Show HN: Less Work, More Golf - <AUTHOR> http://www.scrambl.com

<comment><USER2> Firefox 4.0.1. Ubuntu 10.04. I don't golf and I don't know anything about colors.

Pardon the following stream of consciousness.

I like the colors, the prominent Big Orange Button, the name and the uncluttered layout.

Is your font source so important that, among all the elements of all your pages, _this_ is the one thing you can see at any screen size and scroll position? More important than Create Event and Login (see next para)?

None of your text or blocks re-flow if I have a small screen or if I simply resize my browser down, so you have to side-scroll. The Create Event and Login links at the top right disappear behind a scroll. There's nothing about your text that requires it be in lines that exact length, and there's nothing about your six flagged features (the bottom_feature divs) at the bottom that require them to be in two lines of three; they could re-flow.

Coming Soon, Auto Tee Times. "We make your tee times." Does that mean you actually secure the reservation at the course? You could charge money for that feature.

Create Event: I like that you can see most of what you can do without creating an account and logging in.

The Name and Email text fields extend way out of the Your Info column, into the Itinerary column.

Not sure I like one long column of blocks on the left on Create Event, and a column of just one block on the right.

The url for Create Event is /event/new. If you go to that url, and then manually to /event (by deleting "/new" in the address bar, or using the Uppity addon in Firefox), you display the root page and the formatting gets fubarred. If you're on the root/home page and then manually go to /event, you display the root page and the formatting is fine.

However: If you go to the Login page, /account/login_new, and then manually go up to /account, you get redirected to /account/login_new. Same if you manually go from / to /account, the same redirection. I think this is better behavior than /event/new in the previous paragraph.

Login page: On the scale of security, this is a minor issue, especially on a non-critical site like yours. I tried to reset my password with a fake, non- existent account, email@example.com. After clicking, the page tells me there is no account with this email. What if I wasn't iamfake, but wanted to know whether iamfake had an account on this site or not? You just told me. Anyone else want to comment on this information leak? I see it a lot elsewhere. A better response would be to say something like "If this account exists, we have sent email ..." regardless of whether there is such an account.

I created an account. An entire 15 seconds has gone by, and I still haven't received the confirmation email! :) Seriously, I hate this. When I create an account (anywhere) it's because I'm so interested that I want to do stuff _now_. (still no email). I'm always curious, in general, why these things take so long. Is it by design, to fight spam bots, or do you (and others) outsource this and your service just takes its own sweet time? Or is it just an unavoidable condition of email?

In general I think this is an unfortunate hurdle in an otherwise smooth and inviting (inviting almost by definition, since I'm taking the time to sign up) site and process. I wonder how many potential customers/users are lost at this stage? (still no email ...)

We have email! I didn't time it, between five and ten minutes I think. I've abandoned potential new sites in less time.

Copyright: it says 2011 on your front page, 2010 elsewhere. Templates?

Bear with me on this next one. When I created a new account, I was left on a logged in page while waiting for the activation email. It was the /account page. I know I'm logged in because I see "My Events", and "Logout" at the top. When I clicked on the activation link in the activation email, I was brought to a new page/tab on the /account/login_new page, not logged in. I reloaded and hard-reloaded, still not shown as logged in on that page.

Just a nit, but since I'm shown as logged in on the one page, and you've given me a cookie, shouldn't I be logged in on any page/tab? I like that you left me logged in on the /account page (remember, I've just created the account and I'm waiting for the activation email on that page), it gives me something to do while waiting for the activation email. But then I should be logged in no matter what other tab/pages I'm on, particularly the one that the email activation link brings me to. But, just a nit I'm picking.

My Friends: I added Friend1, Friend2 and Friend3. Deleted Friend2 with the red X on the right, that's pretty clear. What are the check boxes for, to the left of the friends, and the select all check box above them? Did you leave this feature on without any purpose? Did you intend to be able to create an event from here, by first selecting friends, and forgot to finish this feature?

Same comment for Courses.

Create Event: When I first created an event, I scrolled down to the Who block, far enough that Itinerary was not visible. I clicked on Friend1 and Friend3 repeatedly, and "nothing" happened. I wasn't able to see that those friends had been added to the Itinerary until I scrolled back up. And then I thought for half a second "how did _those_ get in there? Oh, right."

Make those buttons in the Who block toggles, and highlight them when a friend is on the itinerary, unhighlight when you click again and toggle that friend off. It may be redundant, but I like the feedback to take place where I did the action.

Similar comment for the date buttons in the When block.

You have "clear all" in the three sections of the Itinerary block. In keeping with the suggestion in the preceding two paragraphs, add a clear all in the Who, When and Options block.

The names of the sections in the Itinerary block (Course Options, Date Options, Invites) should match the names of the corresponding blocks (Options, When, Who). Change one side or the other.

I like the idea of the Itinerary block. Maybe you could move it to span the top, and have it always visible regarless of scroll position (like your font source at the bottom :). You could then move the Who and Options block up to the top of the right column.

The order of the sections in the Itinerary block should match the displayed order of their corresponding blocks. If you were to re-arrange as above, with Itinerary across the top and the other blocks in a two by two grid, AND you re-designed so that the four blocks re-flowed into a single column of four when you re-size the page smaller, then the order of the sections in the Itinerary would be the top to bottom displayed order of the single column of four blocks. Extra fancy if you had the Itinerary sections arranged two by two to match the blocks' two by two grid when the screen is large, and rearranged the Itinerary sections to a single column when the blocks are a single column on a smaller screen/window.

I tried to add a non-existent golf course to my profile, but could not do it, I was limited to only what's in your drop down list. Do you really have all the courses in the country here? I suspect not, but maybe there's such a list.

As for that, you mis-spelled the Wellshire course in Denver as Weilshire. <http://www.cityofdenvergolf.com/wellshire/>

Please don't take any of the above as negative, I think you've made a great site. Whatever I said that's subjective is exactly that, subjective; you're the boss.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! Thank you very much for taking the time to provide such in-depth feedback. This is why I love this community so much.

<comment><USER2> Yer welcome.

I also just noticed that if I delete a friend from the Friends block on the My Profile page, that friend still is shown on the Itinerary on the event that I'm currently working on.

Also I forgot to mention on the Create Event page, Where should be listed on the Itinerary, to be consistent with listing the other three blocks in the Itinerary. You could also then make a Print view of the Itinerary. If you Print-Preview as it is, it doesn't look very good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think we all need to spend less time working and more time golfing. Here's a start-up I created that can help.

I'd love to hear your feedback!

-Michael

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a cool idea. Have you considered expanding it to schedule anything? Trying to schedule boardgames with friends can be quite painful. You can play most of my collection with 4-5 people, but with 6 or 3, your options are quite limited (plus, I am typically trying to play my new 5 player game).

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I started down this path by creating a site that lets you schedule anything: www.DecideOnADate.com. You may want to try it out. With Scrambl we wanted to be different from other invitation sites and focus on a niche, which is golfers. The 2 apps may seem very similar at the moment but we have some cool features planned for Scrambl that are directly related to golf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've read everything on the page and I'm not exactly sure what it does.

I'm guessing its for planning golfing "events". But I doubt my father or the casual user would understand that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Scrambl sends out invites for golf and lets the group vote on the course and date.

How does that sound?

<comment><USER4> Much better.

I recommend putting that next to the getting started button. The top headline sells the benefit and next to the CTA explains what you're signing up for.

<comment><AUTHOR> This change has been made. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing I can think of is picking a date to golf on should probably be a calendar with a AM/PM toggle next to it. It's a bit hard to grok by glancing at it right now.

</comment><comment><USER6> I started www.niblink.com a couple years ago. Failed to get traction / pursued a new venture. The golf industry can be fun. Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm picking up on some sarcasm about the golf industry being fun. Would love to hear more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great idea and well-executed, congrats on the launch.

How'd you build it (get course info, tech stack, etc.)?

</comment><comment><USER8> Quick note: would be nice to see a tag line that explicitly states what you're offering. It's about setting up tee times with friends, correct? That should be stated more clearly and simply.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have thought about this tag line a lot but you're right, it could be more clear. I was trying to avoid using the phrase "make a tee time" as I didn't want to get lumped in to other tee time sites but I may want to rethink this. Thanks.</comment></comment>


The Daily is live in the App Store - <AUTHOR> http://search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZContentLink.woa/wa/link?path=apps%2fthedaily

<comment><USER2> Just as a heads up.. this is NOT available yet to iTunes users within in the UK.</comment>


How to bypass iTunes music previews protection - <AUTHOR> http://alpblog.heroku.com/blog/how-to-bypass-itunes-music-previews-protection/

<comment><USER2> ... or just use Amazon's MP3 store. No DRM, no problems with synching multiple devices, and no "authorization" of devices/computers.

<comment><USER3> There isn't any DRM protected music in the iTunes Store, either.

This is only about the previews.

<comment><USER4> So if I purchase some songs from this store (e.g. someone gives me iTunes credit as a gift) I can still play them without iTunes? I don't need iTunes installed anywhere?

