How to turn into a tree after you die - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/how-to-turn-into-a-tree-after-you-die/ <comment><USER2> I immediately thought of the father trees from Ender's Game series when I saw this.

<comment><USER3> Same here. My immediate response to the headline was "design a metamorphosis virus like the Descolada."

<comment><USER4> What went through my head was "Step 1: Be a piggie."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As I understood it, the "ashes" you receive post-cremation are actually the ground remains of bones from all cremations that took place that day, and thus you can't actually guarantee that it's "you" in the urn (or the tree), it's actually just a large collection of the people cremated that day.

Apart from that, I love this idea. It actually throws up all sorts of strange meta-physical questions about the self and who we really are.

Also, for added creepiness, could you be turned into, say, an orange grove? If you were, would the people eating the fruit be somehow digesting ... you? Strange.

<comment><USER6> I'm probably being too prosaic, but do note that plants don't actually use any matter from the soil they grow on besides water plus some minerals and micronutrients. The carbon that constitutes most of the plant matter is literally taken out of thin air via photosynthesis. Also, most of the molecules that were a part of you a year ago are already a part of something or someone else.

<comment><USER7> Obligatory link to Feynman's explanation:

[http://youtu.be/N1pIYI5JQLE](http://youtu.be/N1pIYI5JQLE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cremation: Guaranteeing that your chances of reanimation are as near to zero as possible. Personally I'd go with cryonics, but thats after you move past the coping mechanisms.

<comment><USER9> Since you mentioned coping mechanisms, a genuine but slightly OT question:

I wonder what the grieving process like for the surviving friends and family of a deceased, cryopreserved person? Do they try to ignore the negative aspects of the death because of the possibility that the deceased will be brought back to life in the future? Or feel as sad as they would if cryonics had not been used, because revival is unlikely and/or even if it did occur would almost certainly happen in the far future? Or is there no difference.

I wonder because grief, while unpleasant, is important when dealing with the death of others. Failure to grieve can cause long-term psychological problems.

<comment><USER8> > Failure to grieve can cause long-term psychological problems.

Sure. But this presumes that one is a lesser evil.

I'd defer to you which is worse: The Void, or someone having mixed emotions for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This makes me smile. These days, when most of the news is about the latest gadget and tech stuff and connecting yourself to the cloud somehow, I am glad there are still people coming up with fresh ideas involving not much technology at all. Just seed and ashes in a paper cup. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER11> What if you plant the tree in your back yard, and it dies, or don't make it for what ever reason?

Would that not be distressing to the surviving family members even more and re-awaken the pain of loosing someone all over again?

<comment><USER12> Then you could cremate the tree and use it's ashes to grow another

<comment><USER13> The correct answer. Life is a continuous process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _> the tree seed is nourished by and absorbs the nutrients from the ashes of your body_

What's really left after the cremation anyway? Is there really anything left that we can call "nutrients"?

<comment><USER9> According to [1] its mainly pulverised bone, salts, and minerals. This appears to provide some nutrition for plants - in the UK peoiple are being urged not to scatter ashes in upland/moorland areas because the minerals are changing the local soil composition and plant ecology [2].

[1] [http://www.cremationsolutions.com/All-About-Cremation- Ashes-...](http://www.cremationsolutions.com/All-About-Cremation- Ashes-c170.html)

[2] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1508784/Cremation- ash...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1508784/Cremation-ashes-bring- barren-mountains-to-life.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have to agree that if every human became a tree after he dies we would reforestate the whole world in no time!

<comment><USER16> Hm. People actually die slowly. If you planted a tree every time someone was born, it would be far more effective!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Fountain

<comment><USER18> Totally! For those who missed it, in the movie there's a story about how a civilization used to bury their people and they'd plant a seed in the deceased's body/chest so it could grow from the inside and take the persons' soul, or whatever there was in it, to the sky, to ascend it. And that's somehow part of the plot of the movie too. Something like that, IIRC.

<comment><USER19> Reminds me of the Russian [1] who had a tree growing in his lung

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169861/Shocked- Russ...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169861/Shocked-Russian- surgeons-open-man-thought-tumour--FIR-TREE-inside-lung.html)

<comment><USER13> Sounds implausible. It is more probable that he inhaled it and didn't realize or is ashamed to admit it.

[http://journal.publications.chestnet.org/article.aspx?articl...](http://journal.publications.chestnet.org/article.aspx?articleID=1090121)

[http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2009/04/russian-man-did-not- as...](http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2009/04/russian-man-did-not-aspirate-fir- tree.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What if you become an apple tree and people eat the fruits?</comment>


Flame Malware Makers Send 'Suicide' Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18365844 <comment><USER2> As someone who doesn't keep up with the crypto/security communities, one thing that has surprised me is how the cutting-edge news on this Flame story has been coming from antivirus vendors like Kaspersky Lab and Symantec. General sentiment seems to be that AV vendors are low-tech operations that don't have the best people when it comes to security. Other comments even on this very thread reflect this sentiment "timaelliott: Symantec is just jealous these guys can remove viruses from a machine so damn efficiently." Do these guys deserve more respect than we give them?

