3D Mandelbrot Fractal in Blender Python - <AUTHOR> http://slicker.me/blender/3d_mandelbrot.htm <comment><USER2> I expected some actual 3D fractals (or rather, some shapes with 3 < dimensions < 4) such as a Sperpinski or Menger Sponge: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menger_sponge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menger_sponge)

</comment><comment><USER3> For 3D fractals, have a look at mandelbulb: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbulb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbulb)

<comment><USER4> And for discussion of 3D analog of the original Mandelbrot, check out the Math Exchange discussion[1] and site dedicated to finding it.[2]

The vanilla zoomed mandelbrot[3] looks 3d to me. It's interesting that actually turning them into true 3d is such an elusive problem.

[1] [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/150117/is-a-3d-mande...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/150117/is-a-3d-mandelbrot- esque-fractal-analogue-possible)

[2] [http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/2mandelbulb.html](http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/2mandelbulb.html)

[3] [http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/h-frac.jpg](http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/h-frac.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For Volumising Mandelbrot's Equation the Mandelbulb is worth a look:

"In 2006 Daniel White inspired by an idea of Rudy Rucker developed a mathematical equation with the potential for a real 3D equivalent to the famous 2D mandelbrot set. With a modification by Paul Nylander _in 2009 the Mandelbulb was born on fractalforums.com_ "[1][2]

[1] [http://www.fractalforums.com/still-frame/the-discovery-of- th...](http://www.fractalforums.com/still-frame/the-discovery-of-the- mandelbulb/) [2] [http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html](http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want to play with 3D fractals in WebGL, you can also try:

[http://www.alsonkemp.com/geekery/webgl- fractals/](http://www.alsonkemp.com/geekery/webgl-fractals/)

</comment><comment><USER7> If nothing else, I learned that you can write Python scripts for Blender. Neat.

</comment><comment><USER8> Step 4 made my day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, the code is well commented and the math is explained in detail as well.</comment></comment>


Improved fraud prevention with Radar 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/radar-2018 <comment><USER2> I really hope that this improves the false-positive rate, as mentioned in another comment.

We've been hurt badly as a startup breaking into the US market and getting many of our genuine charges blocked by Radar (and at a "highest risk" level where it is not possible to disable rules).

As a developer, I had the best possible impression of Stripe, as they provide easily the cleanest API and best documentation of any payment provider I've used.

From a business side, it was highly frustrating losing so many of our early US sales. A lot of this was due to US banks blocking the payment, but Stripe did not handle these cases well in our case.

* Error messages presented to the customer are often ambiguous or misleading, and if you're using checkout.js you cannot customize these easily. In some cases, the customer gets a client-side "Card is declined" error, with no communication passed through to the merchant at all, which makes telephone support very difficult.

* Stripe will not provide any kind of telephone or chat support to merchants. By the time a specific blocked payment can be escalated to a "fraud specialist" the customer is usually long gone.

* Stripe will not allow you disable certain Radar rules.

* If a user tries to pay several times (due to their bank blocking the payment as suspicious), and then phones their bank to clear the payment, Stripe will often then block the payment due to "repeated attempted uses of the card". This is highly frustrating as even very determined customers who try several times and then contact their bank to resolve the issue there still get blocked by Stripe, and usually give up at that point.

* We had one payment blocked by Radar due to it being from a "high risk location" (Pakistan if I remember correctly). This represented unacceptable levels of discrimination for us. Machine learning and probability is useful, but ethically it's hugely problematic to deny people service based on their country, race, gender, age, or other attributes that they do not have control over.

My early experiences with PayPal were nothing short of terrible, but BrainTree is looking like a more and more attractive alternative to Stripe, especially with the PayPal integration built in -- if people have issues with their Credit Card they can simply pay with PayPal credit instead.

<comment><USER3> >We had one payment blocked by Radar due to it being from a "high risk location"

This, to me, represents the worst that banking fraud protection has to offer. Just yesterday I (from the USA) tried to purchase a software license for a tool I've been using the free version of for a long time. My card was declined, so I used my American Express. About two hours later, I got a call from my bank's fraud department saying they had blocked a transaction to the UK for fraud prevention, and disabled my card to protect me. Apparently the bank (a small US-based bank) block any transaction in the UK as it's a "high risk country"... I'm sorry, but this is the Internet. No one cares where the company is located, and I have no way of knowing beforehand that the payment is processed by Stripe US or Stripe UK. Blocking entire countries for fraud prevention is a really lazy way of doing fraud prevention.

But I've even seen worse at another bank. My area of the US doesn't have Publix grocery stores. Apparently this bank considered shopping at Publix to be unacceptable risk when I was traveling for work, and disabled my debit card because of this. Stopping at Walgreens beforehand and getting dinner the night before wasn't suspicious though.

Bank fraud is a hard problem, and taking lazy solutions doesn't solve that problem. It just hurts customers and hurts businesses.

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of Bank of America and Air Canada. I used to fly to Canada every week for work and every week my card would be declined by BoA when I tried to book on AirCanada.com.

I had it down to a science, I knew the direct number to their fraud dept and I knew when I should place my call so that I'd usually be connected at just the right time to get the charge authorized with enough time to avoid the website session from timing out, although sometimes I'd have to start over. Eventually, air canada added a timeout popup which helped prevent this.

I tried everything to get BoA to fix this (escalating calls, writing letters, etc). By the end, I gave up and just accepted it when they "put a note" on my account so this "would never happen again". This went on for over 2 years. Thankfully my company switched our cards to another bank and I never had this problem again.

<comment><USER5> Heh. My bank did something right, and my yearly $AUS payment to Fastmail finally went through without getting flagged by the automated systems.

Alas, a _human_ also saw the transaction, failed to read the note or look in the history and locked the card up anyway.

<comment><USER6> Fastmail charges you in AUD? Weird, I know it's an Australian company but I paid for service earlier this month and was charged in USD. And I'm not misinterpreting the "$" as a USD-only sign, the invoice literally says "USD".

<comment><USER7> (I work for FastMail) We charge in USD, but the payment is processed in Australia. For some reason, American banks often block all payments processed outside of the USA; it's like they haven't heard of the concept of the internet and global trade…

We don't see this problem with banks in any other country (not do I ever have the problem in reverse, buying goods and services from foreign websites with my Australian credit card).

<comment><USER3> Working in information security, I see this a lot in security practices for US companies. The client says "let's block all traffic from outside the US" because they don't do business outside the US. Then come to find out they have contractors in India... and a partner datacenter in Singapore, and oh yeah their factory in China. And now the CEO is on vacation in Costa Rica and can't get on the VPN. And oh shit, there's the field office at one of their suppliers in the UK.

I say this as an American who has never lived outside the US but who deals with international clients regularly: the US seems uniquely inclined (in my experience) to think that everything they need falls within their borders, and everything outside their borders should be treated with suspicion. I've never had a German client want to block all traffic from South Africa. That's just an observation, I make no judgements as to why that is.

I did have an American university for a client who said "we cannot block or otherwise discriminate traffic from anywhere, since we have students or staff in every country outside of North Korea" which is a refreshing outlook IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Engineering manager for Stripe Radar here. Today's update has been almost a year in the making and we're excited to help Stripe businesses fight fraud more effectively. Here's more on what's new: [https://stripe.com/blog/radar-2018](https://stripe.com/blog/radar-2018)

I (and the entire Radar team) are on hand to answer any questions you may have!

<comment><USER9> One of the issues that I faced during my short stint building ML models for fraud detection in debit card transactions was dealing with class imbalance. I was not completely convinced that over sampling techniques or under sampling techniques would work. My initial experiments just resulted in more false positives. Just curious if you guys faced similar problems.

The other point I bring about is rather rhetorical - There are no open standards, model baselines and datasets in the Fraud domain. Compare building a model for fraud detection to building a model for image recognition or object detection There is a standard baseline, standard datasets and your model competes against that baseline. Because of the open nature of image recognition, the models have improved astronomically. I feel that a lack of such openness is fraud is holding back on innovation. I could be wrong in this assessment so please correct me if so.

<comment><USER8> I agree that the lack of standards and baselines in the fraud detection space isn't ideal. One example: some fraud products will build models using human labels as the target to be predicted. Radar, on the other hand, tries to predict whether a charge _actually turns out to be fraudulent_ (we use dispute/chargeback data we get directly from card issuers/networks). These are in fact different problems and the fact that the industry generally doesn't have a consistent target makes discourse and comparisons more muddled.

(And on class imbalance: we spent quite a bit of time experimenting/analyzing how to deal with it—we found that sampling rate has a marginal impact on performance but not a huge one.)

<comment><USER9> If you are still on this thread - check this video out at 28:56

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4inIBmY8dQI&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4inIBmY8dQI&feature=youtu.be)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anything that will cut the number of false positives is a welcome development. We lose far more to mysteriously failing charges than we've ever lost to fraud...

Can the new system now distinguish between the initial charge to start a subscription and subsequent ones? A recurring cause of those false positives is someone moving house after they've subscribed and not telling us, and thus failing a mandatory address verification when their next charge goes through. The concept of pre-approved and automatically-blocked lists seems like it might help with that problem, but it would be better still if we could just define the rules more flexibly in the first place so the address-related checks are done the first time but if they've passed previously then we're not too concerned if they start failing later.