<comment><USER3> You need iTunes to buy (i.e. you can only access the Store using the iTunes app, not a web browser), but what you get is a completely standard AAC-encoded file without any DRM. I think pretty much any audio player available today can play that (as well as any mobile OS). Just drag the files in your library to your desktop or browse your iTunes folder to find them. After that you can uninstall iTunes and never need to see it again.

iTunes does embed your Apple ID (you need to sign up and get one to redeem your gift card, though you do not need to enter any credit card info or the like) and purchase date as well as time as metadata in the file, but that information is easily removed. There are no watermarks.

<comment><USER4> So if I understand correctly, the answer is no.

Is there some sort of iTunes kiosk, a publicly accessible device with iTunes installed where a customer could purchase songs, download them to removable media and then move the songs from the media to whereever they need to have them?

Or maybe you can use a friend's device with iTunes installed?

<comment><USER3> You can use a friend's machine. Either create your own Apple ID there or redeem your gift card using your friend's Apple ID and buy music from their account. After that you can just copy your music to an USB stick or to Dropbox or whatever.

Yes, you need iTunes to buy – but once you have the music, you do not need it anymore. They are just standard audio files that work with any (somewhat current) player.

<comment><USER4> Nice explanation. Thanks for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article says

> _Although downloading iTunes previews are illegal and restricted by Apple_

What does the author mean by this? If downloading the files are illegal, why is there an API for it? And why do Apple products have features for consumers to do it? Is he trying to make a distinction between downloading and streaming?

<comment><USER6> Hi there I am the author. iTunes API terms state that:

> ... _music video previews; (iv) is streamed only, and not downloaded, saved, > cached, or synchronized with video_

[http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentati...](http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentation/itunes- store-web-service-search-api.html#legal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry for the tangent, but svbtle knockoffs like the <http://wp- svbtle.themeskult.com/> used here are annoying.

I don't want the whole internet to look like svbtle. Heck, I don't even want svbtle to look like svbtle.

<comment><USER8> I think he's using Obtvse: <https://github.com/NateW/obtvse>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If this becomes widely used, it'll only kickstart an arms race between Apple and the people trying to access the iTunes previews. Remember what happened with the Palm Pre and iTunes syncing? Apple doesn't like unapproved devices accessing its content ecosystem.

<comment><USER10> I am not sure Apple can differentiate Apple devices over HTTP except UA header. Maybe they can develop a proprietary streaming protocol but is it worth?

<comment><USER11> There are probably a bunch of ways of checking with javascript that are much harder to spoof than the UA.

<comment><USER12> I am not sure related native iOS streaming libraries integrate JavaScript security just to protect iTunes previews.

<comment><USER9> That could be easily updated if necessary. Moreover, it's entirely possible that there are dormant APIs precisely in case this sort of thing happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am not sure m4a format can be played on Android devices.

<comment><USER14> Of course it can. m4p files are right out but those should be nearly extinct by now.

The player app on my phone plays just about every audio format available, including ogg and flac.</comment></comment>


Raspberry Pi Model B Schematics - <AUTHOR> http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1090

<comment><USER3> Wow... 17 unattached GPIO pins off the CPU. I wonder if they just ran out of room to put them on the board, or if they have lack alternate pin-specific capabilities that the used pins have.

I kind of wish there was a harder to use card edge connector for these - <USER2> could likely implement an additional 2 SD card slots or similar I/O.

<comment><USER4> Man...two unused pins on the external LVDS display header. They could have thrown an I2C pair on that and made it really easy to add an external touchscreen or other kind of display device. Shame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has to be one of the most hacker-friendly companies out there. Kudos!

<comment><USER6> It is worth noting that they are an educational charity, not a for-profit organisation.

I think it is great that they have released this - and I think that Broadcom also deserves credit for allowing them to release a schematic giving away the pin-out of the BCM2835 SoC - it makes the Raspberry Pi so much more useful to know what the outputs of the system are.

This opens up the possibility of trying to work out how to use the unused pins on the BCM2835 based on the names. I haven't been able to work out what the HD pin group does (probably not SATA or PATA based on the number of pins, and HDMI has its own pin group). There seems to be a CAM0 not connected to anything - given CAM1 seems to be a camera, it looks like it is for an additional camera. It also has CCP2 outputs for a CCP2 camera. I also haven't been able to work out what SLIM is - but given it has two pins, CLK and DAT, I guess it is some kind of serial data protocol.

<comment><USER6> Although they look like they are in the middle of the BGA ball array, and probably on a pad that is just floating, so actually connecting anything to the pins that the board isn't designed to allow access to is probably effectively impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> is there anybody specialized in circuit design? i mean, how hard is it to build a cheap Pi equivalent board? If this is so popular, why no commercial version?

<comment><USER8> The Pi has kicked off some interest in hardware hacking for myself too. My question is how hard would it be to embed an 802.11 radio into the same board for a discreet sensor project

<comment><USER9> I haven't looked at the schematics yet, but generally a SoC based design like this needs at least a six layer board, which combined with the speeds it runs at is pretty advanced electronic design...

Coupled with that, it can be really hard to get low volumes of some of the parts they use, like the SoC, PMIC (power management IC) and so on (although you can get free samples if you ask sometimes - but they generally won't give them to you unless there's a chance you'll put through a big order with them in the future). And soldering the BGA parts onto the board would be a pain unless you pay for it to be assembled for you...

Unless you know a lot about that sort of thing, it would probably be more successful to design something that interfaces with a Pi.

<comment><USER10> My university had a wonderful pair of courses in the first year of its CS degree. The first had us build a Z80-based computer on breadboards, with a couple of hulking ancient HP logic analyzers to debug with. For the second, they gave us an assembled Z80 single board computer and had us do something interesting with it -- games displayed on an oscilloscope, control a small robot, etc. For both courses compilers were strictly forbidden.

It was a great way of bridging the abstraction gap between the physical hardware and the code we typed at the keyboard. (We were also required to take courses in basic digital and analogue design and compiler construction to give an overview the rest of the stack, too.)

Nowadays, I think they've switched to using ARM boards for the second course in the build-a-computer series. From a hardware reliability and cost perspective it makes sense, but it's a little sad that the "I built one like this! Just not quite so neatly..." factor has been lost.

As a software guy, the details of the Pi's PCB layout are about as impenetrable to me as the internals of the SoC itself are. It's Magic Electronic Stuff!, but just a tad more powerful than the Z80 I used to play with.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


440 year-old maps filled with footprints - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/08/23/753114640/440-years-old-and-filled-with-footprints-these-arent-your-everyday-maps <comment><USER2> > _We need to stop thinking that the conquest was the worst thing that ever > happened to these local people_

Unfortunately it is rather difficult to make such a comparison, as the conquistadors eliminated so many of the written artifacts along with those who could read them, that we now do not have enough surviving examples or remaining knowledge to currently decipher the contents of what little remains.

<comment><USER3> It's a juicy counter-narrative quote. But, even in this excerpt, Rosario Inés Granados didn't say that the conquest wasn't the worst thing to happen to indigenous peoples. Quite the contrary, she asks us to think differently about it, "She says the maps demonstrate that the indigenous groups that lived in Mexico were more than just fodder for genocide."

With her exhibition, Dr. Granados is trying to focus our attention on agency: the clever, if not subversive, acts of hybridization that locals used to preserve their heritage while under the thumb of foreign invaders. Creating maps and other works of art that passed the sniff test of the Spaniards, yet, in a parallel narrative, spoke to a subjugated indigenous audience. "Maps show us not only what is where and how to get there, but also who we were — and perhaps, who we're going to be."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Teozacoalco map strikes me as created by someone who understood the idea of a round Earth. Notice the orientation of the drawn characters on the surface. Did they have this notion already? Certainly the ship navigators would have.

<comment><USER5> Of course they did. For some reason in today's popular culture, we have this strange idea that the common knowledge that the Earth was round, only came to be after the 16th century.

That's totally wrong, common people knew the Earth was round for 2 millennia in the old world.

In the new world, surely the Maia knew it as well given their extremely advanced astronomical knowledge for the time. Incan astronomy, although not as advanced, was still quite sophisticated, they surely understood moon ecplipses well enough to get that the Earth was round.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth)</comment></comment>


Web Application Firewall for PHP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/terrylinooo/shieldon <comment><USER2> I've been using Webarx since they also block public exploits, but it's nice to have a free and open source alternative. Looks really well done and easy to use! Thanks for sharing it :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really cool. I would love it if Nette was added to the list of Popular Frameworks on the Getting Started page. But the list of what is available is already impressive. I can't wait to implement this in a project!

</comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for sharing. This would be awesome to integrate with Drupal 8/9\. It already supports Symphony...</comment>


Ask HN: What lesser known startups are you excited about? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Rural hubs -- Utah has an interesting one where small town rural residents are being trained to do work as subcontractors for techy metro-based companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> 3D medical printing.

For example, BioBots.io has developed a "living tissue" 3D printer that uses photolithography versus mechanical or chemical deposition. It sells for $5K per machine. With recurring revenue of ~$1K for each cartridge of "bioink"!

R&D expenditures in the space are offset by partnerships with research institutions. And clinical demand is gargantuan. Two factors that could result in a $2B+ industry by 2022[1].

