The Pros and Cons of AWS Serverless Express - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/the-pros-and-cons-of-aws-serverless-express-789996e4be32 <comment><AUTHOR> A deep dive on the good and bad sides of the migration framework built by AWS Labs for express-based legacy apps.</comment>


Redesigning the country selector - <AUTHOR> http://baymard.com/labs/country-selector <comment><USER2> While this has a nice UI, it suffers from a ranking system that fails to weight prefixes correctly.

For those of us in Canada, typing "ca" should probably rank countries that start with the "ca" prefix first, followed by countries that have a word that starts with "ca", finally followed by countries that just happen to contain "ca".

I don't see much use in showing "United States" as the first match for a user who has typed "c" and "a".

The same problem exists for the prefix: "uni". The list in that case is:

      United States
      United Kingdom
      Réunion
      Tanzania, United Republic of
      Tunisia
      United Arab Emirates
      United States Minor Outlying Islands

<comment><USER3> Can anyone explain why 'United States' could possibly be an autocomplete result for 'CA'? I am staring at United States and just can't see a 'C' anywhere... have I totally lost it?

<comment><USER4> Funny enough, I already proposed the same problem and solution with a blog post and sample code for "Re-thinking the State Dropdown with Autocompletion" back in May. Same issues applied, but there was at least some feedback on reddit and optional changes.

[http://skookum.com/blog/re-thinking-the-state-dropdown- with-...](http://skookum.com/blog/re-thinking-the-state-dropdown-with- autocompletion/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/h37gb/rethinking_the...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/h37gb/rethinking_the_state_dropdown_with_autocompletion/)

        My blog post links to jsbin sample source so feel free
        to optimize it with all of your proposed fixes.

<http://jsbin.com/oxifa3/18/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My main complaint about old country pickers and this one is non-prioritization of countries in the list. Yes, I understand that this may be a sensitive issue, but how much likely your customer is going to be from Canada than from Cameroon. Or if I start typing 'CA' in this selector, I get American Samoa and Antarctica before Canada! Let alone my old acquaintances Cambodia and Cameroon.

Same for Russia - you get Aruba, Nauru and Burundi higher in the list.

So here is my non-PC suggestion: rate countries by population or GDP per capita, so countries where your customers are more likely to be from will be closer to the top and thus easily accessible with fewer keystrokes.

<comment><USER6> I think that's making it too hard. Where is this information coming from? How do you update it?

Instead, just order the matches like so:

1\. Everything that matches at the first word 2\. Everything that matches at the start of some word 3\. Everything that matches at a non-start position within a word

Granted, in this scheme Cameroon will still show up before Canada, but you don't have to look anywhere near as hard to find it. I doubt anyone would notice/care about your "non-PC rating scheme", but I do know it would be a much bigger pain in the ass to maintain.

<comment><USER5> This is a good suggestion - I believe prefix match should weigh more than partial infix match.

As for "too complicated" - I am not suggesting to extract GDP or population data in Javascript. But in static HTML on server side you may add additional "weight" attribute to each option, the way alternative spellings are added (look at the HTML source). And then you may manage these weights externally.

<comment><USER7> I believe prefix match should weigh more than infix match... except for countries that start with an article (The Philippines, The Netherlands) where infix match works better. The Netherlands is now number 11 on the list after typing "Ne".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have to ask. Is it common for anyone to type their country starting with characters inside of the word?

I.e. instead of typing "can" for canada, would you type "ada" or something similarly fuzzy?

I personally type "can", and if Canada is not the first result I consider it's usability inferior to a standard drop-down.

<comment><USER9> It may not be common, but I don't think it is an unreasonable thing to expect. Think of a country such as the Democratic Republic of Congo -- I'm not entirely certain, but I'd imagine it is common for someone to simply start typing "Congo" while still expecting the result to be available.

This example may not be ideal since this country selection has both "Congo" and "Congo, Democratic Republic of" in its data set, but the principle can probably be applied elsewhere.

<comment><USER10> I think the parent was more interested in whether someone would use a string of letters _within_ a word in the name, as opposed to just starting a word somewhere in the name.

That is to say in your example, the parent wasn't questioning whether the code should support 'Congo', but whether it should support 'ong', for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Normal country selector:

Type I, click Ireland (seven or so down).

This: Type I - Ireland not shown.

This is less usable to me than the usual country selector as a result.

Yes, I'm being nitpicky, but all the JS doesn't cover up that it's slower to find my country.

</comment><comment><USER12> I typed UK. The only option offered was Ukraine.

I'd actually much prefer a country selected that was based on geography with a Mac OS X dock-like magnification so I can choose my country easily.

<comment><USER13> Remember the old Windows time zone picker that let you click on the world map to select your zone?

Geopolitical sensitivity about precise borders forced Microsoft to switch off the region-highlighting feature.

(Info: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.aspx))

Also, the user may not always be picking their own country and it may be unreasonable to ask the average user to find, say, San Marino on a world map. While you could of course restrict the use of a map-style picker to only the users-own cases, it would be nice to have a somewhat standard picker for all occasions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could you retrieve the country from the IP address to set the default?

<comment><USER15> Doesn't work if you're traveling abroad. I hate getting country-specific versions of a site even after logging in with my US credentials. It should remember that I'm from the US.

<comment><USER16> You're presenting two different problems really.

1\. Yes, sites should remember your personal preferences that you've already set.

2\. When setting those preferences, pre-filling based on ip would work in 99.9% of locations. A standard selector can handle everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Throwing an autocomplete at something is NOT always an upgrade. I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about country selectors, and I'll present my solution for two separate use cases here.

In the first case, a country selector allows a user to select a country as a component of their shipping address, a user profile, etc. The input method described in the aforementioned article suits that case decently; however, it's not immediately intuitive that a user can access some of its touted conveniences (such as the selection of a country by its short name), and in most cases, a user will not frequently return to the same country input field (i.e. they'll set up a saved shipping address ONCE, or set their home country on a social profile ONCE) which removes the possible avenue of training the user to expect the pattern.

In this case, the best possible user experience can be given by leveraging geo-location (either by using the JS API, or any of the myriad IP-based solutions) and making intelligent suggestions to the user. For example: If I'm a user, and I am required to enter my shipping information (including country) on a checkout page, the page's best GUESS as to where I am should be displayed first, and the user should be allowed to change that assumption quickly. For example, you might show the user a drop-down box with the page's best guess selected by the default, surrounded by nearby countries (depending upon geo- location accuracy). Secondly, flag icons actually have quite a bit of value -- many people think visually, first, and will be looking for their flag's colors. Even if the icons are minuscule, they're still incredibly helpful.

The second use case which I want to present is that in which a company (such as Range Rover) presents a page allowing you to select which localized version of their site you wish to visit. In Range Rover's case, this is a massive list of countries, with their respective flags. Let's be honest: part of the reason this page exists for most companies is because they wish to demonstrate how significant their global reach is, or the expenditure required to translate the site. On Range Rover's site, the US (my homeland) is buried deep on the bottom left-hand side -- to make this more usable, they could leverage the same geo-location technique discussed above, and simply provide visual differentiation between my home country, and the other countries! Everyone's goals are achieved here; usability is increased, the "global" feeling is imparted, and the business douches who insisted upon a massive list of countries in the first place are sated!

The guys who wrote this article don't understand what's possible with current technology, and therefore cannot successfully design for it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why is a simple auto-complete input doing 100+ points on HN?

It seems to me they are just selling their $78 report on checkout usability.

</comment><comment><USER19> Impressed to see 'England' become 'United Kingdom'. Not so impressed to see that 'Wales' wasn't similarly treated.

<comment><USER20> "uk" doesn't, but "gb" does :/

<comment><USER21> Wales and UK work for me - I suspect it's been updated.

<comment><USER22> Yes, those work now. Northern Ireland hasn't been added yet though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't start typing the letters inside of a word to try to get the word in autocomplete.

</comment><comment><USER24> Being keyboard only is huge usability issue. Simple drop down enables to use pointer devices as well.

</comment><comment><USER25> Fails for U.S.A. and U.K. Also Laos.

And I agree that matching "us" to "Australia" at all is pointless.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why don't country selectors use the free IP databases to pre-fill the country? It would reduce 90% of user input.

After that just tally a daily table of "INSERT INTO country_order (count,country) FROM (SELECT count(*),country from users)" and then do: "SELECT country FROM (((SELECT TOP 10 count,country FROM country_order order by count) UNION (SELECT 0 as count, country from country_order)) GROUP BY country) ORDER BY sum(count), country"

That should produce a country listing where the TOP 10 countries are ordered by their use and the rest are sorted alphabetically. The SQL might not be perfect but you get the idea.

</comment><comment><USER27> This can be diplomatically difficult.

The linked implementation only lists Taiwan as "Taiwan, Province of China". I could see this being interpreted in many different ways, with either side being insulted. (Maybe that's best.)

<comment><USER28> If 'Hong Kong' can stand on its own in the ISO list, I really can't see the PRC being insulted by calling 'Taiwan', well, 'Taiwan'.

It seems the dropdown here is just a harmless tech demo based on ISO, but this is _such_ a common mistake. Even the rails/country_select thingie on GitHub has the same trap included. Use it and you are bound to make Taiwanese users unhappy, which already happened to Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, ...

