U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-encryption-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-government-seeks-facebook-help-to-wiretap-messenger-sources-idUSKBN1L226D <comment><USER2> I think it has become abundantly clear that a fully peer to peer, encryption required (non-optional), no single central server infrastructure solution is the answer.

No points to tap.

No point in tapping the data.

If they want to capture conversations it's time to go back to the proper old ways of actually spying on high-value targets.

<comment><USER3> Isn't this what Slack is?

<comment><USER4> Slack literally stands for Searchable Log of All Content and Knowledge. It's incredibly useful and transformative for what it is. It's about the furthest thing possible from private.

<comment><USER3> OK, this is all news to me. I have to go delete a bunch of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At what point does the technical community stop trying to technically interfere with the efforts of law enforcement, and start trying to change the laws that make law enforcement behave this way?

<comment><USER6> > At what point does the technical community stop trying to technically > interfere with the efforts of law enforcement, and start trying to change > the laws that make law enforcement behave this way?

Law enforcement and government are addicted to power to an unhealthy degree. Convincing people to voluntarily give up power is rarely successful.

You seem to believe majority support is enough to make something happen. It is not.

The Public Option has 75% popular support. Medicare-For-All has 59% popular support.

Yet we have neither.

<comment><USER7> _The Public Option has 75% popular support. Medicare-For-All has 59% popular support. [HR] Yet we have neither._ Brexit was decided on an embarrassingly close vote: 51.9%

So we have two seemingly popular things that haven't happened and one that has happened but was not so popular (but it turns out that it was more popular than was suspected by anyone beforehand). I'm afraid that is politics. If it helps, I am not a fan of Brexit but will have to live with it anyway.

There is no conspiracy and I don't think that it is fair to accuse your police and government of being arseholes (to put words in your mouth!) Sometimes we simply have to accept that our personal will does not always dovetail with that of the majority - that is how democracy works. To be fair though, there is also nothing wrong with getting a good rant in on HN.

If you feel really strongly about healthcare, why not emigrate to the UK? Our NHS is bloody amazing and only costs: [https://www.gov.uk/national- insurance/how-much-you-pay](https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much- you-pay) \- roughly 12% of your salary. There is a lower band and an upper band so it is not 12% of everything you earn and it also covers unemployment payments and other things.

<comment><USER6> > There is no conspiracy and I don't think that it is fair to accuse your > police and government of being arseholes (to put words in your mouth!) > Sometimes we simply have to accept that our personal will does not always > dovetail with that of the majority - that is how democracy works. To be fair > though, there is also nothing wrong with getting a good rant in on HN.

You've clearly never dealt with either in the US for a protracted period of time.

Yes, they very much are. Their response to them breaking the law and/or making a mistake is "Fuck off, sue us."

> If you feel really strongly about healthcare, why not emigrate to the UK? > Our NHS is bloody amazing and only costs: [https://www.gov.uk/national- > insurance/how-much-you-pay](https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much- > you-pay) \- roughly 12% of your salary. There is a lower band and an upper > band so it is not 12% of everything you earn and it also covers unemployment > payments and other things.

A) You are moving the goal posts from the original discussion.

B) I was born here. I'm not leaving just because I don't win every battle.

> Brexit was decided on an embarrassingly close vote: 51.9%

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/russian- influe...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/russian-influence- brexit-vote-detailed-us-senate-report)

[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/britains- russia...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/britains-russia- collusion-scandal-looks-just-like-trumps.html)

[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/top-brexit- back...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/top-brexit-backer- passed-trump-team-info-to-russians.html)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43336351](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk- politics-43336351)

> The four most recent readings - taken by BMG Research and Survation between > November and January - have, on average, once the 8% who said "don't know" > are left to one side, put Remain on 52% and Leave on 48%.

Now that it isn't being influenced by an outside party, it is no longer narrowly winning.

To be honest, I don't think people should cry they have a mandate from the people with less than a 55% majority.

<comment><USER7> _Now that it isn 't being influenced by an outside party, it is no longer narrowly winning._

My original point about Brexit being very close still stands and I would suggest that your _Remain on 52% and Leave on 48%_ are still very close given the sheer pain of the separation that has become apparent since the original vote (you try listening to the news here - its bloody boring.) If you had waved say 60% Remain, I might take notice.

<comment><USER6> Yeah but your statements are largely irrelevant to what I was saying. A heavily influenced vote with borderline +/-2% isn't what I was discussing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "it could make similar arguments to force companies to rewrite other popular encrypted services such as Signal and Facebook's billion-user WhatsApp"

Umm... Signal is open-source, so unless they outlaw encryption across the board, the worst-case scenario is someone just has to fork it.

<comment><USER9> There's no guarantee that the client you install on your device is built from the same source code that is publicly available, unless you build the client yourself from that source code. I suspect no one is doing that at this point (since Noise died with CopperheadOS).

<comment><USER10> Right, for the masses, but for focused enterprise, like a well resourced gang, for instance, refortifying your security is just another build away. Add on some sneakernet transport and side-load instructions and the only people affected by a weakened platform is everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Facebook's Haxl team openly discusses their ability to wiretap Messenger at scale for anti-spam.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT6VJkkhy0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT6VJkkhy0o)

Users should be given the option to use peer to peer strong encryption with friends they whitelist.

</comment><comment><USER12> *a different department of the US government. We already know that the NSA wiretaps Messenger at will extrajudicially via PRISM and other programs.

</comment><comment><USER13> Would [perfect] forward secrecy prevent a government from asking an entity from decrypting intercepted and recorded transmissions?

<comment><USER2> Forward Security is about creating a single session key and then ensuring that it isn't trusted after the session.

This is a good best practice and SHOULD be used everywhere.

It does not prevent any attacker, government or otherwise, from making client implementations do things like:

        * add in third party key distribution (backdoor the conversation)
        * send a 'backup' of keys or other details to a central server
        * directly man in the middle by only establishing a "secure" connection to a middle server
        * compromise the situation in other ways; E.G. using a flawed "random" source

BTW, if you can't build the client your self from source, how do you KNOW the above isn't being done?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Law enforcement agencies forcing technology providers to rewrite software to capture and hand over data that is no longer encrypted"

Would this, or could this, fall under compelled speech? Especially if an employee is using the product themselves?

</comment><comment><USER15> It happens because Facebook's design is fundamentally flawed for the security.

<comment><USER16> How is it fundamentally flawed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's strange for the same issues with China there is 'outrage', and then for the exact same things here we see hand waving and 'technical' solutions.

What technical solution is going to protect the human being from the indignity of security personnel presuming the right to going through your personal papers and thoughts? And this is already in effect in US airports with no pushback.

It is this denial by many about what is happening at home and the absence of mainstream protests and push back that has allowed the the rise of surveillance capitalism, the NSA, secret courts, secret orders, secret processes and brazen surveillance demands by governments.

The worse it becomes the more the need to posture and distract by seeking to hold others accountable for the very things you are neck deep in.

</comment><comment><USER18> Article on HN: "The government shouldn't be trying to do this, we need encryption, decentralized services"

Article on Reddit: "Delete Facebook! Fuck Zuckerberg."

<comment><USER19> One is a consumer's answer, the other one is a creator's answer.

Makes sense, as these are the respective target audiences of the two communities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Easily tapped central server(s) is my nutshell theory of why rightwing extremists aren't being kicked off of Twitter. Third-party doctrine, and all that.