<comment><USER11> PM on Radar here. There are a couple of ways to handle this. You could, as you said, add a customer to your allow list as soon as they pass the initial charge (and AVS) check. You can also use the new `is_recurring` rule attribute [0] which identifies whether the payment is a subscription charge or not (though there's some additional work to distinguish the first charge, and how you use it depends on the nuances of your integration). I'd be happy to discuss your specific use case in more detail. Feel free to email me directly (firstname.lastname@example.com).

[0] [https://stripe.com/docs/radar/rules/reference](https://stripe.com/docs/radar/rules/reference)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok some really dumb questions if you don't mind, but how "fraud detection" works has always been one of those areas I am interested in, but not enough to seek out a practitioner and pin them down - until now !

\- Any idea what the total fraud vs genuine transactions ratio is? And how that breaks down across industries? I am assuming that SaaS services don't get as much of this - i mean would people buy bingo cards with a stolen card?

\- how does fraud get monetised? Once i have downloaded my millions of credit card numbers from Tor (or stolen my friends mothers wallet) I need to persuade a merchant to deliver me something - but it's always bugged me that they actually have to deliver it. to a physical address. that can presumably be traced. It all seems very low level

(Quick story, years ago, call it the year 2000, was in the UK version of BestBuy and the manager called up a service to verify that this 17 year old kid could have a laptop. The manager asked what's your name ? Ok Your address ? Ok. Date of Birth? March 1954? really? you look a bit young for fifty. It just seems a poor way to commit crime)

The question i am trying to ask is that turning credit card numbers into cash seems like a grind that farmville would be impressed by? is it just lots of low level grunts in shops and online or is there something i am missing?

\- what advantages do you get as a payment processor that a merchant does not have? And how is that better / worse than the card provider? I would assume there are people trying the same card in multiple different stores at the same time, so if you spot one attempt you stop them all, whereas individual merchants could not know. But Visa probably spots that i just paid for goods on two continents which you can only spot of both merchants use you? Do you and visa share data or do sequential checks and the like?

\- how much do the "obvious" checks help - highly unlikely purchases (3 iphones) timing or physical activity (I probably won't buy books on amazon, clothes on boohoo and petrol in a garage in the same five minutes) versus the more ML / secret squirrel stuff?

cheers

<comment><USER13> We've found that fraud vs. genuine closely matches the percentage of assholes and psychopaths in the general population, somewhere ~1% to 2%. And just like in meat-space these people are the cause for increased prices and frustrating checkout experiences - i.e. payment holds and refusals.

The problem is said people can do so much damage to a profit margin as they tend to hit an online store hard and quickly, racking up huge potential reversal costs. For us, being in a specialized digital space makes this especially painful as the digital items can be "used" and no longer resell- able or recoverable, so inventory and real dollar value is lost.

Visa / MC has no real incentive to stop the fraud as the merchant in most cases is liable for the reversal - Visa / MC is just a facilitator that bends towards keeping the buyer happy (same with PayPal). 3DSecure was introduced over a decade ago to alleviate some fraud based on unauthorized \ unknown but uptake has been anemic due to poor buyer experience.

As for converting stolen card to profit, purchasing and delivering high ticket physical items online and reselling is one known method.

<comment><USER12> Oh man you win my favourite post of the week with "assholes and psychopaths" quote :-)

I will read the rest of your post after I get some dry pants on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is really cool that Stripe is building Radar, we wanted to use [https://siftscience.com](https://siftscience.com) for something similar, but they went all corporate, and changed their pricing model before we could implement, so instead of them charging per "transaction" or user action, you now had to pay a minimum of $1000 per month for their smallest offering.

<comment><USER15> I'm seriously hoping this will make SiftScience reconsider their pricing, but more importantly their handling of customers on legacy plans. Grandfathering? Anyone?

This is a big win for Stripe. Sift is bullying customers into a minimum of 1,000 USD regardless of previous volume or history.

We were in the 10k orders per month around 250 USD with Sift. Now get kicked in the teeth with the minimum 1,000 USD and no real additional value. Not cool.

You know what's cool? Stripe's decision to not charge anyone who was a Stripe Radar user before today. Kudos.

It must be said that Sift does not only apply to Credit Card fraud and has many verticals (content abuse, ecomm, etc), but I think the big stuff is definitely on the chargeback and fraud prevention.

<comment><USER16> This is the boat we're in currently. We haven't been forced to change our SiftScience plan to the $1k/mo minimum (which would over double our current costs)

I'd love to move to Stripe Radar, but that doesn't really help with PayPal orders.

<comment><USER15> We've gotten a few weeks extension, but at some point I'm pretty sure things will be enforced.

Regarding Paypal, I believe the fraud that hurts the most is credit card (chargebacks, threshold maximums and card programs!), and Paypal in general is not that bad at that (not as bad as other things).

If Sift sticks with their new pricing, I think it comes down to doing some math.

Our Current Sift Scenario: 3,000 USD a year.

Proposed Sift Scenario: 12,000 USD a year.

Potential Stripe Radar Only Scenario: 0.

Assuming Stripe is as good or possibly better than Sift at catching fraud/automating flows, then we've got 3 to 12k to offset any potential PayPal fraud and still come out on top.

Ok, Not proper math, but worth considering...

Edit: formatting.

<comment><USER16> I'm currently looking at some of our txn stats on Sift/PayPal, it seems like we could get by there with some simple internal rules.

Definitely something I'm considering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We've all but given up on Stripe's radar. We plugged in Signifyd, and it's amazing to see how often Stripe gets things .. completely wrong.

Now obviously Signifyd scrub, but we haven't seen a case where we've had clean transactions scrubbed, and when a CB goes through, you're refunded.

Likewise, you no longer have to worry about your CB% going over and you getting blacklisted for life.

Until Stripe steps up and starts providing chargeback protection, their protection is simply lipservice.

<comment><USER11> Radar PM here. I'm sorry to hear this. If you're up for it, I'd love to dig into the charges you think Radar's gotten wrong (my email is email@example.com).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish they will be a way to minimize false positives. It's a biggger issue to block legitimate customers because they are not from the US.

<comment><USER8> For any fraud detection scheme (or any binary classification scheme, really) there's a tradeoff between false positives and false negatives. The Radar 2.0 updates—particularly Radar for Fraud Teams—will help here in a few ways:

\- With Radar for Fraud Teams, you can customize the threshold at which Radar blocks charges—so if false positives are very costly for your business (because you have large margins, e.g.), you can tune Radar to reflect that,

\- Radar 2.0's custom machine-learning models (for businesses that have enough data with Stripe) should adapt to the unique circumstances/patterns/trends of your business, and

\- Radar 2.0's ML overall has substantially improved performance, which you should see after you've upgraded.

<comment><USER18> Ok, thanks, we'll try that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Clean landing page as always, keep up the good work.

<comment><USER20> Except the spinning polygon ball. I found it so distracting, I couldn't read the bullet points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good video on how they built out Radar. [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/stripe-machine- learning](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/stripe-machine-learning)

</comment><comment><USER22> I love Stripe and am an early and long time customer.

Everything about them is beautiful, simplified and easy - except Radar.

For all the blogs and good intentions of the team, Radar to me means an email 3 days after I've processed and shipped an order telling me it may be fraudulent, followed a month later by a reminder "I'm sorry, you lost your credit dispute for $X" email, followed by a $15 charge by Stripe for no error or bad faith on the part of my company.

When Radar isn't busy sending me reminders that we're having money stolen from us, they are hard at work denying legit charges and sending customers down a Kafka-esque rabbit hole, hell bent on seeing exactly how much friction can be introduced into our website's buying process by a single third party service.

Stripe didn't create the fraud and they are taking on a difficult and emotional part of their business, which is commendable, but it must be said:

1\. The false positive rate of Radar is so bad that it renders the product worse than useless - worse because it initially provides a false hope.

2\. You can't disable some parts of Radar. Better to throw the whole thing into the sea and use a plugin then be forced into some parts of this.

I know there are good people trying hard to build this product well. Some of the people on it serviced our account in the early days. They had a vision of a better way and they made it real. My hats off to them. Now, people I respect, I have hard words and a hard truth to impart to you:

You are not delivering the value you claim to provide. Do not continue iterating. Discontinue the product. Allow others who focus on this to do it well. You are great at what you do but you are frustratingly, annoyingly, arrogantly bad at this. It pisses us all off to be forced to use it and to be told again and again how great it is going to be or how fixed it is this time. I don't want to engage with Stripe on Radar or "learn more about it", I don't want to be interviewed by you so you can better understand the voice of customer, there is no email or back channel thing you can send to make this better. The beauty of Stripe is that it "just works" but Radar does not just work - and it never will.

<comment><USER11> PM for Radar here. Really sorry to hear that. Portions of your comment are surprising to me but I don't want to discuss your business in public. We'd be happy to discuss in private. If you don't want to, we respect that.

For the benefit of other HNers: if you ever have a concern about this sort of issue, we'd love to hear from you (my email is firstname.lastname@example.com). This is all I do every day; you can never waste my time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Stripe's false positive problem has been awful for my business. Hoping it gets better.

</comment><comment><USER24> Shouldn't fraud detection available by default? Why customer has to pay extra?

</comment><comment><USER25> Do you use ML on street view imagery of addresses to attempt to detect if an address is abandoned (and subsequently, more likely to be used to recieve fraudulent orders)?

