Disinvesting In the USA - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/11/25/De-investing-from-the-USA

<comment><USER2> There was a disturbing moment for me when a coworker just asked me out of the blue if I was for this Health Care Reform stuff. She had it all reduced to "you're taking money out of the pockets of some, and putting it towards the health care of others." Then when I tried to point out that 1 - that's how the current system works, and 2 - the disparity in prices shows that the free market just doesn't work for American Health Care (basic microeconomics) she just starts talking over me. Jingoism has replaced discourse. American Democracy no longer works. It's just a doppleganger of its former self.

<comment><USER3> Why would the law of economics work differently in medicine?

<comment><USER4> First of all, F=MA is a law. Economics is a guess.

Second of all, parent is not claiming that economists' predictions about the free market system do not apply to health care. He's saying that the field of microeconomics specifically predicts that in some scenarios, the free market system just doesn't work very well; that is, the market does not facilitate a scenario in which market participants efficiently distribute goods/services, and therefore do not benefit optimally from them. This is called market failure. Healthcare fits several of the criteria for a failing, nonefficient market. Namely:

\- Monopolistic competition.

\- Healthcare is a non-optional service.

\- Informational asymmetry - that is, doctors generally have more information about medicine, as well as about the specific medical state of their patient, than the patient does.

For more information, see:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microeconomics#Market_failure>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure>

[PDF] [http://www.stevereads.com/papers_to_read/uncertainty_and_the...](http://www.stevereads.com/papers_to_read/uncertainty_and_the_welfare_economics_of_medical_care.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Almost every single "market failure" in the economic literature is really an opportunity for a business plan.

All Arrow's paper shows is that certain naive structures for health insurance might not work out so well. But there are plenty of other structures that might work well. For example, here is the design for a better type of healthcare company:

\- The company by contract defines that 80% of all premiums must be applied to reimbursement, the other 20% of revenue pays for administration, marketing, and profits.

\- As a result, the company cannot profit by denying care. If they deny care, that money must be spent on another patient.

\- Since the money must be spent by contract, the company will be incentivized to spend the money in the way that maximizes the total health of the pool, so that they can attract more customers. The incentives of the insurance company and the patients are actually aligned.

Unfortunately, in my state, and in most states, the above structure for a healthcare company is illegal. Regulations prevent it. So I hardly see healthcare as an example of "market failure" when regulations prevent the types of business plans that would actually work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This decision may be a little short-sighted. I have seen no proof that our political system ever worked any better in the past. During the Cold War, America constantly elected those perceived "less Communist", and invaded countries deemed as communist without much evidence [1], with political discourse almost completely unrelated to reality, and things turned out just fine (more or less).

The point about customer confidence stands, however.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#History_in...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#History_in_Central_America)

</comment><comment><USER7> Regarding US healthcare:

The American system is broken and corrupt.

Broken because it denies healthcare to millions who need it or financially bankrupts others. Healthcare is a basic human right - what exactly is the problem with having everyone pay a healthcare levy so that universal care can be provided? I live in Australia and my medicare contribution is ~$300 per YEAR. I have NEVER paid for a single doctor, or hospital visit in my life - the concept is utterly foreign to me.

Corrupt because from what I understand big pharma has lawmakers either in their pockets or by the balls - not sure which.

I hate the 'why should I pay for other people's health cover' line - it's something you only ever hear healthy people say.

<comment><USER7> Am I getting down voted by Americans who don't like having their system criticised or because people disagree with me?

<comment><USER8> Beats me, but if you want criticism I'll give it a shot.

 _Healthcare is a basic human right_

I'm unaware of any right that involves making other people take care of me by producing medicines, providing services, food, housing me, and tending to my disabilities.

You can certainly argue that a lack of healthcare is a moral problem that good people solve so that all folks have as much healthcare as is feasible, but to say it is a right is to start trashing what real rights are, and healthcare, for all it's importance, is nowhere near being as important as, say, free political speech. This is a critically important thing to understand.

So I agree that morally something must be done, but I felt you went way over the top with the language.

<comment><USER7> "and healthcare, for all it's importance, is nowhere near being as important as, say, free political speech."

I assume from this statement that you are either a) healthy and/or b) fully capable of paying for all you and your families medical needs - both now and in the future.

"I'm unaware of any right that involves making other people take care of me by producing medicines, providing services, food, housing me, and tending to my disabilities."

Australian doctors are highly paid. Their salaries are paid by every Australian tax payer whether healthy or sick. By sharing the burden all of society benefits.

You would be much more inclined to agree that healthcare is a basic human right if you were both sick and unable to afford treatment.

The standard of living in Australia is as good or better than in the US. My medical costs are $0. Regardless of whether I am visiting the doctor for a flu shot or having life saving heart surgery.

Better systems are possible.

<comment><USER9> A basic human right is not the same thing as a shared moral obligation. The language of "rights" is often reserved for "categorically permitted acts", such as the right to think and speak as you wish.

A lot of people are resistant to using the language of "rights" in the context of "complicated systems that impose duties and burdens on the people who implement them". Even assuming that it is the duty and obligation of a moral, prosperous society to provide for the health of its members, many people would _still_ not term that a right.

<comment><USER7> Please review your understanding of a human right.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, proclaimed that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one's family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care."

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a 'Second Bill of Rights' for Americans, declaring 'freedom from want' to be one of four essential liberties necessary for human security. Roosevelt's definition of freedom included "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." <http://www.nhchc.org/Advocacy/RighttoHealthinAmerica.pdf>

This is also a good read: [http://civilliberty.about.com/od/equalrights/f/Health- Care-H...](http://civilliberty.about.com/od/equalrights/f/Health-Care-Human- Right.htm)

Note that there is no mention of adequate care only for those that can afford it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Researchers create artificial jellyfish from silicone and a rat's heart - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/22/artificial-jellyfish-silicone/ <comment><USER2> Discussion of link from original source without blogspam currently on front page:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4278142></comment>


Ask HN: Why does hacker news send reset passwords in plain text? - <AUTHOR>

=\ <comment><USER2> What's the alternative? Password resets are for when you've forgotten everything, so there's nothing that could be used to encrypt them. And email is the only contact mechanism that works on everyone.

(FWIW I avoid the risk by not giving HN an email address)

<comment><USER3> The alternative is to send a single use link that points to a form to set your password.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep he's right</comment></comment></comment>


Minimum-proposal-stage: a feature proposal for NPM - <AUTHOR> http://sequoia.makes.software/what-is-javascript-part-2-solutions/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the intro post for context: [http://sequoia.makes.software/what-is- javascript-part-1-the-...](http://sequoia.makes.software/what-is-javascript- part-1-the-problem/) . I linked to the "solutions" one because I'm particularly interested in thoughts on my suggestions.</comment>


Coinbase: Responding to Firefox 0-days in the wild - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coinbase.com/responding-to-firefox-0-days-in-the-wild-d9c85a57f15b <comment><USER3> This was the original article that talked about this attempt: [https://robertheaton.com/2019/06/24/i-was-7-words-away- from-...](https://robertheaton.com/2019/06/24/i-was-7-words-away-from-being- spear-phished/)

HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20283922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20283922)

</comment><comment><USER4> Coinbase should be hiring pentesters and giving them employee level access - even access to commit and deploy code.

Any insider shouldn't be able to steal more than the hot wallet, and even that should be hard.

I actually _wouldn 't_ put much effort into border security. At coinbases level of risk, evildoers will have no qualms bribing an employee to install a backdoor in their machine.

<comment><USER5> The trouble is finding someone to bribe who won't suddenly start buying new things.

<comment><USER6> To follow through on that though, what makes you think that would be anything noticeable? Suddenly a coinbase employee buys a cool car or other new toy... So what? Nobody would think that was exceptional.

<comment><USER5> I think this is why investigations require low levels of evidence to start, but high levels of evidence to end.

Just because it isn't exceptional doesn't mean that it isn't worth looking into. People who are greedy are impulsive and are unlikely to hide an inflow of cash.

<comment><USER7> Theft isn't restricted to impulsive people though. It's mostly restricted to people who think they'll get away with it. Clever and cautious people may actually be able to.

<comment><USER5> Uh.

Yes.

But things don't disappear do they?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > CVE-2019–11707 was simultaneously discovered by Samuel Groß of Google's > Project Zero and the attacker.

At least another time in the last week I read on other threads on HN or related links that vulnerability were found almost the same time by independent people.