<comment><USER29> The PRC claims Taiwan as an integral part of China. But Hong Kong is a 'special administrative region', i.e. an autonomous jurisdiction for which China essentially took over as the colonial power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> On a similar note, I've always found it kind of amusing/frustrating that forms in the US make you fill out city, state, and zip code, when in fact the zip code indicates a specific city and state. I realize that's a huge database of geolocation data to keep as part of the program, but I wonder if there could be some kind of lookup that goes on behind the scenes and fills in the city and state if the response is quick enough (and allows the user to fill it in manually if it doesn't).

<comment><USER31> Zip codes can and do cross both state and city boundaries in some cases. That's not true of zip+4 but most people don't know their extra 4 digits.

Then there is the expected rhythm of filling in the form as city,state,zip so putting zip first throws people off. I did a form once where we put the country above city/state/zip so we could do the wording for those more appropriately (e.g., switch to "postal code") and even that was annoying to many testers.

<comment><USER32> You need more foreign testers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sorry to say - but it sucks. Completely irrelevant results, strange sort order.

In any standard dropdown list, just press a button and it scrolls to the first word starting with it. Press again, etc, and it cycles.

Fuzzy string search is a good algo and all, but does not make a good country selector. Everyone knows first letter of a country, so keep it simple. And, see SublimeText for an excellent example of fuzzy string searching.

</comment><comment><USER34> Update 13 Nov: As many commenters have noted the sorting logic on the original demo wasn't all that "logical".

We've now changed it so the first letters of the country name are ranked higher (e.g. typing "Ca" now returns "Canada" at the top instead of "American Samoa", and "In" returns "India" instead of "United States", and so on) as many of you have suggested.

Thanks for the feedback.

PS: The Smashing Magazine article describing the handling of typos, multiple spelling sequences, synonyms and prioritization can be found here: [http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/10/redesigning-...](http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/10/redesigning- the-country-selector/)

</comment><comment><USER35> When typing "united ...", the United States shows up in the list.

When typing "america ..." the United States does not show up in the list.

Yet "United States of America" is the, or one of the official/common names of the United States, according to <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states> and [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/us.html)

I like the interface, but it has a few quirks as pointed out in the other comments, and the database behind it could probably use some additions.

</comment><comment><USER36> I love that England gives me United Kingdom

<comment><USER21> I love that "Great" gives me United Kingdom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nice one. Scrolling down the endless list of options in a form is pretty cumbersome. I like the fact that you can type in common abbreviations for countries as well ('de' for Germany, etc).

</comment><comment><USER38> nice idea, but the graceful degradation also needs extra work if usability is the goal. On Opera Mini, for example, it's a text box. The javascript will round-trip to the server, taking several seconds. I'd much much prefer the dropdown. Out of context, i'd not even know what to type into what appears to be just a text field. You could consider this a usability flaw in Opera Mini, but it means a usage drop for many mobile browsers for sure.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I like this. However, I'm wondering if including all the common and local names of a country would become too cumbersome during implementation over time.

</comment><comment><USER39> While it's better than traditional country selector, I think there are some possible improvements here. I started typing Ger (as in Germany), and first suggestion was Algeria - wouldn't it better to sort them by popularity/language version of my browser/ip geolocalization, instead of repeating old mistake of putting stuff in alphabetic order?

</comment><comment><USER40> I still don't see how this is any more useful than just using the default auto-complete with your standard country list. The data I've measured shows that selecting your country is not often a pain point.

Also, if it's for shipping, you can often work out the country by the address, and perhaps just show the matches.

E.g. Do you mean Someplace, X or Someplace Y in a drop down.

</comment><comment><USER7> A minor improvement suggestion: countries can now start with their proper article like "The Philippines" and "The Netherlands".

The article often gets omitted in drop down menus so people can find it if they search by alphabet (and advanced users can press the first character to jump to it quickly). With this plugin that would no longer be needed.

</comment><comment><USER41> Well, I don't think this "works". We are conditioned to think that lists are sorted in alphabetical order. When I key in first few letters of a country, I expect to jump to that country's name directly. But with this redesign, I ended up typing more letters to "fine tune" auto-complete's suggestion!

</comment><comment><USER42> Most Canadians I know are used to hitting 'c' three times. It skips you past Cameroon and Cambodia and selects Canada. I suspect people from other countries behave similarly?

This totally breaks that expected behavior for me. Maybe it should, maybe "it's time" for that.

I suppose I can get similar behavior with this by typing "ada".

</comment><comment><USER43> Something that always bothers me about "Select redesigns" is that scrolling does not work like it should. If you move your mouse outside of the div/whatever, it'll scroll the page instead of the select. A regular select will keep scrolling until it reaches the end, then it'll scroll the page.

</comment><comment><USER44> As a vimperator user and command line person this is awesome. But obviously as a tablet or mobile phone user this would be not good.

I think this could be easily fixed by having the drop down menu pop up when you click in the input field (before you have typed anything).

<comment><USER45> How about popping up a world map, letting the user tap the country, and if that's unclear give a list of local countries? Or putting a map button next to the field for such augmentation of typed entries?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> this is hardly something brand new, this looks bettter and works just as well :

<http://harvesthq.github.com/chosen/>

I'm sorry but progressive enhancement of a select tag into an autocomplete element isn't quite news worthy.

<comment><USER47> Does chosen have an equivalent to what this selector does with data- alternative-spellings?

<comment><USER46> no, but again, that wouldn't be that hard to add.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Whilst some country endonyms appear to work (Deutchland, Hrvatska, Suomi), non-latin endonyms (日本,Россия) fail, some even when romanised. This isn't an easy thing to solve when many countries have multiple de facto or de jure languages.

</comment><comment><USER49> A different approach I've tried before is to perform a lookup on the visitor's IP address, and then to auto-select the country that we think they might be from. If we get it wrong, they can always select another country the usual way.

</comment><comment><USER50> I like the attention to detail when I enter "Scotland" and it returns "United Kingdom".

</comment><comment><USER51> A few issues. Typing "ire" lists Ireland last with 2 entries not even starting with "ire" above it. That's kind of annoying. More importantly "Ireland" refers to the island, as opposed to the country which is the Republic of Ireland.

</comment><comment><USER52> Feedback I didn't find in the comments: when you blur the field without actually picking something from the list, it resets even if there is only one option. Examples:

Type: united states

Leave the field, it works

Type: united states of america

Leave the field, it resets

</comment><comment><USER53> I want someone to take this alternative values approach to the occupation selector. They seem to vary just enough that you have to read the full list to find the one that fits best.

<comment><USER54> Unfortunately there's no universally accepted pre-defined list of occupations which are common knowledge to enough people to make that happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> In addition to fixing the sorting as other people have mentioned here, it would be great if you made the return and tab keys choose the topmost completion.

</comment><comment><USER56> Somewhat related: if you know someone at Google, could you please tell him/her to add keyboard support to the country selector of Google News? Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER57> Another, perhaps even easier and more obvious solution would be to guess the country based on IP address and prepopulate the field.

</comment><comment><USER58> I find this plugin far superior:

<http://harvesthq.github.com/chosen/>

</comment><comment><USER59> A country selector should also address typing and nomenclature around addresses and zip/postal code.

</comment><comment><USER60> you have to keep user experience in mind...everyone is used to scrolling down to find the country...if you throw this in, half your users will get frustrated not knowing what to do.

on the technical side, it should just match the starting letters, instead of all letters in the name

</comment><comment><USER61> You should prioritize the list bases on population.

</comment><comment><USER62> Burma is missing (of course Myanmar is there ...)

</comment><comment><USER63> Why is Antarctica on the list?

<comment><USER64> Not to mention Bouvet Island -- an uninhabited volcano in the Antarctic covered by glaciers. If you try to land there, the Norwegian navy will fire on you as it's a "nature preserve".

It's OK though -- most country selectors include BV, since they lazily use ISO3166-1 as a canonical list of countries when in fact it just defines country codes.

When you embark on a redesign, it's usually a good idea to start by revisiting your content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> your selector just sucks. admit it.

</comment><comment><USER66> Wow, talking about missing the boat on something so simple.

</comment><comment><USER67> _So we took it upon ourselves to redesign the country selector._

Sorry, you failed terribly. Feel free to try again.

<comment><USER68> Your comment is rude and offers no illumination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Lolz. They implemented a simple autocomplete plugin and call it a redesign? It's not necessarily faster for a mouse user because it requires keyboard entry.</comment>


MacOS Sierra upgrade from a developer's perspective - <AUTHOR> http://marianposaceanu.com/articles/macos-sierra-upgrade-from-a-developers-perspective <comment><AUTHOR> quick tip: For those who have plugin issues with Xcode 8 (broken by Sierra update), you can unsign Xcode to get your old plugins working again.

Instructions here - [https://github.com/inket/update_xcode_plugins](https://github.com/inket/update_xcode_plugins)</comment>


Bitcoin ETF research finds that 95% of Bitcoin volume is fake - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/BitwiseInvest/status/1109114656944209921 <comment><USER2> >CoinBene is reported to be the largest bitcoin exchange in the world

I literally never heard of this exchange before today. If some random exchange popped up and overtakes all of long time "legitimate" incumbents (eg. coinbase, bitstamp, kraken) _combined_ , I'd be suspicious of that too. The same applies for most of the other exchanges near the top of the list on slide 22. In reality, I don't think seasoned traders are affected by this, only newcomers and the occasional journalist.