12 Things We Can 3D Print in Medicine Right Now

[https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/12-things-we- can-3d-prin...](https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/12-things-we-can-3d-print- in-medicine-right-now-42867/)

[1] [http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market- Reports/3d-printing-...](http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market- Reports/3d-printing-medical-devices-market-90799911.html)</comment>


Depression marks on seafloor suggest whales visiting prospective mining sites - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-08-depression-seafloor-whales-prospective-sites.html <comment><USER2> To me this headline is phrased in a way that gives the impression that whales are visiting places because they are prospective mining sites (maybe curious). However, the text makes clear that that outfits are exploring places which coincidentally seem to be used by whales --if confirmed mining plans may need to be altered.

[in other words it implies some causation, but there appears to be none]

<comment><USER3> Totally read the headline the same way. I thought sea life were fighting 'the man' for a moment.

Alternative [more responsible?] headline: Newly Conjectured Whale Habitat May Thwart Deep Sea Mining Prospects

<comment><USER4> Where's the "thwart"? It's open ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. I don't know of any political force to stop development regardless.

<comment><USER5> From the article:

 _They acknowledge that more research will need to be done to prove that the marks were made by whales—but if their suspicions turn out to be correct, it could impact licensing for mining in such areas._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Eager to cash in, companies have begun the process of sending machinery down > to the bottom of the sea to set up mining operations.

What regulatory body would or does oversee that? That makes me really sad... so much of the earth destroyed, and now one of the last (if not the last?) untouched part of nature.

<comment><USER7> Makes me very sad as well, the sea is probably one of the last places where humans haven't destroyed the local mega-fauna

<comment><USER8> We're working on that though - many different species of pelagics are threatened by human activity :-/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It'd be ironic if those sea floor nodules have value now. "Mining" them has an extremely interesting cold-war story.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian#Building_Gloma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian#Building_Glomar_Explorer,_and_its_cover_story)

</comment><comment><USER10> Do we really have the technology to mine the deep sea floor? How would that work?

We had so much trouble just shutting off the deep horizon well that I figured any deep underwater operation is beyond our capacity.

</comment><comment><USER11> The idea that an air-breathing animal can free dive to 4000 m is astounding. How long would it take a whale to even get down that far? How do they handle the enormous pressure, and change thereof?

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry, is that even possible?

<comment><USER13> "Elusive Whales Set New Record for Depth and Length of Dives Among Mammals. A new study of elusive Cuvier's beaked whales shows they can dive to nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 meters)." [1]

[1] [https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140326-cuvi...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140326-cuvier- beaked-whale-record-dive-depth-ocean-animal-science/)

<comment><USER12> 3000 meters is amazing, but the comment and article above said 4000 -- an additional 1000 meters. at this depth, the whale's body would have tensile strength of something like steel. my bullshit alarm is going off. This is kind of like saying the international space station might be hit by seagals. If I told you that, I'm sure you might have some doubts. ???? whats going on here did they discover a new whale or something

<comment> semi-extrinsic Deep-water diving mammals have a wide range of adaptations to survive pressure. Their lungs collapse while they dive, they don't have frontal sinuses like land-living mammals, and they have special venous plexuses inside their air cavities (inner ear etc.) that expand when they dive and reinforce these cavities.

Deep-water fish OTOH have been caught in the Mariana trench at down to 8000 meters. No reason why 3000 meters is the magic limit for whales.

Bottom line, they don't need the tensile strength of steel as they avoid having body parts in tension or bending (by reducing differential pressures to almost zero), they just rely on the (in)compressibility of the water-filled tissue making up their body.

<comment><USER14> > Deep-water fish OTOH have been caught in the Mariana trench at down to 8000 > meters. No reason why 3000 meters is the magic limit for whales.

Well they don't have to come to the surface every X minutes

<comment><USER12> Yes but there are no whales that can go 4000 meters deep. This is a fact. The article says they are going 4000+. So what is going on here? The fact that fish might be able to do this, which are in a different animal kingdom, isn't being disputed -- that's all great and wonderful but the article is talking about whales. Whales not fish.

<comment><USER15> "Whales have not been observed going 4000 meters deep" is a fact. "Whales cannot" doesn't appear to be, unless you can point to some physiological reason 3000ish is the unbreakable limit.

<comment><USER12> physiological reason is the pressure of water at 4000 meter is 5846.27 PSI.

some simple depth pressure calculator

a heavy duty pressure washer is about half that 2000-3000 psi. Industrial pressure washer is 3500.

The deepest-diving large, military-style submarine was the Soviet submarine K-278 Komsomolets, with a hull made of titanium, making it very expensive, but able to withstand significantly deeper dives than the best submarines made of high-grade steel, like American nuclear submarines. The Komsomolets was a nuclear powered submarine specially designed to make trips as far down as 1300 meters (4265 feet) below sea level, definitely less than the Trieste, but very significant because the Komsomolets had to "defend" a much larger air bubble against the encroaching pressure of the surrounding ocean.

Compared to the best American nuclear submarines, of the Seawolf class, Komsomolets had about 78% better diving capabilities. Seawolf submarines have an estimated crush depth of about 2400 feet (730 m). The Seawolf submarines are constructed of a high grade steel called HY-100, capable of withstanding 100 atmospheres of pressure. As a rule of thumb, the pressure increases by one atmosphere for every 10 m of descent.

[http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Submarine_depth_ratings](http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Submarine_depth_ratings)

no matter how many downvotes there are, you can't change the laws of physics away, this isn't some magical harry potter button

<comment><USER15> The pressure of water at 3000 meters is 4268.33 PSI, and whales have been _actually observed_ there. I don't see how sustaining 30% more pressure than they've been observed to do is an insane idea.

Submarines don't have the option of getting rid of all the air - the crew would die. Whales can exhale the air in their lungs before a dive, and the rest of their body is largely non-compressible water.

The very article you're citing even shows where your logic is failing:

> very significant because the Komsomolets had to "defend" a much larger air > bubble against the encroaching pressure of the surrounding ocean

Whales have _minimal or no_ "air bubble" to defend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do they need a license for mining if this is in international waters? Who issues the license?

<comment><USER16> Because international waters aren't a free-for-all zone, and subject to various treaties/UN conventions. The International Seabed Authority.</comment></comment>


List of websites founded before 1995 - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_before_1995 <comment><USER2> there is a search engine for oldie sites: [https://wiby.me](https://wiby.me)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good one!

It's also possible to run a search on google and show results from specific day/month/year so you can also do it there

But Wiby seems much cooler</comment></comment>


Two (remote) hackers looking for work - <AUTHOR>

Two eastern-European hackers are stuck after a meltdown at their startup. We have bills to pay, and eating something might be okay as well.
I am a long-time abuser of Java, have a living breathing commercial Common Lisp system behind me, and I'm a general jack of all trades. If it's broken, I can probably fix it intuitively and pretty darn fast. I've spent a long time working for large companies, so I can think in terms of business requirements, talking to clients, etc...
The other half of the pair (David) is a functional programming fanatic. He's well versed in Haskell, has a deep understanding of Scala and Javascript (node.js included). His ideal job would like to tackle hard algorithmic problems. He's pretty jaded and would love for some difficult problem to hand him his ass.
We're local, long time friends and would like to keep on working together if at all possible. Think of us as the strike team beta. We're not in your office, but we get shit done.
If you or someone you know would benefit from our skills, please get in touch.
Thanks, Ivan & David <comment><USER2> Are you particularly tied to the technologies listed or would you be interested in picking up something new?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're both pretty tech agnostic. I suppose it's pretentious to call oneself a hacker, but I think it describes us quite well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Portfolio/Places I can see your work?

</comment><comment><USER4> day rate?</comment>


Holt-Winters' seasonal method for forecasting - <AUTHOR> https://otexts.org/fpp2/holt-winters.html <comment><USER2> FPP is a great book. Interesting to see this chapter in particular on the front page.</comment>


Robert N. Hall, 96, Whose Inventions Are Everywhere, Is Dead - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/obituaries/robert-n-hall-96-whose-inventions-are-everywhere-is-dead.html <comment><AUTHOR> An interesting note (maybe a 2016 tag is appropriate?):

> Yet for all the widespread familiarity of what Dr. Hall wrought as a > remarkably inventive physicist, his death, at 96, on Nov. 7, 2016, gained > little notice. An announcement paid for by his family appeared in two > upstate New York newspapers — The Times Union of Albany and The Daily > Gazette of Schenectady — and General Electric, in a company publication, > published a remembrance a month later. But otherwise the news of Dr. Hall's > death did not travel very far.

<comment><USER2> They had an obituary on file but never knew he died. So the article was in fact published in 2018 - I don't think it deserves the date tag.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wikipedia has a very small article devoted to him. Shows the importance of advertising oneself.

</comment><comment><USER4> No paywall: [https://outline.com/funLf3](https://outline.com/funLf3)

<comment><USER5> Not working in chrome or ff</comment></comment>


How to read one book per week - <AUTHOR> http://www.freestylemind.com/how-to-read-one-book-per-week/

<comment><USER2> I was hoping for some actual content here, and sadly, there wasn't really any to be had. The author (who appears to be our submitter) just says he plans to read 1 book per week between now and the end of the year.

The closest it comes to "how" is saying that he'll spend an hour a day working on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I am the author of the post. Thanks for feedback. The "how" I intended to point out, is to read one hour per week, but to plan in advance on what to read, and to dedicate extra time every week for books such as SICP. Some time ago I couldn't believe that reading one hour per week would eventually translate to 50 books per year, so maybe it is still useful for someone.