Here we have a researcher from Google's Project Zero and the attacker.

How do you explain these coincidences?

What is the chance that some prominent researchers being targeted and their systems are actually exploited?

<comment><USER9> This is not an uncommon phenomenon and not specific to vuln research. It happens all the time in mathematics, the sciences... [0]

Far more likely: there is a related cause that made two people think to try the same thing at approximately the same time. Someone publishes a new JIT type confusion bug, someone realizes "oh man it never occurred to me that X could trigger bug type Y", they start digging, and...

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the comment. I think where I read of the other synchronous discovery was hinting to what you wrote but I deliberately wanted to hear about the probability of researchers being compromised.

Maybe this is not the case but if somebody has powerful means, knowledge on how do successful targeted attacks, and access to the right 0 days, it would make sense that can use their resources to find other 0 days in this way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >We collected IOCs from the host in question and started hunting broadly in our network. We did not see any of the IOCs anywhere else in our environment, and blacklisted all the IOCs that we had at that time.

Can someone explain what they mean by IOCs?

<comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indicator_of_compromise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indicator_of_compromise)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Remember, not your keys, not your bitcoin. Stay off coinbase.

<comment><USER13> > _A criminal gang operating in India kidnapped and tortured cryptocurrency > traders in recent weeks before demanding 80 bitcoins as ransom, police say. > Three men had been held captive for 15 days inside a high-rise building and > were beaten or tortured... Not even their family members were aware of the > abduction. The victims had lost all hope because they had no access to > anyone_

[https://www.newsweek.com/cryptocurrency-traders-abducted- tor...](https://www.newsweek.com/cryptocurrency-traders-abducted-tortured- india-criminal-gang-arrested-bitcoin-ransom-1449274)

<comment><USER14> Im confused why this is a response to the parent.

<comment><USER15> It's the same argument as this xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)

Though granted it confuses keys for passwords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find this info is interesting

> The attackers went through a qualification process and multiple rounds of > emails with potential victims, making sure they were high-payoff targets > before they directed victims to the page containing the exploit payload.

It's a well-prepared plan combining social engineering and technical exploits

</comment><comment><USER17> This point to an actual use of the cryptocurrency - exploiting a 0 day against someone who might have a crypto wallet means you can actually directly make money off exploits. Prior to crypto, having a 0 day wasn't equal with ability to make blackhat money with it...

<comment><USER18> > This point to an actual use of the cryptocurrency - exploiting a 0 day > against someone who might have a crypto wallet means you can actually > directly make money off exploits. Prior to crypto, having a 0 day wasn't > equal with ability to make blackhat money with it...

Why would that be the case when it is not illegal to sell exploits?

<comment><USER19> Selling exploits requires credibility, escrow, and deep contacts. Selling bitcoin is a lot easier.

<comment><USER18> Ah so you mean leveraging the exploit for financial gain by using it (ransomware) versus selling. That makes a ton of sense!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting to me that the attackers were well equipped in their phish and 0days, but then opted to drop fairly detectable RATs.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, they could have moved processes before execing the shell. Detecting "Firefox + Shell" is quite easy and standard, even in existing SIEMs.

Detecting "arbitrary program + shell" is at least moderately more difficult.

It's the attacker's dilemma though. They only need to trip one alarm to trigger IR.

<comment><USER13> The biggest fail here was that 32 bit program warning, which probably alerted the employee.

Notice that they didn't actually have an alert for Firefox+Shell, they detected that later by inspecting the audit logs.

<comment><USER21> > We detected the attacker at this stage, based on a number of behaviors (e.g. > Firefox shouldn't spawn a shell).

They explicitly state it was one of the behaviors they detected as suspicious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is among the critical differences between MtGox and Coinbase.

<comment><USER23> "We're not run by idiots"?

<comment><USER24> That doesn't explain listing Bitcoin Cash (Bcash) - an altcoin that shares its mining algorithm with Bitcoin but only has a very small amount of hash rate backing it. Any small Bitcoin miner can decide at any moment to switch to mining Bitcoin Cash and cause block reorgs or mine blocks with no transactions at all.

A similar event actually happened with another asset they offer - <USER2> Classic.

[https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-classic-51-attack- th...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-classic-51-attack-the-reality- of-proof-of-work)

<comment><USER25> Much of this is because of forks - since they offered Bitcoin before the BCH fork (and presumably ETH before the ETC fork), all of their customers who owned one of these before the fork also own the new currency. So they have to support custody for the currencies anyway (unless they want to deal with angry customers saying "What happened to my BCH! Rightfully I own it"), and if they don't support trading they'll get angry customers that say "Why can't I sell my BCH?!?". (This is aggravated by potentially needing to send that BCH off to another exchange, potentially not in the U.S, with worse regulatory compliance, in order to sell.) So most of the work needed to support it has to be done anyway to remain in legal compliance, and it's a small amount of additional work for a large benefit to support trading.

<comment><USER24> That doesn't explain the favoritism for BCH over the multitude of other forks (some worth $50-$100 per token) though. Why no Bitcoin Gold listing?

<comment><USER25> Sure enough, there are angry customers accusing Coinbase of stealing their Bitcoin Gold:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7jtlgz/coinbase_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7jtlgz/coinbase_stole_my_bitcoin_gold/)

IIRC BCH and ETC forked before BTG. They probably did two of them and then asked themselves "Why are we doing this again?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does it a help in this case if one runs the browser in a sandbox? E.g. in docker?

They can then break out from the browser, but only get to docker with that exploit, and it's unlikely they have a docker exploit too at hand, is it?

<comment><USER27> _They can then break out from the browser, but only get to docker with that exploit, and it 's unlikely they have a docker exploit too at hand, is it?_

If you are running Firefox on X11 (which most Linux users probably still do), you do not need to escape Docker. You can make screenshot, capture keystrokes, and send keystrokes, all through the X11 socket.

(Furthermore, you do not need a Docker exploit, a Linux kernel exploit can be enough to break out of a container. This is one of the reasons for e.g. gVisor to implement syscalls in userland and in a safer language.)

Using VMs as e.g. Qubes OS does is probably a bit safer than a Docker container.

<comment><USER28> > If you are running Firefox on X11 (which most Linux users probably still > do), you do not need to escape Docker. You can make screenshot, capture > keystrokes, and send keystrokes, all through the X11 socket.

Also, this is why Wayland is much more restrictive about these types of operations. People love to complain that "I could do _thing_ with X without special privileges" but the world has moved on since X was designed and it absolutely has not kept up.

<comment><USER29> People are totally right to complain about __basic __features being left out, not not having a standard secured low-overhead video recording and screenshotting is simply stupid and harmful for Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > exploit code was delivered from a separate domain, analyticsfit[.]com

They paid some registrar for the domain. Can police request payment details? Can someone buy domain on stolen credit card?

</comment><comment><USER31> Those attacks would not work if they did not enable JavaScript on every website by default.

<comment><USER32> Those attacks would not work if everyone stopped using computers.

<comment><USER33> its almost like the NSA designed all programming languages to insure that it would be impossible to make a perfect program

<comment><USER34> I find the explanation of "to err is human" far more likely.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chinese Internet titan, Tencent, announces big plans for VR - <AUTHOR> http://uploadvr.com/chinese-internet-giant-tencent-reveals-vr-project/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty big for the VR industry. Both Tencent and Facebook are making bets, it's an exciting time to be alive.</comment>


Why I'm Leaving Google After Only 9 Months - <AUTHOR> http://troysultan.com/post/92475325267/why-im-leaving-google-after-only-9-months

<comment><USER2> Discussion of the same post here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8130529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8130529)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be interested in knowing how you got a job at Google as a pre-cursor.</comment>


Ask HN: What changes to net infrastructure are needed so no gov can control it? - <AUTHOR>

This question relates to SOPA, both in terms of enforcing it through DNS filtering, but also any other way they might choose to try to enforce it. But it's intent is towards political-neutrality of the internet.
I heard from a Herman Chinery-Hesse talk, that African payment transaction systems (used by services like M-Pesa) have redundancy in various countries, so political forces in specific governments can't shut them down completely. It seems that SOPA exploits a weakness of the internet, that ICANN is US-based. How could the pan-African approach be applied into the current DNS system and other systems that SOPA might exploit?
For example, to counteract SOPAs potential attempt to control DNS, what would be needed in addition to a hot backup of ICANN's database in Sweden and maybe a few other countries? The OSI-model-friendly way would be to get support of international ISPS to configure different upstream DNS servers, in those downstream from ICANN "fail" to provide the requested record. But could breaking the OSI help? In-build browser support for "backup" DNS servers? Opt-in by installing an anti-SOPA DNS browser plugins?
I'm hoping the question is read as broader than just this example though. What are the weaknesses in general that should be addressed? <comment><USER2> Let me add: Van Jacobson, "A New Way to look at Networking"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqGEMQveoqg></comment>


Is Your Car Too Small? Lyft Bans Subcompact Cars - <AUTHOR> https://therideshareguy.com/lyft-bans-subcompact-cars/ <comment><USER2> Oh thank god. My worst Lyft ride was when 3 of us were heading to an airport in a shared ride, and there was zero trunk space. So all of us sat with our luggage on our laps, bumping our heads, for the 40 minutes to the airport.