<comment><USER3> Firstly, there is nothing at all special or interesting about how flame removes itself. It deletes a list of files that the author knows they created.

Secondly, you have to remember that these companies employ many free-thinking humans with varied jobs and abilities. Among those are some skilled analysts who simply take apart viruses for a paycheck. A lot of AV companies have at least a few people who are best of breed at this stuff. They post writeups and share the work of what is interesting. Marketing is generally not involved in the technical blog posts that you see.

<comment><USER4> > Firstly, there is nothing at all special or interesting about how flame > removes itself.

Actually I'd disagree. The interesting thing for me is that it overwrites memory locations to thwart memory forensics. This isn't a common thing at all, but is something that I covered in a talk at a DC4420 meeting a year or two ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Flame sounds awesome. I am always fascinated by clever bits of kit like this.

I read a piece about conficker a while ago. I thought it was super cool that it patched the security vulnerability on infected conputers to protect itself. Its just really clever. Now you have Flame which has done what it has done and is now trying to kill itself to make it look like it never existed.

Obviously though it is also deeply concerning. States are investing more and more into cyber warfare. If anything more money needs to be spent hardening computer networks and systems to protect from exactly these kind of threats.

<comment><USER6> Self-destruct codes and patching up the hole you came in through are both pretty par for the course when it comes to non-trivial malware.

<comment><USER7> It's par for the course, but it's still a spectacle to see a malware so big/important/advanced self-destruct in front of our eyes, in the news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The command located every Flame file sitting on a PC, removed it and then > overwrote memory locations with gibberish to thwart forensic examination.

I'd like to know how many writes it did since this would finally settle the issue of whether FBI / NSA can read erased data. If one write is good enough for them, you know they can't recover anything with one write either.

<comment><USER9> Researchers already have samples of Flame saved. Nobody needs to do forensic analysis to try and recover deleted files here.

In all likelihood, all the Flame authors are trying to do is prevent computer owners from casually detecting that they were infected, now that Flame is public knowledge.

<comment><USER10> Presumably it is purging machine specific (targeted) configuration, code updates, and spooled data too, i.e. not just the virus code.

Knowing specfically what the virus was looking for, which machines were infected, and what data was snarfed is of critical importance to the targets.

Purging makes the targets job of forensics much much harder.

Edit: flame code is not monolithic - forensics would be very interested in getting code for all modules: "Later, the operators can choose to upload further modules, which expand Flame's functionality. There are about 20 modules in total and the purpose of most of them is still being investigated." - [http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2012/05/28/flam...](http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2012/05/28/flame- israels-new-contribution-to-middle-east-cyberwar/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not sure I follow the logic of

"The design of this new variant required world-class cryptanalysis"

to

"The finding gives support to claims that Flame must have been built by a nation state rather than cybercriminals."

Doesn't that assume world-class cryptographers only work for governments? Are there are other reasons people are assuming this was state-sponsored?

<comment><USER12> It depends on what the malware is designed to do. Cui bono, as they say.

If the malware is designed to grab bank passwords or steal money, then you can assume there's a criminal enterprise behind it.

But if the malware is specifically targeting certain "problem" countries; and stealing documents and other things of non-monetary value, then it's very likely that there's a government behind it. Which criminal mastermind will say, "tomorrow, I'll steal Word documents of all Syrians" ? What will he do with them anyways? Given the abundance of low-hanging fruit, why would a criminal jump through all these hoops?

<comment><USER13> > What will he do with them anyways?

He'll sell them to a state actor. Even if something is non-monetary, if someone with money wants it, it can be monetized.

<comment><USER14> If you're gonna go to that amount of trouble then why not steal everything, including CC numbers and why not target everyone, not just specific states?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _Flame targeted countries such as Iran and Israel and sought to steal large > amounts of sensitive data._

I had heard that Flame targeted Iran, which was one of the reasons people suspected US and/or Israel. This says Israel was targeted. Am I misinterpreting something here? If other evidence supposedly points to a nation-state, what nation-state dislikes both Iran and Israel? Something's not adding up.

Edit: Thanks. "Spy on friends" or "Spy on yourself to deflect attention" seem as viable as any other theories out there, if not more.

<comment><USER16> "Liking" a nation does not preclude other nations from spying on them. I'm sure the US and Israel spy on each other.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure the US spies on pretty much everyone, friend or foe... and it's probably the same the other way round too!

<comment><USER17> Sure. It's also a great way to get around domestic wiretapping laws. Assuming you can cooperate well enough with a foreign power, you can have a "I'll show you yours if you show me mine." sort of situation.

<comment><USER18> The US has some very close allies for sharing intel, and it'd be a massive incident if it got out that such allied countries were spying on each other. It happens to some degree, but if stuff gets out, the White House & State can make heads roll, so you'd only see pretty routine spycraft occur between allies (counter-intel, rumor mill, feelers).

<comment><USER14> The trick is not to get caught... and if you do get caught, then blame it in on the Chinese/Russians/flavour-of-the-month :D

In all seriousness, the spying may not be as hardcore or blatant(!) as say US/China or US/Russia but they are not looking for the same kind of intel between US/UK. I wuold be very very surprised if there was not some intel gathering at some level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At first I thought, why bother. But of course you would want to try to leave your target with no immediate way to determine which machines had been hit. Wonder why they didn't do it sooner. Perhaps they were worried about losing control if too many c&c servers were taken out.