<comment><USER2> I think that's a better way to convey the point. Maybe you have to be more obvious for slow thinkers like me ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to update the article based on your suggestion. Thank you :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lipton's April fool's factoring joke, part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/factoring-again-no-joking/

<comment><AUTHOR> The comments about hard problems and hard instances is very interesting. I'm curious if there are any ways to generate hard traveling salesman problems. Or even better, if you can start with a solution (e.g., an order of 1,...,n) and generate a good traveling salesman around that.</comment>


Lobsters Privacy Policy - <AUTHOR> https://lobste.rs/privacy <comment><USER2> There are still some things you can do to mitigate the damage caused by surveillance capitalism, or in some events, logs being kept against your best interest. One of the major ones is installing an adblocker like uBlock origin, and the other major one is compartmented browsing. Compartmented browsing is becoming more popular due to various addons like Facebook Container (Which I use daily) and silos your facebook session away from other sites you may be visiting. On top of these addons, you can use apps like Jumbo[0] that delete old Facebook posts to mitigate against potential employers scouring your profile looking for red flags to not hiring you. Of course that depends on your threat model.

[0] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jumbo- privacy/id1454039975](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jumbo- privacy/id1454039975)</comment>


Explaining Online US Political Advertising [video] - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9419-explaining_online_us_political_advertising <comment><USER2> Based on the TLD for the provided link, I was thinking that this might have been something from a non-US source. However, this is a study from NYU being presented in Germany. I have no issue with this, but I do find foreign analysis of US anything provides a much different perspective an internal US analysis. Many times I've been in conversation with someone that has said something that I immediately wanted to say "Hey" about, but then after a half second thought I realize their comment wasn't really far off. Probably my favorite thing about international travel. The different perspectives can be so rewarding. And it doesn't have to be political either.

<comment><USER3> Which is why diversity is so great IMO. The thing I love the most about working in Tech in the US is a little bit that I get to work with people from so many different countries and cultures. I have to admit that I was very skeptical of this idea at first.

<comment><USER4> Of course you still have reason to be skeptical. The point is not to lend flourish to your political discussions. It's to increase the labor supply and effectively pay lower wages.

<comment><USER3> Sorry that's just nonsense. There is a huge demand for software engineers which is not going away anytime soon. And it's not a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An obvious but still interesting aspect that the talker brings up is that when advertisers start to disclose who is paying for the ad, what we get is a bunch of shell companies.

<comment><USER2> No need to do anything considered nefarious with your actual name when you can hide behind an anonymous shield. If Facebook/YouTube/Whatever require real names, then we should make rules that donations/ad buys/anything election related must come from real names of people, or after Citizens United, an actual recognizable company name. No hiding behind some anonymity shield.

<comment><USER6> Look up the term "Strawperson". Requiring an existing person's name does _nothing_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> non-video source: [https://online-pol-ads.github.io/Online-Political-Ads- Analys...](https://online-pol-ads.github.io/Online-Political-Ads-Analysis/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Ad blockers defend democracy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Would be nice to have subtitles!

<comment><USER10> Sometimes, they get added later on!

<comment><USER10> Current status: [https://c3subtitles.de/talk/1016/](https://c3subtitles.de/talk/1016/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Kubeformation – simplify cluster creation on managed kubernetes vendors - <AUTHOR> https://kubeformation.sh/ <comment><AUTHOR> We built this tool to bootstrap vendor specific declarative templates (Google Cloud Deployment Manager Template [1], Azure Resource Manager Template [2] etc.) that provisions a Kuberentes cluster (and disks), because writing them by hand is a pain. Kubeformation can read a spec file (common for all vendors) and generate these templates.

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/deployment- manager/](https://cloud.google.com/deployment-manager/) [2] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource- manage...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource- manager/resource-group-overview)</comment>


Show HN: Caption Cat – We post the photo, you write the caption. Every day - <AUTHOR> https://caption.cat <comment><USER2> I wonder how photos are selected, do you use random images with rss feed news or is it manually, could you explain this . Also, do you plan to make battles between human caption makers and an AI?

<comment><AUTHOR> Photos are manually chosen by me. Ideally I would automate it somehow by sourcing a feed, but not every image is suitable for captioning. Some might just not be that interesting, while others might depict things we don't want to joke about.

I haven't figured out the right approach yet, so I'm open to ideas.

As for battles between human caption makers and AI: I'm not sure that would be a fair battle. As far as I know AI isn't advanced enough yet to understand comedy.</comment></comment>


Cool HTML5 Canvas Applications - <AUTHOR> http://creativefan.com/20-shockingly-cool-html5-canvas-applications/

<comment><USER2> HTML5 is almost too good to be true. Flashkiller? We all hope so. (internet games on my iPod touch? Please?)

Also, this article is stunning. As a digital artist, I am incredibly excited about the possibilities that the new tools could present - Especially the fractal render and 3D object viewers. This feels like one of those projects that has nearly unlimited potential, simply because there's a massive number of incredibly capable people interested and involved in the development and implementation of HTML5.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apps like Lucid Chart and Sketchpad are where I think HTML5 will be most useful. Flash is still (and likely will be) popular for games for a long time, but it doesn't work too well for the 'productive' apps, which is where I see HTML5 stepping in.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can you use it for LOB though?</comment>


Oia a port of Io to Javascript and node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stevedekorte/oia <comment><USER2> I've been fascinated by Io ever since reading _why's two introductory posts on it:

* [http://web.archive.org/web/20080212010904/http://hackety.org...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080212010904/http://hackety.org/2008/01/05/ioHasAVeryCleanMirror.html)

* [http://web.archive.org/web/20080430135919/http://hackety.org...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080430135919/http://hackety.org/2008/01/10/lazyBricksLazyMortar.html)

See also Ioke, a JVM- and CLR-based language heavily inspired by Io, being developed by JRuby developer Ola Bini:

<http://ioke.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is apt. I just started the io chapter in Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. I can't imagine putting anything in production with it, but I guess I just don't completely understand what io excels at yet.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, Pixar uses Io in production. It's used as an embeded scripting language for their IT (Image Processing) application and for some build systems. It's edge is simplicity and flexibility, though this is (as usual) traded off for some performance.

BTW, I was just doing Oia as a low priority fun project. If folks are interested enough, I'll try to get a proper working release out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Consider me interested.</comment></comment></comment>


Knossos: Redis and Linearizability - <AUTHOR> http://aphyr.com/posts/309-knossos-redis-and-linearizability

<comment><USER2> Much respect for both Antirez and Aphyr.

I keep thinking Antirez is being forced into these problems by community pressure, though. There seems to be a lot of effort going into trying to make Redis some kind of super-featured distributed mothership of a database when we already know that it's not going to be possible.

Antirez and the community have put in an incredible amount of effort to create a datastore that is exceedingly good at what it does, probably best-in-class. To start asking for a distributed system with more guarantees than it was fundamentally designed for is unreasonable. The WAIT command, like every other command in Redis, was written to serve one purpose and do it well in bounded time. I expect that purpose was chosen keeping in mind what was possible without completely demolishing the current Redis architecture. If we can build a reliably distributed system using it, that's fine, but I don't think we ought to be demanding it this way.

<comment><USER3> Hello sudhirj,

the model tested here was again nothing planned to be implemented, just a model to show that WAIT is just a low-level primitive, and the real behavior of the system is determined by all the parts of the system, not WAIT per se.

Redis Cluster is not going to be a strongly consistent system, I'm not going to be tricked into designing something is not good for the Redis Community in my opinion. However Redis Cluster tries with heuristics to put bounds on how much a replica can diverge, and to pick the history that makes more sense when a slave is promoted.

Btw, about the Aphyr post, 13 days ago I wrote in the Redis mailing list the following message in reply to him:

\---

About non linearizability, perhaps it does not apply to the case where a strong coordinator exists, but in the general case one issue is that when we read, we can't just read because a stale master could reply with stale data, breaking linearizability. There is a trick to force the read to be acknowledged that could work:

        MULTI
        INCR somecounter
        GET data
        EXEC
        WAIT <n>

\---

The fact you can't read from the master without care is a very obvious and well understood problem in distributed systems. Even a DS newbie like me was able to spot that in 5 minutes during the mailing list thread :-)

<comment><USER4> Someone help me out: does the "DS" here mean data science?

<comment><USER5> Distributed systems, I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a glimpse of an alternate universe where technology choices were backed by actual proof. Well done Kyle Kingsbury. Moreover, all his Jepsen series are a great writeup on distributed DB theory and issues, and nurture an healthy skepticism to the wild claims DB authors/vendors throw around.

[http://aphyr.com/tags/Jepsen](http://aphyr.com/tags/Jepsen)

</comment><comment><USER7> I love Redis and have a ton of respect for him, his accomplishments, and what he's given the community. I now how a ton of respect for someone else. We all make tradeoffs. Redis is great at what it does. I will use it for that.

</comment><comment><USER8> That... is an impressive post.

<comment><USER9> Kyle really is a high-output kinda guy, isn't he?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Incredible.