</comment><comment><USER3> To be honest, I thought this already happened. Who wants to ride in a tiny cramped backseat?</comment>


Ask HN: Hardware start-ups on HN? - <AUTHOR>

The hardware start-ups that come to mind include both of Musk's companies, the disastrously launched sleep mate product last year, and possibly Square's payment acceptance swiper. I'm drawing a blank otherwise.<p>Anyone working on shipping physical products? We're personally doing RFID tech for jewelry companies. <comment><USER2> There's a lot of hardware startups you don't hear about. HN has its roots in web apps, so inevitably you hear a lot about web apps on HN. I think if you look in a particular niche you'll find there's a lot of fairly young companies building interesting hardware in a whole range of fields. Kickstarter's awash with hardware funding drives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am looking to do a hardware startup right now. But I do software stuff so mainly just meeting people that may be interested in the idea and then hopefully soon put together a prototype!

</comment><comment><USER4> cm where do I look for a dslr firmware engineer? I want to build an RFID reader for cameras . . .</comment>


A Day in the Life of David Orson, Solution Architect - <AUTHOR> http://www.peakhosting.com/2014/07/a-day-in-the-life-of-david-orson-solution-architect/

<comment><USER2> I really liked the profile article, and I think it's a great idea to showcase the people you have working for you! But as an Architect myself, I tend to object to the misuse of the title for pre-sales positions. It's just a pet peeve.

Good luck to David and to Peak Hosting!</comment>


OpenIDAvatar - Link your OpenID to an email used on gravatar - <AUTHOR> http://paulisageek.com/openidavatar/

<comment><USER2> Is there not a way OpenID providers can provide avatars directly?

<comment><USER3> well Gravatar is a fairly established service, it makes some sense to make use of it (because a lot of people could well have a gravatar anyway :))

<comment><USER2> On the other hand, it strikes me as odd, when using a decentralised method of identifying myself, to use a centralised means of providing my avatar. Particularly when that centralised means depends on _2_ third-party sites (Gravatar and OpenIDAvatar) being up.

<comment><USER3> true. I know there was a proposal at one point to set an avatar standard within the OpenID protocol. But I think it fizzled out.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tilt-shift minecraft shader (video) - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/cA_llLh7tE0

<comment><USER2> This is nice and all, but does anyone really want an ingame experience where only a tiny portion of the centre of the screen is in focus?

The nicer parts of shading are from the mods that he is using (in modified form), [http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/120261-125-glsl- shaders-...](http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/120261-125-glsl-shaders-dof- bump-mapping-waving-wheat-dynamic-shadows-and-more/) and [http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/940974-125sonic- ethers-u...](http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/940974-125sonic-ethers- unbelievable-shaders-glsl-shaders-dynamic-shadows-more/)

<comment><USER3> What if it boosted your frame rate and saved your battery?[1]

The blurry areas could be rendered at lower resolution then blurred to the final screen. I read an article where a 2D side scroller used this technique to good effect on its frame rates.

3D would require a serious mathematician to make the various edges match well enough to not be offensive.

EOM

[1] A Macbook Air that happily runs 6 hours on battery will run about 90 minutes playing minecraft.

<comment><USER4> This looks far more computationally expensive than without shaders.

That side scroller benefited because it could just draw the background/foreground sprites at a lower resolution before blurring. You wouldn't be able to get that luxury easily with a 3D game.

<comment><USER3> I can't speak for all games, but I find my fragment shaders dominate. That is compute power related directly to the number of pixels rather than polygons.

If I can render objects in the distance at 1/3 the spatial resolution, that is 1/9th the fragment shading, times a much reduced texture bandwidth since I'll be using a lower resolution mipmap.

I'll still have to composite it back in to the full resolution frame, but if that operation is faster than my fragment computations it would win.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think a pretty great sandbox game could be made out of this effect alone.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me, or does the video jerk every second?

This one does the same: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQbUyO9goxM&feature=relmf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQbUyO9goxM&feature=relmfu)

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER8> Very nice! I doubt my old MacBook pro can tolerate much more in minecraft, sad to say.</comment>


Record-breaking hybrid drone stays aloft for over four hours - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/quaternium-record-endurance-drone-flight/52758/ <comment><USER2> The usable energy density of fossil fuel is hard to beat, especially in a weight-constrained application like a drone. I'm surprised more of these haven't hit the market yet. The refueling advantage is substantial in a fleet application, too.

<comment><USER3> Weight-constrained and energy-hungry. Fixed wing drones can stay up for much longer.

<comment><USER4> Have both, a quadplane.. (or triplane in the below case).

VTOL (Vertical Take Off & Landing) plus the economy of fixed wing flight. In the case below, flown automatically by ArduPilot. [https://youtu.be/hDG- KlYyYDU?t=65](https://youtu.be/hDG-KlYyYDU?t=65)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something that has been on my mind for a while is how much efficiency is needed (and how far from that are we) to have a drone hold itself aloft on it's own solar power.

It's probably a bit tricky to get data on solar panel efficiency by weight.

<comment><USER6> You can have an easier time if the solar panels are mounted on the bottom of the drone, and you shine a large laser at them. Disclaimer: I am involved with a company that does it this way.

Nasa has built[0] a drone awhile back that flies on solar power, though it was limited to flights during daylight hours as not enough mass was available for enough batteries to last the night.

[0]: [https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history/pastprojects/Era...](https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history/pastprojects/Erast/centurion2.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is something I've wondered about for a long time. Good to see it happen :)

Could it go even longer if the motors burned the fuel directly?

Could fuel motor speeds be controlled with enough bandwidth to remain stable like electric ones?

<comment><USER8> Four separate gasoline engines would be very heavy and a single engine with distribution driveshafts would be mechanically complicated. For fuel-powered rotary wings the speed cannot be varied fast enough to maintain control, so you'd use a collective pitch control on the rotor blades to achieve stable flight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a super weird camera angle. I wonder if it's in ground effect?

</comment><comment><USER10> Can we stop talking about quadcopters as if they're the only kind of drone on the planet? There are other kinds of drones with far better endurance, e.g. Predator drones which can stay in the air for 24 hours.</comment>


The FCC's next CTO is a net neutrality expert - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/28/the-fccs-next-cto-is-a-net-neutrality-expert/

<comment><USER2> His publications on net neutrality: [http://www.ics.uci.edu/~sjordan/research/net%20neutrality.ht...](http://www.ics.uci.edu/~sjordan/research/net%20neutrality.html). I'm not sure what it means to be a "net neutrality expert." As far as I can tell, it's mostly an ideological viewpoint. Jordan uses the phrase "philosophy of Internet architecture." I'd argue that the internet is just a set of technologies and doesn't come bundled with any particular philosophical viewpoint.

<comment><USER3> There are some influential developers of such technology that would disagree with you on that. Tim Berners-Lee for example has stated that:

"The web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect — to help people work together — and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner." [1]

Certainly in the United States it could be useful to have a "philosophy of Internet architecture", mostly because of the market failure in ISPs for the last decade or so.

1\. [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tim_Berners- Lee#Quotes](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee#Quotes)</comment></comment>


"Hello Paul Graham" - Y Combinator hopeful buys Google ads targeting pg - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/VKcnf.png

<comment><USER2> I probably shouldn't respond or it would set a bad precedent, and HN would be deluged with more of these.

I would say generally though: if you're thinking of applying to YC, just apply. The questions on the application form are ones most startups should answer anyway. And if you're not sure what your chances are, the easiest way to find out is to apply.