</comment><comment><USER20> Symantec is just jealous these guys can remove viruses from a machine so damn efficiently.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, it's much harder to fully remove, say, Norton Antivirus from your computer.

<comment> X-Istence I've been nuking my computers from orbit, has anyone found an alternate that works better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since a nation state is supposedly behind this, wouldn't they have secured their command & control hosts better?

<comment><USER23> Surely they're not actually maintaining those hosts themselves (imagine the embarassment of doing a RDNS lookup and getting "flame-cc1.nsa.gov"). They are almost certainly compromised machines owned by someone else, which makes "securing" them in the classic sense pretty much impossible.

<comment><USER24> How far down the rabbit hole would you have to go before you find a connection from a .gov machine?

Or do nation-state malware programmers maintain a strict no-contact policy to keep the government's hands clean?

I suppose we'll never know the answer.

<comment><USER25> I'd imagine the folks doing this have a windowless van parked outside a Starbucks. I'm fairly certain you'd never be able to trace it back to a .gov computer without physically finding the computers themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The cat can never be put back into the bag.

<comment><USER27> Obama has been careless when it comes to giving the military free rein with new weapons without considering the consequences or legal precedent.

<comment><USER28> Well that's a whole boat-load of assumptions and accusations. And some rather funny/naive ones at that.

<comment><USER27> How about telling me what it is you think instead of condescendingly calling me funny and naive. Besides the use of weaponized computer viruses, which the NY Times confirmed was done by Obama in the Stuxnet case, I am also thinking of the massive increase in drone strike assassinations, including of American citizens, in countries we are not at war with, namely Pakistan and Yemen. The only assumption I made is that Flame was also done by Obama but I don't think that is a big leap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> so, is it officially the future yet?

</comment><comment><USER30> But... Did the first officer concurr???</comment>


Wkhtmltopdf Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rebased.pl/2018/07/12/wkhtmltopdf-considered-harmful.html <comment><USER2> IMO puppeteer is the best way to go now, it's maintained by the Chrome team and uses officially supported developer APIs: [https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer)

I built a basic CLI wrapper to make it easy to drop it in in place of wkhtmltopdf: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/puppeteer- cli](https://www.npmjs.com/package/puppeteer-cli)

I've used wkhtmltopdf heavily for years and it is a disaster today. Font rendering is inconsistent across systems, its CSS/HTML support is frozen in time many years ago.

The author's suggested alternative doesn't use a real browser rendering engine, it uses its own CSS/HTML parsing and rendering implementations (!!!). I don't trust it to keep up with standards and don't want content authors to have to deal with yet another dialect of HTML/CSS with its own pile of quirks. We already know Chrome's capabilities and quirks and I'm quite happy with Chrome's print menu and the output of my backend PDF generator being the same thing.

> The CSS layout engine is written in Python, designed for pagination, and > meant to be easy to hack on.

Raise your hand if you want to hack on a CSS layout engine in Python while generating your PDFs. I'll wait

<comment><USER3> Came here to mention puppeteer since I didn't see it in the author's suggestions. I developed a huge script at my last job which processed PST files into PDFs, and it relied heavily on wkhtmltopdf.

After discovering the issues surrounding font embedding and lack of interoperability with windows/adobe acrobat (when redacting) I was tearing my head out trying to figure out how to get it to work. In the end, I chalked it up to being a limitation of how the program handled fonts, and looked for an alternative.

After discovering puppeteer and dropping it in (replacing wkhtmltopdf), basically all the problems I was having with fonts disappearing were solved. Did not look back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I will join the chorus - wkhtmltopdf has been working fine in production for many months, reliably producing thousands of 10+ page PDFs with cover pages, headers, footers, page numbering, and images. Sure, it takes bit of fiddling to get it working as you like the first time - as most non trivial things do - but I've no regrets and would recommend it.

<comment><USER5> I have lots of regrets and most of them relate to wkhtmltopdf.

The thing makes ImageMagick look well architected and streamlined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This wrong usage of 'Considered Harmful' is Considered Harmful. I've been using wkhtmltopdf to enormous amount of pdf and it has been fine. I will try to replace it with chrome headless though for future project just because its newer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bit of an exaggeration to use "Considered harmful" just because there's a new (better?) alternative

</comment><comment><USER8> Harmful? I don't see it hurting you in anyway and if you don't like the OpenSource project don't use it. This is stupid.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have been using Wkhtmltopdf to build pdfs in my application for quite a while. It has never caused any harm. Actually it has always "just worked" and is a good fit for my app.

<comment><USER10> I was going to say the same thing. I actually had to go back and check to see if that is what I was using. I set it up so long ago and have never had to mess with it that I forgot. Works great for me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The conclusion is telling: They switched from Prawn to wkhtmltopdf, have all these issues with it, but have found nothing better.

Wkhtmltopdf is far and away the best solution (at least in Ruby land) even if it is often painful to work with.