<comment><USER21> I honestly can't tell what groups are being banned, nor what the rules are. Isis isn't banned but random right winger is. Jimmy Dore and Kyle Kulinski have pointed out seemingly random left wingers getting banned, Sarah Jeong gets a blue check. It all seems so random and incoherent. I am genuinely lost.

<comment><USER20> You are definitely lost if you think Sarah Jeong should be sanctioned.

<comment><USER21> I don't think anyone should be censored/sanctioned. ISIS, Alex Jones, Antifa, let them all speak as far as I'm concerned. But to the extent that there are currently censorship rules in place, I genuinely do not understand them. Enforcement seems genuinely random and arbitrary.

Sarah Jeong mocks white racists, no ban, fine.

Candace Owens copy/pastes Sarah Jeong's tweets, gets banned, not fine.

A world in which Alex Jones gets banned but ISIS does not is total insanity.

To reiterate, I don't want any of the above to be banned/censored. However, in an world in which the above facts exist, I am suggesting I do not understand what the rules are at all. It seems random and arbitrary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Face to face still the most secure. No tech involved. Just saying.

<comment><USER23> Not everyone has the means to walk over and talk in person, grandpa

<comment><USER22> I know. Just know it's a compromise. I'm late 30's BTW

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The other day i posted a rant on p2p here on HN and everyone was like, huh! Use whatsapp.

We need to build our own p2p and e2e secure chat client like whatsapp which works on every platform.

Sure, it's possible - skype was exactly this before except for the e2e part.

Why we techies can't? Let's make a group and dissect the problem in our free time. Who is up for it?

<comment><USER25> Some people are working on this problem. You might be interested in looking at the Matrix standard [0] or some of the things built using it like Riot [1], a Slack-like web client supporting text, voice and video communication for one- on-one or group contexts.

0: [https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html](https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html)

1: [https://about.riot.im/what-is-riot/](https://about.riot.im/what-is-riot/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wut? Go to Github and cobble a MitM proxy.

</comment><comment><USER27> Reading the comments here reminds me of how silo'ed this community is, philosophically speaking.</comment>


Why 'your' programmers just want to code - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/why-your-programmers-just-want-to-code-36da9973388e <comment><USER3> I think there's a bit of learned helplessness, but I also think that a lot of this is _because_ of agile (or more specifically, scrum), not in spite of it.

The amount of micro-management that goes into most programmers day to day work makes it extremely hard to be innovative, because you essentially have to justify what you're working on daily -- and any creative person knows that not every idea pans out. You need managerial support to occasionally make mistakes.

There have been a lot of times in other jobs where we'd have a slack in our schedule and I used the down time to make a change that was really necessary and took a minimal amount of time, mentioned it in a standup meeting, and got blasted for not working on our "commitments" for the "sprint" (even when I had nothing to do).

Companies always talk about wanting ideas from workers and how important innovation is, but they're not willing to extend the trust to their people to create an environment where that can happen. People naturally become disengaged when they're not trusted or valued.

The worst part is that it's not just management creating this mentality, it's the other programmers. I've noticed that younger more inexperienced programmers tend to crave the structure of agile, whereas the older more experienced programmers chafe at it. I think if programming had more of a culture of apprenticeship and mentorship, and a deeper appreciation that this is hard and it takes a long time to get good at it, our industry would be a lot healthier.

<comment><USER4> That sounds like poorly run scrum more than anything else. I can't count the number of times I've thrown an "investigation" task on the backlog that may or may not have panned out.

Scrum is more about keeping your fellow engineers informed on what they are working on so incompatible things rise quickly. It shouldn't be used as a tool for micro management but instead reviewed at the end of each sprint.

<comment><USER5> And this is exactly why "agile" has become a religion more than anything — if it's not working, it's because you're doing it wrong. You just need to agile harder.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, it really does sound like bad management - management shouldn't be blasting an individual during scrum. Management also shouldn't care if other work gets done as long as the core commitments get finished. Good management shouldn't hamstring you like that - engineering doesn't work like that.

That is regardless of agile or whatever development methodology you use.

<comment><USER7> Management really shouldn't even be participating in any of the scrum meetings other than the sprint review. All of the other meetings are supposed to be just for the team itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a veteran in this field, I find myself not trying to ask permission as much for new ideas that I can do on my own. Multiple times in the past I have done my own ideas,while getting feedback from peers and those that are affected, but generally leaving management out of it and not seeking permission. Some ideas panned out, some did not. But I had a great time, got satisfaction from my work, grew and learned. Then other times I would get into this mode where I want to get permission and let managers in on what I am doing. At first it starts out OK. You scale back your ideas due to their concerns. Then you get redirected... "maybe later but now i want you do focus on this". Eventually it leads to a new job. I think this article helped me pinpoint this pattern, even though I suspected it.

It is a balancing act. You do not want to waste company time with oddball ideas, and some of your ideas will be oddball. You need to seek feedback on them so that they can be improved. You need freedom to try them out, and fail. I think this article is good for both managers and developers. Developers should know that this pattern is real, and there are things you can do to protect yourself from going down this path. For me, its basically not always asking for permission to try stuff out... take a risk and believe in yourself, but also get feedback to filter out oddball ideas that waste time.

<comment><USER9> Definitely second this. Taking risks like this is the only way I've kept the job interesting, and managed to make the projects actually good.

The downside is when it doesn't pan out, you can have a bit of catching up to do.

<comment><USER8> > The downside is when it doesn't pan out, you can have a bit of catching up > to do.

That is so true as I am catching up now on a Saturday. You also learn to not roll your own solutions and check a second or third time for a solution on Github or open source community.... and check again if you don't find it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, this article echoes exactly why I'm leaving my company next week. Was hired 2 years ago as architect, but over time ended up just being micromanaged by upper management. Got bitter, cared a lot more about pay than I used to, and ultimately put my notice in.

<comment><USER11> this is absolutely my sentiment. I started 3 years ago as a senior sysadmin. 2 years later its clear directors call all the shots, management tells engineers to do it, and we're expected to cheer and support the result if its moderate success is achieved, or ignore the fallout if it fails spectacularly. most of my meetings have turned into head-nodding and shrugs.

Lifers at the company dont care about new ideas, and any effort to change is met with cynicism and vitriol.

<comment><USER12> Do you understand the cynicism? Is the vitriol real or imagined?

If you have ideas that are both "complete" and relevant to the business, you're right to be ticked.

If you're just spitballing about "things that could be better" without concrete information about what quantifies "better", you're probably not being taken seriously.

<comment><USER13> Ideas can't become complete if you're not allowed to work on them. Nobody pitches complete ideas unless they're doing something that's already been done hundreds of times before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the article is overly broad, or at least poorly titled. I've wanted to "just code" in two scenarios:

1 - as the article describes, I've been shown an environment that is hostile or apathetic to any of my ideas.

2\. When I am with a team I trust to make well-considered, well-timed, well.communicared decisions. Sure, I participate more when in planned or unplanned meetings and my interest level/enthusiasm is high, but my main value-add is to code. If others are great at their jobs I'm free to try to be great at mine. Coders are problem solvers. If the biggest "problems" are my code, then that is where I will focus.

It is worth noting that we've chosen a career about programming, most of us because we enjoy it. At the start of our careers we are constantly learning, feeling accomplished, and have a amount of time to focus on coding. Over time we start contributing in less direct ways - planning features, scheduling, mentoring. The projects get bigger and more complex. We learn the "easy" parts of the craft and start wrestling with the harder, more subtle, and more long- term aspects.