<comment><USER3> I recently had a thought on how Viaweb's YC application will look like. It will be awesome if you fill it out. Will give us a bit more insight in how you think and look at an application.

<comment><USER4> This is sort of what you're looking for: <http://www.paulgraham.com/vwplan.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google Ad links to this blog post [http://flyairpair.tumblr.com/?gclid=CKGhgpPyvqoCFQ7MKgodFnjA...](http://flyairpair.tumblr.com/?gclid=CKGhgpPyvqoCFQ7MKgodFnjA6Q)</comment>


Mobile Carrier To Sell Service for $19/mo; Android Handsets For $99 Until Nov 27 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/07/disruptive-mobile-carrier-republic-wireless-to-sell-handsets-for-99-until-november-27/ <comment><USER2> As @jkincaid points out, this is a Bandwidth.com company.

Bandwidth.com has built up a whole country-wide internet backbone system of their own to carry VOIP traffic (they carry Google Voice, for example), with lots of connectivity to the local area terminal points (I forget the jargon for that).

We're really happy with Phonebooth.com (another Bandwidth initiative), who provide unlimited VOIP service (with a full virtual business PBX) to North America at $20/user/month. (And who apparently don't charge for calls to Europe (at least Ireland), as I found out recently.) It's perfect for our little 4-man distributed company; we each have a VOIP phone on our desks and can pretend we're all in the same office with extensions, etc.

Bandwidth.com seems like a company to watch...

</comment><comment><USER3> RepublicWireless.com just went live with all the details. Here's the catch (they're quite transparent about it):

The phone monitors how much data you're sending over Wifi vs cellular, and if you're using a disproportionate amount of cell data compared to the rest of the community, they can boot you.

"The best way to know how you're doing is by checking out your Cellular Usage Index (CUI). If it's too high, we'll let you know and give you tips to bring it down. You have plenty of time. But meanwhile, you still pay a flat fee of $19/month no matter what."

<comment><USER4> > if you're using a disproportionate amount of cell data compared to the rest > of the community, they can boot you.

Sounds like a simple prisoner's dilemma, with the "selfish" incentive driving people to lower the total consumption. Of course, the prisoner's dilemma only has the optima it does because of a lack of shared information; people _can_ cooperate when they can strategize in some out-of-band way.

For this service, the "cooperation" strategy would entail everyone conspiring to drive the average _up_ , so that the service provides more to everyone without anyone in particular having a "disproportionate" usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> At $19/month for unlimited, they're probably operating at a loss unless they can build up a significant customer base.

I imagine we'll see an incentive program soon..."Refer 5 friends and this month's bill is free." If you refer the 5 friends you talk to most, the company will save much more than $19.

VoIP is cool, but traditional phone calls and text messages are not always ideal. I think innovation on the communication channels themselves would go a long way for this company. Think <http://voxer.com>

Facebook is in a particularly good position to pull this off correctly. They already have a "cool" factor, and if they could come up with a communication tool that people really like, so much that you're jealous your friend has it but you don't, the people will come. Blackberry pulled this off for years with BBM, but lost its "cool" somewhat recently.

<comment><USER6> > At $19/month for unlimited, they're probably operating at a loss unless they > can build up a significant customer base.

that's a pretty bold statement. Care to elaborate?

Seems pretty expensive when i pay exactly that to AT&T to have 6mbps at my home. we're talking about 1mbps maximum here right?

<comment><USER5> Unlimited Voice and SMS to other carriers is expensive. Look at Twilio's pricing or Skype's pricing, or any other voip provider. Text and calling to your own network is essentially free, but off network gets expensive. Granted, I don't know how big of a cut these voip providers take, but I can't imagine it's that high.

Put it together with usage data, you quickly get over $19: [http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s- teen-m...](http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-teen-mobile- report-calling-yesterday-texting-today-using-apps-tomorrow/)

Edit: Just want to point out, I'm not saying this is a bad bet to make. They can attract a ton of consumers with a super low cost, and if those consumers do most of their communication in-network, eventually they'll be in the green.

<comment><USER3> I don't know the financial breakdown, but it's worth noting that Bandwidth.com — the company behind Republic Wireless — actually runs the VoIP backbone that powers Twilio, Google Voice, and other services. So I'd imagine they get a better rate :)

<comment><USER5> Very interesting, I had no idea. A little more digging brings me here: <http://bandwidth.com/about/read/verizonAgreement.html>

"Bandwidth.com, Inc., a privately held telecommunications company in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, announced today that it has signed a commercial deal with the Verizon wireline companies under which the parties agree to terminate each other's VoIP traffic at a rate of $0.0007 per minute."

This is for landlines, but still a much lower number than I was expecting to see.

<comment><USER7> Remember, this is Verizon selling off bandwidth it does not need since it's unused. To V its like free money.

<comment><USER8> There's still a carrying cost to that bandwidth inventory, so it's not completely free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This isn't terribly amazing. I paid $130 for my Android phone, and pay $25/month through Virgin Mobile.

<comment><USER10> I have that too. The speed sucks dick but it's cheap.

Thoughts:

      1. I really hope it knows to just use cell while driving instead of trying to connect to random passing APs.
      2. Am I the only person in America constantly surrounded by secured/non-free Wifi?
      3. Why wouldn't I just pay less for my phone and $10 more a month for Virgin Mobile?

<comment><USER11> Virgin's coverage is ass.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. So imagine what this other company's coverage will be like - and they aren't owned by Sprint like Virgin Mobile US is. (incidentally, if you update your PRL on your Virgin phone to a Sprint list you get better service...)

<comment><USER12> How would I update my PRL? And what would I update it to? I had no idea that these caveats existed on Sprint's network, I had just (naviely?) assumed all Sprint-based service was "the same"

<comment><USER10> If you google usually you can find a guide for your phone on HTC or other developer/modder/hacker forums for smartphones. It involves getting codes specific to your phone and using some software and a USB data cable to upload new settings to the phone. It's similar to firmware flashing.

Oh yeah, and they really really don't like you to do it because you're basically using parts of the network they don't want you to use. So whatever you do, don't tell Sprint customer service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if they have any kind of soft/hard limits on how many minutes / how much data you can actually consume over the cellular network.

Theoretically, couldn't one could not join WiFi any networks and use Sprint most or all the time?

<comment><USER14> They'll probably try to make it so that WiFi must always be on. Then again, it'll have to be locked on the device, so it wouldn't be very hard to get pass it once the phone was rooted (the devices will run Android [according to the article]).

Then, they would probably check to see who was using the majority of minutes/data on Sprint, and then have a talk with them (or throttle their data).

I'm curious as to what they would do with people who sign up and don't live in cities. If you live in rural areas, it's doubtful you'll have WiFi the majority of places you go. They would probably end up losing money on rural subscribers, then try to make profits from urban subscribers.

There might be a problem with a strategy like that though, because it doesn't seem their profit margins would be too high. I'm not sure how much it costs them to buy data in bulk from Sprint, but doing unlimited data for $19 isn't going to result in amazing profit margins. I'm also assuming that they won't be buying voice minutes, because if these devices can use multiple networks, the only way to keep a single phone number would be using VoIP. Of course, there's no way they would be buying text messages, because text messages can easily be sent over e-mail.

<comment><USER11> > I'm curious as to what they would do with people who sign up and don't live > in cities.

I'm guessing they'll offer it in one or two cities, call it a revolution, fail to generate revenue and fade quietly into tax write-off oblivion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope this is just the beginning of a larger trend. I will check them out and I definitely wish them the best of luck. This is a market that desperately needs disruption.

Does anyone know of any comparable deals like this?

<comment><USER11> Well they're not really disrupting anything, they're reselling Sprint, so they're actually _helping_ Big Carrier.

<comment><USER16> Yea, they just tackled on Wi-Fi onto it. Thinking about it, I wonder if (maybe together with Tucows etc.) they could lobby the FCC and Congress to solve the problem, for example. Of course, it would not be that simple, but...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think I am going to get one just for the few trips I make to the USA every year (Canadian). I have an address in the USA so I doubt it would be a problem.

This could be just the thing I have been looking for to check my emails and servers (religiously) at a decent cost compared to hotel and internet cafe prices. Not to mention the added convenience value. Some places charge almost $19/day for short term access so paying $140/year would be a steal.

<comment><USER17> The idea I had originally went out the door when I read about their "Cellular Usage Index" aka "their solution to their freeloader problem".