</comment><comment><USER26> On a throwaway so I can reply to this. Creditcard fraud is ripe and easy when it came to stripe a few years ago, I havn't carded anything for awhile. But glad to see stripe working on fraud prevention. We use to use tor and not even need to hop exit nodes and we could drain 100+ ccs into twitch streamers alerts for a gag and without stripe then we'd be stuck with paypal, screw carding paypal stripe all the way. Might be useful if stripe tried to card their services themselves to learn to prevent it, but they didnt even appear to try. Atleast block tor for credit card transactions come on, no one is going to use tor to pay for something under their own credit card. Kinda defeats the purpose of tor.</comment>


Ask HN: Is C++ making a comeback due to a slowdown in CPU improvements? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I would say not really. In the late 90's and early 2000's, there was a big push toward managed languages because the typical desktop had CPU to spare compared with what people did with it.

Since then, two things have happened. First, smart phones and other mobile devices placed a premium on battery life, and the CPU can no longer be as power hungry as it is on the desktop.The best way to conserve power is to "race to sleep", finish what you are doing quickly so the cpu can go back to sleep. Efficient languages such as this help in this regard.

Next, more and more code is being run in datacenters on servers that serve thousands or millions of users. Using a more efficient language like C++ means you can have more users on a single box because you efficiently use CPU and memory. This in turn reduces your equipment costs, cooling and electricity costs, and possibly network costs since you have fewer machines doing more stuff.

Concurrent with these trends, C++11/C++14 have greatly improved the usability of the language. With Modern C++11/14, programmers can often be just as productive (if not more so) as they would be using a managed language, and still get the performance benefits of C++.

All these factors have combined to cause a resurgence in interest in C++.

</comment><comment><USER3> C++ has been well and alive since the 80', although it was a bit sleepy during the years 2000.</comment>


Show HN: GitHub repo listing services with great free tier - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/255kb/stack-on-a-budget <comment><USER2> So, how is this different/better than [https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for- dev](https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not know this repo, great resources there. But my goal is rather to have a description of each service with "pros" and "limitations" to help decide which one to choose.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I started putting together a list of services with great free tiers, ready to put side projects or small apps in production. Contributions and feedback are welcome! :)</comment>


Well after a month of sacrificing all my free time... this is what i came up with - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I like the color scheme, actually. I am quite partial to the color scheme because I agree with Maddox (though I don't read his site much anymore) that looking at a white background is basically the same thing as staring as a light bulb. If the entire Internet used dark backgrounds, it would be a much warmer experience, in my opinion.

That said, perhaps the text needs to be just slightly lighter in order to give it a little more contrast with the background. Also, the size is minuscule. I know that Ctrl-+ is not too hard to press, but if that's the first thing that every visitor has to do, it's kind of a waste of time. On my display, at least, the size of event titles is about the same size as the normal text on this site. I would personally increase the size by 25-50%, but I tend to like larger text, so take that recommendation with a grain of salt.

I agree with the other comments that the front page should have a little bit more useful information. It could be something like a list (in order of decreasing popularity) of the events that are happening that day. The search seems somewhat strange, because if I was using that site, I think it would be in a situation where I'm like, "Hmm... what am I going to do tonight?" not a situation where I already know what I want to do and just want to figure out when it is happening (although that is a legitimate use case as well).

In spite of the criticisms, I'm liking the idea, and I wish you the best of luck with it. Have you considered trying to tie it into e.g. Google Calendar so that people can easily add events? Of course, ideas like that are just added features, but I'm curious where you plan on going with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> bumped up the font... i made the search show up across all of the list views and added a "with" directive. As for "what am i going to do tonight?" You could ask for a search of events - "tonight in " then expand from there with "with ".

<comment><USER2> That's great! I really like it now; it's easy to read and it all looks very good.

I like the additional upcoming links on the main page for now. I do like the idea you mentioned of putting up events that are similar to ones you have voted on, but until there are enough events in any one person's area, upcoming local events may be your best bet.

After reading the search description and trying out a sample query, I like it. It's rather intuitive and it performed correctly as far as my brief testing was concerned. One slight gripe -- I don't think you should use "u". That is, "as you would say it when u fill in the blank" should be, "as you would say it when _you_ fill in the blank."

Anyways, I'm glad to see you taking the feedback seriously and making such quick changes. I really do like this idea. The more I think about it, I like how it connects an online community in the real world. I think this has some great potential, and again, I wish you the best of luck with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought id share with you guys... feedback is very much appreciated... Im taking the weekend off

<http://www.theother9to5.com/>

<comment><USER3> _Im taking the weekend off_

I've learnt from experience that you should take the time off before shipping the app. That way you're there to gather the feedback, do the bugfixes. Then try to do a second release within a week with a few little extra features that have been requested to show the community you listen to them.

Nice site, keep up the good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry i meant time off from coding.. i'll still be here gathering feedback

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea. It's simple and to the point.

You should also check out going.com (formerly heyletsgo.com). They are a Boston-based startup that has about 90k users. Going.com is a social network, _but_ they try to get you out to events. I know this site started by using research from MIT's Media Lab to find events automatically. This might be worth checking out because all you need to do know is (a) seed the site with events and (b) get users.

</comment><comment><USER5> I signed up for an account and submitted an event "Checking out the site." The trouble is, in order to post an event, you must select a venue and there are none in the database at the moment so no one will be able to submit events.

Obviously this could be fixed by populating the venue database, but I'm wondering about letting users submit their own venues. It would be really nice to be able to submit "Tupperware party at my house" and provide the address, but then you worry about "Toga party at Steve's house" that Steve doesn't know about.

<comment><AUTHOR> venues are from a web service(yahoo pipes) that was pulling from just boston and 20miles north of boston (where i live).. I just updated it to pull your location from your ip and search 20miles around your location fro venues..

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 2007-05-19 13:12:52 +0100: The text is too dark. The copyright at the bottom is barely visible, same with upcoming, popular, new. submit event is a bit more visible. The "Enter a date..." is readable but hard work. This is on a CRT that's fine for the WWW at large. Edit: Oh, and previous and next weren't visible at all. I've only just seen then by doing "select all text". :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool... Thanks for the feedback.. Im thinking just make the entire web page black and see how it looks

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen I have trouble typing in new venues...I mean, sure, I'm probably the only user in Santiago, but I feel like I should be able to create my own venues and then, if possible, pick from a list of close matches others have typed in before. Overall, though, good alpha; the color scheme is good, it's simple, and it's pretty glitch-free. Congratulations.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> think reddit for events

<comment><USER7> Phrase: "tonight in st louis"

1\. [vote up] this is a test Venu (Boston) on May 17, 2007 (tonight), posted by twism 2 weeks ago 2 points | 8 comments

2\. [vote up] twest The Rack (Boston) on May 17, 2007 (tonight), posted by twism 6 days ago 1 point | 7 comments

Whoops..

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah i need to fix that... ive had no test users and limiting the functionality to the greater boston area

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> how about seeding events automatically from other bigger sites first?

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm...will think about it but im trying to get events of a different kind than what their users typically post

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 'near pittsburgh' doesn't work. I like the idea, though.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love the design.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks...im not a web designer at all ...in fact i hate web design... my css is all bloated and i dont even think over half of the directives actually do anything (from me trying something and scrapping it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> tiny nitpick: "dont" should be don't. :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> How about this: \- You ask a visitor: "what is your name" \- He says "Bob" \- You generate AJAX page that says "Hi, Bob!"

How's that?!

</comment><comment><USER12> I think you need to get out of this mode of thinking "hm.... what kind of SELECT statement you can run on a table and turn it into HTML"

Focus on PROBLEMS that need to be SOLVED. Finding what's going on around is not a problem anymore. Have not been for like what... 10 years?

<comment><USER13> :-))))</comment></comment>


Army of 'Socialbots' Steal Gigabytes of Facebook User Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/facebook_infiltration_bots/ <comment><USER3> Facebook is just a huge mess, really. The other day I was amazed at one particular scam that was so obvious, I decided to investigate. Someone made a page that promised a free iPhone 5 (even though there is no such thing) and had sent over 800,000 invites to people in 3 days. Over 20% answered, liked the page, and entered an email address in a form (as the fan page instructed). The wall was filled with comments like "I hope I win!" and such. There was even some people commenting on the fact that there is no such thing as an iPhone 5, and in every case the answer from other users was basically "who cares? what do we have to lose? it might be true"

Moral of the story? There's enough gullible people on Facebook for scammers to make money, regardless what measure Facebook puts in place.

<comment><USER4> Newsflash: There are enough gullible people EVERYWHERE for these things to work. This is not a new thing.

<comment><USER5> But now, we have one place to go to meet them all. People on craigslist are wary, otherwise it is not easy to get a group of gullible people all in one place.

<comment><USER4> There is literally an advertising industry with this fact at its foundation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do not see any problem here.

> [...] much of it configured to be available only to people on the user's > list of friends.

And it was. People randomly accept friends and then have their data configured to be shared with them. In this case, the problem was not Facebook but was sitting in front of the computer.

<comment><USER7> I suppose it's a bit of a bigger problem than that since a lot of information on Facebook is shared with friends of friends.

Because of this it's not just a problem for the bad user (like my aunt on FB), but also all of their connections (like me and 300 other people).

<comment><USER6> True. But still, you can just set your privacy options to only share this stuff with first-level friends.

The real problem with Facebook is that they collect data about you, without you being able to control that data. Everything that people have in their smartphones about you, or that other people add about you on Facebook by other means (uploaded email address books, etc) is agregated into "your" profile, even if you don't actually have a profile on Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone from Facebook is reading...You guys should add a "Do you know this person?" option to friend requests received from new accounts. If the amount of negative responses to the question surpass some threshold you flag the sending account as suspicious.