<comment><USER3> "Reported" by CoinMarketCap (and it's dropped to #11 now):

[https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/)

I think it's pretty well known within the crypto community that CoinMarketCap exchange volumes are bullshit - other than Binance, the top 45 basically consist of exchanges I've never heard of. They're bullshit because there _is_ a ranking, one that many newbies would refer to, and it's trivially easy to fake volumes through wash trading or just lying if you own an exchange. It's been like that for at least a couple years too - when I first found CoinMarketCap, the top exchange was BitMEX by a large margin, which everybody said to stay away with and doesn't even appear today.

<comment><USER4> what would you say are the top exchanges right now?

<comment><USER5> In the original twitter thread: [https://twitter.com/BitwiseInvest/status/1109114665240616962](https://twitter.com/BitwiseInvest/status/1109114665240616962)

 _" 5/ Only 10 exchanges have >$1M real daily bitcoin trade volume. @binance, @bitfinex, @krakenfx, @Bitstamp, @coinbase, @bitFlyerUSA, @Gemini, @itBit, @BittrexExchange, @Poloniex / @circlepay You can see the daily BTC trade volume on these exchanges at: [http://www.bitcointradevolume.com](http://www.bitcointradevolume.com) "_

Note: Not verified by me, just relevant to the source.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. Subjectively (and this is with a U.S. bias), I would've ranked them as Binance, Coinbase, Bitstamp, Gemini, Bitfinex, Bittrex, Kraken, Poloniex, Bitflyer, Circle, ItBit.

[Now I'm going to peek at the actual volume rankings. Hmm, not bad - Kraken is doing better than I thought, and I underweighted Bitfinex and Bitflyer per U.S. bias, but it's otherwise quite close.]

<comment><USER6> Those match my extremely anecdotal observations in this arena.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This presentation was given with regards to a proposed "Bitwise Bitcoin ETF Trust" that the SEC is considering for approval.

Direct link to ETF research PDF linked from the thread:

[https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr- nysearca-2019-01/srnysearca2...](https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr- nysearca-2019-01/srnysearca201901-5164833-183434.pdf)

Interesting things to see in the hundreds of pages:

page 24: What Do Real Exchanges Look Like?

page 43: Trade Size Histograms For Suspect Exchanges

page 57: Applying All Three Analyses: BitForex

page 111: We Have Reached The Point Of Diminishing Returns For Improvements In Efficiency

<comment><USER8> Is the SEC going to approve it?

<comment><USER9> I'd imagine the SEC doesn't leak that info in advance on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can go to any crypto-trading forum (i.e. /r/bitcoinmarkets) circa 2012 and find that this was common knowledge. Everyone knew/knows that 'Chinese' volume was mostly fake because the exchanges made it easy to do so with low fees. Whether the exchange simply let this happen or actually deliberately created the fake volume was immaterial.

UTXOs remain the best way to track overall market use and movement. Through this, you can plainly see that the last year of market activity has been thin, just traders competing with each other. With one notable exception in Nov/Dec of 2018 causing the big dump. This was one of the most singular events in Bitcoin history, with old coins fueling a major drop in price.

<comment><USER11>
      UTXOs remain the best way to track overall market use and movement.

UXTOs can be mass produced in bulk from single users controlling and scripting multiple wallet addresses.

Looking at the Winter 2017 UXTO transaction logs, it's pretty clear a single entity was (can/is) coordinating upwards of 10%-50% of the volume, the clearest examples of this are throughout December of 2017.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is by far the best analysis of the Bitcoin market I have ever seen. Super interesting. As the Twitter thread mentions, this could actually be good news in the eyes of regulators as it means the Bitcoin price is likely controlled almost entirely by legitimate trading on legal and regulated exchanges rather than the fly-by-night places that are faking their volume.

<comment><USER13> Well, the study shows that there are legit exchanges, so there is some place for the usual market forces to apply (and indeed, the price of Bitcoin on these exchanges lies in a tight band, too small for arbitrage opportunities). That doesn't mean the price of Bitcoin can't be manipulated by pump & dump or other price manipulation schemes.

But still, the study (at least the highlights given in the twitter thread) looks solid and well-presented.

<comment><USER14> pump and dump can take place in small cap equities as well. it will never be impossible - the thing thats needed is the regulation / surveillance to do enforcement on those who perpetrate it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One villain here is CoinMarketCap, which obviously knows most of its listed exchanges are fake yet continue to show their reported volumes. I believe they are paid by fraudulent exchanges to do this. CMC's product is solid but its values are corrupt.

<comment><USER16> They do their best to remove fake volume as far as they can tell. And in my opinion it's best to list the exchanges and assets and let the users form their own conclusions than to be a centralized gatekeeper.

<comment><USER15> I work in this industry, and they _do not_ do their best. The Blockchain Transparency Institute lists OKex as only 11% real volume[0] yet it is the 6th biggest exchange[1]. Repeat for many other exchanges. Simply put, they need to remove most of the exchanges.

[0] [https://www.blockchaintransparency.org/](https://www.blockchaintransparency.org/)

[1] [https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Faking volume is an issue with exchanges, not Bitcoin. Exchanges are in the business of trading. They have incentives to transact Bitcoin. Bull market produces more volume. Bear market has less volume. I take this as most Bitcoin people now are HODLers. They actually see it as a Store of Value.

With this research, the Bitcoin ETF group is telling SEC: Our ETF will better than other exchanges. Please approve.

<comment><USER18> True, but when 88% of the large ($1M+) exchanges and 95% of transactions are mostly fake volume, that's reflective of Bitcoin as a whole, wouldn't you say?

<comment><USER19> If I may, let me apply your comment to something else:

50% of phone calls made each day in the US are fake robocalls, that's reflective of the phone system as a whole, wouldn't you say?

The fake volume may be reflective of bitcoin price or the lack of regulation of bitcoin exchanges but I don't think thenfake volume is reflective of bitcoin as a whole.

<comment><USER18> >50% of phone calls made each day in the US are fake robocalls, that's reflective of the phone system as a whole, wouldn't you say?

Yes, I would! I think that deregulation has enabled the phone system to become a terrible system. That's not a good analogy if you were trying to prove the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find the title a little misleading, "95% of Bitcoin exchange volume is fake." to differentiate from transactions performed inside the network.

<comment><USER21> Transactions in the last 24 hr were 10% of the market cap (i.e. ~$7b USD), so the on-chain activity is therefore much higher than what's being claimed as "real" volume here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "When you remove fake volume, the real BTC volume is quite healthy given its mkt cap. Gold's market cap is ~$7T with a spot volume of ~$37B implying a 0.53% daily turnover. Bitcoin's $70B market cap would imply a 0.39% daily turnover, very much in-line with that of gold"

So people are using it as a store of value, rather than a medium of exchange? This would count against it being used just to buy drugs etc wouldn't it?

<comment><USER23> Why buy drugs/illicit things on an open, immutable and transparent ledger?

Best use cash and leave no trace.

<comment><USER24> Because you don't want to go meet drug dealers in an alley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Some of the shady bitcoin exchanges and Bitcoin derivatives product offerings really do remind me of bucket shops that were popular in the early 20th century ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_(stock_market)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_\(stock_market\)))

One difference is that the obvious remedy that was applied to bucket shops at the time (regulation) doesn't seem to be as effective this time around due to the international nature of Bitcoin markets.

<comment><USER26> BitMEX isn't like a bucket shop, it _is_ a bucket shop. Complete with price manipulation to blow out shorts/longs when too many people are stacked on one side of the action to pocket the margin deposits, repeat ad infinitum.

Check out some 15/30 min or 1h BTC charts, look for 'bart' patterns. Pumping and dumping to wipe out shorts/longs, it's blatant and obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Already posted as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19462894) (EDIT: although this link is from the horse's mouth rather than the WSJ)

</comment><comment><USER28> I have a couple questions!

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears 9 of the largest exchanges are regulated under New York laws.

1\. Is there a scenario where to US could now immediately stop almost the entire bitcoin exchange process?

2\. If that's the case, isn't that entirely against the point of a "decentralized" currency - in that it's not worth much if you can't effectively trade it.

3\. If 95% of volume is being faked, which according to the histograms is likely, what other discoveries about Bitcoin could be waiting to be revealed?

<comment><USER29> Bitcoin is resilient against shutting down the exchanges, it just means people start new ones elsewhere. Value isn't (or shouldn't be) stored in exchanges so there is no real damage.

I'd be far more concerned with the majority of the mining power being centralized in China if I was invested in bitcoin... that's what can actually shut it down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's telling to me that they speak of bitcoin only in reference to value stores like gold and not in reference to utilities like p2p payments. Clearly no one is using bitcoin to spend, and very few people are using it as savings (at negative interest!).

</comment><comment><USER31> So what is the takeaway here? Is this ETF fund trying to make their plan/offering more favourable or attractive by calling out this "fake" volume?