Basically if you use more than "$19 worth" of cellular service per month... they boot you off of their networks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the future, and it is time that it happen. I was talking about this to a friend on the weekend - that cell phone companies are enjoying the last years of being able to confuse consumers to profit.

Deciding on a cell phone provider should be no different to internet providers - pay $20, $30 a month for a connection (unlimited) and that is that.

</comment><comment><USER19> Any idea how much bandwidth this sort of voip uses? I'm wondering if it'll affect PC online FPS gaming or netflix streaming.

<comment><USER20> From <http://republicwireless.com/how>:

      I have DSL at home.  Will it work on that or will I have to upgrade to
      something faster?

      You need about 80kbps both ways to hold a call. The more bandwidth the better
      for improved call quality. Don't forget that streaming video or downloading
      large files all use bandwidth, so your mileage may vary if you are trying to
      make or receive calls and watch Netflix at the same time.

Sounds like it's more likely that your gaming or Netflix would adversely affect the phone than the other way around, though a router with QoS should fix that easily enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> the monthly deal sounds great, but I'd like to know what phones we are allowed to use on the service. Is it going to be a low end barely useable phone or a nice smart phone?

</comment><comment><USER6> ha! an LG phone. no thanks.

still interested on the plan if they provide an android image I can use with their wifi network.

</comment><comment><USER11> That phone is the LG Optimus.</comment>


Improving network isolation in Mesos with IP per container – Mesosphere - <AUTHOR> https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/12/02/ip-per-container-mesos/ <comment><USER2> This will really make it a lot easier to move existing apps to a PaaS setup on Mesos. I'm excited that I won't need to do any more port re-mapping, and won't need any more complicated Service Discovery tools. Instead I'll just be able to address my containers using mesos-dns.

This is one of the biggest changes Google added to Kubernetes when moving from Borg, and it eliminates a lot of the complexity in Borg.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dumb question, but rather than needing extra software (overlay networks) to manage the ip addresses, why not assign 100 private ip addresses per host and have Mesos pick one of those ups to assign to each container on the host as needed.</comment>


Hardware Architectures for Deep Neural Networks [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.rle.mit.edu/eems/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ISCA-2017-Hardware-Architectures-for-DNN-Tutorial.pdf <comment><USER2> I've been wanting to know how electronics' power efficiency compares to biological neurons, and this paper gives a clue. The most efficient hardware it mentions is the GV100 "Tensor Core", at 400GFLOPS/W for FP16.

If a typical neuron requires 10^6 ATP per activation [1], and if it takes 30.5 kJ/mol to charge ATP [2], and if a typical neuron has 100 axons, each of which is contributing one FLOP, then I _think_ a human neuron is about _500 times_ as efficient as a GV100 [3], at 200,000 GFLOPS per watt.

[1] [https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185984-the-human- brains-...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185984-the-human-brains- remarkably-low-power-consumption-and-how-computers-might-mimic-its-efficiency)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate)

[3]

      Neuron:
      10E6 ATP = 1 activation = 100 FLOP
      30.5 kJ = 1 mole ATP = 6E23 ATP
      1 kJ = 0.28 Wh
      ...
      2E5 GFLOPS = 1 W

      GV100 "Tensor Core":
      4E2 GFLOPS = 1 W

<comment><USER3> Keep in mind the energy costs of the supporting hardware for that brain, though.

<comment><USER4> Computers have supporting hardware too - powerplants (plus related infrastructure) and cooling systems, at minimum.

<comment><USER5> Humans consume 0.7-1.3 kW per capita. A network of these chips scaled to human brain capacity would consume around 10 kW. It is really not a big difference. Our robot overlords are going to be quite efficient!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is also a paper from same authors with about the same content:

Efficient Processing of Deep Neural Networks: A Tutorial and Survey Vivienne Sze, Yu-Hsin Chen, Tien-Ju Yang, Joel Emer

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.09039](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.09039)

</comment><comment><USER7> link seems broken!

<comment><USER8> It's a 32MB PDF, as it's image heavy, and takes a while to download from their servers.</comment></comment>


How do you find the COBRA health care costs of current employer? - <AUTHOR>

Let's say you are an employee at Yahoo and have a great health care insurance plan, but you are afraid of having a COBRA qualified event (like many other employees have had recently) and want to know how much your COBRA health care insurance plan is.<p>How can you find this amount out?  A friend of mine at Yahoo tried to contact her insurance carrier and HR department anonymously, but they wouldn't tell her.  Is there a legal requirement that companies should be forced to disclose this info to current employees? <comment><USER2> You should worry more about what happens when cobra runs out..because If you or someone who is dependent on you has a history of -anything- the insurance company can ratchet it up to the maximum allowed by the insurance commission.

A few years back this meant ~2k/month for a family of 4. The only comfort is that they -have- to offer you something.

</comment><comment><USER3> They probably don't like to give out the rate since that's negotiated between Yahoo and its insurance carrier.

<comment><USER4> What would you do with the information if you knew the answer? COBRA will be higher than your current employer's plan because your payment now includes the portion that they contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Find an employee who has recently quit or been fired?

I have no better ideas. It's a very good question.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was on COBRA two years ago, and if I recall correctly I was paying $500-$600 per month for me and my wife. So it is definitely not cheap. Accenture had pretty good benefits but they weren't extravagant. Remember, there are time limits on COBRA, if you plan on quiting, you're only eligible for 18 months of COBRA coverage. If you are in good health, I'd recommend finding your own coverage.</comment>


Why doesn't OS X Lion have Siri? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Apple ships OSX on a pretty consistent schedule every 18 months to two years and I think they had their hands full with all the existing stuff slated for Lion and had also only recently acquired Siri. Engineering teams remain small and focused at Apple. I'm sure Siri or something like it will make it into the core OS at some point.</comment>


Self-taught bloke cracks crypto conundrum supposed uncrackable until 2034 (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/30/cryptography_conundrum_cracked/ <comment><USER2> >But he underestimated the progression of hardware, as the problem has been solved earlier than expected.

>He used a bog standard PC with an Intel Core i7-6700 processor

So it was mainly just raw hardware and patience rather than any novel math technique? The title is slightly misleading then.

<comment><USER3> But the bloke is self-taught. He's an autodidact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty neat. I wonder what's in the time capsule. Also good on him for keeping the program running for 3 years straight.</comment>


How Much Land Does a Man Need? (1886) - <AUTHOR> https://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2738/ <comment><USER2> This story was faithfully transposed to *bande dessinée" (European comics) by Martin Veyron in 2016. "Ce qu'il faut de terre à l'homme" won a prize at the Angoulême Festival, and I recommend it very much if you can read French. My only complaint with it is that the handful of Cyrillic texts in the drawings are not made of Russian words but simple transliterations of French words.

Among the short novels wrote by Tolstoi, my personal preference is for "Father Sergius". A young prince can't support any more the royal court, so he flees outside of his world, then struggles in trying to find meaning and peace in his life.

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy)

> Tolstoy also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic > philosophy of Henry George

> towards the end of his life, Tolstoy become more and more occupied with the > economic theory and social philosophy of Georgism.

> He spoke of great admiration of Henry George, stating once that "People do > not argue with the teaching of George; they simply do not know it. And it is > impossible to do otherwise with his teaching, for he who becomes acquainted > with it cannot but agree."

Land value tax explained in 10 minutes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD_dZvPwAj0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD_dZvPwAj0)

<comment><USER4> You know what _else_ is an interesting fringe idea that had some famous adherents?

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

...I have never really looked into it, but I happened on a paragraph that makes it sound like it might be an approach to dealing with the problems people complain about a lot these days:

"Douglas proposed to eliminate the gap between purchasing power and prices by increasing consumer purchasing power with credits which do not appear in prices in the form of a price rebate and a dividend. Formally called a "Compensated Price" and a "National (or Consumer) Dividend", a National Credit Office would be charged with the task of calculating the size of the rebate and dividend by determining a national balance sheet, and calculating aggregate production and consumption statistics."

"Based on his conclusion that the real cost of production is less than the financial cost of production, the Douglas price rebate (Compensated Price) is determined by the ratio of consumption to production. Since consumption over a period of time is typically less than production over the same period of time in any industrial society, the real cost of goods should be less than the financial cost.