<comment><USER9> The problem is that that this is where Facebook's contradictions really appear.

The problem is that Facebook needs to both maintain the fiction that it's a network for only your "real life" friends to seem safe _and_ keeping finding new friends to keep the interest up.

But the average person only has about 150 friends and they're either currently on Facebook or they probably never will be. So to get new friends, people have to friend "friends-of-friends", people sharing common interests, people with attractive photos and so-forth. But if Facebook were to really discourage non- real-friends, everyone's friend numbers would _drop_ and the site's excitement level would start going down.

It is a weird kind of situation... Facebook is become more like "the regular Internet" how that works out will be interesting...

<comment><USER10> This is a composite of previous comments, someone should hack a " Facebook is dead " essay.

Cure to the present roberry 2.0 - gear up a homomorphic scheme[1] combined with a generative personal cloud[2].

The " personal " in PC was most important when C stood for computer. Next, it will be most important when C stands for cloud.

The other wall this epic bubble is going to run against sooner or later - <USER2> people wake up at an intuitive level :

"Well, since Moore's law makes computation really cheap, let's just give away the computation, but keep the data."[3]

All of this nightmare will be compounded by the stunning crap-storm about to emerge in economies world over.

[1] - <http://crypto.stanford.edu/craig/>

[2] - <http://futureoftheinternet.org>

[3] - <http://edge.org/conversation/the-local-global-flip>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Internet users opt in to providing their personal details on the internet and then knowingly accept connections from unknown parties, upset about "privacy breaches".

This, and more on News at 11.

<comment><USER12> Most people who'd be willing to accept random friend requests on Facebook probably have no idea that this even happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One major problem is that Facebook's privacy model for a long time was "trusted with everything"/"trusted with little", and the criteria for entering the inner circle was "the user adds you as a friend." Combine this will social pressure to reciprocate friend requests, and you have a mess.

I wonder what effect allowing assymmetric contacts will have. Will users get used to people "subscribing" to them without reciprocating, or will we all try to achieve the ultimate high score by "friending" everyone we can get ahold of?

</comment><comment><USER14> Any estimate of the number of bots posing as people on facebook? Any way it could be like 100 million? Can facebook could prove or disprove either way?

Seems both advertising prices and their valuation are linked to this number, I'm curious what kind of due diligence has been done if social bots are as easy as article makes it sound.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Within two weeks, 976, or about 19 percent of the requests, were accepted.

Of the 3,517 users who received the second round of requests, 2,079, or about 59 percent, accepted."

It seems to me that either people are really indiscriminate in who they accept as their 'friends', or the 'randomly selected "people"' were actually other socio bots :-D

<comment><USER16> Or people are more likely to accept a friend request when you already share a common friend on FB.

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing the profile pictures of the 'friends' weren't ugly people.

<comment><USER18> Funny how those stereotypical 'beautiful' pictures found on the internet are usually ugly.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure that's no accident. I suspect they're at the empirically determined sweet spot between 'beautiful/sexy' and 'loose/easy' for the maximum number of people to feel they'd both stand a chance with the person _and_ actually would want to have sex with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It makes you wonder what private data sources actually have of the facebook graph (Not including facebook). Does someone have the whole facebook social graph downloaded or a large portion?

<comment><USER21> At 500+ mil users with an average of 150 connections, you're looking at 500,000,000 * 150 / 2 = 3.75e10 edges. Assuming generously that each edge can be stored with a 4 byte unsigned int, you're looking at about 140 GB. I haven't seen any scrapes that even come CLOSE to that, an that's ignoring throttling and privacy controls.

Edit: more likely, you'd get the data as (id1, id2) pairs with 8 byte longs for each id. That's about 600 GB.

<comment><USER22> This is an ignorant question, but do apps have access to the social graph? If so, I'd assume the top game applications have a substantial portion.

<comment><USER23> You can get names and Facebook IDs of user's friends for anyone who signs in with your app. I don't believe you can fetch their friends through the API, so the game companies should have access to only edges in which one person uses a game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Steal" is stretched thin here. People made their information public.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am going to delete my facebook account this November 5. I encourage others to do the same.

</comment><comment><USER26> Kinda obvious that Facebook is getting scraped up and down for all sorts of reasons. Wasn't there some "art" project of some guy guy who recently scraped millions of (public) profiles?

"used programming interfaces from ihearthquotes.com" seems to be down/unknown the the googles?

<comment><USER27> >Wasn't there some "art" project of some guy guy who recently scraped millions of (public) profiles?

Oh, it's amazing - <http://openbook.org/>

<comment><USER28> I think the grandparent post may have been thinking of this: <http://www.sott.net/articles/show/223241> ('Dating' Site Imports 250,000 Facebook Profiles, Without Permission)

For the site linked in the parent post, it looks like the site uses the Facebook Graph API search function for public posts and then makes additional queries to show information about the creator of each post. Since you don't need a Facebook account to use it, I suspect they are making the queries via the server. They might be accumulating the profile photo data as they retrieve it, but it doesn't look any different than any other site that uses the server-side Facebook APIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Another way to do this is just to use the search method that's part of the Facebook Graph API (replace watermelon in the URL with your query) - [https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=watermelon&type=post](https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=watermelon&type=post)

You'd be surprised the amount of information that people post publicly.

<comment><USER30> wow, THIS is interesting.. and this is like 750 million people's posts :O

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This might sound harsh but...

Who care?

How long are people going to keep believing that information you share with people who share with other random people is ... "private"?

I've friended spam-bots entirely for shits giggles. Seriously.

I like Facebook a lot. Seriously. I'm there pseudo-nonymously but constantly. But naturally I post nothing I don't want totally public 'cause nothing on Facebook is private to start with.

Define "privacy" in the context of Facebook. You can't and that's the point.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is that stealing? Not to get into a "data wants to be free thing", it just seems like the automatic scraping of (effectively) public information, by an algorithm which can't be held to terms of use.

<comment><USER32> I don't think it's stealing, but it's certainly rude.

<comment><USER33> It's automated social engineering.</comment></comment></comment>


The VC Shakeout - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/2010/07/the-vc-shakeout/ar/1

<comment><USER2> Too many VC firms/dumb money or not enough startups? Larger VCs should limit their fund size and do more micro seed investments with a strong value added focus. Make themselves more open to the startup community while still maintaining a black swan business model.

<comment><USER3> How about "the death of the US IPO?" (for whatever reasons).

There's just that much less money to be made than in the late-50s to early '00s and this results in a lot of the things you note. E.g. there are too many firms with too much money for the new No Exit market.</comment></comment>


I created my own time tracker - <AUTHOR> https://app.simple-tracker.com <comment><AUTHOR> All feedback is appreciated, thanks!</comment>


Injecting Software Vulnerabilities with Voltage Glitching [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://yifan.lu/images/2019/01/Injecting_Software_Vulnerabilities_with_Voltage_Glitching.pdf <comment><USER2> It wasn't injection per session, but liveoverflow did a video about something similar (breaking an infinite loop with voltage glitching): [https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Pf3pY3GxBM](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Pf3pY3GxBM)

</comment><comment><USER3> Playstation Vitas have always had trouble with charging.</comment>


US Dept of Energy estimates geothermal power's untapped potential - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/report-geothermal-could-power-up-to-16-of-us-grid-by-2050/ <comment><USER2> I worked on a laboratory building in a cold climate recently. Labs typically consume a ton of energy (relative to offices/residences) due to the energy spent on conditioning and forcing air for fumehoods.

We investigated a couple of different ways of reducing energy: PV, wind, efficient HVAC systems, and Ground Source Heat pumps (GSHP). The GSHP reduced the energy consumption of our building by over 50%, where the rest were barely hitting 10%.

I haven't personally seen it installed at a residential level, but if it's affordable (which, given cheapness of natural gas may not be) could be huge in cold climates.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to be too crazy but, geothermal scares the hell out of me. How many works of fiction involve something like tapping Yellowstone Calderra and bye bye life as we know it when it is weakened too much and kaboom!

Mind you it is survival/disaster 'porn' but Bobby Akart has a book series where exactly this happens. Some joint government-private entity power plant drills into the calderra, and like some companies are known to do cuts corners and drills much deeper than all the experts recommended, it compromises everything just enough that Yellowstone starts erupting.

Sure, there are safe places/ways to do this (hello Iceland) but something about it just seems crazy. Nuclear, sure it's something you can easily control the reaction and with a proper setup can even safely 'shut down' but drilling holes relatively deep into the earth to take advantage of geothermal heat, eeesh that (mostly irrationally) bugs me a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> The new potential of geothermal comes from the fact that you don't have to drill very deep anymore. Instead of water, it uses fluids with a lower boiling point. In some places, like Boulder, Colorado, you can even install geothermal in your own backyard and use it to heat your house. It's actually a common solution there.</comment></comment>


NSA targets the privacy-conscious - <AUTHOR> http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/NSA-targets-the-privacy-conscious,nsa230.html

<comment><USER2> Because anyone trying to keep anything private or secure must be hiding something bad... That's just wonderful.

After 10 years of pervasive surveillance and not being able to catch a single terrorist I can't believe the NSA is trying to rationalize it as being a good thing. It's too bad the bill to defund the NSA didn't pass: [http://defundthensa.com/](http://defundthensa.com/)

<comment><USER3> While attacking the NSA on legal grounds is admirable, they operate above the law. If their public budget was ever threatened, they would just turn to the black budget. Any laws attempting to restrain the NSA's power would be circumvented.

