Grove is here to stay - <AUTHOR> https://grove.io/blog/grove-here-stay <comment><USER3> Maybe I'm misunderstanding this product. Please let me know if I am.

$10/month for 5 users on IRC?

This service is very poorly branded. IRC is a protocol that is easy to set up, free, and low maintenance. Whatever value there is to outsourcing IRC server setup, it isn't $10/mo. But that isn't even what their main service is. Their platform is just _built on_ IRC--their other features (Archiving, workflow integration, etc) are much much much more value-adding. Its like advertising heroku as "rails hosting, and more!". It doesn't point to the real value of the service.

I can get easy IRC hosting for much cheaper than $10/month. Don't charge someone $10/month for an IRC server. Charge them $10/month for a developer- oriented integrated messaging platform or something.

<comment><USER4> "Whatever value there is to outsourcing IRC server setup, it isn't $10/mo"

If it takes me a couple of hours to set up an IRC server and 20 minutes of maintenance per month to keep it running, $10/month is a STEAL.

Not to mention... at anything less than $10/month you need one heck of a lot of paying customers for a service like this to cover its costs.

<comment><USER5> It should take you 30-60 minutes to setup an IRC server depending on how familiar you are with, well, Unix. 0 minutes of maintenance per month. And once it's done, you can have dozens, hundreds, even thousands of users on it for a marginal cost rapidly approaching $0/user. In contrast, by the time you get to 50 users on Grove, it's $125/month.

I very much get the "pay someone else to worry about it" thing, but private IRC servers are so insanely simple, low-cost, and low-maintenance that grove's position seems abnormally tenuous.

Edit: There's something else very odd about their pricing. On their lowest plan, the nominal per-user cost is $2. On all the other plans, with the exact same features, just more users, it's $2.50. A price structure that directly incentivizes _not_ upgrading, however slightly, is very backwards.

<comment><USER6> 30-60 minutes to set up not only an irc server, but a persistent web client, archiving, and full-text search over channels and private chats? The value for me is seeing what happened after I'd left work yesterday, or finding a discussion/links that were posted a few days ago.

<comment><USER5> You've just done a better job of marketing grove in two sentences than grove has ever done itself. That's really the point. As it stands, grove.io markets itself as $10/month for 5 users to chat.

The first two words anyone is going to read on grove.io: "Hosted IRC".

Right about there, 80% of people are going to ask "What's IRC?". It's never explained.

"and so much more." Like what?

"plus additional features"... uh...?

"Why Grove is better". Better than what?

Oh look, a feature. Almost, if not completely on some screens, below the fold. "Archives and search"... of what?

Finally, "chat logs". Oh, it's something to do with chat. Well, I already have that!

If anyone even bothers to look at pricing, they're going to wonder why they want to pay somebody for all this.

Meanwhile, at least half the people who already know what IRC is are unimpressed. "IRC? Who uses that anymore? We have IM now. It's free. I even have logs.". Oops. Same problem.

Edit: Meanwhile, an experienced IRC user like me: I run irssi in screen on a reliable server. All my channels and private messages are logged, and I know how to use grep. What's grove for again?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Grove is here to stay"... _clicks link_

> curl -i <https://grove.io/blog/grove-here-stay> HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server > Error Server: nginx/1.1.17 Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:33:13 GMT Content-Type: > text/html Content-Length: 193 Connection: close

 <title>500 Internal Server Error</title>
500 Internal Server Error

nginx/1.1.17

Well, hopefully they get it on it's feet again. But it's good to hear!

</comment><comment><USER8> Congratulations to the Grove.io team! Its great that this product is able to keep going.

I have been following Grove.io pretty closely. This is a subject that is fairly interesting to me and compelled me to look at some of the different open source options[0], as they do exist for teams that are able to run their own chat. I decided to write my own chat client with a fellow HNer called Subway[1], since I could not find a good open source web client that persisted a connection while a user was offline. After I started I found another large project that more or less accomplishes the same thing called Alice[2] written in Perl. Both these clients have more or less the same goal to persist your connection while you are offline. For those interested in a paid alternative to grove there is also IRCCloud[3] which accomplishes the same thing.

[0] <http://www.thedjpetersen.com/blog/comparing_webchat_options/>

[1] <https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway>

[2] <https://github.com/leedo/alice>

[3] <https://irccloud.com/>

<comment><USER9> Here's my own one I recently built: <https://github.com/stephenmcd/gnotty>

Built with Django and websockets, so you can easily wrap authenticated views around it.

Also includes a bot framework with support for webhooks. Some of the bundled webhooks include things like incoming pull requests from GitHub or Bitbucket.

On top of that it provides a browsable/searchable message archive as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, check out that pricing. What a fucking disaster.

5 users for 10$/mo (2$/user) 10 users for 25$/mo (2.5$/user) 20 users for 50$/mo (2.5$/user) 50 users for 125$/mo (2.5$/user)

I have a hard time trying to think of any corporation incompetent enough to pay for an IRC server that serves so few users, and even then, the only corporations that could probably afford it are those which have IT guys to tell and scream at management to prevent them from wasting money on such a service.

<comment><USER11> Nonsense - their service is _extremely_ cheap.

For the record, I paid their top tier price (actually more than that - <USER2> created a custom plan just for us because we had over 50 users) happily for several months (and would have paid 2x more).

First, they have this nice web UI, which means hardcore geeks in the company could use their IRC clients while other people just using the channels ocasionally to get support (not all of them technical staff) can use the web version instead.

If that saved one hour of my infrastructure staff overall (and I am sure it saved quite a bit more than that) it was worth it - hiring first class infrastructure staff is very challenging, so their time is worth gold.

OTOH, sadly the service was unstable/crashed a lot and eventually we gave up and migrated to xmpp.

I actually wish they had charged more, because maybe with that they could have fixed those issues more quickly and I could have avoided another painful migration...

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, as Grove users the stability issues annoyed the heck out of us, too; fixing them is our first priority. As in, I'm already working on it!

I know migrating (again!) is a pain, but if you ever want to give Grove another try, please get in touch (jacob at jacobian.org) and let me know what we'd need to do to get you back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In this thread: software developers who make $1xx / hr complain about paying a monthly fee that's worth less than the time it took to write the comments in question.

Makes me glad I don't sell to software developers.

</comment><comment><USER13> When I clicked this, I assumed it was going to be Grove going back on their statement that they were closing down, and I was concerned. That sort of wavering doesn't bode well for customer trust. In a weird way, I'm glad someone else is in charge not because the Grove team was bad, but from a PR perspective this just looks good.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sorry. We already moved to flowdock (<https://www.flowdock.com>). Turns out its about 1000x more appropriate for us anyway as a central dev status hub. I would encourage any dev team who was using grove.io to check it out. IRC client compatible!

</comment><comment><USER15> And <https://www.flowdock.com/> is still going to be around, with way better reliability, IRC support, more and better integrations & much more. :)

A Grove.io importer was also added yesterday: [http://blog.flowdock.com/2012/09/27/import-your-grove-io- acc...](http://blog.flowdock.com/2012/09/27/import-your-grove-io-account-into- flowdock/)

<comment><USER16> This is awesome, but appears to be broken right now.

<comment><USER15> If you think you've found a bug, please let us know by tweeting or emailing team@, and we'll get it fixed. We haven't had downtime in 2 months, so I'm curious what seemed to be broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's unbelievable how many haters there are. Unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER18> Cache [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgrove.io%2Fblog%2Fgrove- here-stay)

</comment><comment><USER19> Yeah apparently the blog wasn't up to HN level traffic! I'll get that sorted out asap!

</comment><comment><USER20> We already moved to flowdock, it seems better so far, primarily because it's STABLE! When I used grove, the web client was basically unuseable, and even our IRC clients got disconnected periodically. The worse part is, the IRC disconnect was often times silent - as in, you would think that you were signed in, but none of your messages were sent, or you wouldn't actually receive messages. Presence in IRC (the users that it showed as being in the room) would become out of date quickly, and I frequently reconnected just to get an updated list of who was available.

Can anyone who worked at grove comment on this? IRC is rock solid, so I don't understand how it could have been made so unstable? Did you guys have to implement your own IRC server in order to incorporate some Grove features?

</comment><comment><USER21> I never understood the pricing. IRC Servers are completely free and dead simple to set up. $10 a month for a room limited to 5 users for just a pretty frontend to IRC?

 _Why does this exist?_

<comment><USER21> To the one reply to this: You've been hellbanned - sorry guy. I see some great stuff in your comment history, apparently some overzealous idiot of a mod didn't like that you posted that article on controlling a forum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love Grove.io, works for geeks and regular users and easy webhooks. My channel has everything I want and I've never spent longer than a few minutes configuring things.

</comment><comment><USER23> This really should be sold as a chat for your business which just happens to use IRC underneath.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interestingly, their email lacked an unsubscribe link.

<comment><USER19> That's a big oversight, email me firstname.lastname@example.com and I'll make sure you don't receive anymore email. I hate that shit, our bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> checkout this new upcoming thingy.. <https://catchuphere.com/pages/beta>

</comment><comment><USER26> Grove St. OGs fo'life, homies, fo'life!

