The Next Generation (I3en) of I/O-Optimized EC2 Instances - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-the-next-generation-i3en-of-i-o-optimized-ec2-instances/ <comment><USER2> Besides the PR-approved statements here and there that don't add much to the meat of the topic, one should admire AWS' ability to innovate and add new features and services at this incredible pace.

Right now, in 2019, I'd say that most IT organizations can benefit from "some" use of AWS, at least, and that for certain use cases going close to 100% on AWS might also be beneficial, when you take into account the "human" costs.

The amount of R&D and investments that AWS does makes their products more and more compelling, comparatively to other products/services in the market (e.g. private servers).

I just wish that there would be less cool-aid drinking and more practical considerations when comparing prices between public and private cloud. I guess it will come over time.

(disclaimer: worked at AWS from 2008 to 2014).

<comment><USER3> 100gbps is a bit more than a PR approved statement! It wasn't much too long ago that AWS guaranteed any kind of bandwidth beyond a gig.

<comment><USER2> I was referring to the first two paragraphs of "customer obsession", which doesn't add anything substantial to the announcement.

<comment><USER3> My apologies if that came off as criticism when it was intended to be violent agreement.

<comment><USER2> No need to apologize!

Also, careful with guaranteed - AWS has his special wording about SLAs and guarantees, e.g. S3 "designed" for 11 9s of durability, which sounds like a guarantee but it isn't.

<comment><USER4> Disclosure: I work at AWS

Some organizations set high SLAs and play the odds that they will meet them, figuring that it's worth it in marketing dollars if they have to pay out.

For an AWS SLA like Route53's 100% Availability [1], the service is fundamentally engineered in a way that the SLA will be met. The S3 SLA can be found at [2]

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/route53/sla/](https://aws.amazon.com/route53/sla/)

[2] [https://aws.amazon.com/s3/sla/](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/sla/)

<comment><USER5> "the service is fundamentally engineered in a way that the SLA will be met"

So... with the recent Route53 outage, do you still believe that statement to be true?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jeff - Looks like there are some mistakes here [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on- demand/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/)

i3en is showing "EBS only" under "Instance Storage"

</comment><comment><USER7> I3en drives have lower peak IOPS compared to the ones on I3 but storage latency is 30-50% lower on I3en. Also, it is 50% cheaper than I3 on per GB basis.

<comment><USER8> Can you clarify what 'e' signifies and how it differs from 'd'?

<comment><USER9> e for expanded capacity (i.e. 60TB), similar to X1e which had expanded memory capacity. n for network-optimized just like C5n and P3dn

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Jeff - are the disks slower (but bigger) than the i3 versions?

It looks like the IOPS and throughput are lower at the top end (looking at the two release pages).

<comment><AUTHOR> I am supposedly on a stay-cation this week. I'll ask the team to check this thread.

<comment><USER11> Enjoy your time off!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Curious that they do not mention _write_ IOPS.

<comment><USER13> Someone's gotta benchmark these and let us know</comment></comment>


Amazon Announces Login with Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1824961&highlight= <comment><USER2> I was shocked to discover this is the canonical URL & domain for the Amazon press releases. After I clicked the link and saw the URL I initially thought this was some bizarre phishing scheme.

That being said, I think this is a great idea. I don't love the Facebook OAuth flow and the amount of access most apps ask for. I have trouble taking Twitter seriously as an OAuth provider [bias much?]. I think there are many US-focused companies who will be excited to have Google & Amazon as the two default OAuth authentication providers. If nothing else, it's much more adult than Twitter/Facebook. Oh, and Amazon has your credit card info and a great platform for SaaS billing :)

<comment><USER3> I agree. I love OAuth idea and the single-sign on flow. I love having one source where I can go and see all of the sites that have my info, and I love being able to rescind my account from that central location.

However, I hate that Facebook/Twitter take it a step further with all of their social integration features to the point where many apps assume, by default, that you want to share share share everything you do all over your social network.

As I've found a number of apps/websites _that do not allow you to continue without giving them permission to post on your wall_ , I've been forced to mark every single app/OAuth site on my Facebook as available to "only me". Post all you want, no one will ever see it.

Curating what gets posted under your name shouldn't be this much work. I shouldn't have to strive for a clean digital presence with content that adds something to my readers life.

I'd love an OAuth provider that HAS NO SOCIAL NETWORK!

And Google is out on this too, sorry, but Google Plus is _obviously_ the only web property that Google cares about anymore and trusting them not to socialify everything is a fools game.

<comment><USER4> I though persona by Mozilla was basically this.

<comment><USER5> It is. It's unfortunate that more people don't know about it, especially since it's ridiculously easy to implement, well-designed and would save us all a lot of hassle.

If you're running a Django app, please add Persona integration. It takes around five minutes, literally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd rather use Mozilla Persona based login systems than OAuth based ones. From both a user and a developer point of view, Persona is a very refreshing approach to identity instead of OAuth.

For those wanting to know more about Persona, check out <https://login.persona.org/about>

also since Persona is from Mozilla, you can see all the code and development and you know that privacy and user safety are number one priority.

<comment><USER7> I'm having trouble finding sites that use Persona as a login option. Does anyone have any examples? Trovebox seems to have a demo site up, but I was not able to actually log in to my account.

<comment><USER8> Ditto. Why isn't HN supporting persona? :)

<comment><USER6> I wish HN would use persona!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is about the four horsemen -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google -- and how Amazon is moving forward with Facebook and Google, and perhaps into the lead.

The true purpose of Google+ is to accumulate more information about you, not to be a "social network" per se. The latter is the means to the former.

Amazon has a huge amount of exceptionally high quality ecommerce information. They have "only" 200 million users, but info about what they actually like -- because they buy it -- not what they say they like. Plus, for search -- if you're searching for products/pricing, you might already use Amazon not Google.

Login helps Amazon extend information beyond ecommerce -- and potentially pull clearly in the lead in that regard compared to Facebook and Google.

Apple...has a problem in this regard. Excellent company in many respects, but falling out of the pack in this regard.

p.s. In all of the above I'm only talking about it from the company perspective. If you think it's not necessarily a good thing for a company to have even more complete data about you, I wouldn't argue with you.

<comment><USER10> Apple doesn't even know how to offer an analytics tool for app developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Alright, but the question is "why would someone want to log in with Amazon"? There's no social network attached to your Amazon account. It seems like it would be an odd choice of identity provider, unless you are a store and already using Amazon's fulfillment services.

<comment><USER12> For some reason it strikes me as a pretty good idea. Upon further reflection, I think it has something to do with:

\- Trust -- people increasingly distrust sites like Facebook or Google (privacy concerns), but Amazon still has pretty much entirely "positive" feelings for consumers. And if they can run AWS as well as they can, then you assume you can trust them with your password too

\- Micropayments -- your credit card is already linked to your Amazon account, presumably, so it suddenly enables you to pay for content, etc. on a wide range of sites where you might not otherwise, due to friction and trust issues

It's funny... for some undefinable "fuzzy" reason, I feel much more willing to log into a site using Amazon credentials, than I would with Google, Facebook or even Apple.

<comment><USER13> That's probably because you're a paying customer rather than a pair of eyeballs to them.

<comment><USER14> Right. You're the customer, not the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can also integrate this with your own apps via AWS / IAM:

[http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/05/aws-iam-now-supports- amaz...](http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/05/aws-iam-now-supports-amazon- facebook-and-google-identity-federation.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd prefer Mozilla persona. Amazon as well as Facebook and etc. aren't trustworthy - they are tracking your activity and using them for external logins sounds like a very bad idea.

<comment><USER17> I get Facebook. But why is Amazon not trustworthy?

<comment><USER16> How are they different from Facebook? They also have behavioral targeted advertisement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazon is all about e-commerce, and their partners are reporting a 40% adoption rate for new signups? That sounds way higher than facebook's oauth ... if this continues, Amazon could be an awesome platform to build a business on! They also have a credit system now -- and inventory!

</comment><comment><USER19> I think this could be really interesting. In my opinion, Login with Facebook creates a little bit of anxiety for customers. Everyone has been burned by unanticipated sharing & with this there is no social network to share to. I need to read the documentation (from a quick glance) it didn't seem like allowing people to checkout with Amazon on your site was possible but I bet that isn't far behind. That to me could be great if they are reasonable on commission rates.

</comment><comment><USER20> The more the merrier. I only feel comfortable using my Twitter log-in, and I don't have any privacy reservations with Amazon either.

<comment><USER14> Yes. Amazon itself is undoubtedly data mining your purchase history, but at least they're not spewing your personal info to every random Serfville/PirateWars "games" that one of your friends signs up for (yes, I know that you can turn most of that off, and I have; most people don't).

Everything I've heard and experienced indicates that Amazon is pretty tight with customer information. Certainly you don't get any personal information on customers when you sell ebooks through the Kindle store. Apple is also pretty good about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My main problem with these (as user) is that I usually have hard time remembering which sign-on system I have used for a particular site. Twitter? Google? Facebook? Username and pass? Amazon?