<comment><USER11> +1 @mrbbk Incroyable.</comment></comment>


How To Get 30 Million Facebook Fans - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/12/19/30-under-30-tracks-bys-founders-on-how-to-get-30-million-facebook-fans/

<comment><USER2> Yawn, this is basically just an advertisement article for UStream, Socialcam and Crowdbooster.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm guessing by how this article on how to use UStream (sample advice: "While you're live, there will be a live chat from the fans that you need to engage with!") has already hit the HN front with 8 points in almost as many minutes, that we'll someday see a "How to Get 30000 HN Karma!" piece

</comment><comment><USER4> This is not an article. This is an advertisement.</comment>


Zimbabwe shuts down the use of mobile money for cash transactions - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/africa/1719085/zimbabwe-shuts-down-mobile-money-cash-options-with-ecocash/ <comment><USER2> And its citizens are the ones who suffer. Those poor souls have been forced to live in an even worse poverty relative to other countries on the continent simply because of the dysfunction and heavy handedness of their government(s)</comment>


Show HN: JOBBOX.io – Refer a friend, get rewarded - <AUTHOR> http://jobbox.io/?utm_source=hn&utm_medium=hn&utm_campaign=hn

<comment><USER2> Refer to the top comment in this post.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7908067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7908067)

<comment><USER3> Hi Andrew, you're right on multiple points, please let me not go TL;DR on this one:

\- Referrals for the sake of taking advantage of your friends are rubish. I'm with you on that one. Like you, I know multiple referral-only platforms that went bankrupt already, many more will and I do not wish us to become one of them.

\- JOBBOX.io started out as a pure referral-based mechanism, however, compared to other referral mechanisms, it was quite hard to push through a referral as you needed to write down a propper recommendation letter (we checked all of them) and your friend needed to apply. We launched on March this year and soon realised this was definitely not enough.

\- We then implemented the "apply now" mechanism as a result of user feedback ([http://blog.jobbox.io/listening-to-feedback-and-making- chang...](http://blog.jobbox.io/listening-to-feedback-and-making-changes)). In order for an application to go forward the candidates needed someone who could refer them. Again, before the application was approved, our team did a "5-minutes check" just to make sure everything on the application made sense. This small step prevented "crappy" applications from being sent over to the employers.

\- We realised that, from our 3 key users: employers, candidates and referrers, the candidates were the ones that we needed to focus on. So, we've re-built our entire homepage communication from being referral-oriented, to become candidate-oriented.

\- Since then we've been shifting away from the referral-oriented communication and we're heading into a candidate-oriented one.

\- What next? We're building core functionalities that support candidates, like talent advice, evaluation tools and job offers scoring. Still, we're keeping (and improving) the referral system as we believe that someone should get rewarded for making an on-target referral.

Sorry for the long reply but as I mentioned to @ftpaul early today, your comment deserved a proper reply as I agree with your argumentation, and wanted to give you a sneak peek into JOBBOX.io future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I second the very cool company.

I applied to a job there (went on an interview, waiting for the results), one of the founders prior to the interview even had a Skype Call with me regarding the interview and gave me a few tips.

So far, really nice experience. And they're very open to feedback, I've made a couple of suggestions which where implemented quite fast actually (simple suggestions, nothing very fancy)

<comment><USER3> And you're one of our top candidates! :D The _other_ suggestions will be implemented but will take some more time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool company with engaged founders! CTO reached out to me last week via GitHub when a new HackerSurf user wanted to see JOBBOX scraped: [https://github.com/scotthasbrouck/HackerSurf/issues/9](https://github.com/scotthasbrouck/HackerSurf/issues/9)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Glad you scraped us :)</comment></comment>


Open Cures - working around the biggest problem in medical development - <AUTHOR> http://www.opencures.org

<comment><AUTHOR> The present state of affairs with respect to regulation of research and commercial development of biotechnologies in the US leads us into a situation wherein there are any number of languishing lines of research aimed at intervening in the aging process. They cannot cost-effectively be commercially developed by the US-based groups that demonstrated their effectiveness in animals in the laboratory -- or cannot be developed at all, since the FDA will not approve treatments for aging, and that has the predictable effect on the number of investors willing to pony up for the privilege of running into a brick wall.

A similar dampening effect on development stems from the present state of intellectual property laws, which are three shades of ridiculous. But that barrier is less important, I feel, than the FDA's stance on aging and treatments for aging. One thing at a time.

Outside the US there are a number of developed nations which in which commercial medical development is less regulated. China for example - and US citizens of a certain age will no doubt feel sad that we can now point to modern day China as an example of comparative freedom in human endeavor. Not sad for the Chinese, but sad for us.Other nations in that part of the world are similarly more open than the US when it comes to commercial development of new medicaltechnology: even India, despite its bureaucracy.

When we look to the future of commercial longevity-enhancing medical technologies - or indeed any cutting edge biotechnology - I think we're looking at the process of building a bridge between the less restricted parts of the world and the output of the US research community. That bridge is forged of medical tourism, venture investment, and a flow of knowledge. Without it, little will bedeveloped: there must be an outlet for new science to become new technology, and that outlet is being progressively narrowed in the US with each passing year.

Now I can't do anything about medical tourism or venture investment, but I can persuade people to help contribute to the flow of knowledge: to establish a bridge between potential longevity-enhancing technologies that have been demonstrated in the laboratory but can never be fully realized in the US, and developers half a world away who are more free to translate the fruits of research into clinical application. This is a matter of documentation, of building relationships, and of pulling out the most interesting items into the light. Despite this shrinking world, it is still far from the case that researchers on opposite sides of the world have a good view into what is and isn't accomplished.

I think that there's a lot that might be done to help this process along, especially given the fact that we're moving into an age of open biotechnology - the impetus, as in software development, will be towards openly shared knowledge and designs, because the economic advantages that confers are enormous. Accompanying this shift will be a growing community of lab collectives, semi-professional developers, and hobbyists. They already exist in the form of the DIYbio community, but that is just the earliest manifestation of what is to come, more akin to the Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s that spawned computing hardware companies and the rampant growth that followed.

So I have started a volunteer initiative, an open collaboration for everyone interested in taking the most interesting published longevity science demonstrated in the laboratory and building a bridge from it to those groups who might be able to develop it commercially in the near future.</comment>


Taleb and Asness feud on Twitter over tail-risk hedging - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/finance-titans-taleb-and-asness-feud-on-twitter-2020-05-21?mod=home-page <comment><USER2> Let's face it Taleb has a habit of falling out with people - just search Twitter for Taleb and Block

This is an interesting but long read

[https://medium.com/@allenfarrington/a-tale-of-two- talebs-177...](https://medium.com/@allenfarrington/a-tale-of-two- talebs-1775dff3302b)

<comment> blaser-waffle I mean, _Fooled By Randomness_ is essentially him poking fun at people in the finance industry. Gettin @ people is his MO for years now.</comment></comment>


Insys exec allegedly gave lap dance to doctor while pushing deadly opioid - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/opioid-exec-a-former-stripper-allegedly-gave-lap-dance-to-doc-in-bribery-scheme/ <comment><USER2> what?

Insys (manufacturer of fentanyl sprays) hires ex-prostitute "as regional sales director" to close deals and bribe doctors for prescribing their product.

Then CEO and Vice president of Insys become informants or governments witnesses? They cooperate with the investigation and the ex-prostitute is the scapegoat < Whaat?

Like why did they hire her in that position in the first place?!</comment>


Show HN: Spotify International Pricing Index - <AUTHOR> http://mts.io/projects/spotify-pricing/

<comment><USER2> Why do internet services always seem to be more expensive in the UK? Surely they should be able to be provided at approximately the same cost as the US.

For example, Steam games are consistently well above the US price + 20% for VAT.

Netflix is £5.99 a month, which is over ten USD.

I'm sure there are many more examples.

<comment><USER3> There can be lots of reasons, not all of them just "that's what the market will bear".

There is a genuine cost of doing business in the UK, for instance, in that you can't fire staff on a whim, have to pay national insurance for them and so on.

For Netflix (and Spotify, I'd imagine) rights issues can also be expected to come into play: rights holders may charge more for UK clearance than they would US.

Steam I'm not sure about - they don't seem to have a UK operation. Perhaps they join Adobe in the "squeeze them till they hurt" camp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Spotify Philippines is super cheap. But I didn't realized how cheap it really is until I saw the site. I think they just launched last month with a really low price. Spotify Premium here in PH only costs 129 pesos[1]. How cheap is it?

Today, _$1 = P44.28_ so _P129 is just $2.91_.

Of course it was adjusted with the market value here in PH. It was really a good deal. They also partnered with the telcos here to boost their presence. And I think, they don't have much competition here in PH.

[1] [http://www.rappler.com/technology/news/55045-spotify- philipp...](http://www.rappler.com/technology/news/55045-spotify-philippines- launch)

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice.

It might be better for the upper map to select a colour scale that has a zero point on it - this would represent countries that have the same price as the dollar.

A diverging colour scale would make it easier to distinguish which countries are cheaper and which are more expensive. For example:

[http://colorbrewer2.org/?type=diverging&scheme=BrBG&n=7](http://colorbrewer2.org/?type=diverging&scheme=BrBG&n=7)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea!

I actually had no clue how to do the color scale, and I ended up doing it with 5 different colors based on quantile. Did a small write up with my thoughts about it: [http://mts.io/2014/05/07/spotify-pricing- index/](http://mts.io/2014/05/07/spotify-pricing-index/)

Will revisit the map with these color changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would find it more intuitive if the most expensive countries had the light green rather than dark green i.e. reverse the colour scale

</comment><comment><USER7> It'll never cease to amaze me that all these countries, including many underdeveloped countries, get to have great internet services such as Spotify, but somehow Canada is never one of those.