<comment><USER12> Their conclusion is TLDR'd at the top, and that they have found something better.

> TL;DR: replace it with weasyprint.

<comment><USER11> The last line of the article is "We'll be keeping an eye on weasyprint." I'm pretty sure that means they don't think it's ready yet, and aren't using it yet. It looks promising but they don't directly test it against any of their complaints!

I, like many people in this thread, have used wkhtmltopdf for years and it works pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Curious they didn't mention our main problem: every single release changed something in the output. Upgrading fixed a bug and brought another; every minor version required hours of tests to verify multiple copies (single page, multiple page, long pages, etc) of every report. We ended up just applying the specific patches and building it ourselves.

The developers are hard-working and helpful (@ashkulz even commented on a commit on my personal fork!), I just think the job is too big for the resources they have. Too many edge cases.

</comment><comment><USER14> I used wkhtmltopdf to build the HTML/CSS templates [1] in FormAPI [2]. I agree with all the points, but they haven't really been dealbreakers. It's been working fine, at least for simple things like invoices. weasyprint does sound a lot better though, so I'll probably switch to that.

Also I didn't realize that DocRaptor has an integration with Heroku. I should really look into that.

[1] [https://formapi.io/templates/tpl_mFAsZEmhCtG9FX5N/edit](https://formapi.io/templates/tpl_mFAsZEmhCtG9FX5N/edit)

[2] [https://formapi.io](https://formapi.io)

</comment><comment><USER15> Have been using puppeteer [1] at work as a replacement for wkhtmltopdf with great success.

[1] [https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer)

</comment><comment><USER16> Funny, I just implemented wkhtmltopdf yesterday (via ruby's PDFKit) for invoice generation. None of the issues listed are a big deal for our very simple use case, but I did have to rebuild docker images a bunch of times in order to figure out the right dependencies on debian. I couldn't find a canonical list of these anywhere. The binaries installed through apt-get are also outdated and didn't work for me, so I ended up using the wkhtmltopdf- binary gem.

These are the os dependencies I ended up needing: libxrender1, libxext6, and libfontconfig.

So yeah - the library is fine, but installation ux/docs could use work.

</comment><comment><USER17> I enjoy "mother f'ing Prawn man". - district 9 references aside, it's a great library for generating PDFs in Ruby.

No mention in this of headless chrome - setup as a lambda service is also pretty nice

</comment><comment><USER18> Looks like they just choose a wrong library. Wkhtmltopdf is intended (as name implied) to convert HTML to PDFs, like 'we rendered this nice page in browser using D3 and fancy set of CSSs, now we need to export it to PDF'.

And their grievance is about abilities to generate PDFs from a template with a predefined presets. Clearly, other libraries will suit that task better.

<comment><USER13> I disagree; wkhtmltopdf has many options for exactly their use case (like the headers and footers), not just for regular webpages.

<comment><USER19> If headers and footers are a significant issue something like XSL-FO (with Apache fop) may be a better idea. But then you're trading one monster for another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Prawn is nice, too bad it's incomplete though, I wish Weasyprint was there but you just can't guess when and how it will fail on you. At least Puppeteer is predictable that way, it's good for invoices, short reports and other small stuff, it's not really suitable for anything bigger.

</comment><comment><USER21> Headless chrome will create PDFs...

[https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/04/headless-c...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/04/headless- chrome#create_a_pdf_dom)

</comment><comment><USER22> I've used wkhtmltopdf for many years, and although it certainly has it's issues, it does work once you get it to a stable point. Is it as easy to get there as it should be? No

Recently, I've been investigating writing new projects in react-pdf

</comment><comment><USER23> I tried using Weasyprint ~9 months ago, and really wanted to like it. But lack of features meant it couldn't render my (not that complex) page properly. So I switched back to wkhtmltopdf.

</comment><comment><USER24> All of the reasons mentioned were BS when wkhtmltopdf was in active development, as, even with all that, wkhtmltopdf (and phantom.js later) was the only game in town.

Now we have Chrome headless etc as well.

</comment><comment><USER25> _> PDF is an ancient format, as old as the Web. It was introduced in 1993_

Just because something is old doesn't mean it's bad. "Old" can also mean "well-understood" and "widely implemented," both of which are true of PDF. I can make a PDF and be reasonably confident that it can be read on any platform under the sun, and that someone needing to transform it will have plenty of tools available to do so. Neither of these things are true of XPS, or really any other competing format save HTML, which isn't really comparable as it aims to solve different problems than PDF does.

There are definitely things to not like about PDF, but its age isn't one of them.

<comment><USER13> I think that's exactly OP's point - PDF is old, therefore is should be widely implemented, so "you'd think wkhtmltopdf would be easy to avoid."

It's not a dig against the format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> i was recently looking for a good html to pdf solution and found wkhtmltopdf and weasyprint results to be... poor at best. turns out, you can do it on the command line via a call to Google Chrome and the results are great. Details here: [https://weblog.masukomi.org/2018/05/25/html-to-pdf-on-the- co...](https://weblog.masukomi.org/2018/05/25/html-to-pdf-on-the-command- line/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Is pandoc a poor option? That would be my first thought for converting between most document formats, and I thought it had HTML and PDF support.