In most cases what I would truly like to have is a option to order a sign-on link to my email that would be valid for single use and just for some minutes.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think this is really great! As a customer, I'd much rather sign in with this than Facebook or Twitter, as then I know there would be no social side-effects - e.g. posting on my behalf or similar - which is sometimes anxious making when confronted with a social login button. This separates easy sign-in from social sharing.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'll echo what some of the other commenters are saying, namely that for anything e-commerce related (and I'd argue SaaS-type software) this method of login makes most sense. If you were going to sign up for a free trial of something or create an account at a store, would you want to login with Facebook or Twitter? Or Amazon, whom you likely already trust with your money. The latter I'd say.

On the other hand, if I have a social or news/content site, FB and Twitter login makes the most sense. That way I have access to their social graph as well as an indentity.

Anyway, this is pretty cool. I think I'll integrate Login with Amazon with my startup (mariposta.com) pretty soon, as it very well could lessen signup friction. We'll see.

</comment><comment><USER24> I DON'T WANT MORE LOGINS.

Pretty soon I'll go to "thenewestwebflatdesignstartup.com" and I'll be given these choices:

Login with Facebook, Login with Twitter, Login with Amazon, Login with Persona, Login with OpenID

or create an account with email

Click here if you have no idea what account you used.

/rant

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd rather use Amazon than Google or Facebook, but I'd rather use a site that _only_ did identity than any of the rest. (I don't want access to my Kindle books screwed up because Amazon decided I did something wrong when using them for login, and banned my account. Yes, that reminds me that I need to backup all my Kindle books monthly.)

I don't know what the business model for such a site would be, though.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is excellent, as I would love to have a shared login provider whose business model does not revolve around sharing my information (e.g. twitter, facebook, google). I really don't want everyone on my [friends list equivalent] to know every time I create an account anywhere on the internet, and I feel like I'm always one privacy setting away from that happening.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems like a great idea and a signup option that will spread quickly. Mostly because Amazon accounts tend to be linked to payment options already so you essentially add people who are used to and willing to play online to your site.

</comment><comment><USER28> I hate Amazon login where I can't reuse any old passwords as a new one or even as part of the new one.

It makes it just impossible to remember your login when you reset it a few times, because you need to learn a new one.

<comment><USER29> why are you remembering passwords?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can this be used for taking payments quickly from users?

</comment><comment><USER31> OAuth is for authorization, not authentication. Please stop using it like this. If you want SSO-style authentication using OpenID or SAML2.

<comment> qu4z-2 Unfortunately I think that ship has sailed. Personally I'm hoping Persona will catch on. At least that's designed as an authentication scheme.

<comment><USER31> What problem does it solve that OpenID doesn't? OpenID already has a lot of adoption, and IMO works quite well.

<comment> qu4z-2 OpenID is great, but I somehow just don't expect it to get that much adoption on sites where "Sign In With Facebook" is the default. Whereas I have at least some hope that Persona might become that common if Mozilla play their cards right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It seems that Login systems is becoming a fragmented space, there's Persona, Google, Oauth, Wordpress, etc. and now Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER33> So when are Amazon payments coming?

<comment><USER34> I just used Amazon payments today to buy the new Humble Bundle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> ...This feels more like OpenID rather than OAuth. Could someone explain? I'm so confused.

<comment> qu4z-2 People apparently think that OAuth is Open Authentication not Open Authorization. I think that ship has sailed, unfortunately. Although it still confuses me when I go to log in to a site and I get the pop-up about "Do you want to authorize this application to access <X>?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I understand that this is a good idea for Amazon because it is good for them to keep people within their ecosystem, but this is what I think of whenever someone announces a product that has already been made several times: <http://xkcd.com/927/>

</comment><comment><USER37> I wish I could OAuth with my hn login!

</comment><comment><USER38> This could be a game changer for web payments and the built-in A/B testing sounds cool but I couldn't find any details in the docs.

</comment><comment><USER39> Won't be using this.</comment>


Apple App Store Takes 12% of Mobile Apps Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/2009/05/apple-app-store-takes-12-of-mobile-apps-market.html

<comment><USER2> Doesn't this seem really, really low? Most of the non-iPhone phones out there don't have an easy way of purchasing/installing apps, and the market share of the iPhone is so large that I would think this number would be _much_ higher.</comment>


Pure CSS Landscape – An Evening in Southwold - <AUTHOR> https://codepen.io/ivorjetski/pen/xxGYWQG <comment><USER2> The artist describes this piece as "The final part to my pointless trilogy" and links to these works in the comments:

Still Life [https://codepen.io/ivorjetski/pen/xMJoYO](https://codepen.io/ivorjetski/pen/xMJoYO)

Portrait [https://codepen.io/ivorjetski/pen/dBYWWZ](https://codepen.io/ivorjetski/pen/dBYWWZ)

</comment><comment><USER3> I see CSS examples like this, and just want to cry that I can barely make a UI that works. I know CSS is powerful, yet it is absolutely mind numbing in getting consistent results. Anything I make looks like it was designed by a developer. The only good thing is that I know this to be the case, and I'm constantly on the look out for ways to improve.

<comment><USER4> There's a stage of investment in some specific skill mindset that results in being able to produce things that seem to be absurd or impossible or "I could never do that".

There aren't many real-life opportunities to productively exercise that degree of skill in _obvious_ ways; if you cut down a tree perfectly, few will truly notice how perfect the stump is, even if they may appreciate the result unthinkingly.

So crafting something maximum-insanity like this is a way to exercise all those hard-earned muscles of some random skills, in coordination, for the pure joy of being able to produce a pointless but awesome result.

It isn't so much about "a thousand hours" as it is about "learning how things work at the deepest level", and sometimes to do that you have to learn something unrelated and cross-apply the skills.

If you want to learn to paint-by-stylesheet, pick up a children's paint by numbers coloring book and color it in however you like and then try to work out what the CSS for it would be. Whether you succeed or not, you'll be forced to rethink CSS at a basic level, which will expand your mindset and eventually your skill set.

Or study how GL shaders work, and try to comprehend what's going on when people build cool GL demos like the fish benchmark. You may not ever end up using that GL knowledge, but you'll be more prepared for SVG and canvas elements, which cross-applies to CSS gradients and layout skills.

Or study how DOOM level maps ("wad files") are built. There are stellar writeups of how ultra-basic technology and ridiculous hacks ("no bridges") were used to make 3D perform brilliant things with the tiniest of CPU resources. There is zero practical value in this on the surface, but it carries some valuable lessons in how to make a great UI with careful selection of tradeoffs, and you'll probably end up being better at time-design compromises as a result.

One thousand of those later, you will be able to paint the Mona Lisa in CSS, and it'll be enjoyable as an evening project over several weeks or months :)

<comment><USER5> Cut down a tree perfectly, and you maximise the yield of lumber you get from it. I think that is somewhat obvious. But I'm being pedantic, you make a good point.

<comment><USER4> Perfection in lumberwork isn't just about yield: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NRmYzLrvfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NRmYzLrvfM)

<comment><USER5> Very entertaining! Seeing the position of the buildings, I was certain the video was going to end terribly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is next level. If you expand the frame you can see how the reflection and water are created with simple shapes, but the houses on the right are extremely detailed. Some of this is basically pixel art... I would love knowing how long this took, or if any tools assisted in the creation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Whole moly, changing the sunset colour changes the whole thing. This is crazy.

100% would love to know how this is built and know more about the planning.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you thought postscript was bad, welcome the world's most terrible vector image format.

<comment><USER9> Please don't upset the NeWS fans on HN or we'll come and tweak your transformation matrix ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The artist's account on Twitter:

[https://twitter.com/ivorjetski/status/1238063321015889921](https://twitter.com/ivorjetski/status/1238063321015889921)

I too am eager to read a blog post on the technique.

<comment><USER10> He also posted a video of the work being created. Wondering what tools he used to make it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUCVBNNyjC4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUCVBNNyjC4)

</comment></comment><comment> 076ae80a-3c97-4 Always strange to see things close to home on HN. I spent New Years in Southwold, a lovely place to visit on the Suffolk coast with the fantastic Adnams Brewery right in the heart of the town.

<comment><USER11> Also don't forget the wonderful Under The Pier Show[1]

It's a set of weird and wonderful custom arcade machines such as the "Rent-a- dog" game and, my favourite, the "Small Hadron Collider".

[1] [http://underthepier.com/](http://underthepier.com/)

<comment> frosted-flakes For those who don't know, these custom arcade machines were made by Tim Hunkin, a mechanical genius who co-created the show "A Secret Life of Machines" in the 80s and 90s. Most of them up are on Youtube, go check them out: [0].

Also, I absolutely love that website, as well as Tim Hunkin's personal website[1]. It has a charm about it that few websites have these days.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLByTa5duIolYRtq45Cz_G...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLByTa5duIolYRtq45Cz_GmtzfWJyA4bik)

[1] [http://timhunkin.com/control/o_about_the_site.htm](http://timhunkin.com/control/o_about_the_site.htm). Take a look at the "about the site" page!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminded me of a recent article where an old lady breathtakingly creates beautilful drawings[0] using 'MS Word'.