Tell everyone to use Tor Browser. Heck, I think it's worth starting an underground bounty for ISP techs to install Tor Browser on customer computers. Pay per install, paid in BTC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the privacy-conscious individual is safer than others or made a huge misjudgement by signalling that they have something to hide thereby putting themselves under a magnifying glass that only the top-X% of secure internet users will escape?

<comment><USER5> > or has made a huge misjudgement by signalling that they have something to > hide

That is obviously a psychological effect that the NSA & Co. welcome very much, maybe even try to use against the rest of us. The question is: Do we want to let such a cheap trick get us?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are two variants of this story on the front page. The other one has the fuller discussion, but this one is the original source. We'll bury this one as a dupe and change the url of the other one.</comment>


Anil Potti posts restored to Retraction Watch following false DMCA claim - <AUTHOR> http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/anil-potti-posts-restored-to-retraction-watch-following-false-dmca-claim/

<comment><USER2> I have to thank whoever posted the first article about Anil Potti/Retraction Watch - I've found the site to be fascinating.

Will also point out that Anil contacted the owner of the site, Ivan, and claimed that he had no involvement in the original retraction request. [http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/anil- potti-t...](http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/anil-potti-tells- retraction-watch-he-wasnt-behind-dmca-takedown-notices-of-posts-about-him/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google has been ignoring my requests for reinstatement of content removed as a result of a false DMCA request. They used to be very good about it (this has happened before) and would email to ask for clarification. It's been 2+ months and several "reinstatement requests" later, and still no go.</comment>


A Board of Directors is not an Advisory Board - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/07/a-board-of-directors-is-not-an-advisory-board.html

<comment><USER2> Advisory boards are basically like NASCAR decals. You get names people recognize to endorse you, you put them on your web page, you pretty much forget about it.

The _actual_ board's purpose is basically to decide when to fire you.

So yes, it's good to know the difference between these groups. =)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would argue that one needs a Board of Directors that IS an Advisory Board.

Then and only then would I appreciate and respect my Board.

<comment><USER4> By the time you have a board of directors it's not _your_ board any more.</comment></comment>


Remove all non default gems Ruby 2.0.0 - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/nathan/5042764

<comment><AUTHOR> I noticed that the good old script for removing all gems wasn't working anymore because of default gems, so I made this.</comment>


Startups not status: Japan's top grads rethink success - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/Startups-not-status-Japan-s-top-grads-rethink-success <comment><USER2> While I think this trend is growing (and moving at a snail's pace, like most things that aren't engrained in japanese culture), I want to point out that students from the University of Tokyo (colloquially "toudai") are the most likely to attract funding/find the connections to be funded as startups.

Toudai has a reputation as a school full of eccentric people (quite often literally called the equivalent of "weirdos"), likely because of the high percentage of "smart"/obssessive types who go there (this is probably some equal percentage stereotype, truth, and self-fulfilling prophecy). This is also probably a big contributing factor to the fact that the percentage of people doing startups instead of other options.

I think Japan could be a really huge place for startups to be honest -- the ~4 years of undergrad in college here are actually really really lax, and could have so much potential as a time to try ideas. The right school, with the right hacker-space and the right supporting generalist classes could produce an amazing set of entrepreneurs, but no one's doing it yet.

<comment><USER3> _the ~4 years of undergrad in college here are actually really really lax_

Is this because undergrad does not prepare you for a career and the bulk of the "useful" learning happens later on the job?

<comment><USER4> If you get into Tokyo University in Japan, as long as you don't flunk out and get kicked out before graduating, you're pretty much set for life, because unlike the U.S. or some European countries where there are multiple top grade schools, each famous for certain major, Tokyo University is the ABSOLUTE top in Japan (as in there is ONLY one absolute #1 school), and literally everyone sees you differently if you say you went to Tokyo University.

This is on a completely different level than say if you told your American neighbor you went to MIT. Basically, in the US if you're an engineer, you could go to Caltech, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, UIUC, etc. and all of them are considered top, so the "genius" factor is a bit spread out therefore the scarcity is not as high (relative to how Japanese people see Tokyo University) Tokyo University is absolute #1. Period. There are some exceptions but I think that's the biggest difference.

<comment><USER5> What about if you said you went to MIT, while in Japan.

<comment><USER4> It depends who you ask, but generally when we're talking about uber-famous colleges like MIT or Harvard, I think the brand would generally work in Japan too.

But not all Japanese are aware of MIT or Harvard, and not all of them are aware of how concretely hard it is to get into those. All they know is through what they heard from others, and based on how the media portrays those colleges.

For most ordinary Japanese people, if you say you went to Caltech or UIUC, etc. they will have no idea what the status is (the only credibility you will enjoy is from other academics), because there has not been a TV show or movie about UIUC and Caltech students.

Compare that to Tokyo University, 100% of Japanese people know exactly how hard it is to get in, because they all have gone through high school and they are completely aware of how many of their peers went to Tokyo University.

I'm sure in the U.S., regardless of where you live--midwest, alaska, or wherever--you probably have seen at least a few friends who went to any of the above colleges, because there are multiple of them. However in Japan, many high schools never see any of their graduates enter Tokyo University at all, which means for some people a "Tokyo University student" will almost feel like a mythical unicorn.

This is not unique to Japan and I am aware of at least a couple of other rich countries where the social structure works this way. U.S. is a special case because it's such a large country and the entire nation is built on the premise of diversity, but in many countries around the world there is a very clear and absolute pyramid structure in university "rankings".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What does "Startups not status" mean?

<comment><USER7> I'd guess that instead of going for the Big Co career path you choose to start a business instead. And a startup might not carry the same status in Japan as in the West?

I found the title weird when I read the article. Startups is nothing but status in my book. People work almost for free as long as they can tag themselves as startup people. Must be a cultural difference.

<comment><USER8> "I am a cofounder" is the new "I play in a band"

I guess Japanese society values stable trajectories in life more than money, whereas in the US the common trope is "you work for someone — you never get rich" and since getting rich is the only definition of success we have this hustle culture.

<comment><USER9> haha absolutely.

I even noticed this with a black and white picture of some AI startup group picture google bought. It looked exactly like a band picture from the 90s. Everyone all serious looking, different fashions, the lead singer/ceo a little bit more forward and center in the photos.

Another amusing cultural thing is I remember the saying like "even CEOs of big business want to be in the music industry".

Now it is the opposite and even the biggest music artists in the world want to be CEOs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Said To Be Considering A Free Version Of Windows 8.1 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/28/free-windows-8-1-update/ <comment><USER2> Windows 8 is terrible. Free is still too expensive. It's Windows 7 with reduced functionality and an app store. I've been using Windows on my work laptops for the last 4 years because I use the adobe suite, and it's been easier. I've been stuck with Windows 8 on my most recent laptop, and yesterday I finally decided to switch to Ubuntu. Good riddance.

<comment><USER3> what functionality is lost in Windows 8.1 that 7 had?

<comment><USER4> The traditional start menu. A proper desktop instead of a tablet-optimized interface.

<comment><USER5> If you're a keyboard centric user, the start menu's not a huge loss as one would think.

I used to think it was a big deal until I realized I stopped using the Dock on OSX in favor of Spotlight to launch stuff. When I started using Win8 and learned that I basically could keep the same habits by hitting the Windows key and typing the first few characters of what I wanted to launch, I stopped caring about the start menu.

I used to think the idea of a touchscreen laptop was stupid, but Win8 works for me, and my main machine is still a Macbook Pro. I have a Surface Pro that I use in place of my original iPad, and I think Win8 is quite good in tile mode or desktop mode. It's still hurting in the area of power management though.

<comment><USER6> While you can use the same keyboard habits, I find it much worse. The whole screen gets taken over by a rainbow colored mess of an interface, instead of a concise list in the corner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A free version of Windows 8.1? Those M$FT bastards are just trying to make more money!"

      -- 90% of responses that will show up here

Anyway, Microsoft definitely needs to do something to eradicate the 29% of desktop users that are still using Windows XP which is a security disaster- waiting-to-happen.

[http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share....](http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0)

<comment><USER8> I imagine a lot of machines running XP won't be able to run 8.1. IIRC even the minimum screen resolution of 1366x768 is above the popular old 1280x1024.

<comment><USER7> _I imagine a lot of machines running XP won 't be able to run 8.1_

Your imagination is completely wrong. Here are the minimum specifications:

[http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/system- requirem...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/system-requirements)

 _IIRC even the minimum screen resolution of 1366x768_

Your memory is also completely wrong. Windows 8.1 does not have a minimum resolution of 1366x768. In fact, if you review the system requirements link above, you'll see that it works at less than 1024x768 but that certain features require 1024x768.

Can you help me understand the purpose of your comment? I mean, obviously - you had no idea what you were talking about. You even knew it because you used weasel words like, "I imagine" or "IIRC". It makes me think you had some agenda to spread FUD about Windows 8.1 not working on older hardware.

<comment><USER8> My memory isn't wrong.

[http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Windows-...](http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Windows-8.1/productID.288401200)

> Required memory 2GB

> Required video card 1366 × 768 screen resolution; DirectX 9 graphics > processor with WDDM driver

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why are we not linking source articles? I thought we were just hating on aggregators a second ago.

