people to comment and upvote an item in one click. <comment><USER2> "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."</comment>


Can We Trust Robots? - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/special-report-trusting-robots <comment><USER2> I've recently seen lots of discussions regarding the trustworthiness of robots and the threats associated with giving them too much power. I think the key question is not if we can trust robots, but if we can trust those who define which decisions robots can take without humans and what factors those decision will be based on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Saw this diagram earlier. Amusing and relevant : [http://smbc- comics.com/comics/1464275028-20160526.png](http://smbc- comics.com/comics/1464275028-20160526.png)</comment>


Hacker news readers from Toronto? - <AUTHOR>

Are there enough hacker news readers from Toronto to set up a meet up? <comment><USER2> I'm sure there are, but I'll bet not so many that this inquiry will reach all of them.

Maybe set up something more permanently on meetup.com?

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, I'm from Toronto. I'm pretty sure there is a decent amount of us.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes.

I'm sure there's a solid handful of us.</comment>


For Podcasters: Bitlove - generates a Torrent for all media files of an RSS feed - <AUTHOR> http://bitlove.org/

<comment><USER2> I <3 Bitlove ;) It works great for the most of my Podcasts

The others are just not joined ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> finaly a kinde of tracker just for legal podcasts

</comment><comment><USER4> Great service!</comment>


Ask HN: PCI compliant service for storing credit cards? - <AUTHOR>

Is there any PCI compliant service, which is not a payment gateway and allows storing credit cards?
There are many payment gateways that have the credit card 'vault' system but the country I need to make this work for is Pakistan and there are limited number of compaies that accepts credit cards in Pakistan. 2checkout.com works but they don't have a vault service and I don't want to get into the business of storing such information of my servers.
If you know of any such service then please share. <comment><USER2> The point of these vault services is that they are write-only. Otherwise, they are as good as useless. You put a CC number into them and you can't get them out again. This is why it's a feature of the payment gateway; you get a token back for followup charges but you never get the CC number back.

You might not need a vault if you can find a payment gateway supports followup transactions. So you do one transaction with the CC number and then use that transaction number to do another charge on the same CC without providing the number again. I use one payment gateway that supports this instead of a vault and it works well.

2checkout has recurring payment options which you might be able to use (or abuse) for your needs. If you're trying to do monthly or yearly charges, that option might work well for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> After reading your comment about token, yes that makes sense about token being read only. So having such a service wouldn't make sense.

Actually 2checkout recurring option won't help as I am having to build a payment profile options - user can choose to pay from stored payment profiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you're okay having this appliance/container on your own network, StrongAuth offers such a service/appliance. I'm not sure if they offer a remote solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a solution that would work in this situation but it's good to know about them. Thanks for sharing.</comment></comment>


BT fault hits broadband users and banks - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36844712 <comment><USER3> It's a power outage in Telecity Harbour Exchange, from the LINX mailing list this morning:

08:12

\- We are currently experiencing an outage impacting some of our equipment located at Telecity/Equinix Harbour Exchange in London. It is impacting both the Juniper and Extreme LANs.

\- We are still investigating to get further information, but we have lost all management access to the devices at the moment.

08:45

\- We have had confirmation from Telecity/Equinix that there was indeed a partial loss of power impacting one of the power feeds.

\- Power failed at 07:55 BST and was restored at 08:17 BST for the majority of our equipment.

\- Unfortunately one of our edge routers (edge4-tch) on the Juniper LAN is still down at the moment.

09:33

\- Power to edge4-tch has also been restored now. The router has been back up since 9:15 BST.

\- All member services should be restored.

\- We have an engineer on site and are working with Telecity/Equinix to understand why we lost all power to that device.

\- We are also waiting for a full report from Telecity/Equinix about the cause of the power failure.

\---

We don't peer with BT so ou traffic was OK but we did notice loss of service from AWS to BTNet

<comment><USER4> Great update thanks.

Perhaps I am being naive, but I thought data centers had back-up power to cover this exact problem? I.e. battery power until the generators kick in... or is this how it used to be done and these days no one bothers and just relies on fail-over to other sites????

<comment><USER5> despite best efforts, sometimes the generators don't kick in. sometimes not all of them kick in. sometimes one ATS in one feed in one section that just happens to house one half of an important switch chassis doesn't work as it did during tests last quarter.