Edit: Scroll down the article to see one of her wonderful illustrations using MS Word

[0] - [https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/women...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/womens- day-arundhati-bhattacharya-on-why-she-celebrates-her-aunt-parbati- dutt/articleshow/74531753.cms?from=mdr)

</comment><comment><USER13> For a fun browser painting performance test try resizing the pane with the illustration. It's nice to see WebRender doing quite a bit better on it compared to other browsers.

</comment><comment><USER14> How was this made? Manually? Or somehow converted from a vector graphic? In any case, it's beautiful. I love the dots in the water.

<comment><USER15> The code is super clean, I'm pretty sure it was done manually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Where do the custom HTML tags (sea,beach etc) come from?

I do not see any preprocessor in codepen.io settings.

I thought that in order to use something like [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom- elements.html](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/custom-elements.html) you'd need Javascript.

<comment><USER17> They are rendered as HTMLUnknownElement and just don't have any behavior or style as default, you can still refer to the tags in your css

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/HTMLUnknown...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/HTMLUnknownElement)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Holy heck, this is amazing.

I'll second other people that I would love to see more of the design and planning that went into this.

</comment><comment><USER19> Fascinating. And very impressive the way the sun color is parameterized so you can do, e.g., `$sun1: aquamarine;` in the CSS and still get something that makes sense and looks quite psychedelic.

<comment><USER20> Grey sun makes it B/W!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Instant vaporwave aesthetic:

$sun1: cyan;

<comment><USER22> $sun1: green; for an instant aurora.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is incredible. But can you explain the "groin" tag?

<comment><USER24> The groin is the sea defence you can see in the foreground. It stops long shore drift (but there is some debate about if they just shift the problem elsewhere)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Zooming in on the image crashed my phone.

<comment><USER26> Rightfully so

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is absolutely crazy in a good way.

And if you let me paraphrase a bit:

Your developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is amazing

</comment><comment><USER29> this is really taking the Befunge way</comment>


The scored society: due process for automated predictions [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/1318/89WLR0001.pdf

<comment><USER2> I took Caltech's "Learning from Data"[0] (machine learning) MOOC a couple of years ago. Of course, one of the classic ML applications is loan approval. In one lecture, Prof. Abu-Mostafa mentioned he was a consultant to a large financial organization and his project built a successful loan selection system. But then the organization's CEO asked "Why did you turn down these loans? Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, we have to tell the applicants why they were rejected." Of course, he couldn't say "because that applicant was not on a high enough peak in a 10,000 dimension space." A question came back from the audience, "What did you end up doing?" and the professor told us, sheepishly, "I can't tell you." And so it goes...

[0] [https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html](https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html)

<comment><USER3> Seems to me that you ought to be able to apply simpler techniques than those used to determine whether the loan was approved or denied to determine a set of changes that would have caused the application to be approved, and use that to report a set of reasons that the application was denied.</comment></comment>


Korg volca sample SDK – a sample and sequence encoding library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/korginc/volcasample <comment><USER2> In the world of music technology, par for the course would be for protocols like this to be purposefully obfuscated, and constantly reinvented. Good on Korg for seeing the value of releasing this.

<comment><USER3> Yeah preach! This is so awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is cool, I can't believe Korg themselves released the source to it!

This dramatically increases the value of the device!

Thank you, Korg!

<comment><USER5> Korg have literally always been amazing about stuff like this. They were the first in the App Store on iOS, with an iPad app on day 1 for the iPad's release. Their MIDI implementations are always more consistent, more solid, and more reliable than competitors.

If you're surprised by this, you might know music manufacturers in general, but you don't know Korg. :-)

<comment><USER6> This kind of thing in particular seems to be a first for them, seeing as there are no other 'korginc' repos on github. I do hope they publish more there.

I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to say about their MIDI implementation, but fwiw I have had less headaches while implementing things based on Yamaha's SysEx documentation than Korg's. Not that either company seems to be trying to hide things at the MIDI/SysEx level.

<comment><USER7> They've released schematics for some of their small analog synths before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is this called "SYRO"? Confusing considering the recently-released Aphex Twin album...

<comment><USER9> Not inconceivable the two are connected somehow, of course (either in tribute from Korg or even the other way round; AFX has released a bunch of tracks named after gear, e.g. Fenixfunk 5... and it'd hardly be surprising if certain artists had access to pre-launch gear.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They also clearly label their circuit boards and leave solder pads for mods under the hood. Really cool that they think of the hackers and modders.</comment>


A Cocoa Twitter search client depending on Growl for display - <AUTHOR> http://bitbucket.org/emonk/twitterjunkie/wiki/Home <comment><USER2> You should package the Growl installation framework with this app. That way if Growl is not installed it will install itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Heh, it's kind of interesting, there are now so many Twitter clients using Growl that Twitter has its own category on their apps page: <http://growl.info/applications.php?cat=Twitter+clients>

</comment><comment><USER4> Can it automatically search for short-url'ed versions of a url you give it? That would be very useful when tracking the spread of a new article through Twitter...

</comment><comment><USER5> I was more interested in seeing how they solicited input from Growl, but apparently they only use it for query results.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's pretty awesome, simple but does the job well! :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> alyx: Yes. It's just a quick hack, so I haven't done that yet. (also: it's open source, hint hint. ;) )

makecheck: interesting idea.</comment>


The NSA Called Me After Midnight and Requested My Source Code - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-the-nsa-called-me-after-midnight-and-requested-my-source-code-f7076c59ab3d <comment><USER3> There's nothing to be proud of and writing a blog post about it.

Your users used the software to protect them, or even paid for it. Now this "Dave" can crack files generated by this shareware. Maybe "Dave" had a genuine national security situation. But was it really? What if Dave just wanted to prank the author, during a boring afternoon? What if it were a couple of guys parked outside who hijacked the phone system, so even if you call 411, it would route to their van outside? Or what if Dave already did the same demand to dozens of other security vendors, effectively having the source code of all encryption software? And even if it was a national security situation, what is the legal basis of giving up source code and keys?

What I get is "I was just a regular computer programmer and overnight, I was actually important enough to be useful for the NSA"

<comment><USER4> The ethical implications are often not considered by software developers, thus you get cases like this where the author did not stop to push back, acting as a useful idiot for the NSA.

There are way too many people like that in tech, who don't stop to take in the bigger picture before performing the requested action.

<comment><USER5> At the very least there are many circumstances where reporters who were reporting on pretty underhanded activities in the us were targeted by the us govt, and what if this situation happened to them. My govt is generally good here in the us, but we know plenty of cases where they didn't have good intentions, this is done to intimidate. So if you are an author of security software, you might keep this in mind. And other countries like Russia and China would definitely put pressure on people to help them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Assume the 411 call is legit, and this really was the NSA. The author has no evidence there was a ticking time bomb scenario underway. Other than the fact that he was called late at night.

Calling him at his parents' place late at night seems less like a coincidence and more like an ominous demonstration of their power. I know that would influence me, and I'd feel more disposed to cooperate.

I could forgive someone making a rash decision after midnight while traveling. But here it is, some time later, and the author still seems to think it's a cool story. Nice to know that a maker of privacy software doesn't think skeptically about the government.

<comment><USER7> He gave away the source code, not the master keys to unlock every single version of the software. At best, the source allowed the NSA to derive the binary format used by the files. Whoopie.

<comment><USER8> Not quite. Not that source code secrecy should be relied on, but the source code not being secret increases the changes of e.g. side channels being discovered that jeopardize all the users of the author's software.

<comment><USER9> The ciphers are public. What the NSA really wanted was the size of file headers, special markers, etc -- so they could skip over the fluff and home in on the juicy stuff. I gave up nothing that would put the product or users at risk.

<comment><USER8> With due respect, the person you spoke to on the phone didn't really answer your questions, per your post. What leads you to the conclusion? From my perspective, it doesn't sound like you know what they were using it for at all, or even if there was an urgent matter that even required it. For all we know, it was just a Tuesday and they were just hunting for the source of a common encryption utility.

And just because a cipher is public does not mean that there does not exist a side channel in the implementation of the ciphers or a mistake in your usage of them.

<comment><USER10> > And just because a cipher is public does not mean that there does not exist > a side channel in the implementation of the ciphers or a mistake in your > usage of them.

And just because they have the source code, doesn't mean they couldn't get it from reverse engineering the binary. I have not seen a binary that was completely resistant to reverse engineering yet.

Likely he was just saving them time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People use encryption so that their files are secure in situations where failure would be disastrous. Ranging all the way from protecting your credit card number to protecting your sources from being tortured and killed for talking to you.

Offering broken encryption that appears to work is dangerous, unethical, and stupid.

The author ought to be ashamed and people ought to be smarter.

<comment><USER12> 40 bit encryption in 2000 wasn't seen as bad, it was seen as decent. It would have required a fair amount of computer power to break in a short time.

It was also what was legally exportable at the time.

Providing some security is better than providing none. You lock your doors but have glass windows.

<comment><USER13> But I don't buy a lock for my front door expecting the manufacturer to simply give the key to anyone that asks nicely for it.

<comment><USER14> This wasn't providing the key as much as the schematics to the lock, which turns out, they pretty much do: [https://www.kwikset.com/Libraries/Literature/Rekeying_Manual...](https://www.kwikset.com/Libraries/Literature/Rekeying_Manual.sflb.ashx)

<comment><USER11> It's the spirit of the action. Publishing the source on github ought to be OK in theory if it isn't implemented poorly but it turns out that it is in fact implemented in a deliberately weak fashion.