All good stuff that enables more pushing of that Skinner button (coding)...but we get that sense of accomplishment less and less often even as the stakes involved increase. So we yearn for the earlier days and try to recapture that feeling.

We use and write tools that allow for ever-increasing efficiencies. Humans in meetings? Relatively nothing has improved in decades...it is easy to have that feel like time in a meeting is a waste.

We are solution discovering junkies - don't be surprised when we try and find the high.

</comment><comment><USER15> So, my job is officially "dev lead" but I'm really just a glorified senior developer who the company (use to) listen to more than other people until they brought in a "scrum master" and started going "agile".

I had one process that I designed that wasn't reliable. I didn't realize it until the volume started going up. The people in the field were complaining about the process not working reliably, somehow that got translated to senior management as "performance issues", by the time it got back to the "scrum master" and my immediate managers, I was being criticized about working on "the wrong thing" because I was focusing on health checks, auto recovery, scalabiliy, high availability, and most importantly improved logging to determine what the issues were instead of making it faster - ie improving the speed (performance).

After much arguing, I was able to prioritize one improvement that would improve reliability when processing large data sets and I was able to prioritize logging of both successes, failures and time it took to run queries.

I was not able to prioritize connection resiilliancy even though I knew that was part of the issue.

So we had a big outage while we were working on the "performance issues" caused by spotty network connections that could be improved if we implemented retry logic (that got deprioritized). But we couldn't add the resiliency because it wasn't going to make things faster and it wasn't part of the sprint. What was even worse was that part of the exception message from Entity Framework said that the error was "transient" and that we need to Implement a resiliency policy.

Another part of the issue was based on an unoptimuzed set of queries that were causing reliability issues and that was prioritized. But while implementing that, I realized that there were other performance bottlenecks caused by API calls of semi static data that could be cached. I did a simple in memory cache and was lambasted about that since it "wasn't part of the story".

At that point, when you can't change your environment is time to change your environment. But in the meantime, it's a matter of communicating to senior management the decisions that were made by the scrum master and my manager.

On the other hand, I always keep my resume updated, my network fresh, and my skill set in line with the market....

</comment><comment><USER16> After 6 months spent on "investigations" into technologies with no tangible outputs aside from a 1 page summary of those investigations, I'm nearly to this point. I just got really salty when our department clarified what positions were available for advancement, and I realized I've been doing those jobs for years with no signs of pay raises or titles.

What bothers me more today is that a title, a pay bracket, bothered me; that I am annoyed that I need to come up with a promotion packet. These, to me, are signs that this is just becoming a job. For all of my constant assertions about business relationships and other such comments, I was still holding out hope that it would be more.

So, yeah. Empower your developers. You're paying them a lot of money; make use of and recognize the value of that talent you're buying.

<comment><USER9> Best way of getting a decent payrise is to find somewhere else work.

<comment><USER16> Indeed. But I'm reaching a point where I'd rather find a single employer that I can work with for more than two years. It's... harder than expected.

<comment><USER15> Why? I've changed jobs 4 times in the last 9 years and make 65K more than I did then. On the other hand, I stayed at one job 9 years - seven years too long - and between bonuses being cut and small raises, I only made $7K more in year 9 than I made in year 2 and found my skills outdated.

I vowed I would never make that mistake again.

<comment><USER16> Another $15k or $20k isn't going to change my life. Having things I want to work on will. In my ideal world, I would have work I want to do and wouldn't care if my salary did anything more than keep up with inflation. I wouldn't have to keep my whiteboarding skills sharp, wouldn't have to keep learning how new company Z's politics are just as silly as company X and Y's.

The fact that the money and titles are bothering me is the sign that the work isn't something I want to do.

<comment><USER15> There are three reasons for me to leave a company - technology, environment, and money - in that order. Since I started on my mission in 2009 and left a company I had been at for 9 years, every job change was about all three.

Now, I don't see my next job change as being about money. It's more about using the latest technology that will keep me relevant. But if a company is not willing to pay you market rates, it does tell you something about the company.

But as I've moved up in my career, I've found that the only way to implement the technologies you care about is to both keep your presentation skills sharp and know how to play politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You know the other side of this? Sometimes those bright ideas are 1) not very bright at all or 2) bright but utterly wrong for the current context. A mature or maturing developer will learn to adjust their input to match the context. An immature developer will sulk and want to "just code" and blame everybody else around them for not encouraging their creativity or whatever.

That's the tough thing about articles like this. It's an article that is 100% correct, assuming that the developer in question is both talented and on the cusp of enough maturity to grow in response to gentle redirection rather than bristle at it. Problem is, that's a narrow band on the immature/mature spectrum. A more mature developer would address their concerns, a less mature developer will bristle at everything anyway.

<comment><USER18> Problem is, as far as the coder is aware, the ideas are dismissed before the manager knows that the ideas were. Maybe bright; maybe not. Usually no explanation is made for why the ideas were dismissed. If an explanation is made, the coder isn't being disrespected and doesn't go down this path.

<comment><USER17> In a perfect world, sure! The thesis of the article was that the _reason_ developers only want to code is because they aren't being given explanations. While that might be the case sometimes, it's nothing near a hard and fast rule. In fact, sulky behavior is often an indicator of immaturity even if the management also sucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I thought this was going to go in quite a different direction.

In addition to culture, programmers might want to just code because their time is so consumed by meetings, support, and chat, that they hardly have the chance during normal work hours to code at all.

</comment><comment><USER20> This hits home for me pretty hard. Honestly reading it felt kinda therapeutic as I still occasionally have bad dreams from a previous company (ideas being shot down, trying to fit into an existing team, etc..).

especially this comment -

> Existing teams have established relationships, and are easy to offend > collectively

[https://medium.com/@prajjwalsin/this-sort-of-thing-can- even-...](https://medium.com/@prajjwalsin/this-sort-of-thing-can-even-stem- from-social-discord-and-it-might-not-even-make-it-to-the-manager-e513337bfeaf)

Fwiw, there are companies/teams who act quite the opposite of this article (encourage ideas..). I've been part of many of them and it's something I try to look for now.

<comment><USER21> It just occurred to me that, for people high in trait Openness (creativity, appreciation for ideas) it might be a good idea to figure out ASAP (eg, during initial interview) if the company is really open to new ideas or if they just they are.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I try to ask kind of open questions during the interview process - <USER2> see you're doing this task with 'x' technology, have you considered using 'y'? Sometimes you'll get good responses back along the lines of why they picked the tools, but express an openness to make different choices if you can help them figure it out.

Honestly I'd love to hear ways to actually interview the interviewers on things like this. I feel most of the material I read talks about how to interview candidates, but there's not much about the other way around (how to assess the company you're interviewing with?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Summary: Blankenship is saying coders get really hard to manage because their managers dismiss the coders' contributions to deciding WHAT to do. Blankenship says the coders then retreat to safety: HOW to do things is safety for a coder, because of the coder's greater expertise in the area of HOW. But with this type of manager, HOW is often ignored as well. That's why the coders get frantic, or worse, the coders stop commenting on HOW, and start working to rule ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to- rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule)). Pretty quickly, the coders have forgotten any attempts at contributing to WHAT to do. In a follow up, Blankenship says a solution is "Be humble. Listen more. Ask more than tell." ([https://hackernoon.com/a-wake-up-call-for-tech- managers-d041...](https://hackernoon.com/a-wake-up-call-for-tech- managers-d0415775efd0)) and he says the 1-on-1 is the place to start. That's where you want to end up, but I'm skeptical that advice is going to do the trick. Sometimes you need to tell people to do B so they end up doing A. For example, it's not a great strategy to try to make yourself happy by choosing to be happy; instead choose to be grateful ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3010965/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3010965/)). I think this may work better: 1) "Try not to appear insane (and stupid) to the people you supervise", 2) "Make sure your reports understand what you're thinking and doing enough so they could replace you and accurately speak for you in any meeting", and 3) "Don't waste the intelligence of your reports: capitalize on their insights and perspectives." That has worked in my own managing (says the man who just got "laid off" :) ), but I haven't yet tried it out on other people.