<comment><USER27> They are showing that the methodology that they have for computing the NAV (net asset value) is solid and based on exchanges that do not have fake volume. Also that the effective volume and price sensitivity on those exchanges is reasonable for the asset class. And finally that in order to manipulate those exchanges sufficiently to affect the price and win an arb against the ETF is infeasible.

<comment><USER14> Well said

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> As an occasional crypto trader I've noticed a lot of fake volume. On the coin I follow [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dragonchain/#markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dragonchain/#markets) most of the volume is fake - most of the real trading is on Kucoin and the stuff on Fatbtc and COSS mostly fake. They do it because they want to be seen as the successful exchange so people use them. It's soon apparent if you actually try trading that it doesn't work as advertised and then you often have to pay a steep charge to get your money back or sometimes have problems getting it back at all.

</comment><comment><USER33> What I do not understand: what is fake? The graphs these exchanges report? What does it matter? I do not quite get it.

</comment><comment><USER34> Fake exchanges will probably use this report to improve their wash trading algorithms and make them look more legit.

</comment><comment><USER35> a security researcher recently claimed that it was massively, overwhelmingly, not-even-close, prices driven by monetary exchange policy within the PRC (china), that caused the jump in BitCoin price.. because bitcoin was used to move money out of the PRC.. but, things changed..

<comment><USER23> Got a source on that? Keen to read up on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone feeling like explaining why this is important to a cryptodummy?

<comment><USER37> It's not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1109114656944209921.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1109114656944209921.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> Duh... Any exchange can pretend it's a large reputable player by showing fake volume, it has nothing to do with blockchains.

Further, any with a substantial amount of bitcoin, e.g. $1m, who might gain from their assets having a reputation as a means to transfer money, can create $1b in daily volume at the cost of $1 per year on the blockchain, fully automated.

The expectation that nobody on the planet will do this is obviously zero. So you naturally get fake volume. I'd be surprised if it wasn't >90%.

</comment><comment><USER40> Binance standing strong. I'm glad to see what I already believed. The company leadership is solid, and, CZ, continues to build a robust, secure exchange. Removes coins that are crap, always keeps up to date with posts, maintenance updates, new listings, etc.. and hardly ever crashes under extreme loads. (remember 2017?).

CZ, keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER41> This is well known/suspected in the cryptocurrency circles.

The problem is correcting for bad volumes.

</comment><comment><USER42> Kind of a dumb headline though. One exchange can post 1e1000 btc of volume.

It also doesn't even mean the exchange is malicious. Some exchanges have 0 fees. So if someone using the exchange trades with themselves, it's 0 cost.

</comment><comment><USER43> That sounds surprising. How would you fake trades if blockchain is by definition public? Can't people see the amount of actual bitcoin going to and from exchange's bitcoin addresses?

</comment><comment><USER44> I doubt Bitfinex's volume is real, either. Tether is their fractional-reserve- backed-by-loans-to-ourselves shitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER45> The only volume that matters is the amount of BTC transferred everyday on- chain.

</comment><comment><USER46> Over 200 slides. Clearly a different culture of use at the SEC for powerpoint than in Silicon Valley. Is this common?

<comment><USER47> yes, one is academic the other is for people who "are changing the world."

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> They've detected that 95% of the volume of their somewhat dubiously selected bitcoin speculation markets _doing trades off-chain_ are fake.

This has nothing to do with Bitcoin blockchain or Bitcoin itself. It's all about the speculation markets.

<comment><USER49> It's not dubiously selected, it's just 95% of all markets worldwide that offer trading BTC. And their main point is that the remaining 5% is real and very well arbitraged, suggesting a mature enough market for an ETF.

What kind of trading would you say is _on-chain_?

<comment><USER48> I'm not saying trading should or even could be on chain. I'm saying the title of this post is misleading and should be changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> But is it really? It would seem to depend on what you define as "trading". If I sell on an exchange, and someone on the same exchange buys, there's no reason for them to actually force transactions through the network. It only needs to go through the network if the exchange doesn't have enough on hand to complete the transaction. This kind of net trading is fairly common. Just because it didn't go through the network doesn't mean it didn't happen.

<comment><USER51> The idea of a Bitcoin "exchange" is already weird, as most attributes of crypto don't apply if exchanges are involved.

But if those exchanges don't even bother to execute trades on the real blockchain, if the involved steps are just too much of a hassle, if they are content with storing and processing those "transactions" in their SQL Database, then...what is left of that old White Paper, is it anything else than a sacred book of a religion no one believes in anymore?

<comment><USER52> The saying goes bitcoins on an exchange aren't yours. All exchanges (that I know of) allow you to pull tokens into your private wallet, at which point they belong to you. It would be sort of foolish for the exchange to execute trades on the real blockchain because it would be slow & expensive. Makes way more sense to do that part with database transactions.

<comment><USER51> If it is impractical for professional organizations to handle crypto transactions then it is impractical for anyone. If the blockchain works, if it's good for anything, then ... use it!

<comment><USER53> But nobody is saying the blockchain is good for anything. The scaling problems of on-blockchain transactions have been known since it started, and there has been quite a lot of work done on ways to scale cryptocurrencies without giving up many of the properties it has.

One of these is called Lightning Network for bitcoin, where (in VERY oversimplified terms) the blockchain becomes an arbiter of sorts, and is only used when there is a disagreement or someone tries to cheat someone else out of money, or for very large transactions (large in terms of value, not transaction size).

Saying "If the blockchain works, if it's good for anything, then ... use it!" is like telling someone who wants to fly across the country to just drive it since you were told that cars can drive anywhere in the country...

You could _technically_ use the blockchain for all transactions, but it has a number of tradeoffs that most don't want to use for every single transaction. And that's okay! Having the ability to make a choice between the "zero trust" nature of the blockchain and trusting an exchange for faster/cheaper transactions is awesome!

Hopefully things like Lightning Network will keep continuing and can add an additional choice which combines just about all of the "zero trust" benefits of a blockchain with the speed and cost of off-chain transactions.

<comment><USER51> "But nobody is saying the blockchain is good for anything."

I think crypto proponents very much said otherwise. The blockchain was of course hyped as a practical, usable thing. Zero trust transactions, an alternative to "fiat" currency, smart contracts, Venezuela, privacy and all that. Those were real promises and arguments by the crypto community. What's up with all that?

It seems the Blockchain is unusable, exchanges are just centralized places who apparently don't even put your money on the real blockchain and possible solutions are 'hopefully' in the future.

<comment><USER53> Well nobody can control what others say. I'd say that those actually involved in cryptocurrencies (other than those who bought) knew this all along. It's why there's been so many different attempts at fixing it!

But like I said above, a car taking magnitudes longer to cross the country compared to a plane doesn't make the car useless for all purposes. Having the option of being able to use a blockchain to transact without trust is a huge benefit to many. It might not be what everyone wants for all transactions, and it having downsides doesn't mean it's useless, but it still has immense value to some, for some of their transactions. Bitcoin was not designed to be faster than Visa, so saying it's useless because it can't keep up is kind of silly.

Blockchains and Bitcoin might be useless for you in their current forms, and that's more than fine! But they are still improving and changing, and they will almost definitely never truly be "finished". It's all about fixing the problems that people have.

When Bitcoin was first introduced, it was one of the first to allow trust less transactions without a central authority (again, a gross oversimplification). People found value in it, and as it gained some popularity problems were found, and people began working on solving them.

Those solutions are now beginning to have more widespread usage. Things like Lightning Network aren't "hopefully" in the future, they are now. The usage is still small, partly because the developers are intentionally taking things slow (becaus bugs can be very expensive here!), but the theory seems pretty sound. And many exchanges are already part of it and are planning to move to using it for everything (and IMO any good exchange should love the idea of LN! It takes all the risk out of holding people's money, it allows you to prove your trading volume is real, and it is as fast as you can move the bytes).

I have no doubts that more limitations will be found, and LN itself already makes some tradeoffs, so there will be more work after it's "done". And you can continue to not use it, and you can continue to criticize the ecosystem based on what charlatans and assholes said, but I believe in this tech and there are many people who will continue working on it and improving it for those who want it, for the use cases they want it for.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Portland Anarchist Road Care Fixes Potholes Anonymously (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/03/portland-anarchists-want-to-fix-your-streets-potholes/519588/ <comment><USER3> > _They also run the risk of being held personally liable if someone were to > be injured by the pothole they attempted to fix._

Are they suggesting that the city can be held liable when a pothole they _haven't_ fixed jacks up my car or its tires? I've not really heard of that working in practice. From Portland's own website [0]:

> _Most pothole claims are not paid._

Yea, figures - I think I'll take my chances with the anarchist-repaired potholes.

[0] [https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bibs/article/629953](https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bibs/article/629953)

<comment><USER4> It's simply "you touch it, you (might) own it". The same principle applies, for example, to first aid, which is why "Good Samaritan" laws exist shielding you from liability. I generally sympathise with your point of view, because I really don't know how you can actually make a pothole _worse_ by attempting to fix it. But if someone can make such a case ("they fixed it with road-coloured cardboard paper and I didn't see the hole below"), then yeah, they are liable.

The city is just giving advice in this case. If someone where to harmed by one of these fixed potholes, the lawsuit would be between that person and these "pothole vigilantes".