Knowing that his customers privacy was on the line, knowing that there was no due process, knowing that revealing the source would help the NSA violate his customers privacy, not needing any explanation or legal paperwork, not even truly knowing if the person on the other end of the line actually was the NSA, not a private citizen trying to violate the privacy of another citizen he decided to comply without question.

Ticking bomb scenarios that can be solved by cracking encryption are so rare I'm not aware of any existing in history.

The right answer was to request a court order and wait. If it was truly a matter of national security they can also wake up the judge in the middle of the night and have an officer of the court serve it.

They were obsequious about it because they didn't have a leg to stand on. 50 50 they weren't even the NSA but rather a sailor trying to spy on a mates computer.

Seeing as all you did was call a naval base and get transferred several times how do we know he wasn't talking to a random individual at the base.

<comment><USER9> The ciphers are public. Providing source for this specific implementation of "user interface" did nothing more than indicate sizes of file headers, etc. No customers were put at risk. All I did was save the NSA maybe a few hours of time during a critical moment. Do you really think they couldn't have figured out there is a 4K file header (see, I've said it here, no harm).

<comment><USER11> Can you explain how you can prove you are talking to the NSA by call foo ask to be transferred to bar, ask to speak to baz?

Logically the fact that you called into the navy base indicates you are talking to them but by the time you get transferred how do you know who you are ultimately talking to?

Couldn't you be talking to anyone who works at the navy or works with someone who works at the navy? One great thing about court orders is that its trivial to authenticate them and they get the exciting task of making sure the person asking for them is a legitimate actor on legitimate business.

If a random private wanted to fool you couldn't they have had you call in in such a way as you would trivially be talking to a known party who will ultimately transfer you said party? Hey this joker is going to be transferred to your extension asking to speak to john doe at the NSA send him to my extension please.

Considering that we now know that intelligence apparatus was used to spy on love interests how do you know you were collaborating with a legitimate legal operation as opposed to illegal spying on citizens?

Likely you aren't in a position to judge right which is why we have you know judges and court orders and such ceremony.

I respond to random calls that seem strange by hanging up and telling them to send me something official in the mail.

Neither the people who claim they would like me to give me a fortune I inherited overseas, the guy who claimed I won the lottery, or the guy that claimed to be the IRS demanding immediate payment have followed up yet.

At best your judgement is questionable.

<comment><USER9> Here's how I looked at it -- they are 1000x smarter than me on matters of encryption. It was totally unlikely I knew something they didn't. At most, I saved them a few hours on a matter of life and death, and I had minutes to make that decision. And recall, back then, people felt differently about the NSA. If this was a total spoof - the reality is I didn't give anything up. I didn't invent the encryption ciphers. I just packaged common ciphers in a user interface people really liked.

But in response to the people here who think I was tricked. That's not the case. What I didn't put in the post was that a team from the NSA visited me in California a few months later. But again, had I been tricked, it wouldn't have mattered.

<comment><USER11> You remembered to mention the coffee cup but you forgot to mention the team from the NSA that visited you to confirm the authenticity of what sounds on the face like a story of you getting scammed.

I'm sorry this is utterly beyond belief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
      "But there's still one thing that continues to nag me after all these years  -
      how the hell did Dave track me down 3,000 miles away from home after midnight
      on that hot summer's eve in Bristol, Connecticut?"

Assuming the author flew cross-country from California and his brother had a phone number in the family name, it doesn't seem too hard to piece together with good old fasioned detective work - on top of good old fashioned databases open to the NSA. I wonder if Dave got it right on the first call?

<comment><USER9> I'm the author. They found me on the firsts call. I have a unique name - <USER2> footprint was there. But, I had 5 relatives in the same town. Nobody else got a call. Were they just lucky?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, the NSA was able to build and deploy a backdoored version of this software to their targets without the trouble of reverse engineering and modifying it. Nice

<comment><USER17> All for the cost of a coffee cup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > But seriously, this laptop idiot was planning to blow up a building, or > something equally as bad, but wasn't smart enough or flush enough to pop for > the $39.99 to step up to the maximum-strength encryption?

Boy, you sure seem confident in your assessment of the severity of the situation. It's not like the NSA would have any idea how to get information out of people by convincing them the situation was something other than what it actually was.

Granted 18 years ago was a much different time than today. It's a shame that these agencies have proven their motives so untrustworthy.

<comment><USER19> Lets also assume there is a selection bias. The things the do right with the right intentions you never hear of. Its only when things go wrong do we know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I get that we all want to feel like something we are a part of is so important that James Bond-esque stuff happens to us. But, the author of this software did a disservice to his users by immediately rolling over to an, essentially, unknown party. I'm wondering what he would have given up if "Dave" had claimed to be Nigerian nobility.

Though, kudos to "Dave" if this was just a ruse to avoid paying for the $39.99 version.

</comment><comment><USER21> This person is either lying or delusional, or got pranked really hard. The "details" provided, while they make great story, simply don't cohere with how the NSA operate.

<comment><USER22> I mean, Bethesda is like 20-miles away from where the NSA operates. So straight up, the location is immediately wrong.

A funny thing about people who live in Maryland: the NSA has a big sign that says "NSA" on the highway. We all know where it exists, and there are funny local stories about ignorant criminals taking the wrong road and ending up in the NSA checkpoint. Its a famous local landmark.

[http://www.capitalgazette.com/news/ph-ac-cn-carjacking- suspe...](http://www.capitalgazette.com/news/ph-ac-cn-carjacking-suspect- search-1009-20151008-story.html)

People tell me that you can even drive up and go to a public gift-shop they have out front, by the National Cryptologic Museum (which is run by the NSA). Its literally a public place and they let anyone in to see some cool stuff. [https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic- heritage/museum/](https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/museum/)

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

The thing is: the guy seems to have been called by Naval Support Activity, Bethesda.

[https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/ndw/installations/nsa_beth...](https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/ndw/installations/nsa_bethesda.html)

This is a "different" NSA, and not "THE NSA" that people talk about.

Whether or not its actually part of protocol: I dunno. But maybe "Naval Support Activity" dudes like to pretend they are "the NSA" as a prank. Or maybe they really are part of national security (I mean, the US Navy is still... technically national security, right?)

\</comment><comment>---

In short: my expectation.

1\. Naval Support Activity called this guy up to ask for a favor. They misrepresent themselves (but without lying: they are the "NSA" after all) to kinda encourage this guy to do something for them.

2\. They feel bad about pranking the dude. So they drive to the Cryptographic Museum and buy him the first "real NSA"-branded gear that they find. Then they ship it to him.

<comment><USER23> He says they sent him a blue NSA mug afterwards and "I've had that top secret coffee cup for 18 years now. It's the same one pictured at the top of this article.". The picture of a blue mug on the post says National Security Agency. Hard to imagine one agency pretending to be another like that. Not sure what to make of it.

<comment><USER22> Those mugs are probably sold at the NSA Gift Shop in the Museum. Its probably the real deal, but anybody can buy them.

If these pranksters were really in Bethesda, it wouldn't take much longer than 40 minutes or so to drive over to "real NSA", buy the mug, and then come back to their office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The number of commenters who clearly did not read the story and have completely missed that this story was about the year 2000 is pretty stunning.

Plus the complete lack of understanding of the encryption standards that were legally exportable (which is also mentioned in the story) and seen as good enough is kind of stunning. 40 bit encryption in 2000 was decent. It wasn't great, but it would deter almost anyone.

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like weak security is a trend with this software.

> You attempted to reach www.safehousesoftware.com, but the server presented a > certificate signed using a weak signature algorithm (such as SHA-1). This > means that the security credentials that the server presented could have > been forged, and the server may not be the server that you expected (you may > be communicating with an attacker).

</comment><comment><USER25> What a dingus. Maybe there was no emergency, they just wanted your original source to look for imperfections in your implementation. Maybe 256 is secure, that doesn't mean _your_ 256 is secure.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think I know his brother. Given his intellectual interests, especially at the time, I bet the phone call from the NSA is something they still talk about.

<comment><USER9> Ha ha. We moved on years ago. Our conversations are now typically about the fact he as way more patents than me. I only have two ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How does access to the source code help?

<comment><USER28> attempting to find bugs (likely cryptographic weaknesses) that will let them crack the encryption faster.

<comment><USER29> I should hope he didn't roll his own encryption, pretty sure openssl existed in 2000, the NSA could have gotten a copy of that easily

<comment><USER9> I did not roll my own. Very few people in the world are smart enough to do that. I just create a very nice user interface to make things easy for ordinary Windows users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm not surprised at all seeing all sort of comments from the people of the ethical sect...

I'd really love to see any of these people in such situation. Or maybe even further, in a situation in which they actually have a tangible proof that "something bad is going to happen".

</comment><comment><USER31> Mitnick?

<comment><USER32> I'm about half way through Ghost in the Wires and this sounds exactly like something he'd do. "Hi, this is so-and-so and I'm with this-and-that. Could you send me a copy of the source code? I'm all over your phone line" The book is a continuous stream of anecdotes like this. Love it.