</comment><comment><USER22> I kind of get what the author is saying but he sort of reaches a strange conclusion. Programmers just want to be left alone to code more often than not because being stuck in meetings all day or "interfacing" with management and sales is actively harmful to our careers. In any given day I can have 3 to 4 hours of meetings that are handholding sales guys who can't be bothered reading a medium article on the technology they're selling customers. There are more than one programmer in my division that's turned apocryphal because they never have time to practice their art. If the author of this article thinks _more_ inclusion in business decisions is what I want he simply doesn't get it.

<comment><USER23> _> here are more than one programmer in my division that's turned apocryphal because they never have time to practice their art. _

What do you mean when you say they "turned apocryphal"? I've never seen the term apocryphal used like that before.

<comment><USER22> They can talk about code at a deep level but if they try and sit down to write anything they can't. Essentially sales meetings turn programmers into just more sales people. It's incredibly sad.

<comment><USER24> Almost at that point now myself. I have a deep understanding of our business and I have no problems designing new solutions to business needs but lately when I open up the IDE it's like staring at a white piece of paper and I think, "ok now what?" I just don't have enough coding time to stay in practice. Once I do get some time to get going it starts to flow, so I'm not _that_ far gone yet. Really, I think I just need to move on but I love the industry I'm in so it's hard to make that decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Programmers just want to code because the focus required means proper coding is all you can do. Not answer phones, not be bothered every 10 minutes, not be interrupted for group circle jerk meetings so "social" leadership can look like they are contributing to the world rather than leeching off the work of others.

But that's not what the article was about really. It was more about guy who sounds like he is sick of foolishness and ignorance but hasn't turned in his notice yet. Or else yet another burnt out cynical person who spent too much time heads down in code.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have no problem with offering ideas and suggestions when discussing how to build software, but honestly, I don't care if management decides to go a different route.

I'll code what they want the way they want it the best I can. That's the job. This approach can lead to some "I told you so" moments when I've been ignored and I deal with those when we run into them.

Over the years I've seen a lot of my coworkers get overly upset in these kinds of scenarios and have endured way too much time listening to them complain about it.

The thing is, there's almost always more than one way to do something. If it's my job to choose the route I'll do that and lead the way, and if it's not I'll follow the route chosen but I don't see any reason to get hurt or frustrated by it because I'm getting paid the same to work on it no matter which route is taken.

That said, there have been a few times when my route wasn't chosen and we got stuck right where I said we'd get stuck and in those cases the project either collapsed or we went back and started over using the tools and methods I suggested. Doing that "feels good" but it pays the same.

</comment><comment><USER27> tldr; programmers are creatives, so don't treat them as just resources.

<comment><USER28> Realistically, though, programmers are just resources, as are creatives, as are their managers, as is every other employee. That's the way nearly every business works.

To expect otherwise from one's relationship with an employer, particularly in an at-will employment environment, can be dangerously self-destructive.

<comment><USER29> I think I'd say the same if I worked for my first employer for the rest of my life. At this current company I enjoy hugs from the CEO. If you treat all the interactions in life like family and with respect you might find the world can change.

<comment><USER30> You might have a great place, but I would generally avoid any company with the "family" talk - it's a very common tactic to generate additional loyalty for no monetary investment, and you later find you might be in an abusive family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I appreciate that this author is trying to get management/leadership to own up to their responsibility for a real problem. Yet I wonder what this person thinks programmers' proper role is in the organization. (Let me also point out that they chose the word "programmers")

It's a good insight that when people only have their ideas shot down, they turn away from that and focus on other things. But I don't appreciate that caring about money is (as usual) cast in a negative light, meanwhile the whole point of a modern business is to turn a profit and make the shareholders money. To the author's point, if the programmer is passionate about market share, and suggests something that leads to market share growth, will they benefit materially from that? If not, isn't that also a reason they would disengage? But see, then we have to talk about _paying people_ instead of just being nice to them when they offer up ideas. That's a whole different ballgame.

I'm not comfortable with how much this seems to imply that leadership shouldn't try to, you know, _lead_ with the vision for the future and all that nice stuff. Input should be welcomed of course, but at some level, leadership _should_ be thinking and communicating about what should be built, and how the world is going to be changed by your "Uber for sandwiches" app. This is why the leadership will take all the money if/when the business is a success.

And your programmers _should_ care deeply about how the thing gets built. Because, just for one thing, if it gets built wrong, that's going to become a big problem for them.

\--

Some other thoughts:

The author talks about how if your non-technical ideas get shot down, you won't bother anymore. It can also go the other way- I've definitely been in situations where my technical ideas got shot down enough that I didn't try to offer anything further.

Many companies (tech and otherwise) are ultimately a set of cliques- if you're in with the right groups, you and your ideas matter. It's not set in stone; the membership of these groups change over time. But you have to fight and strive for a place within them. That is also a reason people disengage: it's not worth it, and getting there sucks.

It's definitely not good if a team member's interactions are often sarcastic, however, the author's response to the "I told you so" attitude is telling. Usually when people don't like hearing "I told you so" it's because they were in the wrong but don't want to admit it. They'd prefer to move on without doing any thinking or discussion about why the wrong decision was made, and how the team could avoid that in the future. To be clear, it is rude and unhelpful to cop an "I told you so" attitude. But it is also unhelpful and dismissive to label that attitude a problem without digging any further.</comment>


DRM Broke Its Promise - <AUTHOR> https://locusmag.com/2019/09/cory-doctorow-drm-broke-its-promise/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft is on at least its third generation of DRM that broke old content. Doctorow mentions "Plays for Sure", which doesn't play any more. There was also "Zune", which doesn't play any more unless you downloaded the content before they pulled the plug. Then they had an "eBook store", which doesn't play any more. Not sure what they have now.

<comment><USER3> > Doctorow mentions "Plays for Sure", which doesn't play any more.

Ironically, if you do want something that really does play for sure, get a pirated copy.

<comment><USER4> Or physical. I buy CDs for my favourite music, and rip them for digital consumption. Shame there is no way to do this with books.

<comment><USER5> Even physical CDs are not as easy to use as they used to be; this article [https://www.databasesandlife.com/playing-a-cd-on-a- computer/](https://www.databasesandlife.com/playing-a-cd-on-a-computer/) is from 2007: I bought a CD from a shop, a few months later tried to play it on my computer and the DRM had already somehow gone wrong in that short space of time. (At least CDs still work in CD players.)

<comment><USER6> If the DRM stopped it working then it was not a CD (aka "a defective CD), as a CD - as per the Red Book standard - does not support DRM. You should get your money back.