<comment><USER5> > I really don't know how you can actually make a pothole worse by attempting > to fix it.

My first thought would be using substandard or incorrect materials. Say, using concrete in an asphalt surface. You quasi cover this with your cardboard part of the comment. Perhaps an incorrect mix of aggregate to asphalt might have different thermal properties. If the pothole expanded more/faster than the surrounding material, it might make it a lot worse. Also, if your materials are not safe to drive on while setting (like my example, filling a hole with concrete). You'd also be endangering yourself and others while attempting such work as you'll be unsuitably marked and lanes won't be properly barricaded for your work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the "Guerrilla Public Service" vigilante[1][2] from 2001, he added an I-5 sign notification where people commonly missed the exit.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANFaIeiJ40Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANFaIeiJ40Q)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clgl63CWOkM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clgl63CWOkM)

<comment><USER7> I love that story so much.

We all have those "little" things that bug us, that we just wish we could throw our hands up and fix but naturally never do. The most we'll do is send a comment/email that will never get action-ed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "It's not safe or legal for people to fill potholes on streets that are maintained by the city," says Rivera. "They run the risk of being injured in a traffic crash.... They also run the risk of being held personally liable if someone were to be injured by the pothole they attempted to fix."

Not legal? Everything starts being illegal when it's an embarrassment for the governement. As in capitalism's paralyzie? Let these guys decide if they want to run the risk to be injured.

<comment><USER9> I don't know what you mean by "capitalism's paralyzie" but yeah, it seems like things similar to this should be covered by Good Samaritan laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I put this comment in the Tesla thread, but it applies here as well. Last summer saw a lot of really bad forest fires that had to be fought. The costs of fighting those fires had to come from the state in most cases, and many budgets suffered as a result (a situation made worse by the broad denials of federal assistance to states). In our case (Montana) the budget that suffered the most was road maintenance.

Our roads received the minimum possible care they could receive this winter; the state just couldn't afford more.

<comment><USER5> And, in the case of the Lolo Peak fire, my parents are one of two households that are footing the cost of the firefighters major fuck-up of setting the back-burn that nearly took out an entire neighborhood.

My parents lost nearly everything except 2 vehicles and the pets. The fire started on federal land, and federal officials set the fire that burned down my parents' house.

No compensation to them, yet, except from their insurance.

I know back-burns are not precise, but given that the fed took preventative measures sure as bulldozing a multimile fire line and laying pipe to power sprinklers, then they set the fire and didn't turn the sprinklers on, feels like arson to me. Also, that they started it at one of the worst times of the day. Everyone in Montana knows that winds pick up in the afternoon. When did they start the back-burn? Roughly 1-2pm local, depending on conditions. That's usually about the cutoff for regional slash burns. By cutoff, I don't mean start, I mean, they have to be stopped by then.

Coupled with reports from neighbors, that refused to evacuate, that fire fighters stood by and simply watched while 2 houses & a neighborhood water system burned to the ground.

Am I pissed? Of course. I think there was a huge failure of management in this fire. Will my parents every be properly be compensated? I doubt it. They, and the rest of my family, have lost a lot due to federal mismanagement.

My parents' house was not lost due to a wild fire. It was lost due to federal action to combat a wild fire, and they fucked it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "We don't think the city should exist; we are only limited by our capacity > and our imaginations," says PARC.

Cities are the most efficient way we've discovered to live as humans. They're less wasteful, they consolidate resources, etc.

> "Don't get us wrong, we believe that many of these services are crucial for > society, like healthcare, education, and maintained roadways, but we believe > that the way to achieve access for all is by deconstructing the state and > capitalism, as well as other coercive hierarchies that exist in our society. > It is this driving philosophy that motivates our actions, not only to fix > the potholes, but to take power back from the state, into the hands of the > people."

Centralization and urban living were invented thousands of years ago and has made these services possible and more efficient over time.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it absolutely stuns me these people who dream up of a _better world_ have apparently zero historical insight into how human societies have organized themselves.

"We are going to offer all the services the state offers now but only _better_ " is the silliest argument ever. You run into the exactly same resource and distribution problems as the government has, and you are going to start instituting the same sort of structures sooner or later.

Hierarchical systems are not enforced on people by malificient power hungry lords. Humans self organize into hierarchical system. If you are planning this "total-decentralization" you better have a plan on how to negate this natural "follow-the-leader" instinct most people have.

The second is the historical example. The only time anarchists come to power is in time of great trouble. Mainly because the dominant political force has fallen, and everything is in chaos. Another political force has risen sooner or later, only to install hierarchical power structures. With great misery to most involved.

Doing anonymous good deeds is one thing.

Speaking of a revolution is another.

<comment><USER13> Yeah. I find it weird that when people dream up the "best" social structure, it's often explained by a simple overarching philosophy. How convenient would it be that the entire complexity of human society can be ideally governed by a small set of principles?

It's always "only capitalism" or "only communism" or "no money" or "no government" or etc etc.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the optimal solution isn't based purely on some philosophical idea about how things 'should' be (whatever ' _should_ ' even means!), but instead would be a pragmatic, adaptive solution based on what actually happens and works on a case-by-case basis.

It would be a patchy, ugly system, compared to the perfect elegant algorithm people want. And indeed that's kind of what we have. We just gotta keep patching and amending. There are a lot of existing problems, but we have the framework for fixing them, and no doubt it is a difficult process. But to insist that the solution is to start over is naive and dismissive of the generations of sacrifice made to get to this point.

It's frustrating when people argue that all evil is because of capitalism, or that capitalism is purely good. Can't we just acknowledge that there are good and bad aspects of all systems, and work to boost the good parts and improve or attenuate the bad parts? And work in the good parts of other "competing" systems too? Yes, things don't have to be 100% pure capitalism or not. Hybrid solutions exist! That's basically what is happening, I just wish people would stop arguing by simplifying everything into some catchy moral gimmick.

<comment><USER14> I agree with your skepticism regarding people who express a lot of certainty about what will work, and what will happen in extreme and untested circumstances.

However, I strongly disagree that principles and morality aren't essential. This is because when figuring out, as you say, 'what works best', there is no single definition of 'best'. In fact, as a general rule, there's thousands of competing ones. Principles are how you do a reasonable job of making consistent decisions towards meaningful change.

In addition to a system working well, it also needs to be _understood to be working well_ by the people that live in it. If some definition of a 'best' metric was delivered by a Kafkaesque convoluted system that people found confusing, one which works well-enough on simple principles might be preferable.

<comment><USER13> I agree. I didn't mean to imply that principles aren't important - <USER2> there must be some metric to judge progress against. Principles should hold in a generalized, zoomed-out view of a society. But in practice, there are numerous exceptions and edge cases. Like, "maximize freedom" is generally a good rule but not always.

I feel like the principles we come up with are just rough approximations of what we intuitively know but can't elegantly express. The true moral principle for society is probably a monstrous concatenation of if-else statements. If the zoom-out view of society still follows the principles, then I think that ought to be sufficient for its citizens' concerns about the society's effectiveness and direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ignoring the safety of the people doing the fixing for a moment, how do we know that these potholes have been fixed in a way that'll last a long time and be safe? If I want to know the method and materials used, where do I go to find that out?

<comment><USER8> I destroyed my tire on a pothole last year and I had to change the entire wheel. I doubt a "fixed" pothole can be more damaging than an unfixed one.

<comment><USER16> It's possible that an incorrectly fixed pothole would a) degrade far more quickly and b) do so in a manner that expands the pothole more than just leaving it alone would have.

<comment><USER17> Right. It's not so much about the pothole today, as much as it is the health of the entire road over the next decade+.

That said, addressing this and other concerns isn't rocket science. The city could easily publish a detailed guide to filling potholes (what materials are ok, what materials are not, what process to use, etc).

<comment><USER18> Publishing a guide to filling in potholes seems like it would create controversy with the public, who would ask why it appears the city expects citizens to fill in potholes themselves.

It's much easier to just allow citizens to call a number and report a pothole. Seattle does that and potholes get filled fairly quickly, they even have a phone app that allows you to report all kinds of problems.

Here's Seattle's pothole map showing where and when they have been fixed.

[http://web6.seattle.gov/sdot/potholemap/](http://web6.seattle.gov/sdot/potholemap/)

<comment><USER19> > Seattle does that and potholes get filled fairly quickly,

We must have different definitions of quickly! Or perhaps different standards for "pothole".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> People in the UK took a different approach to get potholes filled in [1] - basically spray painting penises on them to shame the Council into filling them in.

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32448103/mystery- artis...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32448103/mystery-artist- highlights-bury-potholes-with-penis-drawings)

</comment><comment><USER21> Not that it matters really, but I thought I heard this story quite a while ago, and in fact this article was published: MAR 15, 2017

"They also run the risk of being held personally liable if someone were to be injured by the pothole they attempted to fix"

This makes me uncomfortable - are municipalities held accountable for injuries caused by a pothole? Are they held liable for injuries caused by a _fixed_ pothole?