</comment><comment><USER27> 500 Internal Server Error

nginx/1.1.17</comment>


The Jobs You're Most Likely to Inherit from Your Mother and Father - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/22/upshot/the-jobs-youre-most-likely-to-inherit-from-your-mother-and-father.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fupshot&action=click&contentCollection=upshot&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> As someone from the Balkans, I would have expected the job to be that of a notary. Notaries here typically intermarry to keep this lucrative business inside the family. It is common to walk past an office with the sign outside mentioning three notaries with the same last name, who might be three generations of the same family.

<comment><USER3> Depending on the country, civil law notaries are generally a protected profession to protect some of the interests of the state. They are civil servants but run their own private practices.

Quite an interesting profession, actually: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_notary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_notary)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mostly these are jobs that have the bias more to who you know vs what you know. It is much harder to become a doctor when your parents are because the many years of education you need. The article has the example of a teacher to become a politician and fill the job of her father where he fell away, using the network of her father for her success.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a programmer. My mother is a programmer.

Out of the factors listed in the article that influenced my occupation, this one is one of the important ones:

"[The parent] had a studio next to our house, so it was something that we always grew up with," she said. "[The parent's] philosophy was just make it part of everyday life and make materials readily available."

I've had an access to a computer with a programming environment when I was growing up, which was not a common thing in the early 90's Ukraine. Of course, I only used it to play games when I was a kid, but even that was an advantage: liking to use computers and software makes you want to write your own at some point. That machine was under-specced to run many games, so one had to be a bit creative (from fiddling with CONFIG.SYS back in DOS days to running UT with 2MB of video memory, it was fun at times).

And when I did want to play with programming, moving on from scripting in Excel, I already had the tools to play with and a mental image of what programming looks like in general.

On a different note, I love cooking and try to avoid eating out unless it's for a reason (socializing, experiencing food I haven't had before, etc). And that is something I got from my father, who cooks a lot - even though I never cooked while I was living with my parents. But that's the part of the culture that I inherited from him anyway.

Would I be programming if my mother weren't a programmer? Quite likely, as many of my peers did (I went to grad school for mathematics and haven't abandoned the academic world completely). But perhaps I wouldn't have it as a hobby.

On the other hand, my parents didn't travel when I was a kid, so I didn't have a knack for traveling until I grew up. It wasn't that I disliked it, it just wasn't on my radar of interests.

The take-away for me is the following: it's important for kids to see other people - in particular, their parents - do things, and have an option to play and participate. Even if they don't, the effect stays for a long time. If you are a parent - do things. Travel. Learn a different language. Paint. Make music. And if your work is fun, bring it home and bring your kids to work. As the article indicates, all of that expands their palette of things to try, and makes entry into some activity easier.

The kids that didn't follow in their parents' footsteps probably got something - culture, work ethic, philosophy - if not skills or education - that affected their occupation.

I didn't inherit a business or any connections from my parents. But I still have that Hayes Optima 33.6 voice modem that I used to uppload an app I wrote to Freeware.ru back when programs weren't called apps yet.

</comment><comment><USER6> So what if both parents have the same job; engineers in our case?</comment>


Why CEOs are so stupid - <AUTHOR> http://www.markbernstein.org/Sep09/WhyCEOsaresostupid.html <comment><USER2> Absolutely. We make up narratives, then fit facts and stories into those narratives.

For an excellent example, read Good To Great then read The Innovator's Dilemma. Both books look at the rivalry between Nucor and Bethlehem Steel. The difference is that Good to Great tries to fit that example into a theory of great CEOs, while The Innovator's Dilemma tries to fit it into the narrative of disruptive innovation. So in Good to Great it is hard to see why Bethlehem Steel was full of idiots, while The Innovator's Dilemma makes it painfully clear why the bad decisions that Bethlehem Steel made were inevitable given their customer base and market pressures.

Same story. Same facts. Different narratives. Radically different impressions of the competence of the people involved.

</comment><comment><USER3> To summarise: "confirmation bias". He's got a point.

<comment><USER4> Yes, confirmation bias at play. But I'm still not sure if that makes it OK to title the article "Why CEOs are so stupid" - that's a gross generalization even for this particular CEO, given that there was this _one_ interview where he messed up.

<comment><USER5> I think the title was satirical. His point is that CEOs are not actually _so_ stupid, we just look at the ones who fail and point out all the stupid things they did, while the successful ones may have done an equal number of stupid things, but we didn't pay attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To suggest that he consciously said this to lower expectations is probably giving him too much credit. What he said is true enough that I'm sure it was just the first thing that came to his mind.

<comment><USER7> There's something American going on here. You can't mention that a 400lb person is fat in that person's presence, and you can't say that your product might not be better than the iPhone. We know both things to be true, but we're not supposed to say it.

<comment><USER8> He's definitely 'allowed' to say that, but from an investor standpoint, he's not showing very much confidence in his product and the future of his company when he says things like that.

<comment><USER9> Really? Doesn't this assume that investors are dumb or that they prefer blind- but-optimistic CEOs?

I just heard an interview with the CEO of Carsales.com (just went public). He was asked if he was worried about free classifieds doing to them what they did to print. Fair question. I'm sure that as CEO of a classifieds site he has thought about this . He said (paraphrased) "No. Sellers prefer us because we give them a good price _and_ get the car sold." He alluded to an inherent connection between the first and second part of that sentence, that payed classifieds are inherently better at selling cars then free ones.

Does this 'demonstrate confidence' to investors? If you believe him, you believe he is blind to his biggest threat. I assume that most investors don't beleive him. What does that demonstrate?

If he was talking face-2-face with an investor and got asked that question, would they be impressed? Anyone here an investor that would say yes?

<comment><USER10> Well, investors depend on what the CEO says. What he is trying to avoid is sounding optimistic and then falling short of expectations. The up then down in the stock price looks bad.

However, its a good point that we should want a _correct_ representation instead of a pessimistic one. We should seriously wonder about a CEO who drastically under predicts performance just as we would one who over predicts it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Honestly I thought the question was rather pointless to begin with.

Sprint didn't make the Pre. Sprint doesn't compete with the iPhone. The iPhone is a device, Sprint is a carrier. The iPhone may very well end up on Sprint in the not-too-distant future.

Also, if you look at the subtext, you might see that Hesse is delivering a veiled attack on the iPhone--that it's all about branding and hive mind. Michael Jordan was a great basketball player, but he was far from the greatest, even during his career. His style and flash are what got him his place in the spotlight, just like the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER12> The fonts on that page are nice. He's using the free ones here: <http://www.exljbris.nl/></comment>


Court: Violating a site's terms of service isn't criminal hacking - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/ <comment><USER2> "Criminalizing terms-of-service violations risks turning each website into its own criminal jurisdiction and each webmaster into his own legislature," Bates wrote.

IMO that is the most important part of the ruling. You cant have criminal penalties and then delegate the definition of the crime to each website.

Lying or breaking TOS is different than hacking. You are granted access by the site, and it's no different than the access they grant every other user.

<comment><USER3> >You cant have criminal penalties and then delegate the definition of the crime to each website.

How does this differ from criminal trespass, where each landowner can define permitted use versus trespassing however they wish?

<comment><USER4> The only criminal act in trespassing is coming back _after_ being banned. Whatever you did to _get_ banned is not a criminal issue.

And as far as I know trespassing bans have to be a manual blacklist or whitelist. You can't define some arbitrarily complex behavior that makes you into a trespasser. Maybe I'm wrong on that?

<comment><USER5> That would depend on the jurisdiction. Typically in the US, most states define two separate criminal statutes for each situation:

1) Criminal Tresspassing - typically defined as the entering the property of another without express permission from the owner (this tends to include intruding via drone these days)

2) Remaining or Reentry after forbidden - which is for those cases where entry was permitted, but the owner subsequently revoked that permission.

<comment><USER3> >this tends to include intruding via drone these days

Can you elaborate on this point? There are a LOT of FAA rules and federal laws that allow aircraft to fly over your property without your permission. I could see the argument for a ground-based device or perhaps an extremely low-flying drone but not for general drone use.

Of course, there are other laws (like requiring line of sight, not flying over humans or livestock, etc.) that are probably broken by anyone flying a typical non-commercial light drone over someone else's property at a level low enough to be annoying.

<comment><USER5> I happen to have this handy from a Motion:

Laws traditionally related to state and local police power – including land use, zoning, privacy, trespass, and law enforcement operations – generally are not subject to federal regulation. Skysign International, Inc. v. City and County of Honolulu, 276 F.3d 1109, 1115 (9th Cir. 2002). State and Local Regulation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Fact Sheet Federal Aviation Administration Office of the Chief Counsel, 2015.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Who is really reading a site's terms of service, or EULAs etc.? We mandate food companies to clearly label items with standardized, readable and compact information, but software companies can confront users with text that could only ever be interpreted by bored lawyers. The idea that this could be 'binding', let alone leading to a 'crime', is silly to me.

<comment><USER7> > Who is really reading a site's terms of service, or EULAs etc.?

I do. I make a point to take the first five to six hours of every working day reviewing the ToS for each website I'm projected to visit that day.

I diff the text against known past versions and if there are significant enough changes to any particular ToS, I stop using that site until I can sit down in-person with my $550/hr lawyer (usually I only do this once or twice a week) and review the changes to make sure I'm clear of all liabilities for my projected use-cases. Once I get the go-ahead, I resume access to that website.

Overall the process only takes on average 30 hours a week, and the costs are around $2000/week. It's worth it though, I wouldn't want to break any rules set by private land owners (whether virtual or not).