For example, if the money cost of a good is $100, and the ratio of consumption to production is 3/4, then the real cost of the good is $100(3/4) = $75. As a result, if a consumer spent $100 for a good, the National Credit Authority would rebate the consumer $25. The good costs the consumer $75, the retailer receives $100, and the consumer receives the difference of $25 via new credits created by the National Credit Authority.

The National Dividend is justified by the displacement of labour in the productive process due to technological increases in productivity. As human labour is increasingly replaced by machines in the productive process, Douglas believed people should be free to consume while enjoying increasing amounts of leisure, and that the Dividend would provide this freedom."

<comment><USER3> This would be soaked up by rent, which is set by available income less essentials.

<comment><USER4> There are townhouses roughly five miles apart in the city where I live that differ by a factor of two in price. If what you say means anything, they should rent for the same amount...? It seems doubtful to me.

<comment><USER3> No. Location matters. 5 miles is a long way in any city. Identical apartments 5 miles apart will have different rents.

<comment><USER4> The major office complex in the middle of things is _almost_ ten minutes commute from the expensive townhouses and _just over_ ten minutes commute from the cheap ones. Even though it's right beside the expensive homes. So in this particular case, 5 miles is _not_ a long way.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that the difference was that the expensive ones were brand new and the cheap ones were 25 years old. But often people don't think of houses depreciating like cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This story has stuck with me for years. Any time I've over-promised what I could deliver or stand to miss a deadline or am otherwise stressed out by situations of my own creation it comes back to me.

This website often focuses on ambition and furiously chasing one's dreams, but it's nice to have reminders that in the end, it's the small comforts and relationships we've built that really matter.

<comment><USER6> What's fun enough, Tolstoy has another story, "What Men Live By", which was usually published alongside "How Much Land",

and says just the same things about comforts, relationships, and generally love, which really matter:

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6157/6157-h/6157-h.htm#link2...](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6157/6157-h/6157-h.htm#link2H_4_0001)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing this story! I just finished reading it and it's a good reminder that we live together and depend on each other's help and support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Absolute classic. Another Tolstoy short story I really love is the tale of "The Two Pilgrims". You read them once. And they stay with you your entire life ;)

[http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2891/](http://www.online- literature.com/tolstoy/2891/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Tolstoy was a Georgist, and this is basically a little Georgist short story.

[https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487337](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487337)

The basic point of Georgism is that landownership is the root of most of the economic evil in the world and land should all be expropriated and held in common. (but don't want to expropriate capital or do anything to it, unlike the Marxists: Marx called Georgism "Capitalism's last ditch")

So strangely enough, it's not about greed in general, it's about land specifically.

<comment><USER10> Interesting! I wonder though what is specific to land which is different from any other asset or capital in general according to Georgists?

<comment><USER9> Basically, the social value of land is 100% socially constructed, but under a system of landownership, it's 100% privately held and all the profit goes to private hands. There are multiple empty lots very close to downtown SF which are worth millions, tens of millions that the landlord didn't do jack shit to improve, that everyone else improved the value of, that the entire value of is the location. But when the landlord sells, only they get the value.

But it's easy as hell to tax land and impossible to avoid the tax (just show up with cops, what the hell are they going to do, move the land? - and if they don't pay, just sell the land to someone else, although usually the aim is to collect the tax when transactions happen) So tax it. 100%. Georgism's tax suggestions go: have that 100% land tax (not property tax), have no other taxes, that's it. Also tax networks which have an inherent monopoly effect, it was also suggested by Henry George.

Nothing to do with agrarian points of view, really. Georgism was created in SF, it was most popular in NYC, and it was talking about the problems of the first properly modern cities in America and Britain.

<comment><USER11> When you don't or can't own land you end up with favela-like developments. It's okay as a sort of transition from homelessness to home ownership but you don't want that to be the end stage for a city.

<comment><USER9> Land value tax isn't property tax. Despite my use of the word "expropriation", what George specifically suggested was that people would be able to own land, they just wouldn't benefit any from improvements in land value because of the land value tax. So you would have to improve property and do something with it to benefit from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gosh... I (re)read it this morning, and come across it to here. I developed an habit that I gift a book to a random person I meet on outside... at a coffee shop, or on a beach whatever. I usually choose a person that read a book and go like "hey, what are you reading?" and we talk about it... It's a great icebreaker. By the time, I happen to buy hundreds of books and decided to share them. What is the point collecting them and calling it a "library"? It eventually lead me to meet the people from all shades of life with the interesting stories.

<comment><USER13> Interesting practice. I like to read, around 2 books per month, and mostly random books (non fiction) that catch my interest. I have interests that are unrelated to one another, and due to this I find it difficult to just talk about a book to someone I know, and even more so with strangers.

<comment><USER14> 2 books per month, really?

What does your schedule looks like? I have a large catalog of books which Id love to go over, but it can be very hard for me to find the time to simply sit and read beyond sitting on a plane or a bus

<comment><USER15> Do you not have much free time after work? Or do you just feel like there are better things to occupy it, other than reading?

I always read after a work and manage more than 2 books a month but, then again, I don't think I've seen a movie or played a video game in at least half a year, so I'm sacrificing on that front.

<comment><USER16> I'd wager family responsibilities (young kids, sick family, partner who doesn't value reading alone for 1hr as much as you do, etc.)

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I'm lucky to have no kids and a bookworm partner so I don't get roped into playing with toys or watching reality TV. The other option in such cases would probably be their commute to work, if they have one. Audiobooks can be a real savior there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This story reminds me of playing the board game "Deep Sea Adventure" ( [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169654/deep-sea- adventur...](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169654/deep-sea-adventure) ) with some friends. In this game you try to get as much treasure as you can from the sea bottom floor. At the same time you share your oxygen supply with your competitors. We managed to run out of air three times in a row! The final round was particularly amusing: When the players noticed that (only) one player had a chance of making it back to the surface, they made sure to use up the shared oxygen supply since they were doomed anyway.

Fun game, give it a try. Also quite educational, just as this excellent short story.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm glad that Tolstoy found it's place on hacker news. His Christian anarhisam and nonviolence doctrine influence basically all civil right heroes in 20 century. But it is funny how Georgisam is selected. Just wonder could it be related with high property price in bay area.

</comment><comment><USER19> The story is reminiscent of the [http://enwp.org/The_Fisherman_and_His_Wife](http://enwp.org/The_Fisherman_and_His_Wife) archetype.

It teaches the concept of "good is good enough" and the consequences of greed.

<comment><USER20> Hah, I read that to my kids last night, and the article also reminded me of it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I believe James Joyce considered this the finest short story ever written.

</comment><comment><USER22> We had a translated and simplified version of this story for my Tamil class in elementary school - and distinctly remember this and a few others. So much so, that I googled a few years ago to realize that the original was from Tolstoy

</comment><comment><USER23> Russian: [https://rvb.ru/tolstoy/01text/vol_10/01text/0259.htm](https://rvb.ru/tolstoy/01text/vol_10/01text/0259.htm)

</comment><comment><USER24> A security warning for those who have an account on this site. Please do NOT set up an account or log in as the signup/login page lack SSL (https). All passwords will be sent in clear text.

</comment><comment><USER25> Curse you HN, here goes another unplanned multi-hour diversion.

<comment><USER26> The story is quite short. Easily completed in 10-15 minutes of focused reading.

<comment><USER27> If you really _think_ about the story, it can be a multi-hour diversion. (Or a multi-year diversion.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Archive link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200105211507/https://www.onlin...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200105211507/https://www.online- literature.com/tolstoy/2738/)

<comment><USER29> Mirror for ctrl+f

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Absolutely love this short story, it really gets under your skin.

In one sense, I'm pretty sure it's a riff on Jesus' parable of the rich fool (recounted in Luke 12:13-21). In both cases, the sudden & unexpected death of the main protagonist shocks you into thinking through their (and by extension your own) value system.

</comment><comment><USER31> In french (Le Moukik Pakhom):

[http://www.metafora.ch/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/Tolsto%C3%...](http://www.metafora.ch/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/Tolsto%C3%AFPakhom.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> The story of climate change from mid-20 century to present day, at a glance.

</comment><comment><USER32> What a coincidence. Yesterday I searched for short stories on the web, to read before bed and saw this one. Now in HN.

</comment><comment><USER33> \- how much is enough?

\- little bit more...