<comment><USER8> I replied at the same time with the same concern. Shouldn't the municipalities be more concerned about injuries potholes can cause vs. the injuries one could potentially suffer from fixing them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Don't get us wrong, we believe that many of these services are crucial for > society, like healthcare, education, and maintained roadways, but we believe > that the way to achieve access for all is by deconstructing the state and > capitalism, as well as other coercive hierarchies that exist in our society

One thing that always struck me, was in a capitialistic society we are actually all incentivised to fix potholes ourselves... Basically the improved potholes keep us safe, improve business, etc. I think many are just so short sighted, that when they think of capitalism they think of the standard "greedy corporation"

If people actually thought two steps ahead (including said corporation) theyd be more like Amazon, improve logistics and you improve the world. Literally, everyone profits. That's the point of capitalism, you can basically do what you want. These guys are filling potholes for themselves, they said as much. That's a selfish, capitalism-centric act

<comment><USER23> People have always worked to make their environment better for themselves and everyone prior to capitalism. Perhaps you're the one who bought into the propaganda and claim for capitalism properties that have nothing to do with it as a mode of production.

<comment><USER24> You don't need propaganda to value capitalism. Capitalism is the natural product of freedom. It is not a designed system, it is an emergent system.

<comment><USER25> You are thinking of markets. Capitalism requires the state. Property rights do not enforce themselves.

<comment><USER26> These days sloppy use of the word capitalism by both its proponents and critics means that colloquially capitalism == free markets, vs "the acquisition of capital as its own virtue"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I organized a crew to do this in the Santa Cruz mountains last year. I did it after losing two tires in the same car to the same pothole. That gets expensive.

I tried to work with the county to make it official, the idea was to form a group of trained, careful people that would be to public works what the volunteer fire department is to Cal-Fire. Then we could be insured, etc.

The county wanted no part of it even though their budget, at the time, was about $1M/year for 600 miles of roads (that's pathetic and the roads show it. The road I'm on hasn't been paved or screened for decades and it's falling apart, just like many others).

I was hoping we could pioneer a model that other states/counties could emulate. Still am but don't know how to get there. We can bring way more people to the table than the county can. For example, they fill potholes with 2 people, one guy driving a pickup, one guy on the back shoveling patch. We did that (as you'll see below) with 7 people and two trucks (my flatbed and my 1/2 ton). Our protocol on busy roads was to park the flatbed facing into traffic, lights on, flashers on, safety LED flashers up high on, then cone off a buffer behind and in front, put two people with slow/stop signs just inside each cone zone, a person at the middle that directs traffic (everyone had radios on them), a driver for the flatbed (used to tamp in the patch) and shoveler. That's 7 people where the county had 2. We were dramatically safer. We could do that because we all volunteered.

That's a lot of man power for free, it's less risky, it still blows my mind that the county can't get behind that. Someone decided it made them look bad. Personally, I think _not_ using that man power makes them look bad but what do I know?

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/17/mountain- vigilantes-t...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/17/mountain-vigilantes- tackle-plague-of-potholes/)

<comment><USER28> Devon, county in England, has a similar problem. They look to be embracing getting local community to do the work, providing materials and who after training are then covered on liability.

[https://new.devon.gov.uk/communities/casestudy/100000-fundin...](https://new.devon.gov.uk/communities/casestudy/100000-funding- to-roll-out-community-road-warden-scheme-countywide)

<comment><USER27> That's great news, I'll pass that on to the county. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Rather than getting defensive, municipalities should support these groups much in the same way they do volunteer fire departments.

<comment><USER30> Right, and have a strike (and possibly lawsuit) on their hands for promoting unpaid labor. And frankly, I wouldn't blame the strikers.

<comment><USER29> Are you familiar with the function of volunteer fire departments in the U.S.?

<comment><USER30> Not in the US, is there anything special them?

If not, I'd say they have a different pattern of activity than almost any other municipal work: plenty of downtime with unpredictable peaks that might require huge numbers of people at a very short notice. This makes hiring professionals a huge waste except in large cities, because they'll be twiddling their thumbs most of the time.

<comment><USER31> > This makes hiring professionals a huge waste except in large cities, because > they'll be twiddling their thumbs most of the time.

Fire depts are not sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Plenty of work to be done. To respond to a lot more than just fires too FYI.

Volunteer firefighters are there to help out in areas not served by firefighters such as being out in a super rural area or when theres a big fire and there simply isn't enough staff, like wildfires. They're not volunteering to take away someones job. Some of them are just retired firefighters or veterans that want to look out for their community.

<comment><USER30> _not served by firefighters such as being out in a super rural area_

Right. But why are those areas not served by a professional team? _Because there isn 't enough work to keep them busy_.

Same thing with wildfires; you might need 20x more people during a wildfire than the rest of the time. It's not like you couldn't hire 20x professional firefighters to handle them - it's just that it would be a huge waste the rest of the time, as I said.

My point is that firefighting is not like pothole fixing - there's no such thing as a wildfire of potholes. Which is why municipalities supporting volunteer firefighters makes sense, whereas supporting volunteer pothole fixers doesn't, in my opinion.

<comment><USER31> I suggest you actually come out and visit us as you clearly have no idea what its like. We do get "wildfire of potholes" after every major rain season - exactly what the article was talking about. Last year was records for us.

<comment><USER30> Will people die if the potholes aren't handled in a few minutes? Do potholes spread to nearby homes?

No, you get a lot of potholes. That's annoying, but nobody will die if the fixers take a few days to fix them.

<comment><USER31> Again you're showing you don't understand the problem here. It doesn't take them a few days. It takes them years. But whatever. No point in arguing with someone that doesn't live in the pnw

<comment><USER30> It takes them years because they don't have enough people. My only point is that they should hire more people rather than support volunteers as avoutthere suggested.

My knowledge of the pnw pothole situation is irrelevant to my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Its strikes me that these people don't know what capitalism is. I think they think that corporatism is capitalism.

In any case, you can't have an anarchist society ... its always going to turn into an anarcho-capitalist society. People are always going to join together into mutually beneficial joint-enterprises ... and they are going to want to share in the proceeds from such enterprises ... and that is what capitalism basically enables.

<comment><USER33> >Its strikes me that these people don't know what capitalism is

In my experience Anarchists are some of the most well read community of political activists around. May I suggest that you don't know what capitalism is and should spend some time actually reading some theory? Or perhaps engage in conversation with some anarchists? I think you'd find their views and philosophy much deeper and valid than you've conceded in your post.

<comment><USER32> Explain to me how anarchy doesn't immediately lead to anarcho-capitalism?

They only way it doesn't is if you define capitalism to be some sort of corporatism ... which means you aren't "well read" as you put it.

<comment><USER33> In your other comment you made this point

>What do you need to make a modern enterprise? You need tools and you need labor. Some people provide labor, and others provide the tools. Some people who can provide tools, don't necessarily want to provide labor. They are shareholders without being workers.

But the thing is, this only needs to exist this way in a capitalist society. In all your points, you seem to not grasp that the underlying economic system of an anarchist society would in no way resemble the current state of affairs.

In much the same way the economy under a feudalist society does not resemble a capitalist society, and yet fields were tilled and walls built without shareholders.

The fact is that if you abolish capital (by returning collective control over the means of production to the workers) there is no section of society, no "other that provides the tools". The people who provide the tools are other workers, working in other fields, and they supply the workers in the field which uses the tools with the tools. There is no unproductive segment of society such as there is today which lays claim to the wealth without doing any of the labour. This means that there cannot be the accumulation of wealth that we see today, as instead of being horded and spent on the whims of a few, it is immediately pumped back into society.

The state and capitalism are symbiotic. The state only exists to keep capitalist enterprise in check, that is why the state perform functions that we do not believe should be performed for profit (why so many countries have welfare systems, healthcare systems and militaries to maintain the states primacy).

Otherwise everything would be performed by private enterprise (i.e. your anarcho-capitalist ideal) which would very quickly lead to corporate feudalism and private armies.

There is no way for the state to not exist and capitalism to exist at the same time, and seeing as both structures are the root cause of many issues in society, the abolition of both is necessary through decentralization and worker led confederations of labor, rather than the current system of capitalist led governments and businesses.

<comment><USER34> > The state only exists to keep capitalist enterprise in check.

John Locke would disagree. The state exists to protect the rights of people and the public good. "Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins."

<comment><USER33> The state exists in it's current form _because_ we don't trust private enterprise to perform those functions, otherwise we would. So you're agreeing with me, although I could have phrased it better.

<comment><USER35> And we don't trust private enterprise for good reasons. They're known under many names - tragedy of commons, coordination problems, collective action problems. One possible solution for all those, towards which all societies in history gravitated so far, is the state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's this amazing story by 99% invisible about Guerrilla Public Service which I find both fascinating and funny at the same time.

I highly recommend that episode: [http://pca.st/YLdD](http://pca.st/YLdD)

</comment><comment><USER37> We could use these guys in our city. Power to the people.

The city's approach is "see no evil" until you submit a see click fix ticket.

But you need to submit them for individual holes. My street looks like a lunar landscape, but the crew will show up and fix the single hole pictured in the ticket.

<comment><USER4> I believe their point is that _you_ should be that person for your city, not them...

In any case: fixing potholes is just about the least inefficient government service possible: it's a guy/gal making $x per hour, plus some extremely commoditised materials.