<comment><USER8> Will your lawyer be accountable if you would break some rule because of his error? Did you sign any papers about his accountability? Were those papers reviewed by independent lawyers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Feels like this is going to create some headaches for prosecuting CFAA cases if the verdict stands.

I suspect the definition of 'unauthorized access' will need to be more clearly defined since I know many cases in the past relied around users doing shit that was unauthorized by the TOS.

<comment><USER10> > I suspect the definition of 'unauthorized access' will need to be more > clearly defined

I've been saying this for years! For reasons unrelated to TOS rulings, too.

A little bit of background...

In 2011, I was charged with _unauthorized access to a protected computer_. The website in question (Infragard Tampa Bay, run by the FBI through a company called Sylint) was running an older version of DotNetNuke that had a 2008 vulnerability.

The nature of the vulnerability was as follows: If you accessed a specific URL which required no authorization, you could upload files to the server and presumably execute them. (I say presumably, because I didn't.)

I wanted to fight the charge because I never exceeded "authorized access" by using a publicly accessible web form on the public Internet, and the CFAA's terms were vague.

* The website was publicly accessible, without needing authorization

* The file upload form was publicly accessible, without needing authorization

* The folder that files were uploaded to was publicly accessible, without needing authorization

* All of my conduct was authorized by the software they ran on the public Internet, and therefore the _unauthorized access_ I was accused of never actually occurred

My overworked public defender didn't have any fight in him. The EFF wouldn't help either (the person I talked to didn't see the significance of this CFAA ambiguity for civil rights). I grew up in a poor family and couldn't afford legal counsel, so I ended up pleading guilty, which has _totally fucked my life up_ ever since. (It really doesn't get better, even 8-9 years later.)

> since I know many cases in the past relied around users doing shit that was > unauthorized by the TOS.

Good. I hope this becomes a precedent that frustrates prosecutors and helps defense cases in appeals court.

<comment><USER11> Just because something is connected to the public internet doesn't mean that you can hack it. Most homes are accessible from public roads, that doesn't mean you are allowed to climb through any open window that you see.

You used a vulnerability to hack into some server associated with the FBI, I don't see any ambiguity here.

<comment><USER10> > Just because something is connected to the public internet doesn't mean that > you can hack it.

I never said or implied that.

All I said is, because all of my conduct involved publicly accessible components of their web application, I never exceeded authorized access.

Which means that the CFAA's clause about "unauthorized access" _in particular_ does not apply, since none of my packets exceeded or bypassed an authentication or authorization control on their web app.

> Most homes are accessible from public roads, that doesn't mean you are > allowed to climb through any open window that you see.

A better analogy is knocking on someone's door, only to discover it swings open, then walking away. And then getting charged with breaking and entering for their failure to shut their door, and then paying for damages for leaving a muddy footprint on their exterior welcome mat.

> You used a vulnerability to hack into some server associated with the FBI, I > don't see any ambiguity here.

I won't argue that I'm fully without blame.

The mistake I made during all of this was, upon discovering they were running an outdated version of DotNetNuke (right click > view source; not exactly something I had to go out of my way to detect), I panicked. And to assuage my own anxiety, I tested the file upload to confirm that it was real.

That was the mistake that let them prosecute me at all. And it's a mistake I have learned from:

In the years since, I have never sent a packet with security implications to another network even for projects with a public bug bounty. I constrained myself henceforth to reviewing source code and reverse engineering, since that doesn't involve sending packets over a network and invoking a law that was written before the concept of a public network existed. (And that law being problematic is my entire point in this discussion, not appealing for amnesty in the opinions of HN users. Anyone who decides to hate me won't be the first.)

Even if I knew not to do that then, I still would have informed them of their vulnerability as soon as it was discovered. Because that was the right thing to do.

<comment><USER12> Is obfuscation a type of authorisation? If you knowingly exploited a vulnerability to access a non-standard URL then it's pretty obvious you shouldn't have been there. This isn't you navigating to a websites home page, the information I've found reads the following for CVE-2008-6541:

>Access Complexity Medium (The access conditions are somewhat specialized. Some preconditions must be satistified to exploit)

<comment><USER10> > Is obfuscation a type of authorisation?

No.

And even if you tried to argue that, the exploit was public on exploit-db for years, and therefore the expected security from the broken obfuscation is zero bits; so in this case, it would not count.

More pertinent:

> Authentication Not required (Authentication is not required to exploit the > vulnerability.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's an interesting legal question:

If you use the public internet to go to a public website's landing page, by doing that, do you automatically accept a website's Terms Of Service (contract)?

I would argue no, because the social custom is that public-facing websites are intended to be accessed by the public, and until and unless they explicitly accept a contract (such as a Terms Of Service agreement), there is no contract...

Now... I could be wrong.

In fact, lawyers could argue that there is a social contract, an implied contract (they do this with Negligence claims) even before there is a written contract...

So, I'd be interested in arguments, both for and against, with respect to the presence or absence of a contract, either express or implied...

(We can all agree that if a website creates a pop-up or page which says "By using this site, you accept the terms of service", and if you click "Agree", you agreed (well, unless you do not have the capacity to do so, or other factors apply... <g>)... that's _not_ what I'm soliciting arguments for here...)

<comment><USER14> At minimum I think most people would agree that the "default ToS" probably would cover malicious actions and unintended access in both directions.

<comment><USER13> My question is not about what the default ToS covers or doesn't cover, my question is about when/where/how/if -- someone on the Internet accepts a ToS...

And it's not really a question.

It's a solicitation of opinions.

To understand what I'm asking for, you must have an understanding of Contract Law.

That is, what is a contract, when are they accepted, how are they accepted, etc.

OK, now given those understandings, apply that to a public website.

How does/would someone in the public accept a public website's ToS, _other than_ clicking "I agree", when presented by a page or requester saying "Do you agree to accept this website's ToS?".

Does it happen?

If so, why so?

If not, why not?

I'm looking for compelling arguments, both for and against, both pro and con...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The right decision.

And why would it be? Why should private actors be able to invent new criminal liabilities simply by publishing various terms of service?

Spotify: "If you listen to The Jackson 5 on our streaming service from a location in Ohio on a Tuesday, that is a violation of our Terms of Service."

Federal judge: "You heard the man. Off to jail!"

<comment><USER16> Distantly reminds me of the "annoy" website (I forget the exact URL) that was created as a sort of protest of some legislation in the early days of the internet that referenced "annoying" someone (I forget the exact language).

<comment><USER17> Some system that I use at work prohibits "mischievous" use in the banner.

<comment><USER16> Man I wonder what happened to cause that term to be selected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> TOS is too vague a term and too broad to cover the complexities that proper legislation in the matter would require. Not to mention, I can write anything I want in my TOS, but you can't enforce illegal terms. People know bad action like they know porn when they see it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Worth noting this is only a district court ruling, and as the article notes there are a number of conflicting circuit court rulings on the issue. Until a case makes it to the Supreme Court, it's not safe to take this as a given nationally.

</comment><comment><USER20> How does this correlate to for example accessing a 3rd party API that has some sort of protection, for example an API key or request signature algorithm. Would those be considered a 'password'?

</comment><comment><USER21> Yikes

</comment><comment><USER22> "US court" _

<comment><AUTHOR> _updated title_

<comment><AUTHOR> It was changed back to the original title.

<comment><USER23> It's a well-known US publication. Readers are smart enough to figure these things out, and it's best not to get too punctilious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely understand. Ty Dang.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This really begs the question: what is?

<comment><USER25> Breaking past security systems. So like scraping publicly facing data might violate TOS, but you can't call it hacking. Using exploits to get the password hashes would be criminal hacking.

<comment><USER9> Its really not that clear and we will need to wait for the courts to figure out what means what.

For instance this: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/18/at- and-t-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/18/at-and-t-hacker- jailed-ipad-email)

All they did was "scrape publicly facing data"</comment></comment></comment>


A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/07/will-going-college-make-you-happier/613729/ <comment><USER2> I have been reading through the comments and I am very curious about a few things -

1\. What "bullshit" degrees people are talking about? Are they the liberal arts studies? If so, as a society do we not see value in the fine arts? Expertise in music, language, anthropology, history, etc do not necessarily lead to a well-paying job.. but they give intellectually satisfaction in and of itself.

2\. IMHO, the pay you are likely to earn should never be a judge of value of a degree. A degree gives you an opportunity to learn something in depth. As long as you are able to reach that, the degree is valuable. The sad part of being in US (and other places) is that the depth is not valued. Trying college fees to ability to earn is an incorrect optimization.

3\. If I were a poet, an author or a painter, do you think I should expect that I will be able to pursue my passion on a nominal pay (maybe as a teacher/tutor, basic income from government etc)? Most of the "golden age of civilizations" had this property. When everyone needs to fight for survival, that reflects poorly on the state of things and it is more of a dog eat dog world.

<comment><USER3> The arts (orchestra/symphony, opera/musicals, etc) are a luxury good. There is a small, niche market for these things, mostly centered around certain cities - so we can only have so many artists.

The mass arts that the masses can afford to consume (TV, streaming music, and movies) are by definition based on popularity, so we can only have so many artists.

I don't know why we fund so many people's arts degrees. We need less funding for arts degrees, and more funding for the arts instead. Someone being able to live a basic (but self-sufficient) life has nothing to do with funding arts degrees.