<comment><USER28> Pandoc uses Wkhtmltopdf.

<comment><USER29> It can use any of pdflatex, xelatex, lualatex, pdfroff, wkhtml2pdf, prince, or weasyprint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My mileage varied considerably: using wkhtmltopdf to archive intranet pages and it has worked great for years.

<comment><USER12> What's the benefit to archiving intranet pages as PDFs, instead of as .html files? Are there a lot of embedded image assets?

<comment><USER30> Mainly the single file output. And PDFs fit nicely into our (ancient) document management tools. Also pretty confident they will look the same despite browser changes down the road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If one blog post for every piece of bad software out there was on the front page of HN I would probably stop reading HN.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hah compared to Jasper it's not harmful.

</comment><comment><USER33> [https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html](https://meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html)

Considered harmful is kind of a tired cliche.

<comment><USER34> Misleading too. When I saw the headline I thought it was related to some critical security issues.

It ended up being "8 reasons why I dislike Wkhtmltopdf"</comment></comment>


Ask PG: Your new book on Startups? - <AUTHOR> Your bio (http://www.paulgraham.com/bio.html) mentions that you are working on a new book on startups. Can you share some more info? <comment><USER2> It'll be a collection of essays. Most are already on my site. I may try to finish it this summer.

<comment><USER3> What do you think of print on demand services such as Amazon's createspace.com?

<comment><USER2> I don't like the low quality of the physical books these services produce.

<comment><USER4> Really? I just made one with Lulu and I was pretty impressed with it. It was very well-done.

<comment><USER5> I checked your profile but couldn't find it. Care to link us?

<comment><USER4> It's on Lulu here: <http://www.lulu.com/content/2609902>

It's moving to Amazon hopefully tomorrow, which is why I didn't link to it anywhere. I'll probably post it to reddit tomorrow at some time. Nonetheless: the book is very high-quality, if a bit glossy, and Lulu's store is a very effective one. There's a full preview, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does PG really need a book? Maybe to make a little money, or for the vanity of being a published author, but his legacy is online. It's just the new medium.

<comment><USER2> I prefer to read physical books, for anything I care about. At this point the web is more of a replacement for low-engagement mediums like newspapers than books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Humm "Hackers at work" (co-written with JL)?... just kidding.</comment>


Reversing Skype Binary – Silver Needle in the Skype [pdf] (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> For some context, this was the first successful effort do deobfuscate Skype protocol. Many tried before, and after.

The most remarkable thing is their idea of what they call "Twin processes debugging", which is: debug one process, but use the other one to count checksums which are checked randomly in runtime.

</comment><comment><USER2> On the same subject is this recording of a talk by Desclaux (co-author of these slides) and Kortchinsky presented at REcon 2006.

[https://archive.org/details/Fabrice_Desclaux_and_Kostya_Kort...](https://archive.org/details/Fabrice_Desclaux_and_Kostya_Kortchinsky_Vanilla_Skype)

Slides and other files from that presentation can be found here: [http://2006.recon.cx/en/f/](http://2006.recon.cx/en/f/)

</comment><comment><USER3> What do privacy-conscious people use for video conferencing these days?

<comment><USER4> Face to face meetings?</comment></comment>


There is no "I don't know what to do with my life" - <AUTHOR> http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/06/there-is-no-i-dont-know-what-to-do-with-my-life.php

<comment><USER2> Ah, so I suppose when you realize that we're all one entity, and there's no such thing as death, and our egos are temporary waves in the ocean that are able to self-reflect on the ocean, then you realize that reality is timeless. And that means there's no rush to find meaning, because all of a sudden your consciousness expanded from thinking within 70-80 years to thinking within billions of years.

So rather than thinking "what can do I do to make myself (local consciousness) happier because I'm gonna die?" you start thinking "how can I entertain the Greater Me (universal consciousness)?" Life becomes a game that gods play when they're bored, rather than a walk on the death row.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you write Runbooks, if so how? - <AUTHOR> I am just curious how people here approach documenting various operations and support aspects of their applications and systems?
I have traditionally put together runbooks for new hires or NOC/support teams with instructions how to troubleshoot rudimentary problems which may come up, how to find logs, what common failure points are etc.
How do you keep track of system accounts, certs expiration, what errors to look for in logs, how to log into certain systems etc for other to troubleshoot? <comment><USER2> You can write bots which are really simplified cli commands for rudimentary problems.</comment>


Show HN: Visual Backend Development Platform - <AUTHOR> https://connect-platform.com <comment><USER2> I can't scroll your page on mobile (iOS). It feels like the website is stuck in a tar pit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't seen that before (although not tested the website on iOS much). Maybe this link helps instead:

[https://github.com/CONNECT-platform/connect- platform](https://github.com/CONNECT-platform/connect-platform)

And the product itself is a development platform so I would highly recommend checking it out on desktop. Will checkout the issue of the website on iOS asap as well.</comment></comment>


Snapchat Responds to Leak - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-responds-to-email-and-business-leaks-2014-12

<comment><USER2> Captivating response. It gives you a glimpse into understanding why his employees want him as their leader</comment>


The Greasy Underpan of Restaurant Tech - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/24/the-greasy-underpan-of-restaurant-tech/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook

<comment><USER2> I have seen this problem with my own eyes. My parents own several (small) restaurants and despite my tech background I struggle to get them to to adopt any sort of technology. The main issue is the lack of data/guarantee that making the leap in technology will result in greater sales. Sure a huge chain has smart business execs at the top who are trained in cost/benefit analysis but for the vast majority of small business restaurants the owner is the chef who knows about food and perhaps the local community.