<comment><USER6> True. But Data centers usually have an A and B power systems independent of each other for redundancy . Equipment is usually connected to both. The failure of either should not cause an outage. (Unless some one is stupid enough to connect core network equipment to only A or B power)

<comment><USER7> Sometimes only A power or B power is delivered to the rack (otherwise you could receive different phases).

Power failures also occur sometimes when the issue is on the wrong side of where power is distributed - we've lost power to our servers when maintenance has gone wrong for example.

<comment><USER6> From my point of view if you end up with mission critical equipment connected only to A or B power then its engineered wrong.

<comment><USER8> Very true, but sometimes this happens at fault of the facility, not the affected company. I've been in a facility experiencing widespread power issues because customers were incorrectly delivered A+A or B+B power, instead of A+B.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The best thing about being BT is that you own everything so you don't have to justify anything to anyone. Since half of the lords have long term shares in the monopoly the moment that it went private, then your back is covered as far as law is concerned so long as you pay your dividends. You can just laugh as the customer goes somewhere else, because you will still be picking up 75% of the broadband bill.

I also love how BT pays out so much to shareholders, and the public purse bankrolls the infrastructure, then everyone pays BT wholesale. What an outstanding deal.

BT is corrupt and I would like to see it fragmented.

<comment><USER10> BT doesn't own Telecity I suspect that if they did it wouldn't have happened.

And BT pays out around 3% dividend to its owners which is not excessive a lot of BT's detractors have an axe to grind (Sky, Murdoch and Virgin) and want to cherry pick customers and to hell with the USO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find the Talktalk chairman's quoted comments hilarious, though I assume they're not specifically in relation to this outage. If it were Talktalk's network spending would drop about 90% and complaints rise a similar amount. It's not like TT would be unaffected by a Telecity outage. I don;t think TT ever cared what their customers think, just reducing prices and service to the bone.

<comment><USER12> OpenReach own _all_ the ADSL wiring - that's what TT have to buy from them. Most consumer ISPs are quite 'virtual' and dependent on BT for actual provisioning.

The manager of a tiny geek-friendly ISP, Andrews&Arnold, frequently complains about this on his blog: [http://www.revk.uk/](http://www.revk.uk/)

<comment><USER11> Well they own exchange to home. Since unbundling it's a bit fuzzy as most of them have their DSLAM in the exchange and pay rents for space in exchange and run virtual over BT's backbone and so forth. But at least it freed up a lot more competition. Hence Sky asking for Fibre cabinet unbundling recently.

If it was A&A or Zen's chairman quoted there'd have been no need for snark. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Graphs here: [http://www.ukinternetreport.co.uk/?p=d&id=215](http://www.ukinternetreport.co.uk/?p=d&id=215)

</comment><comment><USER14> UKNOF's mailing list is private so it's hard to get a handle on what's going on, but from what I've heard, a DC went down and BT's infrastructure hasn't recovered.

<comment><USER15> There isn't any insightful discussion going on. Suprisingly. So you are not missing out on any info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apparently down to Telicity Group DC having power failure which BT heavily rely on

<comment><USER17> Which DC, there are many.

Two London ones I can think of is north of the city (Oliver's yard) and docklands.

<comment><USER18> Arstechnica says Telehouse North Docklands [http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2016/07/bt-isps- telehouse-...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2016/07/bt-isps-telehouse- north-major-outage/)

<comment><USER19> We've updated the story - did some more investigation. Definitely looks like it was Telecity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We run one the most popular speed test site in the UK at [http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk](http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk) . We are getting 20x more people testing today than usual. Also, because Ookla is down.

</comment><comment><USER20> It'd be nice if we got email notifications about this. I wasted time trying to work out what was going on (and if the issue was in our local network).

<comment><USER21> You want to them to _email_ you to tell you your internet service is down? Er ...

<comment><USER22> Most people have redundancy. Computer has wifi, phone has LTE. Usually different providers.

I would love an email thst my internet service is down. Or text.

<comment><USER23> Incidentally BT also has infrastructure or delivering SMS to landline voice numbers via text to speech - or at least had as of a couple of years ago - <USER2> as lon as it's the broadband service and not the end user lines that were down they'd still be able to deliver it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The infuriating this is that whenever this happens at BT, they say nothing about the cause and nothing about how they will prevent recurrence. As a BT Infinity customer, I've had a total loss of internet several times over the last couple of years and never any feedback from BT afterwards.

<comment><USER25> They seem like one of those obnoxious organisations that think if they provide any information then it will only invite a shitstorm. Unfortunately too many people still chose them as a provider. I nearly. Nearly switched to them last month because of their prices and BT Sport package. But fortunately I'm stuck on a 12 month contract with IDNet. Shame.