<comment><USER4> This is a viewpoint centered around seeing art as a commodity. To me that's like saying we only need so many scientists. Is perceived value the best metric?

<comment><USER5> There's a lot of art out there in the world. A whole, whole lot.

If you want to make something artistically creative for people to watch, listen to, or read, you are competing with Mozart, the Beatles, Edgar Allen Poe, Tolkien, and countless other prodigies. Artistic creations made by individuals are a winner-takes-all market where a small fraction of the creators enjoy the majority of the revenue. Artistic creations made by large groups are somewhat fairer (but still often on the low end) in their compensation, if you manage to out compete other job applicants and get the job.

Regardless of whether you as an individual treat art as a commodity, you have to square your viewpoint as a artist with the fact that you have to put bread on the table. Society will very likely reward you very poorly for your artistic contributions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I barely skimmed the article, but I don't find this surprising for a few reasons (some of which have been mentioned elsewhere in the comments):

\- "University degree" is a heterogeneous thing. While there is such thing as non-economic value, the strictly _economic_ value of a college education tends to cluster around a small subset of degrees.

\- Many countries have enacted policies to increase proportion of people who get degrees. Far from fixing inequality, this has instead diluted the value of university degrees.

\- All universities are not created equal. While it is possible (and even common) for employers to pay too much attention to the reputation of the school, it is also quite common for students to over-estimate the value of a no-name institution. I've found this to be moreso the case in the two European countries I've lived in for an extended period of time (France & England).

\- The exorbitant debt incurred by university tuition in some countries (which need not be named, I think) means the ROI on the university degree has to also be exorbitant.

Have I missed anything?

<comment><USER7> > _Far from fixing inequality_

Was this the purpose? I thought it was to raise living standards by improving productivity. By and large, broader education has been successful at that. (It went off the deep end, in recent years, with the proliferation of bullshit degrees.)

<comment><USER8> I think you covered part of the problem in the second half of your statement.

In the US, part of the problem is that by making education debts non- dischargable in bankruptcy, and by the aforementioned proliferation of degrees that may qualify as 'nice to have' rather than 'increase earning potential'.

The end result is a lot of people who got a college degree that doesn't really pay for itself, and instead leads to 20+ years of debt, or 10 years of indentured servitude to a non-profit.

<comment><USER9> Making education debts dischargeable in bankruptcy sounds good in theory, but against what collateral do you take out a college loan? Most bankruptcy includes collateral liquidation. What's to stop someone from obtaining a useless degree that doesn't contribute to the nation's economy, and then discharges the debt in bankruptcy?

I think a big part of the problem is that debt is so readily issued for degrees that overwhelmingly leave the recipient incapable of providing for society in gainful ways.

<comment><USER10> > What's to stop someone from obtaining a useless degree that doesn't > contribute to the nation's economy, and then discharges the debt in > bankruptcy?

Nothing, and that's exactly why education debts need to be dischargeable like anything else.

Dischargeable loans makes loan companies have actual responsibility and consequences in deciding who to give loans to. Otherwise, they blindly give out loans (why not, there's no risk!), putting all that much money in the system, which college institutions are happy to absorb in higher tuition.

<comment><USER11> But it could lead to plenty of people making the smart decision to file for bankruptcy even when they have a good degree. Bankruptcy at 22 isn't that big of a deal, generally.

I'm not sure what the answer is, though I think an economic approach is key.

<comment><USER10> Bankruptcy negatively affects your credit score by a large amount, so it's not exactly an easy decision.

<comment><USER12> It would be a very easy decision I think. Can you rebuild your credit in less time than it would take you to pay off your loans?

If you're still going to be paying your loan off in 7 years, bankruptcy would be an easy choice.

<comment><USER10> What if you need do anything significant with your money in those 7 years? Like rent an apartment? Have a car to get to work?

The debt doesn't just magically go away. Chapter 7 requires liquidating assets, and chapter 13 requires paying some loans back anyway. And besides, I don't see why loan companies couldn't require cosigners to reduce risk on these college loans.

<comment><USER13> >Like rent an apartment? Have a car to get to work?

Then you rent an apartment or buy a car. Are you implying you can't do this after bankruptcy? It's much easier to do these with a bankruptcy on your "record" than with a $1000 monthly payment.

<comment><USER10> I'm implying that these things are affected by your credit score.

<comment><USER12> Cash is King

If you've got an 800 score and no money, no one will give you a loan. If you've got a trash credit score, but an extra $1000 that isn't going to loans, then you can 'afford' to get fleeced on 36% 72 month auto loans for 7 years until your credit is rebuilt.

<comment><USER9> Depending on the market, I can't imagine it being easy/straightforward for someone with "trash credit" to find a landlord willing to lease an apartment at the market-rate.

That $1000 is likely getting spent no matter what, either in repaying loans, or paying a premium over the market rate to get a landlord to agree to lease you an apartment instead of someone with an 800 score.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> " _Higher education is often described as an investment. But it's still unclear if it pays off in happiness._ "

Nothing, _nothing_ will guarantee happiness. Or a good life.

Make the best decisions you can, by which I mean try to make decisions that you will not regret later. (Have I made a crap-ton of mistakes in my life? Sure 'nuff. Would I make different decisions if I could, even knowing what I know now? Probably not.)

And for the love of Pete, stop denigrating those who have made different choices. Sure, it may make you feel better about your situation temporarily, but it is very, very unappealing.

<comment><USER15> In high school, I had a part time job planting trees, but knew I was going to a university that I was proud to get accepted to and excited to have that opportunity. But kind of thinking maybe I shouldn't brag about that to the other kids who were doing this same job, but wouldn't have the same opportunities for higher education as myself.

Then one day, the subject came up, and the other guys were like "Thank god I'm graduating and won't have to waste any more time reading and studying and sitting in a classroom. I can work outside and make money instead."

And I realized not everyone's path to happiness is the same.

On the flip side:

I spent another summer working with a couple older gentlemen driving a tractor. I said something like "This isn't so bad, working outside, breathing fresh air."

They told me in no uncertain terms "Get a job doing something in an office with air conditioning, you don't want to still be out here doing this when you're our age."

<comment><USER16> The best job I ever had was life guarding a pool barely anybody used. 70% of the time it was empty and I just browsed my phone. It paid $9.25/hr. Some of the other lifeguards were in their 60s or 30s and as a college student, at first I was judging them a little that they were doing such a menial job in their prime earning years.

Then I realized that if they were happy with their current standard of living their life probably had no work related stress whatsoever and they kinda had it figured out. Now I make over 10x more and am constantly stressed out and anxious taking my work home with me everywhere, and I envy those people quite a bit.

<comment><USER17> Find a job which pays you enough and you are not over stressed. If your job is too hard for you at the moment you need to find a way to be able to improve your skills

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's so much potential in a better university/college.

Imagine that in society we pooled our resources to make the best video/online courses for a variety of subjects. The best CS courses. The best history courses. The best biology courses. We could focus on making the courses accessible and translated. We could make the best assignments and projects, iterated and experimented on with a population of millions. Heck, we could even hire professional actors that would both help with engagement and with representation problems in various fields.

Then in addition to being places of research, universities become the places we go to facilitate taking those courses and applying the knowledge. Watch the interactive videos, and expert tutors help you understand challenging topics, guide you where to look next, and facilitate labs. At least for undergraduate, this seems much better than what we have now.

And then, why not open it up to everyone? We could all take various courses throughout our lives. I'd love to be continuously taking classes in new fields, but the world isn't set up that way.

<comment><USER19> I think the real value of a university is the community. What you're describing is basically a new textbook. It doesn't replace the people you interact with. Going to a great college doesn't mean great classes with awesome course material. It's other classmates you study with, it's the TAs that hold office hours, the professors too, sometimes.

<comment><USER20> There's no reason that this couldn't work via an online community. Online courses don't do anything to foster this kind of connection, because they have always been a lazy facsimile of the in-person college course experience. If they tried, online courses could easily foster these kinds of relationships and unlock a ton of potential.

I also think that this is a larger societal problem that should be but has not been addressed by social networking apps. There are no social networks that are designed to foster communication about highly specific ideas. Sure I can go to r/history to find people who are generally interested in history, but where can I go to find people who would be interested in book-clubbing G.J. Meyer's 'A World Undone'? If I want to talk about physics _in general_ , I could go to /r/physics. But how do I find physicists who want to discuss matter-antimatter asymmetry? You can glom on to conversations in current social networks, but there is no way to start/find/subscribe to discussions about very specific subject matter.

Point being, rather than saying that the IRL personal interactions at college are a reason why the current model is ideal, we could do a lot of good by figuring out how to port that experience A) onto online courses, and B) onto the world at large.

<comment><USER21> My only counter to that is socialization in person is a lot different than socialization online... I notice that from my daughter to a lot of younger people in general that spend more time interacting online or via phone apps vs. in person have far more anxiety regarding interactions in person.

As to TFA, I think that for a lot of people trade schools are a better option, and should often be encouraged. I'd like to see more general education regarding retirement planning etc as well earlier on, as this is a place a lot of people get stuck, esp. in the US.

Another issue is that people should be guided towards educational paths that have demand in the workplace. Does it make sense to go 200k into debt for a job that pays 38k/year, or graduate 10k students for a career path with only 100 openings. Some of this onus is on the students and parents, but the schools themselves could do much better with this. Some reform on funding might help, but it's a touchy subject.