For example my father is an extremely talented chef but he didnt own a cell phone or a computer until I bought him one 3 years ago. Yes, 3 years ago! He had run a very successful catering and restaurant operation for ~15 years with pen, paper, and a land line phone. And I am not talking a 50k a year operation -- this is around $1M in revenue. I convinced them a few years back to simplely accept credit cards instead of cash only and their lunch sales increased almost 50%. I pushed them to pay for yelp local advertising (after years of resistance) and their sales went up almost 20%. Next I am working on them adopting integrated point of sale registers and integrating them with loyalty cards. I think the cost savings + increased loyalty is game for another 10-20% profit increase. The overall point being that small to medium size restaurants are woefully behind the times and are extremely slow to adopt new technology. I have kicked around a startup idea focused on collating and seemlessly making restaurants like this be able to move into the 21st century. The problem to solve here is creating software to scale so it's not simply a consulting company.</comment>


Video of Michael Arrington interviewing Mark Zuckerberg at TechCrunch40 - <AUTHOR> http://uk.intruders.tv/TechCrunch40-Michael-Arrington-interviews-Mark-Zuckerberg_a213.html <comment><USER2> I believe all his fundamentals are there, but I don't think he knows how to confront the audience, and Michael himself. If you notice, his hands are always on his knees and he is always leaning forward and looking nervous. I believe he is a great guy, but he needs some work in public speaking. It would help his business connections a lot more.

<comment><USER3> i think him and his team have done a great job with facebook. although he does lack on the public speaking front, he does compensate for it. bill g. was once just an inarticulate, uncharismatic, scrawny geek, but numbers show that he hasn't done too bad for himself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Z is soooo awkward. Ripe for parody.</comment>


ProtonVPN now officially supports watching Netflix from certain servers - <AUTHOR> https://protonvpn.com/support/watch-netflix-with-vpn/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is the first VPN provider to seem to have secured official access to Netflix via a VPN server.

The offering is limited to the upper-tier paid plans.

It's unclear to me how such an offering was secured, as Netflix has yet to comment on the news.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't sound like it's official. Maybe ProtonVPN is just the first provider to be taking active measures to evade Netflix blockades.</comment></comment>


Pfizer to Terminate $160B Merger with Allergan - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-06/pfizer-to-terminate-160-billion-merger-with-allergan <comment><USER2> If you believe giant US companies should pay lower taxes, I have some bad news. That'll be hard, because they already pay little or no US taxes now.

How much did Pfizer pay in US taxes between 2010 and 2012? Zero. What was Apple's US tax rate in 2014? 3.7%. These taxes don't sound like much of a burden to me.

Like most Fortune 100 firms, through legal maneuvering, Pfizer has been offshoring profits for years in order to avoid paying US taxes. At present, that has now added up to over $148B in offshored tax-free profit. Apple and most other giant US corps are little different. None are exactly being taxed into oblivion.

In fact, all these firms could repatriate those monies at tax rates substantially lower than the nominal (high) tax rate. But that fact is conveniently overlooked when US corp. tax rates are publicly bemoaned.

For example, I've heard there's a substantial tax savings when investing in US R&D. What's wrong with that option when repatriating profit while lowering taxes? And the sundry other imaginative ways available within existing US tax law, if CFOs weren't so damned intransigent about paying the obligatory dues of doing business in America?

In the end, you can't pretend corporations like Pfizer are aggrieved innocents in the current legal stalemate of unrepatriated profits that US corporations so volubly bemoan. They knew the deal when they launched their business in this country. It's way too late to insist on changing the rules now.

[http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/26/report-pfizer- dodging-35b-in-...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/26/report-pfizer- dodging-35b-in-taxes.html)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-apple- avoids-p...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-apple-avoids- paying-in-taxes-2014-6)

[http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/29/10-companies-that-dodge- cor...](http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/29/10-companies-that-dodge-corporate- taxes/)

<comment><USER3> I don't know the US tax system, but I assume you have both VAT and income tax. With that assumption, why should a company pay tax of their profit? As soon as they spend some of that profit some of it is taxed in the form of VAT and income tax.

When you have a system where profit is taxed, you get companies investing the money in the most risk free thing they can, to avoid the profit tax. If profit tax is 0% it's far simpler to keep the money home, and to use it when they want to.

<comment><USER4> > As soon as they spend some of that profit some of it is taxed in the form of > VAT and income tax.

VAT-rated companies claim-back VAT again VAT-rated sales. In fact, a VAT-rated company can earn more in VAT rebates than it collects in sales.