<comment><USER31> Yep so good and the 'ring this number to prove I am real' was a walk in the park for him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Social engineering at its best.

</comment><comment><USER34> If it were me, I'd be very wary about that coffee cup.

<comment><USER35> Yepp, throw that thing in an x-ray machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This guy had dubious ethics right from the start by offering most users a free version with weak encryption just so they can pay for the premium version. The export control excuse is bogus as by then DJB had already won the lawsuit against the U.S. government over this issue.

So all in all, I could see it coming that he would be offering the source code on the silver platter to the NSA after reading the first couple of paragraphs from the post.

I also like how he calls that guy a "dumb criminal" for not buying his military-grade encrypted software, as if he hadn't already admitted that he was giving the source code for the full version to the NSA anyway. In other words, he didn't just break the trust of the free users, but also of those paying him to keep their conversations private. This is why I said he had dubious ethics.

<comment><USER37> I don't see why it's any different than a photo-editing app that applies a watermark to the free version. It's intended to let people give the software a try, and if it seems to meet their needs, they buy the actual product.

As for sharing the source code with the NSA, I think you have a better argument there. That said, it's kind of like helping someone install a secure lock on their door to keep out criminals, yet being willing to share a master key with police if it's a matter of life and death.

<comment><USER29> not the master key, the schematics to the lock maybe. Assuming no bugs, I don't see how the source code could help in any way, they may as well have downloaded the source code for openssl.

He also didn't bother to verify whether it was a matter of life or death, he just immediately assumed he was helping break into a file containing the deactivation code for a bomb or something, who knows what the NSA was actually doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Notice how he masterfully distilled cool details about his software culminating in the 'low' price, all wrapped in a captivating story?

30 minutes later after he has left and you have closed the door to go back to your chores, you're wondering why you ordered 2 magic-mix blenders...

<comment><USER9> The only thing I did masterfully was write a Medium article that got some attention. I didn't even include a link to the old software which hasn't been updated in a decade. It's nothing more than an interesting story about one night nearly 20 years ago. Sorry to disappoint.

<comment><USER38> Can I return the blenders?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> God bless you for doing what's right for America.

</comment><comment><USER40> This article seems like a great argument for using open source encryption software. This guy handed over his source code to the NSA without a warrant or anything? So any idiot that steals your laptop can just call him up and exploit his software to get to your files. Great.

</comment><comment><USER41> My guess is that this is a marketing ploy designed to convey the message that the author's skills are above the NSA's and as such his software should be bought by anyone and everyone interested in great security. Considering the shareware version was 40bit encrypted, I highly doubt the NSA couldn't crack it before making that phonecall.

<comment><USER9> All commercial encryption software uses the same public ciphers. Do you really think nearly 20 years after the fact I'm trying to impress anyone? But, they were impressed at the time about my user interface which wrapped the ciphers, and they later had a group visit me in California about some internal uses of that same UX; but nothing came of it in the end.

<comment><USER41> Yeah that was the impression the blogpost left me with. If I'm in the wrong I apologize but as always I feel that honesty is the best policy.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Side projects – focus or diversification - <AUTHOR>

I have quite a free time but the problem is that I have two side projects (I am also working). One is 40% ready and the other is only the idea + some design but is smaller to program.
I think that it is the right timing for both given the cyber and social situation now and I am afraid I will lose the train (for each one) if I leave it for the future.
Should I split up my time between the two or focus on one? First choice seems more conservative/reasonable but second mimics the portfolio diversification principles. <comment><USER2> 1\. Focus on what ever one you can finish first. DONE is the goal, LIVE is the goal. Nothing else matters till you cross that line.

2\. Assume your going to "fire and forget" on that first one, Get it out there, but box the time you spend marketing and promoting.

3\. Go back to the SECOND one and finish that.

If the two are in any way inter-related, if they form a basket of services, then finishing both is in your best interest. If they don't relate at all, then you should add your "personal brand" to each of them. You might find that neither of them is a "business" but together you can support yourself (and maybe build a third thing).</comment>


Ask HN: Why there Safari has so few extensions - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I was always struggling on this: whether to use Safari. It is cool(as in physics) and provides the most native experience on Mac. I enjoyed it until one I found most of the extensions available on Chrome is not on Safari, since they were both built on top of WebKit, why extension developers prefer Chrome over Safari?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> My guess is that Apple, as usual, doesn't grant thirdy part developers access to some parts of their software so is harder to develop extensions and some tipe of features are even impossible to be implemented. Instead Firefox is open source and Chrome is partially open through the Cromium project (I think that most of the soure code is open but I don't know exactly how much so I could be wrong) so for these browsers is easier to develop useful extensions.</comment>


Gavin Newsom Declares California a 'Nation-State' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-09/california-declares-independence-from-trump-s-coronavirus-plans <comment><USER2> I don't see any reason why state governors should sit around waiting for the federal government to provide masks and order emergency actions. The governors are empowered to do those things, and it's their job to do so.

In fact, California used to have a huge stockpile of medical supplies, put in place by Arnold (a Republican). It was abandoned under the Democratic Governors, and disposed of.

Edit: found the cite

[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavi...](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavirus- california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators)

<comment><USER3> Because it makes literally no sense for 50 states to compete and outbid each other for a scarce set of resources when you already have an umbrella organization, the Federal government, that could coordinate the purchases and the allocation as not every state is hitting the peak at the same time. But it's seemingly every state for themselves instead. A complete failure and lack of leadership and shirking of responsibility from the Federal government, directly contributing to a loss of American lives.

<comment><USER2> Washington State currently has surplus medical capacity and has been packaging it up and shipping it to states who need it.

If the governor of your state is doing nothing while blaming the federal, that's a problem with your governor. As I said, they have the power to do these things, and the responsibility to.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't really absolve the federal government in any way. The United States has a Federal Emergency Management Agency which historically has stepped up to the plate during these types of situations.

In what way is this case different?

There are plenty of cases where states have been trying to follow the approach you suggest and have had their orders seized by the federal government. It seems like it's still quite unclear which approach states are supposed to follow so it seems perfectly reasonable for governors to be pointing fingers where the blame lies.

Colorado: [https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/04/coronavirus- colorado-p...](https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/04/coronavirus-colorado- polis-ventilators-fema/)

Los Angeles: [https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/hospitals-...](https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/hospitals- washington-seize-coronavirus-supplies)

New Jersey: [https://www.newjerseyhills.com/echoes- sentinel/news/somerset...](https://www.newjerseyhills.com/echoes- sentinel/news/somerset-county-ordered-35-000-medical-masks-the-federal- government-seized-the-whole- order/article_97ad57a6-004c-53c8-8451-e85a124d35ba.html)

Broader piece: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/coronavirus-f...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/coronavirus- fema-medical-supplies.html)

<comment><USER2> If you want the feds to supply masks, they have to get them from somewhere. Furthermore, if you want the feds to supply masks, you'll get them at the discretion of the feds, not local authorities.

You're seeing what's wrong with centralized planning of things that don't need to be centralized.

<comment><USER5> > If you want the feds to supply masks, they have to get them from somewhere.

Just like the states, or counties or towns or households...

Except the federal government can order private businesses to manufacture whatever it needs, something no governor can do

<comment><USER2> > something no governor can do

The idea the governor of a $222 billion budget can't get some masks made is a bit absurd.

<comment><USER5> > The idea the governor of a $222 billion budget can't get some masks is a bit > absurd

The federal government just passed a $2 trillion stimulus package. And they're thinking of doing another one.

And in addition to the power to print money, it can also order private industries to manufacture masks, tests, vaccines, ventilators, even tp

And it still can't get the job done.

There are not enough masks or tests

<comment><USER2> > There are not enough masks or tests

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/22/21189881/apple- donating-m...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/22/21189881/apple-donating- masks-amazon-bezos-cook-coronavirus)

Maybe Tim Cook should run for Governor. Cook knows how to get stuff done, and he has no legal powers whatsoever compared to the Governor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Governor Newsom refers to California as a "nation state" about once a week, in case the author was wondering. He's used that language quite often.

I'm totally ok with it, so long as the Federal government remains impotent and balks at California's efforts to manage itself, while simultaneously being run by the party of "states rights." Purely in spite of the lack of leadership and outright derision for our needs as a state, regardless of being home to over a tenth of the population and being our breadbasket and technological power house.

I know not all Californians agree on everything, but I think we can all come together and recognize that we do have to look out for our state as if it was an independent nation these days. Because the Feds aren't going to help us when we need it, just tax us and tell us we can't have proportional representation.

<comment><USER7> California has proportional representation in the House of Representatives.

California used to have proportional and geographic representation internally in a bicameral state legislature. Then came the Supreme Court's one man one vote ruling. Now southern California has pure proportional representation and gets all the fresh water it demands from northern California, environmental concerns be damned.

Be careful what you wish for.

<comment><USER8> this isn't true. Since the house has been capped, it hasn't grown or hasn't been redistributed based on population changes. A person in Wymoing has more representation than a person in California.

<comment><USER6> No, they're right. We have 53/435 (12.18%) of the House, which is roughly equal to our proportion of the total population (40mm/330mm, 12.12%, numbers will change with the census).