<comment><USER22> The opposite is true as well. Those who face to face have far more anxiety communicating online with peers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The four years I spent at my university were four of the best years of my life. I grew academically, socially, and career-wise in ways I just never would have without going to school. However, I have plenty of friends that never went to any higher education than high school, or who dropped out of college early on, and it's not like they're unsuccessful or maladjusted. It seems pretty clear that different paths work for different people.

<comment> non-entity Yeah, as much as I hate the university as an institution, they're still necessary for a large amount of people (in practice) These threads tend to be filled with comments that assume everyone is a developer and / or should be. Unfortunately many, if not most high paying jobs will still require higher education, particularly the stereotypically well paying ones. You aren't going to become a doctor, engineer (non software), lawyer, etc. without that degree unfortunately.

<comment><USER24> _> Unfortunately many, if not most high paying jobs will still require higher education, particularly the stereotypically well paying ones._

Not just any higher education, though, but specific professional degrees that grant access to supply managed markets. That part seems to be often missed when this topic comes up.

I recall a Gallup study into the top 1% finding that something like 70% of the top 1% have a professional degrees (doctors, lawyers, etc.). The remaining portion was comprised of more people with high school or less than those with only a bachelor degree, suggesting that a bachelor degree alone does nothing to improve your prospects. Which goes against the common thinking.

But is also echoed in the general economy. With the rise of post-secondary attainment, incomes have held stagnant. If there was a financial advantage gained though higher education itself, not through supply management, incomes would be rising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article spends a little time, in the middle on the headline assertion "College does not guarantee Happiness"

But spends more time on an anecdote about the author's son to demonstrate that "Happiness is possible without College", which is a different matter entirely. And one would hope the latter is true, since 2/3 of the US population does not attend college.

<comment><USER26> I agree.

This article is very light on content and I'm kinda surprised something this banal and content-less even made it to an actual publication.

Also, the guy's son graduated high school two years ago, he's 20-21 years old, practically everyone is happy at that age, let's hear about his life satisfaction at 40. That's ignoring the fact that two years is hardly enough time to evaluate the long term outcome of a major life decision.

To be clear, I don't think the author's son will grow up to be miserable, like the parent pointed out, most people don't have a college degree and most people aren't miserable. But this should be obvious.

<comment><USER25> But then

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question."

       -- J S Mill

<comment><USER27> I think as time goes on, I am learning that humans are dissatisfied because they no longer know how to live the life of a human, where (wild) pigs are fully capable of living the life of a pig. The big eye-opener for me was "The Story of B", by Daniel Quinn. Say what you want about the completeness or quality of its anthropology, it has touched on an ineffable fact that we are constantly trying to use more of what is bad for us to try to make it good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Some kids think they know what they want to do after college, but others don't, so for them college is like buying an expensive insurance policy"

Expensive is an understatement. At the same time, being unsure of what you want to do before college _is_ what makes it a great place to sow the seeds for what you do in life. Funnily enough that happens mostly outside of class through people you meet and projects you work on.

Since the physical aspect of college is in question this upcoming year, I feel that it isn't worth it. You can probably do a lot of school without actually paying tuition, and find new ways to meet people and work on projects.

</comment><comment><USER29> I passed up a National Merit Scholarship that would have let me go away to school and attend one of the big two colleges in my home state. Instead, I attended a local college for two years, living at my parents, taking whatever federal grant money was available and my parents covered the rest, in part because going to the local college kept tuition and other expenses reasonable.

(I'm 55. Tuition has changed in the decades since and this approach might no longer work. It did at the time.)

I then dropped out without a degree and did the military wife thing for a lot of years. I returned to school when I knew what I wanted to do, career-wise.

I made that decision in part because I was personally acquainted with two people who each had a bachelor's degree (and more schooling beyond that -- one was two quarters short of a master's and the other was working on his second bachelor's) and were financially dependent on someone else while they delivered newspapers (one also spent some time selling shoes and he eventually killed himself).

One was in his thirties and living with his mother. The other was mooching off a wife at the time who eventually left him.

So I was never fooled into believing that a college degree guarantees you a successful professional career. I felt I could deliver newspapers for a living without a college degree and I would be better off if I had such a job without being saddled with college debts like at least one of these two men was.

I don't regret my decision. Given the details of my life, I think I made the right choice.

We need to do a better job of educating young people about when it makes sense to go to school. Far too many people seem to think a degree is a magic wand and don't understand what else needs to happen to establish a career, especially one that pays well enough to justify taking on student debt.

<comment><USER30> Wait, if you're 55 now, you grew up in basically the golden age of US growth and the easy value of a college degree at relatively cheap tuition. And you had friends back then who were saddled with college debt that led to dead end jobs?

The situation, is way, way worse now. Orders of magnitude worse.

<comment><USER29> Yes, I know. That's why I added the qualifier I did: I'm aware that not stating _I did this decades ago_ could be misconstrued as saying "You fools just need to live at home and go to the local college. Problem solved!"

I'm not interested in being thusly misconstrued.

<comment><USER30> No I wasn't meaning to miscontrue you for others to read, and I did see your caveat which is appreciated.

I just felt bad for the people who even back then were having trouble with student debt. And to think they were in a relatively lucky age -- everyone is in that boat now, with far less hope of getting out of the hole.

<comment><USER29> I think back then it was much more likely to be a case of "This person has issues and they screwed up (or got screwed over by life/their parents)." These days, it's much more a systemic issue.

The two individuals I knew had serious personal issues. I also had serious personal issues. That's why I decided they were good examples of where my life might end up if I bulled on ahead with going to college as if a degree would fix everything.

In any era, some people will slip through the cracks. But a healthy system makes that the exception, not the rule. Far too many people are overburdened and falling down these days to the point where there is fairly widespread talk of systemic failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Most successful people have X.

Government: "Let's give everyone X!"

Over time the value of X is diluted, loses its status signaling, and overall quality degrades.

Successful people move to Y.

<comment><USER25> The big question is "what is Y in this case"?

<comment><USER32> To prove intelligence and conscientiousness? Probably PhD degree.

<comment><USER33> A PhD only signals that you have an unhealthy relationship with academia.

I've interviewed and worked with so many PhD from top tier schools and it's astounding to me that someone can spend 6+ years studying a quantitative science, at a school like MIT or Harvard and still not have a basic understanding of statistics, and worse be incapable of genuinely understanding any of the quantitative tools they used for years.

The current generation of PhDs don't know how to do any kind of real research, they simply know how to mechanically replicate the processes you need to survive in academia today.

<comment><USER34> Another thing with a PhD is that it is no guarantee that you'll even be hireable. I know of a number of PhD candidates who have trouble interacting in a professional setting outside of the of 'I deserve deference because I have a PhD, you don't necessarily even deserve respect' mentality.

I find sometimes a PhD can come with very ingrained attitude issues. I recall working for a company with a new-recruit development program where really the only way to fail out was through attitude issues. One of the people who oversaw the program mentioned that she's only ever seen people with PhDs and higher fail out over this issue.

<comment><USER35> I wonder if the same people would have failed out of any job requiring human interaction. One thing graduate education does is attract people who know that they would struggle in a mainstream work environment for whatever reason. Some are outright crazy.

<comment><USER34> Quite possibly. I do know it's common to the point of being a trope that some graduate students are just in graduate school to defer having to enter the work-force. Some see it as a way to put off having to make major decisions or processes like job hunting. Not like there's no real reason some opt to do things like that. It is markedly easier to accept scholarships and do the grad school circuit than find a job if you have mid to high grades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A short (and hence inaccurate) overview of the apprenticeship system for the trades in my country:

Apprentices start working one day a week and going to school four. They end up working four days a week and going to school one. Apprentices can switch to a more academic track, at a technical school or university, if they get the desire.

When they finish with their apprenticeship, not only do they already have horizontal ties with their classmates, but they also have vertical ties with their business, its clients, and the master tradesmen who conducted the classroom component and oversaw the theoretical and practical exams.

<comment><USER37> > _Apprentices start working one day a week and going to school four. They end > up working four days a week and going to school one._

It's brilliant. And is there _any_ profession that can't be done this way?

<comment><USER38> Well you can't become a surgeon or a lawyer unless you switch a university track at some point. But you can definitely work in the medical or legal field by doing an apprenticeship first and moving on to a 2-3 year professional degree (for instance nurse school isn't college here).

<comment><USER37> > _Well you can 't become a surgeon or a lawyer unless you switch a university > track at some point._

"Can't" because those are the rules we've established. But both of those professions seem like they be perfect for apprenticeships (they were at one point in history). It's not like studying the literature isn't or can't be a part of apprenticeship curriculum.

<comment><USER38> You could argue that med and law schools are pretty much trade schools, just long ones :)

Unlike in the US where you first do 4 year of pre-med/pre-law, in continental Europe med and law students start learning on the job early.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Nothing is a guarantee of a good life.

It seems like people think you should be able to just check a few boxes, then slot into a 9-5 and have everything taken care of for you for the rest of your life.

Well, it doesn't work like that. Even after college you're still going to have to plan and think and take action to make things happen for you. It's not just all going to fall into your lap because you took a few classes in your early 20s.

<comment><USER40> To be fair, it used to work like that in America. Graduate high school, get a decent paying union job in your hometown with an okay house to raise a family. Drink beer and watch sports on the weekends with neighborhood buddies. Work 30-40 years and retire.