Meaning: it's extremely hard for anybody to screw this up. If your city isn't fixing potholes to your liking, it is almost guaranteed to be the result of a general lack of funds. With the perennial bogeyman of "wasteful spending", governments in the US have simply been starved of resources.

The behaviour you're describing makes perfect sense in this situation: moving on to the next pothole that someone complained about is simple prioritisation, even if it's slightly less efficient long-term to drive a block or two for every pothole instead of fixing a whole street at once.

<comment><USER38> _If your city isn 't fixing potholes to your liking, it is almost guaranteed to be the result of a general lack of funds._

Have you ever lived in a city? I cannot reconcile this proposition with my understanding of any municipal situation I have ever seen. Cities certainly have enough money to patch potholes. They already have a compactor and a dump truck, and asphalt is cheap. If any city is not fixing potholes, it is a question of priorities. There is probably some byzantine explanation of e.g. why potholes on this street are fixed while those on some other are not, but that can't be simplified to "we don't have enough money".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've seen the converse by using grafitti and drawing obnoxious penises around potholes.

Sure, it defaces public property, but it's with the goal that the potholes will be taken care of quicker. Unsure how true that is in practice.

<comment><USER40> They mentioned that in the article and link to another article about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> SFMTrA is a similar group that adds protection for SF bike lanes when the city can't be bothered to do it:

[https://twitter.com/sfmtra](https://twitter.com/sfmtra)

</comment><comment><USER42> Back in my day, Anarchists destroyed public property, not fix it! Kidding aside, this is pretty cool, but really sad that the city can't somehow fix them before property damage or someone gets hurt.

<comment><USER43> The winter of 2016/2017 was really bad here in Portland and caused an unbelievable amount of damage to our roads. Whole portions of streets came up from the freeze/thaw. It was nuts and they're STILL in the process of fixing them, not that the roads in Portland proper were ever that great in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> this seems to be from 2017. do they still mend the potholes?

</comment><comment><USER45> It would be far worse if they not only fixed the pothole, but then made a new pothole near the house of a government official.

</comment><comment><USER46> Wait, are these guys Individualism or Collectivism Anarchists?

Rewind 2000 years...

Wait, are these guys the _People 's Judean Front_ or the _People 's Front of Judea_?

</comment><comment><USER47> (2017)

</comment><comment><USER4> Most people don't even shoulder their share of household chores, even though fair sharing is enforced by informal yet powerful social mechanisms. So I'm not optimistic regarding widespread peaceful anarchy for _services_.

Fixing potholes yourself also takes a (few million) step(s) backward in time: it's the bartering of public service, forgoing the awesome benefits of specialisation and cooperation.

But you know where this sort of anarchy basically works: taxes! Almost all people send in their tax returns without a fuzz. It's almost as if they agree that everyone should chip in for shared endeavours, and that money is an excellent medium for coordinating it all.

(yeah, I know there's the threat of criminal law lurking if you don't pay your taxes. But taxes are probably the world's most universal policy, and only a select few lunatics and presidents seem not to get the concept)

<comment><USER48> Taxes enforced by the state are the absolute antithesis of anarchy. The difference between coercion and voluntary organization is profound.</comment></comment>


Google leaves 60 percent of Android phones under Threats - <AUTHOR> http://www.cyberkendra.com/2015/01/google-leaves-60-percent-of-android.html

<comment><USER2> Title should read "Telephone carriers leave 60% of Android phones under threats."</comment>


Microsoft explains Windows 8 Store: Free 7-Day Trial, lower pay-cuts and more - <AUTHOR> http://www.the4cast.com/microsoft/microsoft-explains-windows-8-store-free-7-day-trial-lower-pay-cuts-for-popular-devs-and-more/ <comment><USER2> I think the generous free trial could allow them to raise the floor even higher than $1.49.

Part of the reason I won't buy expensive apps on iPhone is because there's no recourse if they're terrible. Google's 15 minute trial period is a start, but for some games that's not long enough to download the content they need to run.

It will also motivate developers to create apps with more than 7 days worth of value. How many people will actually keep a fart app or a game with 2 levels for more than 7 days?

I think this will be an interesting experiment and look forward to seeing what effect is has on the quality and quantity of available applications.

<comment><USER3> This will, however, lower the number of 1 off apps that people need. Sometimes, I need an app to do something that I do once a year. I have no intention of paying $5 for this app and chances are, I'll download it and return it clean within that 7 day period. So if your app is very situational, the MS app store might do more harm than good.

<comment><USER4> The trial period appears to be at the developer's option.

Presumably apps like "Tax Me! 2012" and "Fantasy Football Draft Dominator" will know better than to offer a free trial.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting! So not ALL the apps would have trails! :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Relevant post on MSDN: [https://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/07/20/mak...](https://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/07/20/making- money-with-your-apps-through-the-windows-store.aspx?Redirected=true)

The $1.49 may not be very far from $0.99 in real terms, but I feel it significantly increases resistance. I'd be much more willing to spend $0.99 for an app I want to check out than $1.49. Wonder what the rationale behind that figure is.

<comment><USER6> For me, the resistance between $1 and $1.49 is about equal. That is, pretty much zero resistance. Anything below about $2 i think i would still click 'purchase' on a whim without really investigating it. Only at about $3 is would i pause and consider if i really needed it.

(fwiw i'm far from rich, and I own an Android + iPhone and have purchased less than 30 apps lifetime... so I guess whimsy doesn't strike me often, even at 99c! Just adding another data-point.)

<comment><USER7> I think there is a very real difference between 0.something and 1.something. $1.49 is an "awkward" price, that is not as obviously "as cheap as we can make it".

In the iOS ecosystem there is something of a race to the bottom in pricing, where everyone is competing to have the most widely used $.99 app. I can see how Microsoft considers this to devalue the app ecosystem: a system where apps compete on both price and value is more healthy than a system where 50% of the paid apps are at $.99 and everyone competes on visibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $1.49 might be a play to attract developers whose revenue is tied to the lowest app store price point.

</comment><comment><USER9> One serious problem with the Windows 8 Store. It will only be for Metro Style apps, which require the complete stack to be on the the "Metro" .net stack.

I have an app that I was looking to port to Windows 8. It's written in .NET, and uses good architecture so that (I thought) all I would need to do is hook- up the UI. Nope. I can't just reference the core dll and be off. That dll has to be a "Metro class library." Now, I apparently have to maintain two versions of my core library in addition to the UI layers. This is a problem.

<comment><USER10> That's untrue, desktop apps can (and already have) been listed in the Windows Store. They're essentially links out to your website where you'd need to handle your own payment and downloads, but you'd have a presence and show up in search results etc. Search for Age of Empires Online in the store for an example of a Desktop app listing.

<comment><USER9> I've searched for a way that I can make this happen, but I'm not seeing it anywhere. Is it only Microsoft software that takes advantage of this? I suppose that getting into the search results is very useful.

EDIT: found a link

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/08/list...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/08/listing- your-desktop-app-in-the-store.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1.49 is there to ensure no crappy apps. after all in case of MS trials are possible meaning you no longer need to buy crappy apps just because the description sounds good.

<comment><USER12> I don't have any particular problems with the 1.49 price point (and I kind of wish the iOS app store hadn't set a standard where a $2 or $3 app is considered "expensive"), but how does an extra $.50 prevent crappy apps?

<comment><USER7> $1.49 is an awkward price, because it involves fractional dollars, and unwelcome mental calculations. The jump from $1.49 to $1.99 is easy to make, because $1.99 is way more attractive (how many $1.49 apps are there in the iOS app store?). From there, $1.99 to $2.99 is also easy, still only a 50% increase. Suddenly - _POOF_ \- you have a whole array of apps priced around 2-3-4 dollars, instead of a $.99 bloc. This raises the price floor of apps on the Windows market, and there are a multitude of studies describing how effective price anchoring can be.

<comment><USER12> One nit: There are exactly 0 apps on the iOS App Store priced $1.49, because it isn't possible to price an app at that amount (it goes up in increments of $1).

That said, I agree with you - I hope it successfully makes apps in the $2-$10 range more popular, which means developers can invest more time in them and make them better.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mac malware evolves to no longer require users to enter their password  - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/05/26/apple-malware-evolved-no-password-required/ <comment><USER2> In other words: it still falls into the "you have to be stupid enough to allow total strangers behind the wheel of your car" category, they just don't need you to hand over the keys anymore. Got it.

Stupidity is not a problem that can be solved through technology.

At least Apple now has a service to protect stupid people against themselves, it's called the "App Store". You know, with the kind of approval system we've all been bitching about.

As far as I'm concerned, self-inflicted malware is about as big a security issue as running with scissors. To treat it as some external force that needs to be dealt with by manufacturers, OS-makers, anti-virus producers or even legislators just perpetuates the real problem, turning it into a perpetual arms race that can not possibly be won, but at some point may cost us the freedom to install anything we want on _our_ computers.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, Mac users have so far been very safe from actual virusses and worms, and other malicious stuff sneaking onto your computer through security holes, however, this type is something you can't do anything against. It's the user consciously downloading and running a program.

For this type of inexperienced users Symantec and McAfee make Mac products.