There's something seriously wrong with this country...

<comment><USER8> most probably the licensing deal didn't go through

<comment><USER7> That's why I'm saying this. Licensing deals go through in pretty much every country except Canada. There's an issue...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's clearly priced according to the cost of living/wage level.

<comment><USER10> Except HongKong, US, Singapore and Australia. Anyone knows why those are outliers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do different areas have the same music library available though?

<comment><USER12> Nope, the author explains that in a blog post here: [http://mts.io/2014/05/07/spotify-pricing- index/](http://mts.io/2014/05/07/spotify-pricing-index/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> so has anyone managed to sign up to Spotify Philippines?

<comment><USER14> I signed up for Spotify Malaysia when I lived there and continue to pay the lower subscription fee now that I am living in Singapore. The only differences are a minor difference in selection and the fact that, for some reason, all my iPhone push notifications from the Spotify app are in Bahasa Malay (Malaysia's primary language)</comment></comment>


The Unfortunate Physics of Male Urination - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/why-cant-we-build-a-splash-proof-toilet/ <comment><USER2> At home, I sit always. People think I'm weird for doing it but honestly I hate the mess more than the slight inconvenience.

<comment><USER3> > _People think I 'm weird for doing it_

I only think you're a little weird for telling them.

<comment><USER2> I think if you have roommates or housemates at some point, or live with a girlfriend or wife, it isn't entirely out of the question. This isn't something I'd open with at a bar or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article misses some of the most pressing questions! Do I aim for the water or the porcelain? Why are there a million varieties of urinals but all toilets are essentially identical in shape? What can we do to mitigate those terrible moments when a stray hair or something causes what should be one stream to become two? How can we best use a urinal at an airport while being forced to take our luggage with us in hand?

<comment><USER5> Toilets seem to come in a ridiculous amount of shapes, at least where I'm from. There's the difference between splash and have-your-poop-on-display type toilets, there's the pull-cord-to-flush, push-a-button-on-the-wall, and more common push-button-on-top-of-basin types of toilets. And then there's the squat toilet.

Urinals, on the other hand, are all basically the same and only differ slightly in shape.

And now I'm wondering why I bothered to write a comment defending toilet varieties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this why sometimes you see a fly or something painted on the urinal to gamify the "experience" to reduce the splash effect? [https://orgchanger.com/2012/11/01/a-splash-of- innovation/](https://orgchanger.com/2012/11/01/a-splash-of-innovation/)

<comment><USER7> One of the manufacturers in the article, Duravit, is mentioned as using this approach to indicate where the "sweet spot" is for aiming to reduce splash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They didn't address the horrible troughs at old sports stadiums?

BTW, I don't know if those still exist. I think Louis CK had a bit about his boy being traumatized by these on his TV show. I recall urinating at "the trough" at a local ball game as a kid (70s or 80s, not 100% sure). It wasn't a pleasant experience.

<comment><USER9> Troughs are great! I'm impressed by the simplicity of it, "this thing must be a cinch to clean! ten seconds of hose, air dry!" I despise the frequent click bait articles about "how to use maths to choose which urinal to use." Use any urinal! Grow up and don't mind your fellow men satisfying their natural impulses just like you. Overcoming "stage fright" is a marker of growing up; I for one admire the old guys who turn into the brass section of a marching band once they enter the bathroom. If you can't let loose in the bathroom after 2 hours at the mall, where is the safe space? The food court?

I don't think that being a total priss about these things is the obviously correct way to move forward. Not every man needs the toilet of a Japanese emperor (especially when your half acre of fescue hidden behind your picket fence is the ultimate urinary domain).

Also bidets are a joke, end up using twice as much paper just to dry off.

<comment><USER10> Troughs are commonplace in Australia. Despite some of them having a continuous trickle of water, they invariably reek -- much stinkier than individual urinals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's break the toilet taboo already. I'm tired of every public restroom I go to being pull to open. Sometimes even the stalls are pull to open (which is hard to do in such a tight space).

Also, how about those self cleaning toilets Japan has? And paper seat pads that actually fit the seat they are intended for. Maybe put some elastic band in the paper to hold the paper on the seat.

<comment><USER12> The "open inwards" issue is due to building codes prohibiting doors from blocking traffic in a hallway. I think you'll find that most doors that aren't in hallways actually do open outwards.

<comment><USER11> Many restrooms that aren't in a hallway still open inwards in my area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you piss into a sufficiently large jug, there's no splashback. Cleaning aside, can't we make such a urinal?

<comment><USER14> [citation needed]

<comment><USER15> looks like original research to me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't the problem of splashback from urinal solved by this: [http://www.stephensons.com/12191-thickbox/p-wave-mango- deodo...](http://www.stephensons.com/12191-thickbox/p-wave-mango-deodorising- anti-splash-urinal-screen.jpg) ?

<comment><USER17> Those plastic mats you find in urinals don't seem to do much to prevent splash back in my experience. It seems like the urinal shown at the end of the article with more of a vase or jug design has a better chance of preventing urine splashing back all over your shoes and pants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, there is always the sink. :) Khaki - sit down. Dark pants - stand up.

<comment><USER19> At the university that I attended, there used to be sinks in every dorm room. However, the sinks were removed from the men's and co-ed dorms after too many guys were using them as urinals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> how about guys just sit down to pee? it's really not that hard.

<comment><USER7> Most office and public restrooms (for men) have a ratio of 2:1 or 3:2, urinals to stalls, from my estimation. Sitting down isn't an option when there's a line.

<comment><USER21> You just wait.

<comment><USER7> Not always feasible. The brilliant designers of my office gave us a total of 8 urinals/stalls for the men on this floor (same for the other floor, approximately). The ratio here is terrible, about 5:1 men to women (probably worse, actually). There are 200 of us on this floor, 800 in the building. The after lunch bathroom rush means you stand around uncomfortably while waiting for a stall, or use a urinal and get back to your desk.

<comment><USER21> I guess it depends on folks. Usually i plan my bathroom visits outside of the rush hours and i dont wait to have to pee to go. This allows for more flexobility but again maybe not everyone can do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ah, never studied fluid mechanics so feeling vindicated on figuring out both angle of attack and stream breakup remedies.

</comment><comment><USER23> The low splash urinal is a great idea... I've had it several times over the years, I just then think of how often restrooms are actually updated, and how many years it would be before such a thing became common. Kind of sad really.

</comment><comment><USER24> Definitely a fan of sitting at home. At work we have these Ekcos ([http://ekcos.com/](http://ekcos.com/)) splash pads in the urinals. They are very effective.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's great to see an article treating the subject seriously! It diverges from the usual explanation "Men are so stupid that they will stop peeing on the floor if you draw a fly in them". Nonobstant that we pee on the floor because said toilets are so dirty that we'd get an STD by getting to close.

</comment><comment><USER26> _" Women want a way to keep the toilet and bathroom floor free of splashing urine, and so does Mrs. Wiener."_

 _Mrs. Weiner._ That got me chuckling like a 12 year-old boy!

<comment><USER27> They found the right woman for the interview!</comment></comment>


Mt. Gox's Bitcoins are being sold on Bitstamp? - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/c2qWB3nU

<comment><USER2> Bear in mind that the connection between these addresses is tenuous at best. There's very little to suggest that the same person owns all of these transactions. The paths are fairly convoluted, it could be a normal user or a mixer or an internal wallet. You'd never know by design.

As I've mentioned before, this sort of thing is usually correct in that same way a broken clock is.

<comment><USER3> I hope you'd agree with "Jed McCaleb once controlled the donation address 1EuMa4dhfCK8ikgQ4emB7geSBgWK2cEdBG."

While it's unclear precisely how that donation address is related to all of this, I assume that people traced money flowing out of it and into an Mt. Gox cold storage wallet, thus establishing that the person who controlled the donation address was involved with the people who control the cold storage addresses.

If so, then it's hard to see how to disagree with "If the Bitstamp address 1PAzo was funded with coins deposited by Jed McCaleb or one of his associates, and simultaneously two Mt. Gox cold storage wallets were depleted, and the chain of withdraws eventually lead from the cold storage wallets to 1PAzo, then it's extremely likely that Jed or an Mt. Gox owner is trading Mt. Gox cold storage coins on Bitstamp."

It sounds like you're worried that a chain of transfers doesn't prove ownership. For example, someone could randomly send all their bitcoin to someone else for no reason. But in practice, the only reason to give large amounts of BTC to someone else is either because you're buying something from them, repaying a debt, or you're cooperating with them. Regardless of which of those it turns out to be, the Mt. Gox cold storage wallets are the property of the Mt. Gox customers. Using them to buy something or repay a debt would be fraud. Transferring them to an associate with the intent of laundering them via Bitstamp would also be illegal, of course.

I can't think of any other explanations for why the BTC would change ownership except perhaps that they were stolen yet again. But theft can be ruled out if the identity of the Bitstamp account turns out to be a cohort of Mt. Gox.