<comment><USER41> Even on the relatively short timeline of the history of the US, the period you're referring to was quite short.

<comment><USER40> With the huge increases in productivity since the 1950's, people should be working less hours than in 1950. I don't have a good reason why this should be an anomaly in history.

<comment><USER42> Sure, if one is willing to stay at 50's living standard. Trouble is what used to be luxury then is now basic necessity and "everyone" must have it.

<comment><USER40> Exactly. We come back to our original problem. Our society turned "luxuries" like college, into basic necessities that one must do or have. Two cars, big homes, two parents able to work, phones, etc. are all great, but they cease to be luxuries when they become required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Nothing is a guarantee of a good life.

A good life requires so many different elements, but mostly comes down to one thing: what you put into it, esp. in regards to improving the lives and welfare of others around you. Do this, and you will find that your own life gets better and better. Be kind, do work to help others, care about people and their lives (and not just your own) and you'll find that life will turn out pretty darn fine.

<comment><USER44> A good ZIP code is a great start.

[https://talkpoverty.org/2015/12/17/american-dream-zip- codes-...](https://talkpoverty.org/2015/12/17/american-dream-zip-codes- affordable-housing/)

<comment><USER45> What made those zip codes good?

<comment><USER46> Money.

<comment><USER44> Parent's money, to be precise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> If you want a _good_ life, DO something you are GOOD at.

That really is all there is to it. People recognize value and, guess what, they'll gladly _pay_ you for your skill.

Happiness is up to you. The only thing I'd send your way to think about: "In order to get love, you have to give love."

</comment><comment><USER48> this sort of reads as self re-assurement for his son's path; the author is a Harvard professor and I assume daily interaction in academia all revolves around how great and virtuous higher ed is yet he's bucked the trend.

perhaps if he truly feels that way he could leave academia and cease perpetuating the myth?

imo calling it an "investment" is part of the problem. its a pure sunk cost and not an asset.

<comment><USER49> People call it an investment because they think: I put something in it with the goal of getting more out of it in total.

They don't see it as finance terminology and the concept of the word investment in the context of others like 'sunk cost' and 'asset' holds very little specific meaning in that case.

Ironically that is a 'problem' you can 'fix' by putting people in college and teaching them basic accounting.

<comment><USER48> id argue that with an investment you can compare like to like alternatives and can use a greater degree of objectivity.

there are far more variables to consider in higher ed (student loan debt, opportunity cost of time, unemployment, alternative education experiences, etc) so looking at it as an outflow of cash with a predictable return is misleading at best.

no college has a monopoly on information and there is no proprietary info gained (other than network from elite schools). in a sense the knowledge component of a degree can only approach a value of zero as time goes on. the experience aspect is of course subjective and very important to some.

<comment><USER49> And that's why people use the word 'investment' without knowing the meaning of the word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Pete-Codes If you are facing minimum of £27k tuition debt in England which AFAIK gathers interest from day one I would probably skip it. And it's even worse in the US.

As far as webdev goes, you could do a bootcamp and be earning money within 6 months to a year. That's money that's hopefully going into your pension fund and earning interest while your peers are still in class.

Or you could learn to code using cheap and/or free resources. College isn't the only place to learn things nowadays and I think a lot of people haven't caught up with that yet.

I used to think nothing could beat the college experience for bonding but I think the formula of lots of people doing the same thing every day in a niche environment they want to be in is easily repeatable. I'm still in contact with digital nomads I hung out with in Bansko two years ago and I was only there for a month. But it was an intense month of seeing each other every day, just like college.

Oh and don't worry about not finding a dev job if you don't go to college. Employers are coming around slowly and there are lots of success stories out there: www.nocsdegree.com

<comment><USER50> My concern would be whether people who take the bootcamp or self taught approach would have the grounding in engineering and CS theory that someone with a degree has.

I tend to feel that under-emphasizing these things are why the software industry has so much of a problem with poor designs, low code quality, and missed deadlines.

Maybe it would be possible to create a two year degree that would fill in those gaps.

<comment><USER51> Here are my opinions being in the industry through various roles as a dev, technical lead, and dev manager.

I think there is too much weight put on CS theory but it is valuable if you already have it through a degree.

Outside of FAANG and similar unicorn growth kind of companies nearly nobody else needs a new X or a different design of Y. I'd even go as far to say most of the time we don't even need to understand the internal of the tool itself.

Gut feel says upwards of 99% of companies just need existing solutions combined. I'd say 20% of the industry itself thinks they're actually apart of the 1% that are truly facing a problem nobody else has.

I've seen companies suffer from too much CS theory. They get caught up in the technical problems and the most ideal solutions instead of focusing on providing customer value.

We hear this through the many talks about premature optimization and reinventing the wheel but in the real world I hear a lot of individuals calling the work a hack when it isn't the most optimized solution.

<comment><USER52> Yeah, 99% of companies that need software developers can (and should) get away with boring CRUD solutions using boring persistence like an RDBMS. You could probably go a little fancier on your choice of language, using a nice functional language like F# versus something like Java.

<comment><USER53> 99% of those companies building boring CRUD solutions don't even need developers. They could just piece something together off the shelf and be done with it. There's tons of products out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> College was a lot less expensive when I went many years ago. However, I suppose that if I had sunk what I and my family spent on it into local real estate, I could have made more money over the years. I have regrets about college--I wish I had taken more math, I wish I had studied more foreign languages--but none of the regrets are financial.

</comment><comment><USER55> Life is a long haul ride, requires a lot of things to get through it well. College education is obviously one part of it.

It would help people to realize any thing one does has an expiry date to it. This is why you need to have a system to remain consistent at some broad goals. Things like good eating, exercise, personal finance, relationships, reading and learning have to be done consistently, and have to be done throughout your life. You won't be good at life, if you don't do some of things regardless of the age, and place you are in.

The loss is in assuming College Degree as an aristocratic right. If you think this way you will soon realize there is nothing special about reading a few books between ages 18 - 22 and doing no learning after that for decades.

To me primary purpose of education is initiation. College degree should be treated as a good head start as an initiation. Nothing more, Nothing less.

<comment><USER56> > Life is a long haul ride, requires a lot of things to get through it well. > College education is obviously one part of it.

I would disagree. College education is absolutely not required to get through life. And it should be required even less than it is. There are some professions for which degrees are super useful. But most people doing degrees are going into professions that just require any degree and could easily be done without one.

<comment><USER57> I have a good friend of mine from high school who right after graduating became a welder. He has a very high quality of live, better than many of my friends who are doctors who are in debt and just now starting to pay off loans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> There are things that can increase the chances of "a good life". There is nothing that can guarantee it. Pocket aces increase your chance of winning a hand, but it doesn't guarantee you win.

So while a college degree is not a guarantee, the question is whether or not it increases your chances. Because if it does, you can combine it with other things that also increase your chances to give yourself the best shot.

I mean, it is possible to sit infinite monkeys at infinite typewriters and get Shakespeare. Doesn't mean it's a good strategy.

Now, if college is unavailable to someone for whatever reason, it is good to know that a good life isn't dependent on getting a college degree. You can focus harder on other positive indicators.

But if we're going to dismiss everything that isn't a sure thing, we're going to be just dismissing everything.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm not sure where this goes in the threads and discussion, but this historian has a really nice article on the importance of the humanities. Unlike science and technology, the humanities don't have an obvious ROI, especially when you have to pay large sums of money, and I think he does a good job of illustrating the value the humanities bring and possible consequences we are seeing in our own society of not valuing them.

[https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical- case...](https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical-case-on-why- we-need-the-humanities/)

(And thank-you to whoever first posted a link to this guy's blog to HN, it's really good, and I'm not even all that into history of warfare.)

</comment><comment><USER60> In the CS field, the low hanging fruit is often worth more than the harder stuff.

It's all about show and very little about substance.

Building a flashy web app and studying for interviews will get you further than anything you learn in school.

</comment><comment><USER61> It shouldn't be. I never understood this idea. Because no one really says this, and you especially don't have an excuse to believe this now.

Why would you subsidize a path in life making people in some cases worse.

</comment><comment><USER62> In summary: many people go to expensive colleges and don't live a good life. On other hand, many people don't go to colleges but live a good life.

That's all.

</comment><comment><USER63> I mean of course it isn't - no single aspect of your life will guarantee happiness or a good life.

</comment><comment><USER64> If you turn that statement around the same is true. You can have a 'Good Life' without a college degree too. From my perspective, its more about what you can produce on an on-going basis than any certificates that you hang on the wall.

</comment><comment><USER65> Considering how expensive college is in the US, I'm actively considering alternate options for my kids. It doesn't make sense to turn them into debt slaves and get into hundreds of thousands in debt just to get a job.

</comment><comment><USER66> I agree with this. In retrospect, a better path for me would've been (in The Netherlands):

\- Don't do pre-university in high school but prepare for "higher job education" in high school. Graduate at 17.

\- Do a "higher job education", speed it up (instead of 4 years do 3 years) and graduate at 20. Do some web dev/UX-based degree (they exist and speedups are possible, provided you're pro-active).

\- Get a job grind away for 3 to 5 years, learn about investing and invest most of the money.

\- If you want to go deeper in computer science, because the craft is beautiful then follow a master degree in security.

I'd have missed out on a lot of spiritual/some social development that I wouldn't have gotten at "higher job education" but did get at uni (as I did that for 6 months, a different degree though). However, compared to that, I now have a career setback of 7 years.