</comment><comment><USER34> Antony Beevor mentions this story his book about Stalingrad. It's in reference to Hitler's stategy on the Eastern front.</comment>


Wolfram, in a previous startup school talk (transcript) - <AUTHOR> http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/ycombinatorschool/

<comment><USER2> While I was lukewarm about the actual tones generated, the Wolfram Tones app actually has pretty high production values.

<http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/>

Try downloading one of the tones and clicking "not sure" for the cell phone model. You get a popup with pictures of every model. Clicking the model fills the form.

That must have been a fair bit of a pain to find or curate the data for so many different cell phones. Might be available online, but it's the kind of one off thing that could take you two solid days to get the list of manufacturers, get their full cellphone lists (not just current models!), scrape & organize all the images, and then add the form functionality.

Not bad at all. I wonder how many people are actually using it though.</comment>


Show HN: Lufo, Last Used First Out – jQuery plugin to improve long select menus - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/lufo-last-used-first-out-an-easy-way-to-drastically-improve-the-user-experience-of-long-select-56cd0ef1fcff#.ba7cyr2rq <comment><USER2> LUFO: is this some neologism for LRU? (Least-recently-used replacement policy: victims or removal from the cache are least-recently-used items).

</comment><comment><USER3> kind of similar purpose using contact-list-like ui [http://www.hyperdev.fr/projects/alphascrollselect/demo/selec...](http://www.hyperdev.fr/projects/alphascrollselect/demo/select- a-country/)</comment>


Airtel is sniffing and censoring CloudFlare's traffic in India - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@karthikb351/airtel-is-sniffing-and-censoring-cloudflares-traffic-in-india-and-they-don-t-even-know-it-90935f7f6d98#.fvd1m32xl <comment><AUTHOR> The Register's report on the same: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/14/cloudflare_investiga...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/14/cloudflare_investigating_mystery_interception_of_site_traffic_across_india/)</comment>


Funeral Industry Social Network (I'm Dying to Join) - <AUTHOR> http://cdsocial.com/

<comment><USER2> I like the line about "These are your future customers!"

Everyone dies eventually.</comment>


Is there any theme marketplace that doesn't suck? - <AUTHOR>

I hate how theme marketplaces treat their developers. Recently I submitted a template and it got rejected. May be it wasn't up to the standards but it was really disheartening to see how they communicated the rejection. This is what I got in my inbox:
----
Hello,
Thank you for submitting your item. Unfortunately, this submission has been rejected.
Your item must be improved in one or more of the following areas:
- Visual quality and appeal
- Technical quality
- Originality
For more information about quality standards, please refer to the item style guide: https://xyz.com/help/sellers/style-guide
Regards,
XYZ Support
https://XYZ.com/support
-----
A standard boilerplate message with vague reasons. Which one of the three reasons? Lacks technical quality? How? Invalid HTML? JavaScript errors? If the developer wants to improve his theme and resubmit it how will he know what changes to make? Theme developers work hard to develop themes and they deserve at least a proper feedback about what are the exact reasons their submission got rejected. Is it that hard or time consuming?
I tried contacting support and asked if they can tell the specific reasons. Got no response. This is what they call "support"?
Today I gave them feedback through their website and also mailed it to founder. Let's see if they care to respond this time.
I would like to ask HN if there is any theme marketplace that doesn't suck? What an independent theme developer should do to avoid such marketplaces? What are the options? <comment><AUTHOR> My email to founder :

I would like to suggest that you need to improve the quality of feedbacks you provide to theme developers when their submissions get rejected. Theme developers work hard to develop themes and they atleast deserve a proper feedback about what are the exact reasons their submission got rejected. This will help them make changes and improve the design if possible. I understand that to maintain the quality of themes in your marketplace you need to reject some themes but why not do it with a proper feedback? Is it that much time consuming?

At them moment they just get a standard reply that their item must be improved in one or more of the following areas:

\- Visual quality and appeal

\- Technical quality

\- Originality

This is a terrible form of communication and a terrible user experience for theme developers who provide all the themes you sell at your marketplace. I wish you take some time out and do something about it.

</comment><comment><USER2> Dude try CreativeMarket.com, great folks with great platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> In a lot of ways the reviewers at these sites are similar to call centre workers. They're expected to maintain quotas.

When you're trying to get through a large backlog reviews, that doesn't leave much room for tailoring responses to people.

I'm not justifying it. The process leaves a lot to be desired...I've seen quite a few things rejected that I would be happy purchasing.

Regarding improving your own work, perhaps you could ask someone else to review the theme before you submit it.

<comment><USER3> If you're going to do a few designs you could also just open a shopify store or something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> C'mon I submitted my first project. And got acceptted after first time, soo ... Probably your template actually sucks or it's just another same template like rest of them or you wasn't lucky at assigned reviewer for your template.

</comment><comment><USER5> What is this? Envato? I can't imagine that Envato would do this...

<comment><AUTHOR> Check the comments here : [http://notes.envato.com/authors/dealing-with- rejection-part-...](http://notes.envato.com/authors/dealing-with-rejection- part-2/)</comment></comment>


Node.js koa-mapper a better router that rewrite koa-router - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/d-band/koa-mapper <comment><AUTHOR> I rewrote koa-router and add some features:

* parameters validation

* parameters from path, header, query, cookie

* body parser

* request body validation

* coerce data types of parameters and body

* OpenAPI generation</comment>


Show HN: Look-alike – ad hoc visual regression testing in your browser - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/look-alike/ilgnnafljmfofogfllhejmihafdbalgc <comment><AUTHOR> Two days ago my team was doing a global change in our style guide and we needed a visual regression tool to help us avoid unexpected issues. Unfortunately, PhantomCSS setup is complicated and we quickly got frustrated. That's why I crated Look-alike. It's convenient for ad hoc usage. (Note that it's not meant for cases where frequent, repetitive and multi-page tests are needed!) Oh, and BTW - the whole thing is open source and available on github: [https://github.com/kdzwinel/Look-alike](https://github.com/kdzwinel/Look- alike)</comment>


Which one invented first: Kotlin or Swift? - <AUTHOR> There is a nice comparison of Kotlin and Swift here: https://ragunathjawahar.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/my-first-ios-app-while-learning-kotlin-for-android/. It is interesting fact that both have some kind of same and similar syntax. I am curious about their beginning. Was the project Kotlin first started or Project Swift? or Is this a situation of hen and egg? <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_%28programming_language%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_%28programming_language%29)

> Development on Swift began in 2010 by Chris Lattner, with the eventual > collaboration of many other programmers at Apple. Swift took language ideas > "from Objective-C, Rust, Haskell, Ruby, Python, C#, CLU, and far too many > others to list".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_%28programming_language...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_%28programming_language%29)

> In July 2011 JetBrains unveiled Project Kotlin, a new language for the JVM, > which had been under development for a year ... Influenced by Java, Scala, > Groovy, C#, Gosu

<comment><AUTHOR> So, Kotlin development started before Swift. yeah?!

<comment><USER2> Maybe. Or maybe not. The data I presented is insufficient.

Kotlin initial commit 8 Nov 2010 - [https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/commit/369b1974782b821e4...](https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/commit/369b1974782b821e44b7aa6cd68e2e41eb2ba036) . Note that this does not mean it's the first work done on the project, only the first commit.

[http://www.nondot.org/sabre/](http://www.nondot.org/sabre/) says "I started work on the Swift Programming Language (wikipedia) in July of 2010. I implemented much of the basic language structure, with only a few people knowing of its existence. A few other (amazing) people started contributing in earnest late in 2011, and it became a major focus for the Apple Developer Tools group in July 2013."

In any case, it's clear that neither was influenced by the other, at least during initial development.