<comment><USER4> Just as a thought: if there was an "Only run Mac App Store-distributed applications" switch somewhere in OSX's System Preferences, off by default, I know several people for whom I (as their tech-guy-cum-sysadmin) would flip it on in a heartbeat, and then never likely hear about this particular flavor of PEBKAC again.

<comment><USER5> System preferences > accounts > parental controls > limit programs > allow app-store programs > all

Deny all the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> * Requires user interaction, so it doesn't count.

* Doesn't work if you aren't an admin.

* The OS is just installing what the user agreed to install.

Seems like Mac users are regurgitating Windows users' excuses from years ago.

It's a problem. Rather than make excuses, we should be expecting Apple and others to be actively working toward a solution.

<comment><USER3> If I trick a GNU/Linux or UNIX user into running a "sudo rm -rf /" command and entering a password, did I create malware?

<comment><USER7> No, modern rm implementations disallow that by default. You need to override it with a switch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Without wanting to sound condescending, I'm not sure that the average Mac user is sophisticated enough (in terms of technical expertise) to detect interaction that has been initiated by malware.

So many years of being told that there's no such thing as malware for OSX (and so no need for anti-malware) may have produced fertile ground for it. Of all the people with Macs I know, just one has an anti-virus installed.

</comment><comment><USER9> In the final screenshot, I wonder how Sophos think that the unsophisticated user is supposed to figure out which of the two scare boxes claiming to have detected malware is lying, and which is telling the truth?

</comment><comment><USER10> There are only two long term solutions: \- an anti-vir scanner which constantly monitors all your files, hogs resources and plays the game of cat & mouse \- Prevent users from installing software that wasn't from the Mac App Store, just like on iOS.

The last is a nuclear option and not practicable for a professional desktop system. But I would like this as a configurable option for my parents. (Withholding the admin password from them is another possibility, but, well, see the article)

<comment><USER5> Don't the parental controls in mac os x allow this? Haven't tried, but you can limit the apps that the user can run to your own selection. Or even limit to just app store apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just to be clear, the article is written by someone associated with Sophos, a commercial anti-malware firm. ClamXav for Mac OS X is free, the engine is open source, it has regular malware definition updates, and monitors any directory or directories the user specifies. Well written, powerful, open source, free software. www.clamxav.com

</comment><comment><USER12> from [http://www.macworld.com/article/160098/2011/05/macdefender.h...](http://www.macworld.com/article/160098/2011/05/macdefender.html)

 _"Windows 7 is actually more secure than OS X, but the gap narrows every year. And there simply isn't the same attack ecosystem for Macs, nor are we likely to see one develop.

So while Mac users will likely see more malware, it's highly improbable we (or Windows 7 users) will ever experience what those who are still running Windows XP battle today.

But two other factors are changing the Mac security landscape. First, Apple products are growing rapidly in popularity. At the same time, the overall Internet security environment is more hostile than a cantina on Tatooine."_

<comment><USER5> How is windows 7 more secure? I can install a malicious app if I want to on any system.

The only "problem" here is that safari automatically opens safe files. They should also get a smartscreen filter like IE9 has. Safari has something like this already (google safefilter) but it doesn't seem to be as effective.

Mac OS X as a whole has xprotect, but that is a very simplistic defense to look for some known malware signatures.

<comment><USER13> I'm no security expert, but I do try to keep up. Someone please correct me if my facts are off. _Ahem_ :

Windows 7 does a lot more randomization of memory layout than Mac OS X does, making it more difficult to exploit executables and libraries shipped with the system. It's actually easier to exploit a Mac OS X machine than it is a Windows 7 machine -- see the results of pretty much every Pwn2Own [1] contest.

That said, the vast majority of spyware is targeted at Windows and doesn't need low-level exploits to do its job. It's the difference between safety and security; you're probably more safe on a Mac, even though they're technically less secure.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn2Own>

<comment><USER5> True, but it is my understanding that the randomization will finally be addressed in Lion (Address Space Layout Randomization)

[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/25/apple_exposing...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/25/apple_exposing_mac_os_x_lion_to_security_experts_for_review.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe only a recent Windows emigrant would fall for the "your computer is infected" trick.

Oh, and wow! It evolved and now installs in a part of the system that makes the malware easily detectable and removable.

I wonder what Sophos is trying to sell... Oh yes! Anti-malware for a platform that really doesn't need it nearly as badly as that other competing platform.

Flagged because it's actually an ad.

</comment><comment><USER15> Someone who knows how OSX works - how is the malware getting execute permissions?

<comment><USER16> It's not. For whatever reason, OS X installer pkg files are deemed 'safe files' by safari, which has an option to open such "safe" files automatically. So the thing that actually launches is a standard Installer.app from apple, but running a pkg script provided by the 'bad guys'. Fortunately Installer.app requires user interaction before it does anything, but it's still disconcerting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As I understand it, this relies on the admin account's ability to write to the /Applications folder without a password. So, if you just run in a non-admin account, you should be fine.

<comment><USER5> Won't the non-admin account just ask for the admin password? Since people are used to doing this when installing apps, it comes second nature..

If people are willing to click through several steps of an installer app, they'll also type in the admin password if requested.

This is only useful for other family members that you do not trust for safety reasons.

<comment><USER17> Right, but the _point_ of this article is that it no longer needs the admin password. If you're running in a non-admin account (like I am), it'll still need the password, and thus user interaction, so it'll be trivial to stop.

<comment><USER5> Even without the password you still need user interaction, the user has to click next multiple times during install.

<comment><USER17> True. Somewhere I thought I read that the installer ran without user interaction in this variant, but thinking about it, that doesn't make much sense.

Though, if you're concerned about having to give an admin password (as evidently some people are), running in a non-admin account would solve that. (Also, if you have write privileges to /Applications, it's possible to write a script overwriting the contents of a trusted executable with malicious code, but that isn't how this works so it's slightly irrelevant.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting that the author of the fake in-browser Finder apparently uses Dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know how this malware gets past the com.apple.quarantine attribute? That is a little concerning, though in general this is just your standard trojan attack.

<comment><USER5> Are you talking about the dialog warning you about opening software from the web?

Might it be because the zip file is extracted automatically? (open safe files in safari)

Or is an installer not considered an application is apple's eyes?

Edit: well, i just checked without open safe files (I just found it today on a google image search, google plays a big part in the distribution of this). And there still is no warning when opening the zip. I assume once extracted it doesn't know it was downloaded from the web. Is it that easy to circumvent?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like how they make it look like a passive process, except for the fact that at every screen shot you would have to run the application or click "next". This is social engineering. You were tricked into installing it. There's not way to stop that if it's an open system.

</comment><comment><USER21> Some nice sensationalism and FUD there by Sophos. Great product marketing, guys.</comment>


Synergy - n-named http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> A software KVM switch?

<comment><USER2> Sort of - but it also links the clipboards too (across Win32, Mac, Linux)</comment></comment>


A startup idea - <AUTHOR>

Maybe this already exists... I know there are gift card trading sites, there ought to be a rebate trading site.  I just bought a gadget at Fry's that has a $25 rebate that I don't want to redeem because it requires filling out a form and providing personal information that I don't want to hand over.  But I should be able to give the rebate receipt and the UPC code to someone for, say, $10 and they can redeem the rebate and pocket the $15 difference. <comment><USER2> Why wouldn't you want the $15 rebate, though? I'm not calling the idea bad, I'm just playing devil's advocate. You cited personal information as the reason, but you'd have to give personal information to the rebate trading site, too.

Also, how would you confirm the UPC code was valid prior to the buyer sending their money over? Or even the rebate - most rebates have like a 30 day policy. How could you prevent people from using expired rebates, etc?

<comment><USER3> I like the concept. A lot of people ignore rebates entirely because they're so often not worth the time, frustration, and hassle. If a site like this could be set up to be a quick and easy process, at least on the seller's end, I could a lot of people going for it. On the other end you've got easy money for stay-at-home moms or others with time on their hands.

I see it more as a logistical and maybe legal problem. Will companies honor rebates not submitted by the original buyer? If not, how easy would it be for them to find out that it's happening, and how big of a fuss might they make over the site? And as the parent brought up, what about fraud? Or not realizing some clause in a given rebate and not sending some vital piece of information with it?

It might all work out, or there might be some catch that renders it totally impractical, but I think it's worth looking into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Those mail-in rebates are bad; they depend upon a minority of people being able to successfully redeem them. They hide from the market the information that should be encapsulated in a price that reflects cost and demand.

If a manufacturer's product is not moving, instead of a mail in rebate, they should pay the retailer directly to lower the price. This forces manufacturers to face the music when they make something that no one wants or is overpriced; they will be more careful next time, or the bad ones will go out of business; that is the way the market is supposed to work.

Tolerating these rebates is like allowing bad manufacturers to cover their loses by offering gullible consumers a game of three card monte.

The way to make it honest, is to setup a table outside the door to Fry's or Best Buy, and offer a dollar, a cup of coffee and a donut, or some other small reward to every shopper will agree to sit down right there, fill out the rebate, apply the stamp you will supply, and mail it. With any kind of reasonable rate of return the rebates would vanish.

The reason why your idea will fail, is that it is too hard to transmit all the purposefully burdensome documentation required to retrieve the rebate.</comment>