<comment><USER67> Assuming you're Dutch, but in the context of this article, HBO is college as well (the very clear distinction between applied universities and research universities doesn't exist in the Americas).

<comment><USER66> Ah, I didn't know! Thanks. And community college is MBO then I guess?

<comment><USER67> Yeah, pretty much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> College degrees only became a so-called "requirement" for a good life in America around 1970 as a way to maintain racial segregation as a response to all the civil rights legislation in the '60s :/

</comment><comment><USER69> It is close if you get a CS, Engineering or business degree.

</comment><comment><USER70> The article seemed underwhelming to me. TLDR: college doesn't guarantee future happiness (uhm, what does _guarantee_ it?) some kids would be happier just going to work.

That's fair, but while some kids would thrive going to work after college many more would be hampered by a lack of a college education for the rest of their lives.

Probably US specific but, in most schools, education sucks and all good colleges (not just super expensive; state schools, too) offer a solid STEM background to fix the damage after lousy schools. College should not be necessary, but in the US it kind of is.

So to make college optional, fix schools: reduce hours and drudgery, focus on consistent STEM background, give extra support to kids that excel in a subjext. My 2c.

</comment><comment><USER71> Knowing what you're worth.

Charging accordingly.

Don't work for middle men, get direct clients.

Make friends

Help people

Oh and study

<comment><USER72> How to get direct clients?

Id love to go C2C but finding clients seems really hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> There is no degree can guarantee a good life. But college degree can increase dramatically for that possibility.

</comment><comment><USER74> This would have been a hot take if they published it 10 years ago. Now it's old news.

</comment><comment><USER75> The only degrees worth going to school for are STEM.

</comment><comment><USER76> To be fair, nothing ever is a guarantee of anything.

</comment><comment><USER77> and No college degree is a guarantee for a Bad life.

nothing hurts us more than the lack of (higher) education.

kids, stay in school.

<comment><USER78> There are plenty of people without a college degree that have a good life. This disproves that it's a guarantee for a bad life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I couldnt wait to escape the pre-internet dreariness of suburbia and attend college (MIT).

</comment><comment><USER80> Thanks for telling me something I discovered half way through my university studies.

</comment><comment><USER81> Yes.. But it's definitely far better than not having a college degree!!!

</comment><comment><USER82> It shouldn't be!

</comment><comment><USER83> ...Breaking News

</comment><comment><USER84> Well, this article may target white people. You can do a bootc amp and be paid. When you're part of a minority, you need a college degree to live.

<comment><USER85> Can you expand on this? I'm a minority with no degree and I'm curious about your perspective.

<comment><USER86> I think it is conventional knowledge that if you are a minority you are often forced to overcome discrimination and are being judged more harshly. I mostly second-hand experienced this because half of my family are immigrants from a country that had "low-status" when they got here.

Just to be sure: if you are young/new please don't take this as discouragement. The less it applies to you the better. And if you face discrimination then take pride in your accomplishments in spite of adversity.

But I find OP's assessment overly specific...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I had a mate who did this in the UK joined the army but he said he enjoyed his time in the "Mob" but eventually you have to get a job that pays a real wage.

It is one way of getting training - and if you say went into the right MOS cyber etc get to Master Sargent E8 you could then get a good job outside.

</comment><comment><USER37> Colleges have become massive businesses whose purpose is to jam kids through to graduation (thus maximize tuition fees). Most kids don't really want to be there. Both parties are incentivized to "get through it". When a large number of young people have degrees obtained this way, is it any wonder the value is diminished?

It's a shame, because I loved (and continue to love) higher education.

<comment><USER88> Is it really true that, in the US, many college students don't want to be there but go nonetheless, despite having to pay absurd amounts of money? Where I study, uni is basically free, and I've met very few people in my degree who don't want to be there. This seems absurd to me.

<comment><USER37> > _Is it really true that, in the US, many college students don 't want to be > there but go nonetheless, despite having to pay absurd amounts of money?_

Judging by the number of people who don't show up to class or otherwise just "get by", it's absolutely true. People "go to college" because they're told it's their meal ticket into the middle class. This is the point of the article.

Ask the average person if they'd rather pay to have the paper degree and not have to attend any classes, or get the education for free but not receive any paper credentials. You'll have your answer.

<comment><USER88> _> Ask the average person if they'd rather pay to have the paper degree and not have to attend any classes, or get the education for free but not receive any paper credentials. You'll have your answer._

This is an interesting thought, however I don't think it is a good test for whether someone wants to be in college/uni or not. It is reasonable to enjoy the education _and_ be realistic about the value of the paper certificate at the same time.

The overall point about social pressures etc. is well taken though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Yeah, no sh*t.

Assuming you went to college for a marketable and "valuable" degree - by this, I mean a degree with a clear path to a somewhat stable career. Usually, if you don't have internships you've already shot yourself in the foot.

Plenty of people with family money and college still find ways to go bankrupt from addiction, real-estate woes or bad investments.

Some just don't care enough or have enough drive to be "successful".

Some who find success get involved with the wrong people, or think their source of money is an endless fountain and go broke or worse end up on the street.

Goodness do journalists write for simpletons these days...

</comment><comment><USER90> No one really goes to college and grad school to learn. Higher ed is commoditized as a:

* insurance policy, where students use it to avoid limiting themselves to low-status and low-paying careers

* lottery ticket, the gateway to a "prestige" career track [1]

* status signaling mechanism, where young people flex their educational elitism [2]

And higher ed is arguably bad at what its supposed be good at - a delivery mechanism of relevant knowledge. If you have ever interviewed a fresh grad who didn't study "Cracking the Coding Interview" or did not have a few "side projects" under their belt, then you know what I am talking about.[3] The internet is _the most_ effective information distribution delivery and it's much cheaper, no wonder the value of college is in question.

[1] Consulting, finance, corporate middle management, grad school

[2] How many times have you been on a date and you tell or ask the other person where they wen to college, what they majored in, etc

[3] Arguably, the standard that hiring managers set for new grads is too high. Perhaps it's the employer that should be training fresh grads, but that is not how the current job market works. I think about this a lot because it causes problems for both young people and employers.

<comment><USER91> _> If you have ever interviewed a fresh grad who didn't study "Cracking the Coding Interview"_

Goodhart's Law.

 _> or did not have a few "side projects" under their belt_

IME: end-of-course projects at places like MIT and Carneige Mellon are often much more impressive than the CRUD web app or copy-pasta Jupyter notebooks I tend to see from e.g. coding bootcamps or especially self-taught applicants. And students usually have a half dozen or more of those, in addition to internship projects.

Sometimes a self-taught person comes along with a genuinely impressive project, and I push hard to hire those folks. But for the most part it's silly little single-person-project web apps and such.

 _> The internet is the most effective information distribution delivery and it's much cheaper, no wonder the value of college is in question._

The questioning only really has a loud voice in places like the USA with horrendously expensive higher ed systems. I don't really hear a lot of griping about the cost of education or opining on internet alternatives when I'm in Munich or Vienna.

<comment><USER92> What sort of things do you see in these end-of-course projects? Genuinely curious

<comment><USER93> At the University of Washington (which consistently ranks at the level of MIT and Stanford for Computer Science), someone with a bachelor's in Computer Science would generally be expected to complete at least two of: * Operating Systems: Either implement lock/fork, assorted system calls, and virtual memory for OS/161; or implement a device driver. * Networks: Implement the Tor protocol or a project of similar complexity. * Compilers: Implement a compiler for simplified Java including at least constant propagation or a similar optimization. * Animation: A year-long course series that culminates with animating a few-minute long movie. * A small video game. * A Maps-style program for finding the shortest walk between any two locations on campus, including displaying that information. This one was required for Computer Science.

All but the last of these were done in groups of 2-3 people. It might have been theoretically possible to graduate with only one big project, if you took machine learning, security (the final project for this one was finding an exploit in Firefox, but no actual code was required), and some heavy theory classes. Most people would have done at least 3-4 big projects like this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


USBNinja released – USB attack development platform for the Raspberry Pi Zero - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/xcellerator/usbninja <comment><AUTHOR> It's just a small project right now, but would love some feedback from anyone interested. It's designed to be very simple to modify or to extend the existing functionality. You can imitate: USB-To-Ethernet adapters, USB-To- Serial adapters, HID Keyboard and Mass Storage (and any combination thereof)!</comment>


Compile C/C++ to Flash - Adobe Alchemy - <AUTHOR> http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/alchemy.html <comment><USER2> The speed of coding in C with the execution speed of the Flash VM! Yes!

<comment><USER3> Makes you wonder if there was another reason - e.g. they had an internal reason to get c/c++ running on the VM - then they figured they might as well open source it.

<comment><USER4> I think that's one of their stated reasons.

Since they've stated they're heading for all Flash-based software in a few years (no more desktop), they probably more or less have to port all their apps to Flash. Ugh.

<comment><USER5> Photoshop anyone? It is due for a re-write and it is in C/C++.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A dream come true! Thank the lord! I can now have Clojure, running on the JVM, running on the Flash VM!

Lisp has finally come to the internet scene. Beware, PHP, beware, Javascript! Your time is over.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's just that simple. Game over, all you massively popular languages, because _lisp has arrived_!