The traditional moral reason for taxing profit is that it's excess money for which the company couldn't find a use; they've already paid the staff, invested in R&D and maintained the corporate jet fleet and they _still_ have money left over. The Government can quite easily find a use for that excess cash in providing infrastructure which the company needs in order to operate.

<comment><USER5> > The traditional moral reason for taxing profit is that it's excess money for > which the company couldn't find a use; they've already paid the staff, > invested in R&D and maintained the corporate jet fleet and they still have > money left over. The Government can quite easily find a use for that excess > cash in providing infrastructure which the company needs in order to > operate.

This is complete absurdity. There should be no "moral" reason behind taxes; only logical. Taxes on profit are punitive against small businesses and encourage tax optimization strategies that are not remotely related to any sort of sound business. Assuming any government is going to better spend money than private enterprise is one of the funniest things I've read today.

<comment><USER6> "Assuming any government is going to better spend money than private enterprise is one of the funniest things I've read today." As someone that works in the same industry as Pfizer (and Valeant), yes it is true that sometimes the government is going to spend money better than private enterprise. The Cost and success rate of R&D in drug devleopment is not sustainable without the significant funding the US government (and to some extent other governments) contributes to basic science. The Valeant CEO (now Ex) has used the phrase "value destroying R&D" and Pfizer is Pfamous in the industry for R&D Pfailures. Both have been serial acquirers where they find much of their post-consolidation synergies in R&D, leading to deep cuts (often total cuts in Valeant's case). While they are acting economically rational way, the long-term consequences are that they are subsidized by the government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The irony is, the US has the highest corporate income tax of anywhere in the world. Maybe if we eliminated corporate income tax (like most economists suggest[1]), foreign companies would be inverting _here_ instead of the other way around.

[1][http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/8/25/1324505/-Eliminate-c...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/8/25/1324505/-Eliminate- corporate-tax-seriously)

<comment><USER8> This is Robert Reich original idea, and quote.

"It's time we eliminated the corporate income tax and made up the shortfall by increasing capital gains taxes. Here's the logic: First, the corporate income tax favors big companies that are able to shift their income abroad and engage in other tax-avoidance activities, while harming small companies that can't do any of this and therefore suffer a competitive disadvantage. Yet small companies are the engines of job growth in America. Second, the people who actually pay the corporate income tax should properly be the company's shareholders, who are the legal owners of the company and who benefit from increases in its income. But in many cases, depending on the structure of the market, a significant share of the actual burden of paying the corporate income tax is often borne instead by employees in the form of lower wages, or consumers in the form of higher prices."

It sounds like a good idea, but capital gains are already high. My aunt lives in a house she bought for $25,000 in the 70's. She is far from well off. It's a crime what she's going to pay on capital gains if she sells her house.

Yea, I know about the ways around the tax, but they have downsides.

I'd be for this, if capital gains were tied to income. Maybe tied to the average income over the last 10 years?

Right now it's the same rate for a billionaire, and the old lady surviving on social security. My aunt is taking the same percentage tax hit on the sale of her investment as the billionaire?

<comment><USER9> If you're talking about your aunt's primary residence, there is a capital gain exclusion of $250,000 (or $500,000 for married couples). Additionally, improvement costs, all sorts of taxes, fees, etc. can be excluded from capital gains, on top of the base exclusion. Obviously, in a high COL area, the sale price might be greater than the exclusion but it's pretty hard to argue that someone making a greater than 1,000% profit on an asset should not pay capital gain taxes on the gain above 1,000%.

See: [https://www.irs.gov/publications/p551/ar02.html#d0e301](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p551/ar02.html#d0e301)

Your initial point still stands though. Capital gain tax rates are the same for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a victory for rule of law. The Treasury decided it was legal, but they didn't LIKE it, so they decided to make it so burdensome they wouldn't go through with it.

Maybe, fix an idiotic corporate income tax so it's not a constant game avoiding it. Companies are going to stop incorporating in the US; the golden goose is going to die sooner or later.

<comment><USER11> It's not the first time something like that has happened (as I'm sure you know). I'm reminded of the National Firearms Act. The gov't wanted to ban fully automatic weapons back when the prohibition shoot outs were common. Instead of just banning them (probably a long-drawn out process), they just slapped a $200 tax on it. The guns at the time only cost ~$50, so it was an effective 400% price increase.

The interesting part is they never updated the tax, so you can buy fully automatic weapons now (if made before 1986) and you pay the $200 tax on a weapon that is north of $10,000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The rules for inversion are stupid. More laws more rules. More eventual loopholes. The game goes on.

Inversions are a symptom of a huge burdensome tax law that large businesses are incenventized to keep because they benefit from all the fine print.

The rest of us are left scratching our heads and ultimately paying the bulk of the taxes because we don't hire teams of tax lawyers.

<comment><USER11> _More eventual loopholes._

Exactly. All this does is send lawyers and accountants back to the drawing board to figure out the next best option.

The only winners here are the politicians who can claim they are "tough on big business".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems insane that US corporate tax law isn't a bigger issue in this upcoming presidential election cycle.