The "at least one" rep has a bigger impact on some of the medium/small size states. My point was more on the senate/electoral college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This makes happy... because this is how things _are supposed to work_ in a Republic. Power was never supposed to be concentrated heavily at the Federal level. It's much easier to kick policies you don't like at state levels and not be ruled by people in physically/culturally distant areas.

<comment><USER10> This is not power. This is aid, planning, money, and ideally to show some semblance of leadership.

<comment><USER11> We have governors declaring they will seize medical equipment from its owners. We have mayors of major cities advocating for us to conscript medical personnel via the Selective Service. We have the President invoking the Defense Production Act and telling private companies to manufacture goods. We have governors and mayors and county-level medical officials across the nation outlawing religious services and declaring that it is _illegal_ for people to _leave their homes_ except under a list of officially approved circumstances.

Behold, the power.

<comment><USER9> I'd rather take on the commanding force [guard] of a US state than the federal government of the US. Again, it was designed this way intentionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> this kind of "journalism" makes me sad.

In my view it's plainly an attempt to scratch an itch to validate our disappointment with the lack of empathy we see in GOP politics; but instead of expressing that, the author stokes hate and "other-ness" and encourages people to interpret words people say as evidence for their visions of extreme separatist versions of the future... which further breads more lack of empathy in others, and the spiral continues.

Fear mongering and visions of separatism exist on both sides of the party lines.

</comment><comment><USER13> The best thing that could happen to the United States would be an amicable divorce.

It is ridiculous to have national elections matter so much at the local level and come down to a few counties in a few contested states, remote from the vast majority of citizens.

Edit: It's heartening to see all the principled federalism and subsidiarity here in the HN comments. I'm sure it would be the same if a Democrat were in office and a Republican governer were talking this way, no?

<comment><USER14> A small nation has less coordinated power and would get walked over by USSR and China.

If the US was 50 small nations in WWII, Hitler more likely would have won.

<comment><USER15> France, Germany, etc all have their own armies but are part of the EU, and United Nations.

The states could be more like that.. a loose federation that only comes together in times of war but other than that the state decides their own constitutions, etc..and have their own presidents/etc..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've always liked the idea of flipping the tax situation so states keep the vast majority and the feds get peanuts - attacks the root of federal power.

How could CA accomplish that? I guess we need our own tax collection agency?

<comment><USER17> It would have to attempt to withdraw from the United States.

<comment><USER18> No. People would just have to vote politicians in that support more power at the state level. This has happened throughout US history.

Secession is unconstitutional, and no state has a military. In fact, the US military would already be there (and most troops stationed there likely wouldn't be from that state).

<comment><USER17> "attempt"

I'm going to repeat my point, and try to expand a bit, to maybe make it clearer. To unilaterally change where taxes go, California would have to attempt to withdraw from the United States. There's no other mechanism for a state to directly reduce their federal tax burden.

Sure, people across the country could elect federal officials that were committed to reducing the importance of the federal government, but then it isn't _California_ doing it, it's the whole US doing it.

<comment><USER18> Cities and also states will be in a precarious financial situation after this. There is a danger this allows for the federal government to exert further power and control. Since history often rhymes:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/four- ti...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/four-times-the- government-held-highway-funding-hostage/454167/)

Rather than a single state attempting to withdraw, it would likely have to be a coalition of states acting upon a unified effort for increased state rights. If representatives in NY/Tri-state, CA, IL, MA, etc. acted in unison, it would likely be more effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Do states have the power to riot and say "we're not going to pay federal taxes, because well ... the federal government did fuck all and gave us the middle finger when we most needed them"

The pandemic from the start when Trump saying "its only one person, we totally have it in control" to the change of opinions on masks, to the lies really feels like a shit show.

Yet he has massive support. It baffles my mind.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ok, bye! Been super fun!

</comment><comment><USER21> That's either poor wording, or treason (or insurrection, if you prefer).

<comment><USER22> It is neither. A nation is a social construct, and the federal government is just that: a federation (of states). Saying California is a nation-state is perfectly legal and a reasonable position to have.

<comment><USER23> > the federal government is just that: a federation (of states).

Sure: initially, the US was initially imagined much closer to the current European Union. That was a long time ago: a lot has changed.

> Saying California is a nation-state is perfectly legal and a reasonable > position to have.

Not since the civil war it isn't.

<comment><USER22> >a lot has changed

And a lot can change again. Last time the lines shifted seriously was the great depression. Seems like crisis is a catalyst for shifts in power structures...

>Not since the civil war it isn't.

Unless trump is planning on arresting governors brown and Newsom, along with dozens of former and current California legislators, this is a toothless threat.

California is a nation state. Think that is treason? Run up. 33.7166357, -118.0594170

<comment><USER14> Saying that you can survive defying federal sovereignty doesn't prove that you aren't defying federal sovereignty.

<comment><USER22> Saying that a war defines what is legal or illegal implies that the letter of the law is unimportant, only how the law is enforced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For those not familiar with US politics and culture, California is the the most influential on both.

Trends that start in California go nationwide in about 5 years.

So take what Governor Newsom says very seriously - it's a crystal ball.

Historically, the Governor of the State of California also has an outsized shot at being President. Reagan is one example, and the only reason The Terminator didn't run is because of citizenship requirements (he was born in Austria.)

You can bet President Newsom is in our future.

<comment><USER25> What? There's been one US president who was previously governor of California (Reagan) and one who unsuccessfully ran for governor (Nixon).

No other political candidate from California has even been nominated. We've had seven presidents from Ohio.</comment></comment>


Apple Updates Response in Lodsys Patent Case - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_updates_response_in_lodsys_patent_case/ <comment><USER2> I'd be curious if anyone can comment on this line:

"Apple's license agreement with Intellectual Ventures presumably precludes Apple (and Google) from this unless they risk losing their license to those patents and potentially many others (up to more than 30,000)."

Is it really possible to have a license that says "you can't challenge the validity of lawsuits that stem from patents we own/profit from"?

<comment><USER3> > Is it really possible to have a license that says "you can't challenge the > validity of lawsuits that stem from patents we own/profit from"?

If you mean "challenge the validity of the patents," then it is absolutely possible, and it is a very common thing to put into a license. You don't want your licensee to insulate himself from suit by signing the license agreement, and then immediately turn around and sue for a declaratory judgment of invalidity. Having this clause puts the spectre of an infringement suit into his head, and it makes him less likely to challenge your patent's validity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where is the updated response? This article just says there has been an updated response.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why aren't they just trying to void the damn patent in question?

<comment><USER6> I would imagine they have a very smart team of lawyers that has informed them that the action they are taking currently is the smartest, quickest, and cheapest way to settle the issue.

</comment></comment><comment> digiwizard</comment>


Tom Robbins on Failure - <AUTHOR>

So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all, you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.<p>~ Tom Robbins <comment><USER2> Good stuff.

I've been meaning to write about how ass-backwards our school system is for punishing failure rather severely rather than embracing convergence.

Story Time:

When I taught calculus I, I had a student that did terribly on the first two tests. With my help and a lot of tutoring from my end, he brought his grade up on the third test to a C and his final was a B.

If I had taken the average and followed instructions from the course coordinater, then I would had to have given him a D in the course which would have fucked him over.

But, I gave him an A.

When he took Calculus 2 in the next semester, he got high A's all by himself.

Loving failure is a big part of education.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like he deserved a C+ or perhaps a B-, which would have been fair and wouldn't have done any serious damage.

<comment><USER2> I don't think history matters, I think what you are going to do matters. Before I gave him the A, I asked myself:

How well does he know it?

Does he have the tools to know it?

I concluded that he would do well if he had confidence in himself, so I gave him the grade I thought would do him best. Now he has a math degree.

Students grades as predictors of life is too much pressure and forces an unhealthy fear of failure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure if I just had an epiphany, but I just sort of got lost in the thought of how our survival instinct prevents us from realizing our full potential.

Good quote, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Statistically, we are all failures, out to 6 sigma. [1]

The next step is to get a certain 1950's classic about humans' use of statistics.

\--

[1] (Stated off the cuff and not scientifically.)</comment>


Forget Silicon Valley, It Still Pays More to Be a Doctor in America - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-16/which-u-s-jobs-pay-the-most-top-ten-professions-by-salary <comment><USER2> These comparisons are too coarse. I make more money as a line level eng in big tech than my wife who is a surgeon at a well respected hospital with a hoity toity pedigree. I have always made more than her, my path has caused me to incur much less debt, and I work about 60% of the hours that she does. In 10 or 15 years, she might make more than me or we might make about the same depending on the career track I decide to take. She is in the top 2% of her field pedigree/track wise and the real benefits accrue after 10 years or so of being an attending. At that point, you can consult, be an expert witness in court cases, direct a medical program etc. If you aren't in the top echelons then you're ceiling is going to be 300-400k unless you get a deal at a rural hospital desperate for your services.

<comment><USER3> working at FAANG and making 300k tc is like 5-10% of engineers even in America, your experience certainly isn't true for the run of the mill engineers. Top 5-10% doctors probably pull in close to a million.