<comment><USER26> As a colleague of mine used to say when I worked there: "It's a good thing we're not a communications company."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My BT Infinity home broadband in south London is affected. 'mtr' shows any traffic via the BT-owned IP address 188.8.131.52 gets 88% packet loss when it hits that router. Web sites using other routes are ok.

</comment><comment><USER28> And again the next day: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12135794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12135794)

</comment><comment><USER29> I noticed this morning that HTTPS was failing but HTTP was fine, but it "fixed itself" after ten minutes. No idea if this was related.

<comment><USER30> Had issues yesterday where BT was complaining that my machine was using non BT DNS (all our machines at home use google's 184.108.40.206 / 220.127.116.11)

Slightly concerning since we never enabled parental controls (Which the message implied was the reason it wanted us to use BT DNS) and now hearing that somehow only https traffic was affected by an issue.

<comment><USER31> As an aside, I've found BT's DNS to be very flaky; sometimes down (or unreachable at least) for many hours at a time. I switched to google's and never had any problems since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there a reason there are so many Data Centres in Docklands? Is there something about that area that makes it great for datacentres?

<comment><USER33> Most investment banks are based there (Canary Wharf), they pay a lot of money for low latency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Huh, so that's why my internet connection was timing out on a lot of sites earlier today.

</comment><comment><USER35> Their customers should rightly be outaged.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is probably the reason why linux.dropbox.com was down for brief time today

<comment><USER37> Out of all the sites you could have mentioned why did you think that (the deb repo for Dropbox's packages) was pertinent to this story?

<comment><USER36> Because it was. This and ubuntu repo was not working on my PC during BT outage, other sites worked. After BT sorted it out I didn't have any problems. I asumme that it was the issue with some BT connection between me and dropbox server

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Might be a better organized coup attempt from the remain supporters :)

<comment><USER39> Middle and upper class folks cutting off their Netflix and Spotify entertainment while also leaving them unable to tweet incessantly about it. I don't think so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Living in England, you really need a downtime strategy for your internet connection. While it's seldom a complete country-wide thing like this one, you can still expect your broadband to drop out for up to an hour at a time at least once every day.

BT is just that incapable of providing DSL to residences.

I live in a tiny village in rural France half the time, and never really think about the internet connection. Just like you never worry that water won't come out of the kitchen sink when you turn it on.

But then I come back to England for the summer and there at the front of my mind several times a day is the Internet connection. Why is it super slow all of a sudden? Hey, it dropped again. I hope it comes back soon because I need to check stuff in. I have a personal hotspot set up on my phone that gets used within my house on a weekly basis. There's an OpenReach van parked out back a couple times a year fixing yet another fault on our line.

Nowhere else I've lived has it been anywhere near this bad. I look forward to the day where BT has some actual competition.

<comment><USER41> I've been with BT for a very long time (5+ years) and other than during unseasonably violent storms this is the first time that I've suffered any kind of outage at all. Not only that but I'm in the middle of nowhere and still get fibre (to cab at least)

<comment><USER42> Then you're been very lucky.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/03/bt_blames_faulty_rou...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/03/bt_blames_faulty_router_for_mass_internet_outage/)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/17/bt_outage_three_days...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/17/bt_outage_three_days_fix/)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/29/bt_broadband_in_broa...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/29/bt_broadband_in_broadbased_brownout_and_titsup_incidents/)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/12/bt_infinity_working_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/12/bt_infinity_working_to_fix_the_problem_after_three_days_of_outages/)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/30/bt_major_dns_outage/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/30/bt_major_dns_outage/)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/25/bt_cable_theft/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/25/bt_cable_theft/)

And that's in just over two years.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Twitch Chat Draws – Replicating Reddit's "The Place" on Twitch - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/petargyurov/twitch-draws <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN. I've been thinking of ways to create an interactive Twitch stream and this little idea popped into my head; I wrote a bot that lets users make collaborative art.

The initial idea was to create something more than just pixel art, but as an MVP it works. I plan on extending it by adding more ways for users to draw: things like shapes and paths, and the ability to fill largers areas.

I also plan on scaling the grid automatically based on the number of viewers. Eventually I will add "gamified" modes too.

Let me know what you think.

See it in action here: [https://www.twitch.tv/chatmakesart](https://www.twitch.tv/chatmakesart)</comment>