Companies like Google and Apple constantly take advantage of US/EU/wherever tax laws to pay the least amount they have. I don't particularly blame the companies because they are taking advantage of laws that currently exist, but something needs to be done to simplify the tax code to avoid loopholes like this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Lower the corporate tax to 0%, cut all corporate indirect tax subsidies, raise the top income brackets to offset the loss. Just doing this would be a big boon for the U.S., imo. At the very least, make the U.S. corporate tax structure actually competitive. We have the highest rate in the world, of course people are going to let their money sit off shore.

<comment><USER15> Also, can we please stop taxing the incomes over the exempted amount for US citizens living overseas? I would love to have the option to live elsewhere for some time without my citizenship hanging over me as a burden.

<comment><USER16> Can we please revoke the US citizenship, then, of people who move to Singapore just to avoid paying American income taxes? Or at least strip them of their assets when they try to give up citizenship as a tax ploy?

<comment><USER15> Seriously? If they move to Singapore why should they ethically be liable for US taxes anyway? It's not like the US provides exemeplary services to non- residents that are superior every other developed country (which all do not tax their non-resident citizens). For instance, they didn't even opt to evacuate most citizens out of Yemen and requested help from India to do so.

So no, I don't support paying taxes for services I don't receive. If I had to make an analogy, it would be like a remote worker being charged for a catered luncheon that he/she clearly can't attend, and when asked about being exempt like every other remote worker, being told that he/she became a remote worker solely to avoid the lunch payment and so should not be exempt.

<comment><USER16> >If they move to Singapore why should they ethically be liable for US taxes anyway?

Because they actually derive their entire income from work done and assets owned in the USA, and don't even really live in Singapore.

<comment><USER15> > Because they actually derive their entire income from work done and assets > owned in the USA

How many people does this even apply to, compared to the vast number of US citizens abroad (some of whom are not even aware they are US citizens) who owe US taxes on income from local sources? If you really think this makes sense, then tax it, but that isn't how income tax works today for expats who are taxed on all of their income sources (globally) above the exemption.

> don't even really live in Singapore

There are laws in place to establish residency with a reasonable degree of enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Corporate taxation is double taxation because personal income (and capital gains) are taxed. The problem with double taxation is that splits and hides the amount of tax. It's an anti-pattern that creates complexity and deadweight losses like tax accounting, etc. that could be used for productive purposes.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not good for some hedge funds: "80 hedge funds counted Allergan as one of their top 10 holdings at the end of the fourth quarter"

[http://reut.rs/1N8fNTF](http://reut.rs/1N8fNTF)

Not good for senior execs either of course, nor for the advising banks due to lose out on $100 million of fees (Goldman, Guggenheim, Centerview, Moelis & Company), and JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley lose out on dozens of millions of investment banking fees.

Maybe good for some of the workers, who won't lose their job to "synergies" anymore?

</comment><comment><USER19> Govt will do nothing [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/panama-trade- deal_n_9223...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/panama-trade- deal_n_922398.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think one of my side projects has a future? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
Recently I started one side project - ilikeprogramming.com . My idea for it was to become an fan-based index for the programming languages popularity.
So do you think such an site/idea has any future?
if true
  continue_reading else
  just_close_this_thread end
Well, I have a few issues with it.
1) The voting system.
I use twitter currently, because it adds greater value to the votes and also it spreads the idea for the site. However some people have reported that they don't want to post any twits and just want to vote. Do you think an anonymous voting system could be better?
2) The promotion of the site. I'll be happy to get some advices about way to promote such an idea. I have tried with presenting the idea here in HN, however it was not enough.
Thank you for your time, Stan. <comment><USER2> HN'er davidw runs <http://langpop.com/> which determines language popularity from various sources statistically, rather than fan-based voting.

He discusses it from time-to-time. <http://searchyc.com/langpop.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> In order for a side project to survive I highly recommend finding a business model, even if the income is just tiny. It could be as simple as being your platform to promote yourself as a freelance programmer, but still, money makes your side project stay around.</comment>


Lessons Learned From Getting a Ton of Press - <AUTHOR> http://lifeoffbi.com/2011/04/26/lessons-learned-from-getting-a-ton-of-press/

<comment><USER2> FWIW, I wanted to (and tried to) click on the "How We Do Sizing" text on the graphic on: <http://www.blanklabel.com/how-it-works.aspx>

Instead it took another three clicks/pages to get that information. When it comes to clothing I'd think sizing was pretty important to know up front.

</comment><comment><USER3> Press will look for you if your product is cool.</comment>


Technology That Could End Humanity–and How to Stop It - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/technology-could-end-humanity-how-stop-it/ <comment><USER2> So, to paraphrase : I've come up with some fictional scenarios, therefore end freedom. BTW, as a philosopher I don't care about the consequence of that thought chain and I am placing the onus on other people to come up with workable counterexamples to deal with my fictive narrative. Also, that I will be used as a justification for dictators is nothing at all to me.

The really great thing is that Bostrom still thinks / argues that nuclear weapons are "secure" and that there is a culture of security around them. That trope alone should rule him about of serious debate - let alone the howling gibberish about Sparrows raising Owls.

</comment><comment><USER3> Judging by the state of the Amazon and other forests, fire is a technology that most likely to kill us all at the moment.</comment>