<comment><USER2> And jtwebman at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10671532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10671532) points out that 'Swift's first commits were in Jul 17, 2010', with a link to [https://github.com/apple/swift/commits/master?page=821](https://github.com/apple/swift/commits/master?page=821) .</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Peter Thiel's Money Talks, in Contentious Ways. But What Does He Say? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/technology/peter-thiel-trump-facebook.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftechnology&action=click&contentCollection=technology&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16538753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16538753)</comment>


Ask HN: Improving how you convey thought? - <AUTHOR> In short, when speaking orally i tend to lack clarity of meaning. I pause to think of words (of which i seem to know little), i forget names of persons, places and things. In general i feel i suffer from memory issues. My ability to form words from thought, verbally, is severely lacking. I find this much less of a problem at the keyboard, as it seems to be a "real time" issue.
Now, i'm in my early 30s and this has been happening for many years. I don't think it is inherently anything wrong, nor is it bad enough to warrant a medical diagnosis. No one notices my problem as a problem.. it's just how i speak.
Yet the fact remains, i'd like to try and fix this.
For a little history (in case the context matters): I've always hated english. Grammar spelling were evil to me growing up, and while i wanted to read books, they put me to sleep so i could never get beyond a couple pages. As a result, i frequently google spellings of words i should know, or look up how to phrase something, etc. The little grammar and english i do know is from osmosis more than any concentrated education, and as such my education on the subject is woefully lacking.
So, might there be some classes to help people like me? Should i push through the sleep phase and try to read every night? Thoughts?
NOTE: I'm sure i could take some classes to improve my spelling, grammar, and general understanding of the english language - but that's not the core problem i'm trying to fix. If you think that will lead to a solution, great, but the core problem remains as wanting to speak with more clarity and ease.
Thank you.
(As an aside: How ironic it is that i am having trouble conveying my question.. haha) <comment><USER2> Try to write more! Do it creatively so it's something that you enjoy. Have your friends read what you write and provide feedback. Writing helps you formalize your ideas and allows you to see errors you make concretely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! Writing is not something i would have thought to do. Any tips on vocabulary? I assume reading, and i suspect my normal technical reading _(programming related books)_ is less helpful than reading for leisure.

<comment><USER3> Anecdotally, I think a lot of my vocabulary came from reading older novels. J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, etc.

Recently I've started reading modern scifi/mystery novels and found the vocabulary to be very simple (smooth? Like the text is lacking texture) by comparison.

If you can't get through novels without falling asleep, try audio books (preferably unabridged). Lots of classics on [https://librivox.org](https://librivox.org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is thought experienced by you? Do you think in words? In pictures? What is your internal landscape like?

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as i can tell _(on the spot, not a ton of introspection on the subject)_ :

When speaking verbally i don't mentally experience it. There is no thought, the words are just expressed. When i'm searching for words to expand on ideas i have already spoken, there is often.. just nothingness. Eventually i speak it, but there is nothing that triggers this.. the words just come to my mouth. As strange as that sounds.

When not speaking verbally, i think in internal monologue. No pictures, just a voice that seems to be soundless _(i can 't tell if it sounds like me, i mean)_.

When i am forming an idea, such as a data structure in code, there is no way i can describe how i experience that. If i'm searching for how to design it, sometimes i'll talk with myself (verbally) and figure it out, but if i'm not talking in myhead or verbally, then it's this.. ephemeral idea that slowly becomes actionable, but never visually/audibly clear.

This is actually quite the interesting question to try and answer. Thanks :)

 _edit_ : expanded on a couple things.

<comment><USER3> As I've become more involved in meetings at work, I've noticed a myself speaking like you describe. It's as though I've trained my hind brain on the topics being discussed and can just let it pattern match the conversation to generate and issue a response. Problem is I often don't even remember what I said, much less am able to build upon it when questioned.

The change has probably come about due to the pacing of conversation. I remember that before I'd build a statement in my head, test phrasing a couple different ways, check that it made sense in context, then say it. That's quite a bit slower, though, and often by then the discussion has mutated such that the constructed statement no longer fits.

On those rare occasions of deep, thoughtful conversation is when I notice the difference. Thoughtless speaking seems to be something I slip into, while thoughtful speaking is very deliberate - I have to consciously stop and force myself to actually focus on and consider the topic sometimes, especially if it's been a while.

Like maxhudson suggested, writing seems to me to most closely match the process of thoughtful speaking. Even if the first pass is on autopilot, you can go back and reevaluate, analyze what you wrote.</comment></comment></comment>


DNA study deepens mystery of lake full of skeletons - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/08/dna-study-deepens-mystery-lake-skeletons-roopkund/ <comment><AUTHOR> I can't work out when the party of Mediterranean people died, it says a thousand years after 10th century, so that means a few hundred years ago.

No mention is made of the Greek kingdom in Bactria that lasted until Two thousand years ago, but I imagine the genetics would have intermixed with neighbouring peoples within a few hundred years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco- Bactrian_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Bactrian_Kingdom)

<comment><USER2> No... the 10th century was 901-1000. A thousand years after means > 2000\. So it happened in the past 19 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Wikipedia article is far better, even though National Geographic has done all the work:

"Genome-wide DNA study of skeletons from Roopkund by Harney et al. 2018 revealed that the skeletons belonged to two distinct groups; one group is composed of individuals with broadly South-Asian related ancestry from 9th CE, and the second group is composed of individuals from 200 years ago with genetic affinity with east mediterraneans"

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

<comment><USER2> That doesn't change anything. The 10th century is still 1019 years before this year. Just like 20th century fox means 1901-2000. I get what you are trying to say, but language is used to convey ideas. If the words you use to convey your idea doesn't match up to what the rest of the world thinks, then it is you who is wrong not the rest of the world. To argue against it is to argue against modern conventions. Example: What year is it?

If you give any other answer than 2019 then you are wrong.

Same thing for... when was the 10th century?

Another great example is the imperial system. Just because the USA uses miles doesn't mean they are right when writing down their units in miles. Every true scientist knows it should be kilometers and makes fun of the individual who used miles. Why? Because the majority of Earth uses kilometers not miles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nature paper referred to in article:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11357-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11357-9)

</comment><comment><USER3> Now that, is odd. Any theory I come up with for it, sounds unlikely. The fact that there are more than one incidents involved makes it even odder.</comment>


Science vs Religion (humor) - <AUTHOR> http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa74/harrowlawl/sciencevsreligion.jpg <comment><USER2> Please don't post or upvote crap like this! Not only is it inane and pointless, it will attract the kind of people who like inane and pointless. Those new people will start posting and voting and pretty soon we'll have another Reddit on our hands.

And let's not get into a stupid science vs. religion discussion. I very much doubt anyone has anything interesting to say which we haven't all heard a million times (or thereabouts) before.

</comment><comment> mark-t Oh no, not again.

</comment><comment><USER3> -> reddit.com

<comment><USER4> Indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This cartoon is all wrong. Religion is cooler than science when dragons are involved.

</comment><comment><USER6> this is childish.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sick of science and religion being presented as a dichotomy. idiots should NOT get the same billing as science. Science is about how the world works. Religion is Harry Potter (children's fiction).

<comment><USER8> that's a bit reductionist. religion is also the collection of traditions, social organizations, and a good dose of how to tell right from wrong. now if you dislike the traditions, social organizations, and particular takes on right/wrong, thats one thing. to dismiss the entire institution of religion as merely being fantasy is as incorrect as saying that newtonian physics are an accurate and complete representation of reality.

<comment><USER7> nope. i'm done. rational people have been making allowances for religion for way too long. take your nonsense elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> intolerant atheists are just as bad as intolerant christians or muslims

<comment><USER3> is that a downmod because you don't want to make yourself face the truth?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Read Any YouTube Video – New YouTube Transcriber - <AUTHOR> https://ytscribe.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a new project I've been working on. I watch a lot of YouTube videos and I often don't have time go through entire interviews.

So I made this Django websites that grabs a YouTube's video automatic captions and compiles it into a readable format so anyone can read any video.

Then I built the chrome extension that adds a little "transcribe-me" button to every video.

Think this has potential?

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. Guess it would be cool if you could download it as a pdf if you could tell who was talking and read it for later. Or read on an ebook. Deffo with long Joe Rogan podcasts.

How do I follow you to see what else you work on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yea I want to add pdf, txt, srt download files. And I also use this for Joe Rogan!

You can follow me on Indiehackers, I'm posting updates there: [https://www.indiehackers.com/Sparky](https://www.indiehackers.com/Sparky)

Or twitter @blastlogos

I'm also working on some ios and android apps right now but this was a side project I've been developing to justify my YouTube consumption habits!

<comment><USER2> Haha, sounds good. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great - nice work! I also find that I would rather read than watch a video or listen to a podcast, I can read much faster than watch/listen. Clever use of the video captions as well.

How are you handling formatting and the punctuation?

Nice loading messages by the way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'm using some custom Regex and a python package called punctuator. It's not 100% perfect but it works better then you'd imagine.</comment></comment>


Customer Reviews "The Internet Bubble" (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Bubble-The-Anthony-Perkins/product-reviews/0066640008/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found the one and two star reviews especially interesting. I think a lot can be learned reading contemporary texts from the dot-com era.</comment>