This links to the Verge which repackaged the original ZDNet article: [http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-monetization-dilemma- bundlin...](http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-monetization-dilemma-bundlings- not-all-its-cracked-up-to-be-7000026852/)

</comment><comment><USER10> It sounds a like this is going to be a gimped money-grab like "Windows 7 Starter edition" (where you can't even change the wallpaper).

Meanwhile, the other two major desktop OSes are completely free. Upgrades too. The notion of paying for the basic software that makes your computer work is quickly becoming outmoded.

<comment><USER11> Of course Apple can release cheap OSs, their machines cost twice as much as a PC. The total cost of ownership should be considered.

<comment><USER10> The upgrades are also completely gratis. And again with the "Twice as much" myth? Do I really need to link the article that shows the _discount_ being offered on the new Pro machines with the workstation chipset?

And you're also not counting the reduction in cost from the bundled crapware that comes on most every OOTB PC.

<comment><USER12> The new Mac Pro is a joke. If you need to add more disks, you're adding an additional $1,500 to $2,500 for the external disk enclosure. That puts the base price, for 6 bays at $5,500! Now that is absurd.

<comment><USER10> I can add external peripherals to any laptop/desktop and drive the price up as well. I'm talking out of the box.

<comment><USER12> You are being disingenuous. The number of laptop users with a bunch of external disks compared to desktop users.... very, very different.

This is about what is normal. My desktop machines have ALWAYS had more than just the boot drive. My laptops have NEVER had anything but the boot drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have to admit, I dismissed the Chromebook when it was first introduced. It seems at this point that it's really been a market changer.

<comment><USER14> I believe that Apple aggressive pricing of the last operating systems (up to the current "free") had much more influence on the decision, together with Ubuntu progress in terms of usability.

Edit: Probably is all off these put together, nowadays most users simply do not expect to pay for an updated OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I use Windows 8 every day at work. It's not that bad as some would have you believe, but I like it less than Windows 7, and every release should be more enjoyable and better. I consider Windows 7 to be the best version of Windows ever. It has a pretty clean windowing UI, it's stable and secure and generally just works.

It's an OS that really appeals to MS's core audience. Why mess with it?

I have my Windows 8 machine set to boot straight to desktop mode, and I have the start menu back; so it's pretty similar to using Windows 7. But every now and then you accidentally open up an app or file in Metro mode, and it's a really disorienting experience when one of my windows is in metro mode and the other is in desktop mode.

The core issue of Windows 8 is that it tries to merge two pretty good UI concepts together, and in the process makes both worse. I like Metro as a tablet and phone UI. I like the Windows 7 UI for desktop computing. It's when you have to use Metro on a desktop or Windows 7 windowing on a tablet that it all goes to hell.

I would suggest that MS end this, and make Windows 9 the best traditional Windows it can. Aim it at businesses and people who want to use the same OS they use at work at home. Focus on networking and cloud support (take OneDrive even further), improving multithreaded support (make it easier for developers to harness 4-12 and more core computers) and improving the file system.

The UI concepts of Windows 7 are pretty good. You can iterate on the UI and add new features like Apple does with OS X, but there is no reason to get away from windowing for desktop computing. It's a conceptual model that works well, particularly for power users and work that benefits from multiple-monitors and multitasking.

Microsoft should then spin off Metro into its own OS without the Windows name, while still using the Windows kernel. This is what Apple does with iOS, and it works very well.

I use OS X at home, and think Mavericks is what MS should be aiming for, not Windows 8. Mavericks is the best desktop OS I've ever used, and, while I really like iOS, I wouldn't want to use iOS on my desktop computer.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not sure this will help: IMNSHO market already perceives COTS computers as "costs $x, plus has Windows for free."

<comment><USER17> the OEMs don't perceive it that way. Acer could have two SKUs. One with the free version at 199 and the non free version at 249. I think a lot will buy the 199 version.

<comment><USER18> Asus tried that with the EEE netbooks.

[http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_strikes_back_at_lin...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_strikes_back_at_linux_netbook_push)

(Money talks. Microsoft has a lot of money.)

<comment><USER10> It could easily be argued that the EEE machines didn't work because they were too small, badly designed, and way _way_ underpowered.

I'd put the Chromebook up there as one of the first netbooks that were not horrible.

<comment><USER19> EEE did work. They were highly successful and created the netbook category.

<comment><USER10> Yet the model line was eventually switched to windows and then killed off entirely.

Heck the netbook as a concept has been rather dormant before the Chromebook came along.

<comment><USER19> The Ford Model T was also discontinued, was it a failure as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That people are avoiding Windows 8+ is a side affect, it's not the problem. The problem is that developers have been (and are continuing to) fleeing Windows like it's the plague. The solution is to either radically make Windows more developer friendly or open source Windows. At the very least open source XP which you have no interest in supporting. Stick it on GitHub and accept pull requests.

<comment><USER20> But I thought one of the bullet points of Win8 was that it was more developer friendly.

When you say developer friendly, what do you mean by that? Seems to me you can develop more or less whatever you want in numerous different ways. Are you talking about developing on the core?

As for open sourcing a previous version, there's always something like ReactOS, [http://www.reactos.org/](http://www.reactos.org/).

<comment><USER19> Microsoft's idea of developer friendliness is always aimed at high-level. Windows is developer friendly _as long as you use their tools /languages_. Developers want to choose their own tools, so they should make that easier / more integrated.

<comment><USER20> I'm not a Windows developer, but I'm fairly certain there are options of tools/languages for Windows development that are not offered directly from Microsoft.

Again, are we talking about developing applications to run on Windows or developing on the core?

<comment><USER19> Low-level applications/libraries. Things we take for granted on other OSes like alternative shells, alternative terminal emulators, language bindings for Win32 gui.

<comment><USER20> Ok, I understand now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hope this doesn't involve intrusive advertising or tracking. Firstly we're all on a slippery path with that one but secondly can you imagine the increased burden of _family tech support_? When relative X turns up with a $250 windows laptop and wants the ads removed, its going to be painful to explain.

I imagine this will actually cause more harm than good to the brand.

<comment><USER22> Ever since Vista, every time I run notepad Win calls home to Redmond to let them know I did it(non-intrusive, granted). There are ~ 40 ways Windows phones home to an MS IP when I open something or other these days. They call it 'metrics', I call it none of their business(look how they manipulate the data to say 'most users don't use start menu, anyway'...bwahahaha). TG for 3rd party firewalls, careful what you block...

<comment><USER21> Yes definitely aware of this. I ran wireshark on my workstation (MacBook) and had Windows 7 in a VBox virtual machine. The amount of network traffic it generates is insane. Prior to using the windows machine there was a little mDNS traffic and some SSDP stuff from my router/television and nothing else. Moment windows is online, thousands of packets everywhere. I didn't have time to reverse engineer what it was doing (as I was debugging an SSDP stack) but it's worrying simply from the complexity of filtering all of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just updated Windows 8(#) to 8.1. What a bullshit (still)!

It's not a question of money (free) but of simplifying the experience. It's a bloody mess!

(#) Admittedly I didn't use Windows 8 often (mostly worked with Mountain Lion and Ubuntu 13.04/13.10 however I was a longtime Windows user before (Win98 to 7).

<comment><USER23> (just saw [this article]([http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2014/03/02/windows_8_surface/](http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2014/03/02/windows_8_surface/)) on the hn frontpage which describes very well what I meant with bullshit and mess. I kind of like the metro part but as I need the Desktop part... no 'love';)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> MS starts fearing really free OSes at last. Interesting times. What's next, MS will open source Windows?

<comment><USER22> A few tens of millions of XP users would sure appreciate that, April 8th is fast approaching. MS has extended MSSE updates for XP 'til 6/2015... can't wait to see what they pull out of where next month.

PS: I could have sworn I saw XP workstations running on the ISS while watching NASA archives couple days ago. I do not know how recent the archive footage was...

<comment><USER25> NASA uses Windows XP on A31 & T61 Thinkpad notebooks:

      As of 2010, the Space Station was equipped with 68
      ThinkPad A31 computers along with 32 new Lenovo ThinkPad
      T61p laptops plus a dedicated IP phone which also has
      limited video phone capabilities. Work incorporating
      those laptops into the station's LAN continued into June
      2011. All laptops aboard the ISS are connected to the
      station's LAN via Wi-Fi and are connected to the ground
      at 3 Mbit/s up and 10 Mbit/s down, comparable to home DSL
      connection speeds.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad#Use_in_space](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad#Use_in_space)

<comment><USER24> Didn't they get rid of it and started using Linux?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I could see the benefit being people who have to re-install or want to upgrade from XP/Vista can now do so for free - but wouldn't 9/10 of those people just buy Windows or pirate it anyway?

For non-technical people, is losing Windows XP customers to Linux even an issue for Microsoft?

They do have a good point about combating Chromebooks with a free version of Windows. Will it run efficiently on Chromebook level hardware? The Acer C720 is a Haswell Celeron with 4GB of RAM which should be plenty. I'd be concerned about the OS footprint on the SSD more than anything. 32GB vs 16GB would double the storage cost of the machine.

</comment><comment><USER27> It would be interesting to see how "free" it will be.

I'm not sure how OSX is accounted, but I suppose it's now defined as upgradable software coming with the hardware, the same way drivers are just software for a device already paid.

Would Windows follow the same way of thinking and be free when bought OEM (as the article hints at) or have a really free tier that anyone could download for any hardware supported ?

It would be nice to have Microsoft let go a lower/barebone tier of windows and focus on a premium version and additional services (unlimited skydrive integration with automatic backups for instance) for profits.