(You mentioned that it could be a mixer, but that can be ruled out in this case because it'd make no sense for Mt. Gox to launder bitcoins and then deposit them into a bistamp account that has someone's real-world identity attached to it. Also, when bitcoins are being mixed using a mixer, it transfers the coins in a pretty distinctive way that indicates a mixer is being used, such as by randomizing the BTC amounts rather than always transferring e.g. 150BTC or 50BTC or some other nice-for-humans value. I assume that if a mixer is being used here, it'd be possible to show that the transfers are behaving in a way consistent with a particular bitcoin mixer implementation.)

Since there are no plausible explanations about how the bitcoins might change ownership, why would it be unreasonable to proceed with the assumption that the ownership hasn't changed, unless proven otherwise?

<comment><USER2> Bear in mind that this is the same sort of analysis that attributed large amounts of the initially mined coins to "Satoshi", when they were in fact core developer Gregory Maxwell's. There's a lot of room for error, especially when the email in question has an address in between with no attributable person behind it.

<comment><USER4> > Bear in mind that this is the same sort of analysis that attributed large > amounts of the initially mined coins to "Satoshi", when they were in fact > core developer Gregory Maxwell's.

Citation or redaction, please.

If Gregory Maxwell owns a life-changing sum of early bitcoins, it is certainly news to me. If he does not, then you are making claims that could endanger the life and well being of someone who has worked very hard in service of the bitcoin community.

<comment><USER3> Anecdotally, I think I remember that incident, but unfortunately I don't remember precisely where I heard it.

There have been a lot of very-wrong analyses of the blockchain which have gotten people riled up about one thing or another and then turned out to be bogus. The whole process has sometimes shown unsettling parallels with numerology. It's good that nwh is reminding everyone to try to be as skeptical as possible.

It'll be interesting to see whether the evidence turns out to match the story.

<comment><USER4> The only incident I can think of was a paper by Adi Shamir and Dorit Ron claiming Satoshi had a connection to Silk Road, and the actual owner of the coins (Dustin Trammell) came forward and demonstrated that (a) the coins were his and (b) the transaction was with MtGox not Silk Road. Gregory Maxwell was not involved in any way:

[http://blog.dustintrammell.com/2013/11/26/i-am-not- satoshi/](http://blog.dustintrammell.com/2013/11/26/i-am-not-satoshi/)

I know of no other incident involving mis-identification of Satoshi's stash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bitstamp is domiciled in the UK. [https://www.bitstamp.net/about_us/](https://www.bitstamp.net/about_us/)

UK law prohibits handling stolen goods. [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/22](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/22)

<comment><USER6> The question, as _msantos_ points out, is whether bitcoins are money or goods. If they are money, then handling stolen bitcoins are not illegal, and the rightful owner of them doesn't even have the support of the legal system to get them back: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet)

I would argue that bitcoins are money, and not goods. Goods have use value, bitcoins do not - they only have exchange value. They have no use in and of themselves.

TL;DR: Even if you can prove that someone else holds a dollar bill that was stolen from you at some point, you do not necessarily have the right to get it back.

<comment><USER7> I agree, but people have found some pretty creative "use values" for bitcoins:

[http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks- photo...](http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks- photographs.html)

tl;dr by sending bitcoins to an fake address, you can use put an ASCII Ben Bernanke in the Blockchain.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't say that is related to bitcoins (the currency). They've just put data into the blockchain. The tokens you and I trade as money (bitcoins) don't get a use value because someone has put ASCII art into the blockchain.

<comment><USER7> I'd argue differently because the bitcoins are destroyed in the process. In my view, they become the ASCII art. But I suppose it could just as easily be said that you purchased ASCII art hosting from the blockchain.

<comment><USER6> I see your point. I guess I just think it's insufficient that it has _some_ use value, for it to be called a good instead of money. My point is that they are _mainly_ (almost entirely) money.

I mean, US dollar bills can also be stacked together and lit on fire, thereby having use value as firewood, or you can write notes on them, making them a notepad, but they are still money because their exchange value completely dwarfs their tiny use value (if one can quantify such things).

I'd argue bitcoin falls into the same category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if this is true (March 20, 2014):

" _is #bitstamp about to become another #mtgox ? Uk trader seeks high court injunction to cease Uk trading operations_ " [https://twitter.com/frankieterrier/status/446638248761503744](https://twitter.com/frankieterrier/status/446638248761503744)

" _#bitstamp getting sued for $1.2m Uk trader seeks freezing of assets in high court action. #bitstamp not processing withdrawls._ " [https://twitter.com/frankieterrier/status/446637903721287680](https://twitter.com/frankieterrier/status/446637903721287680)

<comment><USER9> There is no thread at [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=85.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=85.0) about that - so I guess it is just a manipulation attempt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems like people are clutching at straws here. We shouldn't go making fact- less accusations that the coins are being sold when we technically don't have any proof, the link is very weak at best. Given Mt Gox's collapse and surprising lack of security or due-care, it wouldn't surprise me if it were true, but there is a massive if there.

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems a bit silly. Why is this made public? If this was a private conversation then they could set a trap. Now whoever is making these transactions will simply stop and wait for a new opportunity.

<comment><USER12> The blockchain is public information.

<comment><USER13> That's not the question... the question was why put this on pastebin and have it posted to HN. If this was communicated in a more private manner, you could have actually done something with the information, such as find the people who are moving these coins.

Now, if there is anything nefarious going on, the parties responsible probably know that others are watching.

<comment><USER14> If he figured it out, so can anyone else. Disclosing the find levels the playing field for any eventuality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why is Bitcoin getting so many features on HN?

<comment><USER16> Because a not-insignificant-enough number of "smart" hacker news folks got very burned by a get rich quick scheme and they won't let it go.

Snake oil and charlatans? There's an app for that.

The cognitive dissonance is maddening. Something so esoteric and technical, which required great intelligence to even use, let alone build the cottage industry around... continues to make these intelligent young, white, libertarians look like simple con targets.

The shovel and panning sellers made loads (mining rigs and exchanges). Everyone else who hasn't exited is holding the bag.

If you lived through the dotcom bubble, this is a repeat in slowreck motion. People will lose 95-100% of their investments until the rest freak out and bolt.

Very smart, young, white guys built up expensive trading stations and lost their shirt daytrading on dotcoms. It's like buying a mining... nevermind - nobody's listening.

<comment><USER17> This is an excessively cynical, misanthropic view of events. I know a lot of people who could be described as "long bitcoin" and while there's no doubt a few opportunistic types, most are genuinely excited and actively involved in something they truly believe in.

Your bitter prognostications about "young white libertarians" says more about you than anything else, IMO. And invoking the dot com bubble doesn't help your point - the internet was, indeed, the next big thing, but the bubble was misinformed and 10 years too early. Long term, though, "dot com" was and is real, and many are hoping and working towards cryptocurrencies travelling the same path.

<comment><USER18> Sometimes I still can't get my head around how something that isn't real is worth anything... Argh, I must be too old to understand now :) I was closely involved in a startup in the first bubble, I remember the hopes and dreams and hype and VCs throwing tons of money to invest into ludicrous stuff,and coffee machines so big and expensive... It looks all the same now, the rich want to get richer and call it "innovation" (I saw a prototype of something huge that was "invented in the 90's by some young fellows, unfortunately it was too early, way too early...and saw it again "invented" by someone else many years later and called "Facebook") and the young programmers (they're called hackers now I believe) were just happy to code and get their pat on the back, feeling special,with stock option promises (I was one of them, I must be an old hacker now :) ... So many smart people working super hard( although pizza and wine at midnight was cool)...

Do you feel special and useful guys? Or does it take $19B to be real special?

But still, HN kicks ass no matter what :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Did this guy leave an email, bitmessage address or anything???? How is Nejc suppose to reply?

<comment><USER2> Its a "public" copy of the message, it's been no doubt emailed to the person in question as well. Posting it here, on reddit and on bitcointalk is just the author being pushy.

<comment><USER19> Oh, didn't get that, you're right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What if there was a way to tag bitcoins as stolen and declare them null and void? Would this not disincentivize thieves? Could we prevent abuse of such a system?

<comment><USER19> It's a very interesting development as it shows that _stolen bitcoins can be tracked indefinitely_ unlike FIAT.

Now, what you propose though, is against the _freedom_ bitcoins is assumed to stand for (on the ethics side).

On the technical side that's very possible, as of today, if everyone _plays along_ and I mean literally _everyone_ , especially mixers.

How could one track down bitcoins flushed into public mixers? I guess they could do this as well, if the BTC were tagged and thus _refused_ by the mixers or even worst _hold captives_ and resend them to original issuer. However, you only need 1 TOR hosted mixer to lose track of the wallets.

On the other side imagine the practical chaos: I make a _huge_ transaction of non-tangible goods in a situation where you can't prove that the service/product was delivered. Then I just tag these bitcoin that once belonged to my wallet as _stolen_ if the other party doesn't give them back :-) you see where this is going right? :-)

<comment><USER21> > unlike FIAT.

Actually, unlike any commodity or any currency with a physical representation. What makes other currency not traceable is the notes and coins, not the fact that they are fiat or not.

side note: has "fiat" now become synonymous with non-crypto currency the same way hacker has become a swear word ?