<comment><USER5> Right, I mean, I agree, but my point was: It looked like a CD, I bought it from a physical shop selling CDs, it was a modern release from a top 10 pop star at the time. So if you want to listen to music, the algorithm "just buy [what looks like] a CD from a shop, then you won't have to deal with DRM" was not true, at least in my case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Professor here: this part isn't correct in my experience:

> Professors are offered substantial bribes to select the most expensive texts

I've never heard of this happening, and certainly have never been offered a kickback myself to take a book. Accepting one would be a crime for state university professors where I am, and probably almost everywhere else.

<comment><USER8> I've always wondered why I had to buy the new edition of textbooks each year. I know it's fairly common practice to assign the newest edition of a book. Is there a good reason for that that I don't understand? How different is my Calculus 1 textbook Ed. 17 from this year's Ed. 18?

<comment><USER9> The reason doctors will often prescribe the "next generation" drug, even if the old one works fine and is generic, and 100x cheaper, is that they believe it's better. They aren't stupid, and know its only _marginally better_ , but they want _the best_ for their patients. Professors also want the best for their students, and so the latest edition is prescribed. In a way, it's a point of pride, but its also a little bit lazy, because it's the simplest way they can signal "hey, I'm staying current, doing my job and not just phoning it in."

So, yeah, I don't think it's bribery, it's just a heady mix of (ignorance of) diminishing returns, moral hazard, and status signaling. Plus its a petty injustice that only hurts people in aggregate, and it only hurts people who already can afford college in rich places, so no-one is really going to care about this to change it.

<comment><USER10> The new intervention being "marginally better" can be questionable.

New interventions often aren't tested head to head against their alternatives. Or inadequately tested against them.

So we have no idea if they're even better, but manufacturers don't want to risk the embarrassment of evidence that they're inferior.

<comment><USER11> Yes. Here's a personal anecdote to illustrate. Years ago I had dental surgery, and the dentist prescribed a new and very expensive antibiotic for me. I was poor at the time, and paying for that was a serious hardship.

The next day I had a severe allergic reaction to it, and the dentist replaced that prescription with plain old penicillin (which cost me $10 for the complete treatment). I was absolutely furious that he didn't go with the affordable and time-tested treatment first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anything with DRM is not sold, it is leased. My bugbear is that they still have "Buy Now!" buttons and such, which to my mind is fraud.

I wonder what the reaction would be if it said, "Lease Now!" instead?

<comment><USER13> I suppose "Buy Now!" refers to buying a license.

<comment><USER8> It would still be misleading in that case, because you are on the e-book's page, not the e-book's licensing page. Or at least, you are led to believe that's the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> DRM is exactly why i have a ^large^ personal server, and is also what motivated me to learn how to extract data from a display buffer.

<comment><USER15> I would be curious to hear more about both of these. I've often thought about setting up a private server, but the set up and maintenance seems like a massive undertaking.

And then being able to extract from a display buffer seems like a good skill to have.

<comment><USER16> My media server is currently a FreeNAS system from iXSystems. It provides about 26TB of RAID-6 protected storage and relies on open source products so if iXSystems goes away I can still maintain/upgrade it. My "management" consists of some Nagios scripts that tell me if it is complaining about anything (disk goes bad, scrubs haven't completed, ECC errors have spiked, etc).

In its "media" volume it holds my movies, books & papers, and music that have been de-DRMed (if necessary, I always prefer buying non-DRM products). Each medium has a slightly different method of de-DRMing. My toy search engine only indexes the books/papers though.

<comment><USER17> If you don't mind to answer, how do you deal with backups for that much data?

Is RAID the only redundancy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Our modern secular religion is the worship of markets as self-correcting, self-perfecting systems that merely demand that we all act in our own self- interest to produce an outcome that makes us all better off. Whenever corporations thrive by making us all worse off, we're told to stop complaining, because it is the "will of the market" at work.

You could add this paragraph to the introduction of many other subjects: healthcare, education, for-profit prisons, etc

<comment><USER19> I'll listen to people complain about how bad markets are, as soon as they cease exchanging what they value less, for something they value more.

Edit: To clarify: when you claim markets are bad, maybe don't engage in "market" behavior for your own benefit, while encouraging the use of force to deny others the same benefits.

And, if you _do_ believe in markets (as virtually everyone does, for themselves anyway, even avowed socialists and communists) -- but you have a problem with _corrupt_ markets, then be specific. Say "I disagree with Mercantilism masquerading itself as a free marketplace", or "regulatory capture and rent seeking by those aligned with government is corruption".

Don't say stuff like ... this. It reduces your credibility.

<comment><USER18> >I'll listen to people complain about how bad markets are, as soon as they cease exchanging what they value less, for something they value more.

Where does duress fit into your overly simplistic view of markets?

<comment><USER19> Because the only way to get people to stop naturally forming markets, is by force. Usually lethal, if history is any guide.

<comment><USER18> So the market is virtuous when it charges usurious prices for medicine because people are getting something they value more (their lives) in exchange for something they value less (literally anything else)?

<comment><USER19> Conflating the patent-protected status of medicines plus the spectacularly expensive FDA approval process, with a "market", does not a powerful argument make...

Don't get me wrong. There may or may not be a bunch of things wrong with the highly regulated (read: lobbiest controlled) and inefficient (almost insurmountable barriers to entry) medical industry — but using that as an argument against "markets" in general?

Weak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's why I have never - and will never - purchased any DRM controlled content. Especially books. Period.

Just imagine a thousand, or even just 100, years from now people want to find out what we read and did; of course by then all current DRM license servers will be gone.

I read the same books to my kids that my parents had read to me, I have books that people gave me, or books that I found at book-giveaways... The author mentions this all.

We've been duped.

<comment><USER11> > That's why I have never - and will never - purchased any DRM controlled > content. Especially books. Period.

I do purchase such books, but only if I know that I can strip the DRM from them and convert them to a format that I can use normal software to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good reminder I should be cracking the DRM on all my eBooks to take a backup again.

This is a perfect time for the companies to do stuff like make DRM digital goods go "poof" cause everyone (including the .gov) seems to have bigger things to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER22> Worth noting, obtaining DRM-Free _Audiobooks_ is significantly easier.

• downpour.com

• libro.fm

• audiobooksnow.com

Selection isn't _as_ good as Audible, but it's more than decent between all three stores, with titles from many different publishers. I posted about this in a bit more detail a few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20450647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20450647)

<comment><USER23> I love Libro.fm!

Also, as a last resort, Google Play has most of Audible's content but DRM free.

<comment><USER22> Are you sure Google Play audiobooks are DRM free? I'd read they were not.

<comment><USER24> Where did you read that? I see an "export" option for all my audiobooks that allows you to download them as MP4 files of various qualities.

<comment><USER22> Okay, so it depends on the audiobook:

[https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7572879#export_...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7572879#export_audio) > Some audiobooks may not be available for export. Open the book's details page, scroll to the Additional information and check under "Export option."

Still, very good to know that Google Play is an option in some cases!

<comment><USER24> I looked a little closer, out of the 37 audiobooks I have on google play, only 2 of them are not exportable (both of which are published by [https://www.booktrack.com/](https://www.booktrack.com/) so this is probably a mostly per publisher thing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Frankly I have no idea what religion has to do with DRM. This seems a bit ranty to me.

<comment><USER26> I don't necessarily agree or disagree, but the author is comparing religion to free market capitalism, not to DRM directly.

<comment><USER27> And when capitalists start telling you to trust the invisible hand of the market, the comparison to religion becomes obvious & apt.