</comment><comment><USER20> Win8 was an attempt to convert from a desktop interface to a tablet interface. But the thing is, I'm still using a desktop. There's no way you can convince me to use a tablet interface on a desktop, especially when my monitor is not touch enabled. You can offer it to me for free and I would still politely turn you down. I already have Win7 on my current machine and it does everything that I require. Why exactly would I take a step back in interface design when I'm happy right now?

</comment><comment><USER28> As I understand it, Microsoft needs to keep Windows everywhere so they can sell everything else (Office, Exchange, Server, SQL and Sharepoint).

Why don't they give Windows for free ?

<comment><USER29> > Why don't they give Windows for free ?

I think you know the reason, its because they make a shit load of money selling it.

It's not at all clear that they would be better off giving it away for free.

<comment><USER28> Sure but they're loosing ground.

If I was them I'd rather make less money now and stay relevant for the next 20 years than satisfy my immediate greed and disappear* in the next decade ...

* disappear is too strong but my English being limited I don't have the word I need to convey what I mean.

<comment><USER30> Slide into obscurity is probably the phrase you seek.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I called it.

Here's what I said MSFT should do and it looks like they're on their way:

Have a free version of windows that sends back analytics, displays ads every now and then etc.

The normal version of windows that's for enterprise/government/the rest will get a significant price bump.

I made the mistake of not putting my prediction on the internet before the free version was released. Now we wait for the price bump.

<comment><USER32> Uh, what? Did you think everyone would kiss your feet and praise you as a god if only you had put your random prediction somewhere on the internet?

<comment><USER31> Just a little bit of banter. Chill out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Windows 8.1, so bad they're giving it away for free.

Seriously, doesn't this fall under monopoly no-nos?

<comment><USER34> Is there another commercial operating system that isn't free?

<comment><USER25> various UNIX (Solaris, etc.), QNX, z/OS, etc. (and OS like iOS/MacOS on non- Apple hardware)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yet again, both Microsoft and Apple following in the footsteps of Linux. Got to love the articles like with headlines like these:

[http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/apple-ends-paid- oses/](http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/apple-ends-paid-oses/)

<comment><USER36> This is an asinine comment. RHEL and SLED are enterprise-geared distros and paid products.

<comment><USER16> True. On the other hand, MS has to fear XP replacements which are not Windows, yet will run on the same old(er) HW that XP did; e.g. LXLE, which is geared specifically towards this goal: [http://lxle.net/](http://lxle.net/)

<comment><USER5> The biggest XP replacements that are not Windows are iPads and Android tablets -- at least for the majority of users who are primarily emailers and web surfers. Not sure if a free version of Windows is going to stop the bleeding there.

<comment><USER16> That's a good point as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: There are 5 S-1 posts on the front page, what explains the rush? - <AUTHOR> Is it just because the stock market is doing "well" right now or is there some other explanation? <comment><USER3> Links to the referenced 5, since one just dropped off the front page: Sumo Logic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24262251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24262251) Asana: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265430) Snowflake: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265041) JFrog: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24264478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24264478) Unity: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24261559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24261559)

I understand the stock market very poorly and had the same question myself, so this may be way off the mark, but I wonder if it's because of pessimism in the economy that non-public investors are harder to milk right now. It's unusual to see this many S-1's on HN, even more unusual that I've heard of most of them before.

<comment><USER4> Macro assessments of "the economy" play some role in expectations, but the economy is not comprehensible as a monolith. The predictive value of assessments of the "economy" on any one specific business are basically useless.

Rather, individual businesses are evaluated on their own individual trajectories, physics, prospects, and teams. Many of these have done well in COVID times and have stories aimed at convincing investors that improved performance will continue- independent of, or in inverse relation to larger negative macro assessments.

I haven't read these S1s but am sure this is the case here.

There are also technical- financial technical, not technical technical- reasons that make one moment better than another for seeking capital, and now is "good" for certain kinds of companies. It is also lifesaving for others- like Kabbage being bought by Amex a couple weeks ago. Their business (I believe) has basically been destroyed by the pandemic so Amex was able to get a good deal.

You should just read the S1s. The stories they tell are in fairly straightforward language, amidst a lot of transparency and compliance gobbledegook. But if you know a little about the companies you can probably arrive at an opinion about their narratives.

Cheers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I might be able to provide context as a money manager and employee of a pre- IPO startup that considered IPOing right now.

Companies prefer to IPO when they show the strongest growth as it likely will lead to the highest valuation at time of IPO -- regardless of other fundamentals (such as profitability). These companies are likely doing very well for a combination of reasons: \- Lockdown has increased use of their services \- The market is in a large upswing right now

This makes their growth look phenomenal to investors, and likely, their board members who want to cash out see this as an opportunity.

There has been a bit of a "dead zone" for around the last year with people thinking the market was going to slow down for a recession and it has been considered hard to "raise money". A lot of people also believe a longer recession is still coming (I'm one of them).

This means that we likely have a short window where growth / income look fantastic for a few companies. The next opportunity might be in 2-3 years.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Also, as an investor, I think this is terrible practice as I believe the fundamentals of the investment are far more important than black swan-type of events giving you a growth spurt.

<comment><USER6> There's a lot of demand for equities right now due to the low rates and more pessimistic outlook on other securities. I think that can help drive up the amount they can raise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Asana lost 120m last year

Snowflake lost 350m last year

Unity lost 160m last year

Sumo Logic lost 43m last year

Jfrog lost 400k last year

Out of curiosity, is it normal for companies to IPO this far away from profitability, or is this a recent tech thing? I feel like it was a big deal when uber IPO'd so far away from profitability, now it seems standard.

<comment><USER5> "normal" in the last 10-15 years -- yes. That doesn't mean it's a good deal. The "recent" idea has been to project growth (rather than profit) as the primary metric, with the idea that eventually when "dominant" in the sector the money that goes into growth will multiply profitability.

I don't subscribe by this method.

Another thing to keep in mind is that IPOs are usually done for 1 of 3 reasons:

1) To allow an exit for investors

This means that you have to think you know more than their current investors do about their growth -- unless the investors have other specific timelines (sometimes they do), or else you're buying what someone else thinks is no longer a good use of capital.

2) To raise money

This means the company needs more cash, either for "growth" or because they will fail without it. Again, you should be certain that this company-in-need deserves more money.

3) To create a sense of "official-ness".

Some companies can be better respected in their industry and helps with their brand if they're public.

It's been reported that public CEOs often spend about 50% of their time working on matters that relate to simply being public. It's one of the reasons that Warren Buffett will sometimes take companies private after buying public ones -- to afford them more time and energy to work on the actual company. There's very little about going public that actually makes a company better.

<comment><USER8> Another big reason is to make it easier to do acquisitions.

It's a lot easier (for both sides!) to buy another company with your stock if there is more confidence in the valuation, that way everybody knows what they're getting (or giving away). One way to get a really, really solid valuation is to be publicly traded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One explanation is just that submitters tend to imitate what's already on the front page.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265770)

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember the same thing happening last year at the same time (late august), so my guess is that it that this timing has something to do with financial optimization of S-1 filings.

</comment><comment><USER11> When prices are high, people sell. Simple as that.

<comment><USER12> You can only sell if someone's willing to buy

<comment><USER11> Sure but if there wasn't a buy-side prices wouldn't be increasing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is nothing more than a greatly-timed opportunistic race to the finish. The same rush happened in August and September 2019 and right now they are at it again, before they lose out as they nearly did due to the virus and also towards other uncertain characteristics happening in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yes, basically stocks are very high considering that economic collapse is a likelier possibility than it has been in a while. So companies that were trying to pick the right time to IPO are filing now to get that green in the bank before the market implodes.

<comment><USER15> If all of these companies are rushing in to get some of dumb money (probably not the correct phrase for this) floating around would it also mean these companies aren't worth investing in?

<comment><USER16> More like these are good companies that are ready to IPO and the window of opportunity closes if there is a crash. So go now or go in 2+ years?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is actually pretty normal, unless there has just been a crash:

[https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/ipos](https://www.nasdaq.com/market- activity/ipos)

If you start studying the capital markets you'll quickly learn just how little you've known about the economy before. Look at any object on your desk - <USER2> how was that thing made? Someone out there has manufactured the thing, there was a few if not a few dozen corporations involved.

<comment><USER16> None of these seem to be listed on that page yet.

<comment><USER17> Because filing the form S-1 comes quite a bit before the actual start of trading. S-1 is a prospectus, lets investors familiarize themselves with the offering.

I'd also add that this is just NASDAQ. There's a lot of other exchanges across the world.

<comment><USER18> Though, obviously, offerings in other (foreign) markets won't necessarily file S-1s because S-1 is a concept of the United States' Security and Exchange Commission (SEC).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have you seen the stock markets recently? Apple has market cap of 2 Trillion dollars. Just a little piece of that will fuel a business's growth.

</comment><comment><USER20> Trying to take advantage of all the capital available and momentum in the market. Same thing happened the couple years before the dotcom bust in 2000.

</comment><comment><USER16> Trying to cash out before capital gains taxes rise?

</comment><comment><USER21> Is more public companies a good thing or not?

</comment><comment><USER22> Probably because tons of money can be taken off the table for all these over pumped companies in the stock market and plowed into the hot new things.

</comment><comment><USER23> SPACs are playing a huge part too.

</comment><comment><USER24> Pump and dump, imho.

</comment><comment><USER25> I imagine trying to get them in before November 3rd

<comment><USER26> What's the importance of that date?