The primary reasons to use one programming language over another are its libraries, its community (documentation, examples, etc), followed by its expressive power. In other words, just because Lisp is so badass does not mean it will dominate. That's like claiming that your new amazing EBay clone will be a big hit. In both cases, you're fighting the massive inertia of huge network effects.

<comment><USER6> Well, Clojure has access to any JVM library. And thus has nice threading (as well as a model of it's own, as I understand; I haven't used it that much.) That's why it's getting so much attention.

Also, running a VM on a VM was definitely a joke. It'd be a horrible idea beyond belief.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Flash must die. Flash is evil. Flash is proprietary, and Adobe's key technology to subvert the web and build their own proprietary OS.

<comment><USER7> What exactly is bad about any of that?

<comment><USER8> are you serious? they are trying to pull a microsoft, of course. i don't think anybody needs to be told what's bad about _that_.

<comment><USER7> Wow, what a stuck-up response to a serious question.

My point is, market forces drive innovation. "Flash is proprietary" -- in what possible way is that bad? Most of the luxuries of life are proprietary. Humanity is better for having the concept of "proprietary".

Imagine how you'd feel if someone was saying, "Viaweb must die. Viaweb is evil. Viaweb is proprietary.". It would sound rediculous. And yet, Viaweb was a platform, just like Flash. So ask yourself, _why_ does that sound rediculous? Could it be that there is some pent-up anger or frustration with Adobe and Microsoft in particular, and that anger is distorting our ability to look at the situation objectively? I don't know. I personally think Microsoft has added a lot of real value over the years, and that the world is better with them than without them.

Also, I don't like feeling as if I'm in a roomful of zealots. Please make thoughtful continutions to Hacker News.

<comment><USER8> wow, what a snotty response to a serious reply.

if viaweb were acting as a mini-monopoly back in their day, then yes, i think "viaweb must die" might have very well been heard at the time, and with good reason.

adobe is showing every sign of desiring exactly the sort of monopoly with flash that microsoft created with windows. given the damage that monopoly did to the tech sector, i consider this something worth getting worked up over.

<comment><USER7> Sigh. I apologize. Really. I just haven't slept in 27 hours (and got only 5 hours then). Startup life. :)

Anyway, my reply was over the top. So thanks for the thoughtful followup in the face of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The most interesting thing about this for me is that programming language implementations could possibly be ported to the flash VM.

Anyone who has tried 'try ruby' knows what I'm talking about: <http://tryruby.hobix.com/>

.. being able to experiment with interpreted languages (other than javascript) in your browser could be kind of cool.

</comment><comment><USER10> so will we see an objective-c framework for developing web applications compiled for flash? Go Objective-C!

<comment><USER11> Have you seen Objective-J and Cappuccino? <http://cappuccino.org>

<comment><USER10> yup, and it looks great. Very very interesting technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Doom was compiled into flash, So its got that going for it.</comment>


TSA mission-creep: scans and gropes now at bus stations (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=rEiMvu6svgw

<comment><USER2> Wait, first the apologists and fraidy-cats told me that I had no right to travel by air, that it was "put up with the nudatron and grope, or take the bus or train or drive".

Hey, now taking the bus makes me a suspect, worthy of a police patdown, apparently.

This is what happens when we get the conservative Supreme Court that we asked for, and they slice the 4th Amendment protection against search and seizure so thin you can see through it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> When I first watched this I thought it was some kind of clip out of a movie until halfway through.

That super creepy newscaster praising the government's over-reaching authority in protecting us from imaginary threats seems like he's right out of a Hollywood movie where it's a parallel dark-world.

Except this is reality which makes it more scary.</comment>


RideCheck: Connecting you with help when you need it - <AUTHOR> https://www.uber.com/newsroom/ridecheck/ <comment><USER2> > When a RideCheck is initiated, both a rider and driver will receive a > notification asking if everything is OK. They can let us know through the > app that all is well, or take other actions like using the emergency button > or reporting the issue to Uber's Safety Line.

I wonder about the implications of notifying both rider and driver that Uber's internal checks have indicated that something might be wrong.

I can think of a few situations where the driver is doing something that violates Uber's policies, and the rider may want to notify Uber discretely, without the driver being aware that the rider knows there's a problem -- because if the driver knows, that may leads to a worse outcome.

Similar to when a bank robbery is taking place and the teller surreptitiously presses a silent alarm button. There's a reason why that button is silent.

<comment><USER3> I think you are misunderstanding this feature. It's more like a "targeted ad" where the "target audience" is people who were in accidents and the "product" is free/easy acess to things like 911, help w/ insurance etc. I imagine there's going to _some_ false positives (e.g. maybe the algorithm can't discern between an accident and being stuck in traffic), but the "have you been in an accident? yes/no" prompt is unobtrusive enough, all things considered.

The silent button thing you're thinking of actually sort of exists too, but it's somewhere else (in the Safety Center section of app): if the police dept of your city supports it, activating the 911 feature through the app sends your ride information to the police.

You can also use the "share my trip" feature and texting to get a family member or friend to call police for you

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Sorry to hear that" seems like an odd response after you indicate you've been in a crash of unknown severity.

<comment><USER5> Manager: "We're still working on the copy for the confirmation text"

Developer: "Ok, I'll just put this as a placeholder for now"

[3 weeks later]

Developer: I left a note in the code that this was only placeholder text. Do you have the final copy?

Manager: Let's leave it for now. I still need to confirm with Bob and Alice.

Developer: [Shrugs and goes home for the day]

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems a little embarrassing it took them so long to send a notification to our app that we were sitting in one spot longer than the traffic data suggests is appropriate. I bet they spent millions on this.

<comment><USER7> Doing this _without having too many false positives_ is the hard part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What if the offending Uber driver subdues the passenger and grabs the passenger's phone and claims everything is okay ? Brainiacs

<comment><USER3> This thing is for car accidents.

In my mind, the only thing a company could do to try to prevent the scenario you're describing is doing background checks, but that assumes a correlation between a background check and a propensity for violence can be established, which may or may not be the case.

By the time an actual physical attack is happening, I don't think there's much anyone could do, brainiac or not.

<comment><USER2> You say it's for car accidents, but the GIFs embedded in the post, as well as the post itself, imply that it's broader than that and reference the Uber Safety Line.

<comment><USER3> > imply that it's broader than that

Are you sure you're not just projecting your own impressions onto the article? Where do you see that being implied? The GIF literally asks if you were in a car crash. I'm curious where you and the GP get the impression this feature extends to physical assaults.

> our technology can detect possible crashes or if a trip goes unusually off > course.

> When a RideCheck is initiated, both a rider and driver will receive a > notification asking if everything is OK. They can let us know through the > app that all is well, or take other actions like using the emergency button > or reporting the issue to Uber's Safety Line. Our safety team may also > follow up by phone to inquire about the RideCheck. In the event of a crash, > we can also help expedite the insurance claims process.

To me this reads like a feature to deal with scenarios involving injury due to car accidents. The only thing that remotely sounds related to assaults is the presence of a 911 link, but that's something you also want to have in case of a medical emergency; it's not exclusive to only scenarios when you're explicitly being attacked by someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does that feature help in anything?

<comment><USER10> >In the event of a crash, we can also help expedite the insurance claims process.

<comment><USER4> While true, I assume this has little to do with the in-app feature. That is, I doubt "detecting" the crash has much of a connection with the claims process other than making the button more visible. I don't drive for Uber, but I assume any claims assistance they provide existed before this.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hackernews for tourism? - <AUTHOR> I'm traveling and I find tourism sites awful. So was thinking about a location based hacker news. Like upvote and explore nerdy activities <comment><USER2> Could you clarify what you're looking for? I think I know what you mean, because current tourism review sites are awful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey just added a description.</comment></comment>


Powerstrip-flocker: Portable volumes using just the Docker CLI - <AUTHOR> https://clusterhq.com/blog/powerstrip-flocker-portable-volumes-using-just-docker-cli/ <comment><USER2> We're really pleased to have got a powerstrip adapter ready for flocker! Storage and networking are two important pieces of the Docker jigsaw and this means that you can compose both storage (flocker) and networking (weave, calico, socketplane) into the SAME container using the vanilla docker client.

Because it uses the vanilla docker client, it means that orchestration frameworks (mesos, k8s, fleet, swarm) will also be able to trigger the adapters.

Please note - powerstrip adapters are NOT designed to be used for production and are just a way to prototype docker extensions and experiment with composability of extensions in the Docker ecosystem :)

<comment><USER3> Kai, it's really awesome to see this finally out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do checkout the demo [1] I and Luke did earlier, using Powerstrip adapters for Weave and Flocker. It shows how a database container can be moved from one machine to another, keeping it's data and IP address!

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vVKtmd0ENw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vVKtmd0ENw)

<comment><USER4> Yup, and also here's one with sound. :) [https://vimeo.com/118119440](https://vimeo.com/118119440) (recorded in the sauna room of an Austrian log cabin thanks to crate.io!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As I understand Flocker creates ZFS snapshots which are replicated between the nodes. Is this happening continuously and to all nodes? It's not really clear from the post.

<comment><USER4> Hey geku! We are not currently doing _continuous_ replication between nodes, although we are working on a cloud block device backend which would allow synchronous replication using the underlying cloud block service.

In particular this would enable stateful failover... is that what you had in mind?

<comment><USER5> Yes, that was the point. Thanks for clarification.</comment></comment></comment>