Edit: for those who, for some reason, think my comment unworthy: "The 'invisible hand' has an iron grip on America " [https://fortune.com/2014/08/13/invisible-hand-american- econo...](https://fortune.com/2014/08/13/invisible-hand-american-economy/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> wonderful propaganda that they got to call restrictions "rights"

<comment><USER29> They _are_ rights. _Their_ rights. You have no rights. They can afford to buy legislation to ensure this. E.g.,

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love this quote: >> There's a name for societies where a small elite own property and everyone else rents that property from them: it's called feudalism.

<comment><USER31> We're talking about art, music, literature, movies. There's no small elite; anyone can create intellectual property to sell, share, or rent.

<comment><USER32> I think this is a bit of a weak argument, the overwhelming majority of creative works are not sold by the creator themselves.

<comment><USER33> When a small time creator does sell something, they might even still lock it down! Serial keys and web-activation? That's the bread and butter for countless software titles.

I've now bought a blu-ray player 3 times from Cyberlink. What's going to happen to my blu-ray player when they go out of business? I doubt I'll be able to get it to play blu-rays at all unless I find a crack somewhere. The software I need to play the media I own is DRM'd lol.

<comment><USER34> Even VLC can play Blurays now, with the correct library and configuration.

<comment><USER33> Not properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Simply boycott DRMed stores and only buy in DRM-free ones. Vote with your wallet.

<comment><USER36> DRM has won. Steam has DRM, Playstation has DRM, Netflix has DRM, Spotify has DRM, practically all browsers support DRM.

<comment><USER37> Personally, I view DRM for streaming different than DRM for purchased content. For streaming, DRM is to prevent the user from essentially archiving the catalog, which its fine by me. But DRM for purchased / non-subscription content isn't something I support.

There have only been a few times when I've purchased a book or audiobook with DRM. Removing that DRM was trivial with the right tools.

Basically, DRM sucks, but I'm willing to forgive it for streaming content, since you're paying for access to a catalog and not a specific product.

<comment><USER35> Firstly, streaming doesn't need to be equivalent to renting. That's a wrong notion. For example Bandcamp allows you to buy music and download DRM-free copy, but you can as well stream it from their site for convenience.

Secondly, even if you can say, renting has value if you rent the same thing for lower price than buying, it's only reasonable if you still have the option to buy the same thing (DRM-free).

But it becomes a major problem, when someone only provides renting of digital goods and you can't buy them. In such case DRM on streaming isn't any better. I.e. for example Google Stadia or Netflix exclusives would be such example.

<comment><USER37> Streaming definitely isn't renting, though. For an analog, it'd be like a video rental shop saying 'rent all you want for $11 per month'. Streaming services have released physical copies of their series. I doubt they've done it for lesser properties, but the main ones are out there.

But as for DRM, I view it in the same way we didn't technically own DVDs [1]. We purchased access to the film, but not the film itself -- except now its done with far more complex methods that change every few years.

> When consumers buy a DVD or Blu-ray disc, they are not purchasing the motion > picture itself, rather they are purchasing access to the motion picture > which affords only the right to access the work according to the format's > particular specifications (i.e., through the use of a DVD player), or the > Blu-ray Disc format specifications (i.e., through the use of a Blu-ray > format player). Consumers are able to purchase the copy at its retail price > because it is distributed on a specific medium that will play back on only a > licensed player. In prior exemption proceedings, the Register and Librarian > have recognized that there is no unqualified right to access a work on a > particular device. _(pg 4 - 5)_

The benefit of physical media is that you'll pretty much always have access to it so long as you have a method to consume it.

I agree that DRM isn't good, but I don't see this problem as anything new -- just the next step for the content manager's control over their owned content. Sadly, it's the consumer that loses.. but that's also not new. The only difference between the license for DVDs and bluray vs DRM is that DRM is enforceable, typically by time.

None of this speaks to DRM in gaming. Of all forms of entertainment, I think the DRM there has the greatest consequence to the consumer -- but I'm also not as familiar with that market.

[1] [https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%20...](https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%208/DVDCCA_and_AACS_LA_class08_1201_2014.pdf)

<comment><USER35> _> Streaming definitely isn't renting, though._

Something like Netflix is surely intended as digital renting. I.e. you can rent the entire catalog, for some period of time. When you stop your continuous payments, you can't use it anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's my belief we need a comprehensive set of digital consumer rights enshrined in law. Things like the ability to resell used licenses, create player-owned servers for abandoned games, and "service expiration guarantees" printed directly on the packaging for all products that rely on external servers stating a minimum time period for which the manufacturer is legally bound to support that product. Things like what Google did to its Revolv customers should never be allowed to happen.

<comment><USER39> This is the key here. Proper application of user rights could also push companies to open up voluntarily. For example, if required by law to continue to support access to content sold for a period of time it could change the liability math for companies and lead to less DRM in many cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> DRM is just digital feudalism.

</comment><comment><USER40> > Professors are offered substantial bribes to select the most expensive texts

Really? I'm still waiting for my check. Somebody call me.

I know this his article is a rant, but that particular statement calls into question the veracity of anything else he says.

Maybe. _Maybe_ there is a bribe _somewhere_ involved in a 200+ person introductory class. Maybe.

No one in their right mind is going to offer or accept a bribe over 30 books at $150 each. The biggest "bribe" I ever get is that the publishers often send me a free copy of a book. And, if I ask for one, it probably won't be free, I'll have to send it back.

Most EECS professors I know of are keenly aware of the price of textbooks. They do _NOT_ go out of their way to make things difficult. And, if we pick a book, it's a book you are going to make use of again in your career. We also place it on reserve in the library, and we avoid the digital lock in which generally causes us as much grief as it causes the students.

Maybe this is different in the non-technical fields.

<comment><USER31> Administration captures the profit in education, not rank and file professors.

[https://www.the-scientist.com/profession/textbook- adoption-h...](https://www.the-scientist.com/profession/textbook-adoption-how- do-professors-select-the-right-one-60192)

> Many professors and departments encourage such practices, which can be > viewed as either bribes or legitimate marketing ploys. Richard McKenzie, a > professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, was appalled > at schools' requests for inducements to adopt his textbook The New World of > Economics (Homewood, Ill., Irwin Publishing Inc., 1989), written with Gordon > Tullock. "A department at a Southwestern university chose our book and two > others, and put them up for auction," says McKenzie. "They would adopt the > book with the biggest side payment." So McKenzie began talking to > publishers' sales reps and quickly learned that monetary enticement to adopt > a book, although not rampant, does happen, and not just in economics. In > science, these extras are encountered in large introductory biology and > chemistry courses--but less so in physics and geology classes, which tend to > attract fewer students.

<comment><USER41> It's somewhat amusing that an economist is shocked to see market mechanisms at work…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Huh? DRM broke it's "promise"? What did DRM promise this guy.

DRM made a promise to business that it would control content in ways that would let them extract more money from users and make it much harder for them to copy or use the content outside of approved uses.

DRM has lived up that promise and more.

It's been so successfully lucrative this promise and similar systems of control may expand to ink, coffee, tractors, phones etc etc.

Sounds like a promise kept.

<comment><USER43> > DRM made a promise to business that it would control content in ways that > would let them extract more money from users and make it much harder for > them to copy or use the content outside of approved uses.

1\. If you think it's harder for users to copy or use content outside of approved usage, choose your favorite TV show, and type the name of the show with the text "s01e01" into Google. You'll find links to stream it in low quality or torrent a high quality MP4.

2\. Meanwhile, try downloading a book from Amazon and transforming it into epub so you can read it on a different reader. If you manage to figure out how to do that, please let me know.