<comment><USER27> That date is Election Day in the U.S. 1/3 of the US Senate, the entire US House of Representatives, a slew of local and state races and ballot measures. Also, at the top of the ticket is the election of a new (or perhaps not) President.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Trump's capital gains tax policies that have deprived our government of vital revenue are increasingly likely to go away next year. Rich people have bribed the Republican party for decades to make it so that "investment" income is taxed at ~15% vs ~25% for the working person's hard earned income.

<comment><USER29> There's no revenue to tax if your high tax rate pushes all the businesses away

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> They should be hidden from the homepage. I stopped visiting TechCrunch a very long time ago when the majority of their posts became fundraising news.

</comment><comment><USER31> No, whether something is on front page is not really affected by stock market (though HN algorithm is closed so it may actually be, but unlikely). The main reason is, someone shared link to S-1 and others upvoted it</comment>


The Transaction Costs of Tokenizing Everything - <AUTHOR> https://elaineou.com/2017/10/14/the-transaction-costs-of-tokenizing-everything/ <comment><USER2> This article is a collection of straw men. It extrapolates the failure of one dot-com era startup (Mojo Nation) into the extremely wide ranging thesis

> As it turns out, bandwidth — and most computational resources — are simply > too cheap to meter.

This is patently false, as bandwidth and all other computational resources are metered on a huge scale today, by centralized cloud computing and ISP companies.

It's even false for BitTorrent. The article describes BitTorrent with

> After Mojo Nation's demise, a former employee stripped the token incentives > out of the protocol and created a simple tit-for-tat filesharing system.

However, most serious BitTorrent users are active on trackers which require a certain seed:leech ratio, thereby metering the user's contribution. The fact that no money is involved has more to do with the fact that most of them are used to share files in violation of copyright, not because of some intrinsic law of computational resources being "too cheap to meter".

It also references some hare-brained scheme cooked up by Enron shortly before their collapse to claim that bandwidth cannot be traded, and makes the false assertion that all peering and internet transit today is free.

<comment><USER3> I think the author summarized his hypothesis quite well in the title: The Transaction Costs of Tokenizing Everything [... are too high compared to the costs of bandwidth, etc.]. If you introduce a bidding market for every computational resource then that itself creates new costs (keeping all the systems running that create bids, check if they have been filled, cancelling old ones, drafting bidding protocols, etc.) that might largely offset the gains in more efficient resource allocations.

<comment><USER4> And it might not.

That's like going up to Eisenhower after he proposed the interstate system and saying, "Wait, the cost of paving over that much land and building that many overpasses might largely offset any gains of this supposed more efficient transportation network."

All new technologies introduce costs, but ideally they also act as multipliers that bring far more benefits.

The multiplier effect might not be enough, but then again, it might be. You're not really saying anything.

Better to talk about _under what circumstances_ the benefits-multiplier might not be enough to make up for the costs. For example, someone elsewhere in the thread said that yes, if humans were bidding on such tokenization, it might create too many barriers. But look at all the ad networks we've built where billions of tiny auctions happen instantaneously -- that's all by machines. So if the system is built for machines, the multiplier effect could be potentially huge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article keeps mentioning torrents as a free panacea that disproves the need for decentralized monetized hosting systems, but for some reason no one else ever helped seed the torrent of my encrypted backups when I posted it onto piratebay.

<comment><USER6> Google, Amazon or Tarsnap will all host it for you for a small fee.

What value is there in decentralized hosting across lots of commodity nodes of your private encrypted data? As opposed to "centralized" hosting with a few different providers.

<comment><USER7> Might be useful as a P2P backup? For example, If I want to backup 1GB, I have to donate 3GB to the network.

Considering the hardware cost, it's probably obvious why everyone just pays a 3rd party.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure that plugging a big USB stick into your router is cheaper than paying some cloud service to host your backups. The problem is that it's a lot more complicated to have distributed backups than just plugging storage into an internet-connected device in your home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just realized, I'm severely confused about what Filecoin _is_ , and possibly ICOs in general. I assumed "ICO" was analogous to IPO. If a token is essentially a bearer share that is coupled to the payment system. No reason you couldn't create the coin, run it privately until you get some revenue, and then offer it, as IPOs are usually done.

But when I search Filecoin's website for "revenue" and "profit", I only see references to the participants in the system, and not the token holders.

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Afilecoin.io+revenue](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Afilecoin.io+revenue)

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Afilecoin.io+profit](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Afilecoin.io+profit)

I did a quick search of the top 5 tokens on [https://coinmarketcap.com/tokens/](https://coinmarketcap.com/tokens/) and I'm not immediately finding any clear statements on how profit is made and distributed.

A question for people who are better informed, is there any kind of list or tracking on tokens payouts? Something like this ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.03779#](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.03779#) ), but for non-ponzis?

<comment><USER10> ICO can mean any number of things, but typically refer to a token that is tied to something that isn't its own currency. I'm assuming the Filecoin is redeemable for data storage on their network, but I'm not super familiar with that technology specifically. To give some other examples...

Tether is a token tied to fiat currency

NEO Gas is used for compute time in their smart contracts. NEO also has a currency that is used to mine gas. It can be a little confusing, but one of them is a token and one is a coin. This is different than Ethereum, where the currency is also the token used to pay for compute time.

I can dig deeper and give examples of how some of the other tokens work, but unfortunately I'm not super familiar with the other tokens in the top 5.

And, yes, ICOs can be tied to some number of shares in a company. In these cases, the token is redeemable for a share of the company.

<comment><USER9> Ok, so I think I can understand Tether. A token represents a share of a bank account balance. So the organization that controls Tether buys and sells the coins to keep the balances balanced. So the value of the token is predicated on the existence and continued support of the company. The on-blockchain nature is valued for transaction processing, and allowing it to be wired into other contracts (I presume), not for decentralization, because you have to trust the Tether organization, N=1. Otherwise Tether would just be a database and a website, backed up by some bank accounts, i.e. a bank.

Are you aware of any tokens that don't rely on some kind of managing external organization's voluntary continued support? Or at least anything run like an ETF, where someone can deliver a basket of assets and get them tokenized? Or the inverse?

<comment><USER10> NEO Gas is an example of this. Gas is a token that represents a fee that can be paid for executing the smart contract. Unlike Tether, when a smart contract is executed the Gas is consumed. NEO uses a consensus algorithm called proof of stake, so more NEO Gas is created using a coin (neo shares) which represent your stake in the consensus. In this case both the token (gas) and coin (share) have value, but the token can be redeemable for something -- smart contract execution.

Here's a list of fees associated with the token: [http://docs.neo.org/en- us/sc/systemfees.html](http://docs.neo.org/en-us/sc/systemfees.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The good torrent sites do have token systems, though, and manage their economies in pretty interesting ways, e.g. periods of "freeleech" to stimulate engagement; stipends for new users; bounties for desirable rare content; etc. And this goes back to warez FTP sites.

Maybe private trackers would be a good use case for blockchain storage tokens. Certainly the hypothetical seeding ratio I could have on a certain private tracker for art film would be actually valuable to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes, these are terrible interfaces for humans, but they are excellent interfaces _for machines_. Well, to be fair, they are tricky interfaces to program to, but the potential in terms of fast and efficient resource allocation in a world where more and more decisions are automated is huge...

</comment><comment><USER13> This is super real. I don't want added abstractions of value if they're not necessary.

To me, the brightest possible future of money is generosity combined with raw _dimensional analysis_ , as in _people having education about how to count physical resources_ and a willingness to work together and share in creating more abundant lives for themselves and others.

To the extent that tokens help do that, cool. But if they just become another tax/rent pyramid then to put it frankly, fuck that i don't want it.

<comment><USER14> Markets that decouple price from consumption are unsustainable. Consumers who consume less than the average have an encentive not to participate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought this was going to be an article about the resource overhead of bad serializers in network applications!

Disappointed!

</comment><comment><USER15> s/Vince Cerf/Vint Cerf</comment>


Persona-Driven Development: Meet Customers First, Write Unit Tests Later - <AUTHOR> http://www.krisjordan.com/2008/09/12/persona-driven-development-meet-customers-first-write-unit-tests-later/

<comment><USER2> Any suggestions for quick GUI-prototyping tools? Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like PowerPoint because you can simulate interactivity, it's easy, and it's flexible. A few links:

<http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/interactive> [http://www.krisjordan.com/2008/09/07/10-minute-mock- prototyp...](http://www.krisjordan.com/2008/09/07/10-minute-mock-prototyping- tips-for-powerpoint/) [http://www.istartedsomething.com/20071018/powerpoint- prototy...](http://www.istartedsomething.com/20071018/powerpoint-prototype- toolkit-01/)

There are tools specific to GUI-prototyping that have other upsides/downsides, a great list is here:

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GuiPrototypingTools>

<comment><USER2> Thanks for takng time to put in all the links, Kris.</comment></comment></comment>


I used airbnb to rent out my bedroom to go full-time on a startup - <AUTHOR> http://mhelpdesk.com/going-all-in-heres-how-i-rented-my-bedroom-to-join-mhelpdesk-full-time/

<comment> dj-wonk It looks like you intended to remove identifying information, but your images still show your friend's last name and email address. It is faint but readable.

</comment><comment><USER2> The founders of AirBnB rented out air beds to friends to support their startup work in SF, that's how they got the idea for AirBnB...

</comment><comment><USER3> The risk is worth it!</comment>