<comment><USER4> I seem to recall reading a comment on hn a few months ago about over hearing (at the gym) a transplant surgeon trying to recruit his friend saying that he could get several mill per year.

<comment><USER5> That sounds about right. I sometimes deal with surgeons through work and also through someone close to me and these surgeons seem quite wealthy considering the types of cars and houses they are talking about. Must be way into the millions.

there is also no ageism so they have a secure career for almost as long as they want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One big advantage that doctors and lawyers have is that their careers easily progress as they get older, they continue to get paid more and have excellent job security. A 50 year old lawyer or doctor is making bank where no one wants to hire a typical 50 year old developer.

<comment><USER7> I think the difference is that there are so many more software engineers. That is, there is no doctor equivalent of a typical 50 year old developer that no one wants to hire because those doctors were filtered out through med school, residencies, etc. You're left with a few highly skilled set of doctors. While there is no such filtering process for software engineers and you're left with a large number of people of varying skills. A highly skilled 50 year old software engineer is still very hireable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The title of this article talks about Silicon Valley but then uses national numbers. There are very few software engineers in the Bay Area making only $110,000 a year. If they want to talk about tech that's fine, but this includes programmers working at insurance companies in Tulsa, which isn't exactly the image that comes to mind with "Silicon Valley."

<comment><USER9> Still though, on a cost-of-living adjusted basis, it works out the same. The other day someone asked me if a $100k offer at WalMart in Bentonville, Arkansas was a good offer. The effective purchasing power is well over $200k in Bay area dollars, not to mention the lower tax burden.

Granted, there is huge opportunity cost living in Arkansas.

<comment><USER10> Do Tesla's cost half as much in Bentonville? What about MacBook Pros or student loan payments?

<comment><USER11> No, but food and rent cost far less, meaning you can buy more Teslas and pay off more of your loans.

<comment><USER10> The math doesn't add up. Food isn't uniformly half as expensive and rent is only a limited percentage of your take home. A 1k apartment vs a 4K apartment is a yearly difference of $36k, not $100k.

<comment><USER12> This. 10 out of 10 discussions I have around this topic with people looking to move out of the Bay Area results in the other party realizing money isn't going to net out in their favor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A doctor in the US is someone who has gone through 4 years of undergraduate college, 4 years of medical school, and 3 years of residency.

In addition, getting into medical school is pretty difficult, so they have to be among the best students in undergrad.

Now let's compare an somewhat analogous software engineer. Someone who has gotten a bachelors degree from a good college graduating near the top of the class. They now have 7 years of experience in their job. A possible equivalent of the competition for getting into medical school might be landing a job with FAANG.

Looking at levels.fyi, it seems that such a person would be making from 250-350K, which is comparable if not greater than an internal medicine or family practice doctor with a lot less stress and much fewer work hours.

<comment><USER14> > Looking at levels.fyi, it seems that such a person would be making from > 250-350K, which is comparable if not greater than an internal medicine or > family practice doctor with a lot less stress and much fewer work hours.

Is that $250k-$350k exclusively in hyperinflated areas of the country? What would a FAANG developer be making in Miami, or Iowa?

<comment><USER9> I've heard near-FANG companies pay roughly 75% of what the expected value in Silicon Valley would be in places like Denver or Austin. A deep discount for sure but with the added benefit of far lower cost-of-living and tax burden. Facebook and Google are unique in that the majority of their engineers are in high cost-of-living areas, so they pay the same amount for the relatively small numbers of engineers working outside of the major offices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't "fixing" healthcare cause a big reduction in not just doctors salaries but the amount of profits doctors offices make

Not sure how much they ding my health insurance company for when I got in for a ten minute visit and see the doctor for maybe 5.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, and that's okay. Nobody's owed compensation at a specific level, and moving forward, medical professionals would be more public servants than rock stars. That's not to say they'd be paid badly, Canadian doctors under the single-payer model make $250-500K CAD and have much lower expenses as malpractice insurance is socialized too.

<comment><USER17> I vote we go after software engineers next! We won't earn as much, but hey, we will be able to feel good about being public servants. Its always easy to throw others under the bus... Look at what happened to the education profession. It used to be good, but its slowly been getting worse and worse. Now its generally the C students that go into education.

> That's not to say they'd be paid badly, Canadian doctors under the single- > payer model make $250-500K CAD

Only because if they got paid less, they could move 50 miles south and get paid 2x.

<comment><USER16> If you can make a good case for socializing software engineering, then I'm all ears, but I've yet to hear a good one. The difference is that a software engineer doesn't control directly the life or death of another, and doesn't provide a service we all need to maintain basic function and that of society. Health care should be a human right, some letters on a screen less so.

> Only because if they got paid less, they could move 50 miles south and get > paid 2x.

That sounds like a market would exist regardless, does it not? Canadian physicians have little interest in working in the US because they want to serve people based on their needs and not sentencing them to death based on their inability to pay. There are serious moral issues doctors in America are payed handsomely to ignore.

The interesting thing is you're arguing against your own interests here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Those salary numbers are nation wide. In silicon valley alone, software engineers will make much more on average than doctors.

</comment><comment><USER19> This seems like a very click baity article.

I've only skimmed the article, but it seems it's looking at median salary. I'd guess that Silicon Valley salaries are on the high end of the income distribution for the positions so likely to be higher than GPs

<comment><USER10> That's the problem with wanting "typical" numbers. Amazon range TC numbers _are_ common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm a little confused on the goal of this 'analysis'. It appear that time spent in school/school cost isn't even considered. I'm not that familiar with bloomberg articles so I can't speak to their normal quality, but this seems like a filler article

<comment><USER20> Now that I noticed that this is aimed at young professionals in an effort to guide their career choice, this article seems even more disingenuous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm a sophomore in college right now. A couple of my friends chose to do Pre- med, and I'm majoring in CS. Nearly everyone in my CS classes will graduate with the degree, and get offers as software engineers. However, the people doing Pre-med are stressing like crazy, taking nearly double the amount of classes I am, and still might not get into medical school. And don't forget residency after that. Obviously the debt from 8 years of school is going to be much more, not to mention the emotional impact of all that stress and school.

<comment><USER9> I noticed something when I graduated a few years ago that only became more true as I started looking at hiring new graduates. People that would have normally gone the PreMed/PreLaw/Investment Banking route are changing majors half-way to CS. The students changed from easygoing hacker types to hyper- competitive types.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My GP is leaving medicine. She doesnt make that much and the hospital is dictating her hours like a fast food employee. GPs make in the mid 100K range. I have several relatives that are physicians and they still work long hours, maybe 60+ hours a week, are on call some holidays, weekends, nights etc. They do love their work.

I went to an MD PHD program for 5 years before dropping out (for the dot com boom). My dream was to develop systems that would create custom cures for infectious diseases. Take a sample of the virus/bacteria, drop it into the machine, and custom antibodies are created for the particular strain. I realized that medicine changes so slowly and you are essentially a mechanic for the human body. As a physician you have a specialty and will likely be doing the exact same thing for the rest of your life.

As a physician you are servicing people as a developer you are building things. Tech is rapidly changing and for me is way more fun. You can reinvent yourself to a totally different technology or field every 5 years. You can start a company in just about any field with a development background to make much more than a physician can make.

I started my own consulting practice and overall I believe was a much easier and interesting path than medicine would have been.

<comment><USER23> She should start an urgent care clinic in an underserved, but not totally economically depressed region. She will almost certainly earn multiples more than she made on salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the same article, the median CEO makes $190k, which is considerably less than what I think most people assume -- slightly more than 3x the median household income. Note that for the purposes of government statistics a CEO is running a thousand person company, it is not the "CEO" of a 20-person startup. That pay seems low for the amount of stress and responsibility that job entails.

It is good to be a software engineer.

</comment><comment><USER25> No shit the average doctor makes more than the average programmer (though a Silicon Valley programmer is going to have a higher compensation than average - which makes this article even more stupid, because it uses national numbers on salary to make a generalization about Silicon Valley salary).

But becoming a doctor is a _lot_ more difficult, expensive, and takes much, much longer. Its much riskier. Getting into med school after the sunk cost of an undergrad is far from guaranteed. Passing your boards and getting into residency is not guaranteed and you may have to go into a different specialty than you were planning on. By this time you've already given up 8 years of earnings and have probably taken out loans in the six figures.

And if you graduate med school and don't like the work? Too bad!

Seeing a few friends go through the stress of the process, I wouldn't want to do it myself. None of my friends got a residency right out of med school. The other one of my friend decided to not go into med school at all after getting a pre-med degree and instead go to nursing school.

</comment><comment><USER26> My family is full of people in the medical field.

They generally make more than I do. I work remotely on a beach at 30. They cannot, or aspire to once they retire.

For my values and life goals, I prefer my compensation: freedom. Though they get to wake up everyday to help people.

</comment><comment><USER27> And work twice as many hours a week.

<comment><USER28> And have massive personal liability that could much more easily leave you unemployable and emotionally scarred.