<comment><USER22> Yes fiat has become a word of derision amongst the cryptocoin community, completely ignoring the fact that cryptocoins are essentially a form of fiat currency. Many crypto fans sidestep the fact that cryptos also don't have intrinsic value, and the networks aren't as a decentralized as one would think(handfuls of devs, early adopters, and pool and exchange operators hold a large sway over the networks and future of the coins).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So are bitcoins going to have a modifiable value based on being tainted?

<comment><USER24> blockchain.info has a method of tainting and tracking coins:

[https://blockchain.info/tags?form_type=1](https://blockchain.info/tags?form_type=1)

Taint is viewable using "Related tags" and "Taint Analysis" on address pages.

<comment><USER2> It's widely regarded as complete bullshit and can be fooled by almost anybody who cares to.</comment></comment></comment>


Zuckerberg Takes Out Full Page Ads to Say "Sorry" for "Breach of Trust" - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/facebooks-zuckerberg-takes-out-full-page-ads-to-say-sorry-for-breach-of-trust.html <comment><USER2> I expected a non-conditional apology but there he is blaming on a single app being able to extract data.

We dont want apology for the breach, we want apology for collecting all the data for so many years. We want to FB to delete the data they have collected even if it means a massive reduction in advertisement revenues. But I guess none of his algorithms can foresee the end of FB.com in the western part of the world.

Good night sweet prince.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why buy ads in newspapers when Facebook can already communicate directly and instantly with billions of people?

Maybe they're not trying to reach their users with this message at all.

Maybe their target audience is policy makers who read newspapers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing says 'trust' like buying off the media to end the bad publicity.</comment>


Diary of a Disaster: General Magic Goes Poof (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.grosen.dk/jp/Diary_of_a_Disaster.html <comment><USER2> Some more positive memories:

\- Magic Cap came from the early-1990s expectation that the future involved intelligent agents that would travel around the network, do work (e.g. searching for the best price on a flight or new shoes), and then report back when the user was connected again.

In practice, this meant that you could send email to another Magic Cap user that included executable code, like an animation or a little game, that would run in a sandbox on the user's device.

Even today, we still don't really have this -- you can't stick JavaScript (or a Java applet) in an email and expect the receiver to be able to run it.

\- The Motorola Envoy ran on Motorola's low-bitrate, high-power (and now defunct) Ardis wireless network. It was robust enough to work from within an airplane!! Because almost nobody had them (in 1995), the flight attendants would not stop you from sending and receiving email wirelessly while flying. Of course today, even if Ardis still existed and still worked from 30,000 flight, they would be telling you to put your phone into airplane mode...

\- I did not have a Motorola Envoy, but I did have a Sony Magic Link that I used for email from 1995-1996. It was amazing! You could leave it by your bed, and when you woke up in the morning, it would make a (free, local) call to AT&T PersonaLink to exchange email. I have fond memories of lying in bed in my PJs in early 1996, having just woken up, and flirting via email with a high- school friend who had already arrived at school at the computer lab. This all seemed like an incredible luxury at the time.

Of course "checking email when you first wake up" became much more common with the end of per-minute fees from major ISPs (AOL ended theirs in December 1996), the rise of laptops and pervasive Wi-Fi (~2001), and eventually the rise of cellular handhelds with email (~2005).

<comment><USER3> > Even today, we still don't really have this -- you can't stick JavaScript > (or a Java applet) in an email and expect the receiver to be able to run it.

We did have it -- it was called VBScript in Outlook and it was one of the biggest (actually probably the biggest) security disasters in the history of the internet.

<comment><USER4> And Tcl has had a safe interpreter feature and a sophisticated policy mechanism from early on. It was used in the Tcl browser plugin, which routinely downloaded code from the Web and executed it. The plugin is gone but the safe interpreter and policy interface are still perfectly functional.

Tcl also had several agent extensions back in the 1990's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, brought back a lot of memories. I worked for Motorola on the Envoy team. It was my first encounter with Reality Distortion Field engineering. I remember their software engineers were literally called "wizards" as their job title. They developed a custom fully object-oriented programming language to write the OS in, and confidently assured us that it was so advanced that the OS would ultimately be delivered with literally zero bugs. This in the face of build after build of buggy, unstable, backward-incompatible code. I remember the change of line terminator from semicolon to colon (or vice versa?) when the product was already months past its original ship date. Good times.

<comment><USER5> Can you tell us more about the programming language and operating system? For example, how did memory management work? Was it based on garbage collection, reference counting, or still manual memory management? And what about persistent storage? I gather from the OP that fragmentation of persistent storage was a big problem.

<comment><USER4> We weren't allowed access to the OS code itself, just the developer API, so I can't give detailed info about the implementation. I was the chief QA engineer for the Envoy team, but I was locked out of bug discussion meetings with the GM people. Everything was handled at a very high level.

I remember they were very proud of the fact that the programming language was fully object oriented, and drank deep of the OO kool-aid. So no C-style direct memory access AFAIR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Steve Wozniak, the cofounder of Apple, has signed away several of his patents on infrared control technologies to General Magic"

"We find that a phone link is actually faster than IR! The poor IR performance is particularly wounding to Woz, who signed away his IR patents and technology to General Magic."

 _a lot of bug discussion and ignoring Woz_

"Wozniak is visibly upset that the product has not been fixed and that the stock market is so gullible. Perhaps be is also miffed that be was not even offered stock for his gift of the IR patents some three years ago."

If they treated Woz they way this article says, then I cannot help but think they were probably going to fail. Its a true shame because I still think agents would be a very interesting way to organize programs even though the remote communication part has been taken over by http-based APIs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised that such a buggy piece of software was developed by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld, who made QuickDraw and the original Macintosh Toolbox work in even less RAM (128K, soon upgraded to 512K). I wonder what caused the later project to go so badly.

<comment><USER6> See the "Second System Effect" in the mythical man month.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man- Month#The_sec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man- Month#The_second-system_effect)

<comment><USER7> That explains IPv6 and uEFI/EFI.

<comment><USER6> I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on both of those things - I've considered IPv6 to be elegant even, as elegant as v4 - EFI I don't know enough about to have a strong opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a developer introduction to Magic Cap from 1995: [http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.11/11.05/MakingM...](http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.11/11.05/MakingMagic/index.html)

<comment><USER5> So the persistent storage was _RAM_? How did anyone think that was a good idea? Was flash just too expensive?

<comment><USER9> My memory (heh) fails me somewhat. But I think the only Flash available in 1995 was NOR Flash. So very slow, expensive, unavailable in reasonable sizes, only limited numbers of writes. When I said very slow I mean glacially slow. I have worked on systems with battery backed RAM. Works fairly well, however a naive reliance on it will result in data corruption and tears. (Hint reset or a program crash can come at any moment)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a Feb 1994 article from Byte that offers some additional insight to the General Magic product, and has some screenshots too:

[http://www.guidebookgallery.org/articles/justlikemagic](http://www.guidebookgallery.org/articles/justlikemagic)

</comment><comment><USER11> _Oct. 7, 1994 - By this time, the magic is wearing thin, and Woz has gone from exhilaration to borderline disgust. Ten days ago, he was euphorically calling the Magic Link the best computer consumer product ever made. Today, be fears his friends have made horrible engineering mistakes. I watch as Woz goes out to buy still more Magic Links to try to discover the source of the problems so he can help his friends fix them._

One more story to add to the "Woz: a real mensch" pile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Woz, Jay Miner, and Seymour Cray were my first computer heroes. It still is amazing reading stories like this to get a feel for their abilities and determination.

// ok Apple WTF are we doing trying to autocorrect Woz to Wiz?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A good story. Pity it is marred by a number of uncorrected OCR errors: many "h" scanned as "b", 1/0/5 scanned as I/O/S.

</comment><comment><USER7> I remember they also offered a Magic Cap application for Windows. I never used it though, so I can't comment on how well it worked.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was about par for the course for applications at that time (a couple of crashes when connecting), but it didn't really do a whole lot either. I used it for two months then they announced the shutdown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No mention of the disastrous "cleaning up" bug when you pulled the PCMCIA RAM card. That was the final straw for me. It could take 30-45 minutes before you could use your device again after pulling the card.

<comment><USER4> Ah, yes. Also, if you yanked the Envoy battery the wrong way before proper shutdown, total data loss. (The Envoy battery was not internal, but an integrated part of the case.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone else remember the pivot afterward into a voice recognition product?

</comment><comment><USER15> "Early Summer, 1995 - I advise a major brokerage house not to invest in General Magic. They invest anyway. I hope they don't wind up losing a large chunk of cash."

Isn't that insider trading?

<comment><USER16> "Insider trading" is a loosely-defined phrase, but the regulations most people think of only apply to publicly traded stocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How amazing is it that nearly every problem encountered with those early devices has been solved in the intervening years?

<comment><USER11> Given twenty years and the combined engineering budgets of every major technology company during that time, General Magic could probably have solved them all too :-D

<comment><USER17> I don't know about that. Many competitors trying out often conflicting ideas probably makes things go a lot faster than one company could ever go.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Toilet Paper is Better Than Cash  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2010/09/14/why-toilet-paper-is-better-than-cash/

<comment><USER2> The editorial makes a good point. Absent some new catastrophe, the blood letting is over for US firms. Many even have the cash flow to look at acquisitions. Consumer spending, too, is on a slow rise. So most of the dividend-paying, consumer-staple firms are safe. And safety is all investors need to get back into the stock market.</comment>