It's not at all clear that the minor difficulty of 1 prevents so much lost profits that it outweighs the profits lost from 2. So it's absolutely not clear that DRM has resulted in extracting more money from users.

<comment><USER44> > It's not at all clear that the minor difficulty of 1

You're gonna be ad-blasted, have inconsistent video quality, and be given a million popups.

Also, the availability is not nearly what you think it is.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=battlestar+galactica+2003+s0...](https://www.google.com/search?q=battlestar+galactica+2003+s01e01)

<comment><USER43> > You're gonna be ad-blasted, have inconsistent video quality, and be given a > million popups.

If you're seeing ads and popups, you should get an ad-blocker and update it. No one should be seeing these in 2019. The quality I noted, but I also noted that you can torrent higher-quality video easily.

> Also, the availability is not nearly what you think it is.

> > [https://www.google.com/search?q=battlestar+galactica+2003+s0...](https://www.google.com/search?q=battlestar+galactica+2003+s0..).

I clicked your link. Second page of results, first result, was a link to DailyMotion where the full 54-minute episode was available to stream in quality as good as it was in 2003.

I suspect the fact that this shows up on the _second_ page of search results instead of the first is a success of DMCA threats against Google, not a success of DRM. But I'm sure if you added some combination of keywords like "torrent", "stream" or "free" you could get an illegal copy to show up as the first result.

I'm not encouraging anyone to do this. I encourage everyone to pay for content with money, preferably in the most direct way you can so the creators actually get the money. I'm just saying that DRM only affects people who want to do things the "proper" way. People who don't want to pay for content can easily bypass DRM with a Google search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> VidAngel is fighting a legal battle that may change the face of media ownership.

[https://blog.vidangel.com/2019/08/23/update-family-movie- act...](https://blog.vidangel.com/2019/08/23/update-family-movie-act/)

Note: I am a shareholder and have a substantial intetest the outcome of this battle.

</comment><comment><USER46> For those here who are unconvinced and still believe DRM should exist, let me present some further evidence proving the contrary.

1\. Polish ebook/audiobook stores. In the polish electronic book market, DRM doesn't exist. Instead, it has been replaced with watermarks, which are prolific. Almost every ebook out there has one. I've seen some clear warnings displayed at checkout, so that people know what might happen if they share a book on line. This is a pretty good compromise. You can read the bookwhenever you want, you're not dependent on any server, you can read on any device you want to read on, and you can even share it with a trusted friend. However, if someone pirates the book (and someone will, regardless of DRM), it's much easier to track them. DRM is an obvious barrier to overcome, and usually no traces of the original downloader are left after stripping it. Watermarks, on the other hand, can easily be forgotten about, and, if done well, even hard to detect. This is not that easy to achieve in ebooks, as they're fundamentally made of text (though you can embed them in covers, images etc), but for audiobooks, movies or music, it's pretty trivial.

2\. Streaming. Some say DRM for music streaming is absolutely needed, but I disagree here. For those who want to do it, downloading music from streaming services is pretty trivial. Playlist migration tools from one streaming service to another exist and are widely available, and ripping music from Deezer, on a mass scale, is also pretty simple. A tool called Deezloader exist and can get anything from Deezer, and their database is pretty similar to what other music services have. It's not as easy to find as it used to be (currently residing on a wiki on notabug.org and a Telegram channel as far as I know), but it's certainly doable. I could use it to get all my music out of my Spotify in 10 minutes... but somehow I still didn't. I, as well as other people, value the recommendations, the instant search, the syncing of libraries between devices and the social functions too much to bother. I know people who use it regularly, mostly to i.e. rip stuff out to play in a car that only accepts mp3s on pendrives, but they stil are active users and subscribers of streaming. People who don't care that much usually use youtube and rip using shady websites anyway. That's pretty onvincing evidence that removing DRM wouldn't change much, at least for me.

3\. Piracy. Piracy exists. It existed and it will,, regardless of DRM. DRM doesn't change the piracy landscape in any substantial way, and removing it won't change it either. Making the files magically easier to download won't mean that they become magically easier to host. Those who want to host them now can do it already, i.e. by downloading existing torrents. The people who actually might benefit from DRM stripping are consumers themselves. Pirates will still do their things, but we, the consumers, would be able to do much, much more.

<comment><USER47> I have personally seen both sides of the this and have worked on DRM solutions. The merits and efficacy of DRM highly depends on what you're locking down, how you lock it down, and who is being locked out.

For example. Hardware DRM (TPM/dongles/etc) is near impossible to crack, or worthless if you _did_ crack it. Try and find a contemporary version of Steinberg/Avid software that has been cracked - to my knowledge it doesn't exist, at least not in a usable form.

I've also heard of some content where DRM increased revenue by a moderate integer factor.

On the other hand, I'm also aware of content in the same market that saw significantly increased revenue due to piracy, and other content where legitimate users pirated because it was _easier_ to access than the legitimate content!

It's all a balancing act over how much your users can tolerate and how much benefit you see. There's no one solution for all digital content, and sometimes none is the best business decision. I will say that people deciding to use DRM are not stupid and have better numbers than the author of this article. The big guys know _exactly_ how much money they would lose by abandoning DRM. In a smaller shop it's more of a guessing game, but that's just because we have less information and forecasting ability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> DRM never promised me anything besides endless pitfalls for wanting to listen to music or watch movies legally on my own terms.

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't pay for drm unless I can crack it. But I don't remember publisher's saying they would lower prices for drmed goods. Does anyone?

There are lots of arguments against drm but this seems like a weak one.

<comment><USER11> > Does anyone?

Yes, I do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I didn't need to click through to know it was an article by Cory Doctorow :D

</comment><comment><USER51> If you want a collection you can count on, you have to pirate it [1], unless it is somehow sold DRM-free.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/488/](https://xkcd.com/488/)

</comment><comment><USER52> > Despite the fact that they do less, they don't cost less.

I realize that Cory doesn't like the idea of capitalism. But consider for a moment: the free market offers you a choice. You can choose to buy a "libre" book, or you can choose to buy a DRM-locked down e-book for the same price.

Why do people buy the DRM-locked e-books? Because they don't care about the DRM-restrictions, and prefer to have the space-savings associated with a digital file.

That's all it comes down to. Cory Doctorow can wax poetic about why old-school books are better (and maybe they are better for many people), but for all e-book buyers out there... e-books are worth the tradeoffs.

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

Now, I certainly think there's some market-problems going on in the book world. Amazon and Apple engaged in price fixing a few years back, Microsoft DRM shutdown their Zune service, terminating the songs that many people bought, etc. etc. Plenty of issues abound that should get fixed.

But a lot of this blog post seems to be complaining about choices that other people are freely making, and fails to understand WHY those people are choosing e-books over the alternative.

<comment><USER53> > Why do people buy the DRM-locked e-books?

Do these people actually know a) that e-books are DRM-locked and b) what DRM- locked implies to their ownership of said e-books?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> 1\. Most Republicans don't understand DRM

2\. Most Republicans favor DRM because the Chamber of Commerce favors it.

3\. The primary proponents of DRM in the Chamber of Commerce are groups the Republicans hate: the RIAA, MPAA and a few others.

4\. Republicans sign on for things like DRM and copyright extension because they think they're "good for business".

5\. Point 3 says Republicans could have an interest in weakening some kinds of intellectual property protection. They are prevented from doing this by their ideology (Point 4).