<comment><USER29> And start your career $300-500k in debt with the only option you possibly have for paying it off is working as a doctor, even if you decide you don't like it 8 years into the program. You are now 100% handcuffed to the profession and have 20 years of servitude ahead of you.[0]

[0] True story of family friend

<comment><USER30> There's also the opportunity cost of the years of additional schooling. Their tech counterparts in the Bay Area are making six figures a year for several years while doctors are racking up additional debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I make quite a bit of money without a degree and I work 30 hours a week as an engineer. Doctor salaries are not much more than what I get already so I'm failing to see how it pays more to be a doctor. I guess if all we're looking at is total compensation then sure they make more than me, but I put in way less effort to formal education and work way less.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why are all of these articles on comp so wrong?

<comment><USER25> Can you elaborate on what is wrong about them?

<comment><USER32> They always just seem meaningless, for example:

What is a Computer and Information Systems Manager? What jobs does that cover?

Let's say maybe it's software engineers, why are we comparing doctors, who's comp is all salary, to engineers, who can have 50%+ bonuses?

Law is a well known bimodal distribution. BigLaw pays $190k salary + bonus straight out of law school.

Where are bankers and consultants? Post-MBA comp is $150k - $165k salary + bonus.

The articles just never seem to align with what I've heard by word of mouth.

<comment><USER23> Almost half of doctors in the USA are not on salary, they are partners in their own practice.

<comment><USER32> Didn't know that - great point

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Maybe a better source for physician salaries: [https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-compensation- overvie...](https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-compensation- overview-6011286)

<comment><USER25> That link redirects to a login page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> if you study your ass off and work as many hours like doctors do, then i'm sure you can make just as much money in big cities with tech jobs.

</comment><comment><USER34> They also have the distinct disadvantage of always being in the position of making decisions that may kill someone.

</comment><comment><USER35> Doctors make more because they have a government-enforced cartel preventing competition for their jobs from other US citizens and also preventing immigrants from coming to the US and claiming to be "doctors" without any qualifications.

<comment><USER36> Yes, please tell this to the next doctor you see who saves your life or cures your disease. /s

<comment><USER35> You are implying that they would be insulted. If they were insulted by the implication, why do they accept government interference in doctor licensing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> But its still easier to break into tech.

</comment><comment><USER38> Did not read. Assumed article did not deduct malpractice insurance premiums and student debt payments to reach conclusion.</comment>


Hackers dump data for 2.3M Patreon users online - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9439077/patreon-hack-user-database-2-million-users <comment><USER2> >Patreon revealed earlier this week that it had recently been hacked, compromising the email addresses, usernames, and shipping addresses of its users.

Were passwords not breached? Or is it just that they haven't publicly released the passwords from the breach?

<comment><USER3> passwords were leaked, but were per-user salted & 12-round bcrypted, so there has not been a mass password breach. with significant computing power and weak enough passwords, obviously some passwords that are extensively targeted (say, a famous or infamous creator) will be compromised in the coming weeks & months. which, of course, is why the initial announcement suggested all users change their passwords as a precaution.</comment></comment>


GotCast Is Looking For Talent - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/08/gotcast-beta-is-looking-for-talent/#comments

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure how this will pan out. I find it interesting because the amount of people that want to be a "star".</comment>


East India Company brand returns after 135-year absence  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10971109

<comment><USER2> In every Indian history textbook, The East India company is listed as the initial vehicle which brought about the British rule in India.

Since I was brought up in India, I had a VERY -ve reaction just reading the story here on Hacker News. It was kind of built in.

I dont understand why this guy would pick this name for his company. Maybe he never intends to sell in India.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, but come on, as an Indian wouldn't you LOVE to own the Dutch East India company? I also think reverse colonialism played a huge part in Tata's purchase of Land Rover and Jaguar.

"Turnabout is fair play" as they say - I'm sure there are a bunch of Indians who would love to get a hold of "prized" British assets. It's an ego thing.

<comment><USER4> Yeah right. 'The holocaust also had a huge role to play in Jews getting their homeland'. What British colonialism did to Indians was nothing less than the holocaust on creating human misery and deaths. But of course, for people sitting on the other side of the planet reading history through the eyes of the plunderers, British colonialism was benevolent towards Indians in many ways. I can't blame you for that. Winners get to write history and sadly Indians are too busy subsisting, to get their history right at least within their borders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, the company that played a major role in modern India's history, American Revolution and for the most part British modern history is now a brand with a bit more than a coffee and tea shop? I wouldn't call that exactly a 'return'. It's more of a homage+memorabilia setup than anything.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would be highly amused if some Americans visiting London stole the store's entire stock and dumped it into the harbor, for old time's sake. I would be less amused if activists decided to re-enact some of the other episodes from the history of this company.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anybody have data on what he paid for the brand?

</comment><comment><USER8> _At its peak, the company employed a third of the British workforce and was responsible for a huge tranche of global trade._

I knew it was big, but a third of the British workforce? That's insane.

Anyway, I welcome the East India Company back. I realise it has almost nothing in common with the original entity, but I personally might buy their tea if it becomes available here, just for the illicit non-PC pro-colonialism thrill.

<comment><USER9> It's big in the sense that it exercised power in a way that dwarfs what we currently regard as modern corporate kleptocracy. The Company wasn't just a trading company, it was responsible for exercising political power in India on behalf of the British crown, and even operated its own military forces.

It's precisely this excess concentration of monopoly power that Adam Smith described in _The Wealth of Nations_ as a criticism of capitalism gone awry [1].

Probably as close to a real-life manifestation of Shinra as we've ever had in history.

[1] <http://www.newstatesman.com/200412130016.htm></comment></comment>


Flat adverts that may be breaking the law - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18588612 Adverts for rooms/flats to rent that limit candidates based upon gender/race and religion still live on today. <comment><AUTHOR> I personly believe if you own a property then you should have some control who lives there. Also if your only comfortabel with people of a certain gender/race etc then it's yoru home and your choice and by outlining that then your being open, honest and avoiding the waste of your and others time. Now all that said you don't see many adverts for white british males only, some would say that advert would not last long and you would end up in jail. But racisim is in the eye of the beyholder and something is only race related when it is made a song and dance about and some people like a song and dance sadly.

Sadly all that will become of this is a lone women will rent a room to a male instead of a female and have a incident or the other way around and that will become the reason why you have this - for peoples saftly in there own homes.

Even sader is that if they make it against the law in a way they uphold then things wont change on results and will only casue peoples time to become wasted.

If you remove the whole race card argument then there is no argument.

\-- Red blood person who comes from Earth wins all the time in my books, shame everybody don't see it that way.</comment>


Tell HN: Happy New Year - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> So far people are wishing a productive new year. You know what? Screw that. You deserve a break, HN. Take some time to yourself. Go on a vacation. A long one. Spend some time with your wife. Or husband.

You guys are always so goddamn productive it makes me feel unproductive, and I have a full time job, a side project, and a wife who puts me on a very busy social schedule. For once take it easy and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Seriously HN, sometimes you anger me, sometimes you entertain me, but mostly you guys amaze me and you all deserve a bit of a vacation. Tell your boss I said so.

<comment><USER3> I hope for the sake of everyone here that productivity implies _more_ free time to spend with friends and family.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The autistic coder in me never understood why we paste printf("Happy New Year\n"); readline(); at the top of every conversation during the holidays.

But for once I'll follow protocol. Happy new year, HN!

<comment><USER5> Because it's important to acknowledge crossing an arbitrary boundary we all agreed was important, and wish each other well when we do it.

I don't get it either.

Happy New Year to you all.

<comment> __--__ In this short, brutal life you have to seize any opportunity you can to celebrate.

Happy New Year :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To each reader I hope you a productive, hackin' new year!

</comment><comment><USER7> Happy new year to you as well :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Shouldn't this have been posted at 0 GMT?

Or has doing time math gone to my brain...

</comment><comment><USER9> Happy New Years hackers. Here is to a year full of productivity and learning!

</comment><comment><USER10> You have done more to bring us to the fore-front of understanding code and current events. I appreciate greatly you helping me to see the mighty geekAVerse in all it's Glory!

</comment><comment><USER11> No way man, here on the left coast you'll have to tare 2013 out of our cold dead hands!

... for another 60 minutes anyways.

Happy new year!

</comment><comment><USER12> Happy New year's everyone! make the best of it!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any 2014 wishes for HN headlines, improvements, milestones, technologies and hacks?

</comment><comment><USER13> HN: Disrupting New Years Day 2014 since New Years Day 2014/01/01:00:01

</comment><comment><USER14> New Year's Resolution: to get the leap year conditional right this time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wish everyone a Happy New Year! Let's make the most of 2014!

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's wishing that 2014 is your best year yet!

</comment><comment><USER17> Happy New Year. Have more fun this year!

</comment><comment><USER18> Same to you!

<comment><USER19> 1

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Happy new year everyone ..

</comment><comment><USER21> Happy new year, HN! :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> Happy New Year, guys.

</comment><comment><USER23> Happy New Year HN :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Happy New Year, HN!

</comment><comment><USER25> Happy new year :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Hacker New Year

</comment><comment><USER27> Happy new year!

</comment><comment><USER28> Happy new year!

</comment><comment><USER29> Happy new year!

</comment><comment><USER30> HAPPY NEW YEAR

</comment><comment><USER31> year++;</comment>