6\. All that said, writing a whole piece that will encourage republicans to double down on that ideology [1] is not doing the world a favor.

[1] Doubling down on ideology is what people do when you make fun of their ideas. They just yell louder. This has been the heat source for every flame war that has ever been.

<comment><USER55> The DMCA had broad bipartisan support, and as far as I'm aware no political leaders are proposing to revoke DRM protections.

<comment><USER54> Yes, like I said, the Democrats did it because the entertainment industry is an important constituency of theirs. The Republicans did it because they thought it would be good for business. But the businesses that benefit most from expanding IP protection (record companies, movie studios, publishers) are not very big as big businesses go. Sony pictures made $9 billion last year. Exxon-Mobil made $279 billion -- probably more than all the major studios put together. So it's possible that the Republicans could be persuaded to cut the entertainment industry loose. You could tell them they'd be helping millions of smaller businesses who could benefit from lower IP costs and that the departing RIAA and MPAA members weren't their kind of businesses anyway.

This is a longshot. I'm not pretending it isn't. But if it did work, looser IP laws would fall clearly on one side of the political spectrum, making it possible for them to get enacted in time. When they aren't on either side of the spectrum, there's no chance.

<comment><USER56> 1) I don't think you did say "Democrats did it because the entertainment industry is an important constituency of theirs" in your OP

2) Why do you seem to be more angry at the party you think earnestly made a mistake rather than the one who whored out to a special interest group.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Light has traveled 11,830,560,000,000,000 miles since Jesus was born - <AUTHOR>

Light has travelled approximately 11,830,560,000,000,000 miles since Jesus was born.  Anyone have an idea of what stars or galaxies are near there or is it way out of our visibility range? <comment><USER2> I think you lost sight of the big picture when you put the number in terms of miles. The light emitted at the time of the death of Jesus has traveled some 1,978 light-years (that number equals 2011 AD minus 33 AD). The distance is gargantuan, but compare it to the distances that astronomers and cosmologists deal with everyday. For example, Andromeda is the closest galaxy to our own and it wheels through space at about 2,540,000 light-years away. That puts things into perspective! 1,978 light years from Earth is not even outside our own galaxy. The distance is gargantuan from one perspective, but not even a drop in the bucket from another perspective. I do not know the distances of many stars, but for what it's worth, Deneb (the 19th brightest star in the night sky) is about 1,400 light years away.

</comment><comment><USER3> The farthest we are capable of observing from earth is about 43 billion light years away. 2,010 light years is well inside our galaxy. I'm not sure exactly what we can see at about that range, though.</comment>


How we scored Baremetrics.com for $616 - <AUTHOR> https://baremetrics.io/blog/scored-baremetrics-dot-com

<comment><USER2> Summary: if the target domain is hosted by Godaddy, use their domain buying service because they might have contact information that goes beyond what WHOIS shows.</comment>


REST is all about evolvability - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fil.vasilak.is/post/rest-is-all-about-evolvability/ <comment><USER2> Oh yes, let's totally forget that REST only allows to change how data is accessed, how data is accessed is tightly coupled with data model, and that it's data model changes that are most difficult and troublesome.

The post is very short and only uses generic terms, so it's basically contentless.</comment>


The noise that can change your work  life - <AUTHOR> http://www.bozby.com/?thenoise <comment><USER2> ... but reposting this every day will begin to look spammy.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10731135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10731135)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty cool. If it's yours you might get more attention by editing the title and putting "Show HN" at the start.

Some feedback:

\- Pre-configured scenes would be a nice addition

\- there's a typo "Adroid" in the app section

\- it would be a neat desktop app</comment>


What Is It About Restaurant Websites? - <AUTHOR> http://www.portlandfoodanddrink.com/2010/03/what-is-it-about-restaurant-websites/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+portlandfoodanddrink%2FSdXY+%28An+Exploration+of+Portland+Food+and+Drink%29

<comment><USER2> David Chang's Momofuku has a great website for its restaurants:

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

Everything is pretty stripped down and simplified. No gratuitous use of flash.

I also like their use of reservations, for the most part the system is set up to treat everyone as equals, so its not like a celeb can just come in:

"In March 2008, Chang opened Momofuku Ko, a 12 seat restaurant that takes reservations six days in advance, online only, on a first-come-first-served basis, without regard to social status or income. The highly limited seating, along with Chang's popularity in New York, has caused a furor, generating frustration for both influential and ordinary people who have failed to secure a reservation"

</comment><comment><USER3> A few weeks ago a post of the same nature as this was posted. It's worth noting: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130419>

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is a restaurant website for a UK based chain that we just launched (in Dec 09).

<http://giraffe.net>

I feel its both attractive and functional. Its primarily supposed to be a website (i.e used from a normal web browser) but will work fine on your iphone.

There is no flash but we've used jquery extensively for 'flashiness'.

There is also prominent twitter/flickr and facebook engagement throughout.

There are menu's (web based and pdf choices), offers and locations. Try googling for 'giraffe menu' - the menu is the top hit.

We spent a while fine tuning the location finder <http://giraffe.net/restaurants> which uses the google API to provide 'a nearest list' functionality. Once you chosen a restaurant it will also provide you with a list of other restaurants close to your choice.

The site www.usabilitypost.com did a feature on the location finder as we've also done something cool with the location search box.

[http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/11/30/search-dropdown- hybr...](http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/11/30/search-dropdown-hybrid-box/)

The idea behind the site is simple. Get people to the restaurants. We've had a lot of feedback that suggests that it does just that and we're quite proud of the result.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's a restaurant web site that I recently used when deciding where to eat with friends. While it wouldn't win any design awards, it had exactly what I needed - a menu, an image of the location, and an address.

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

A lot of local businesses don't get my business because they don't have or want a web site, and I don't use the yellow pages. A decent web site is becoming increasingly important IMO.

<comment><USER6> No design awards, but this website does exactly what I want as a restaurant customer.

<http://www.pronto-2-go.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can see how small, local businesses fall into the trap of all-flash, all- hard-to-actually-use. But what about a high profile, nationally known restaurant like The French Laundry. Why does their site suck so much?

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

<comment><USER8> I just attempted to find the hours for that restaurant, but got too annoyed that it kept opening up new windows...

Reminds me why I generally just type "<restaurant name> menu" into Google, and generally someone has a direct link to a PDF.

<comment><USER9> The French Laundry isn't the type of restaurant that you check hours (reservations are required and if there is an open spot you take it) or menus (they change daily).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My biggest complaint, among many, is that their ubiquitous Flash intros have a "skip intro" button -- _inside the Flash animation_. Why do I have Flashblock, again?

</comment><comment><USER11> Does a website have any effect on the success of a restaurant or other local, offline business?

Restaurant websites are frustrating for me (and you ;-), but do they matter to anyone that doesn't read HN?

<comment><USER12> Yes they matter. I worked on a website for a national restaurant chain for a while, and they get over 100 million dollars in online orders through their website a year. Same with pizza places. Making it easier to order food on the web brings in a lot of money. If this process is painful, it will have a definite impact on revenue.

You can also directly email customers who spend the most money (based on info in the online ordering database) and send them weekly specials and coupons on the website. This is very effective.

"Pizza Hut is getting 30 percent of its sales online. Moreover, online boosts the amount of sales – online orders are ten percent higher than in-person orders because it is so easy to check off additional or more expensive items." Source: [http://localonliner.com/2010/01/29/newspapers-partner- with-a...](http://localonliner.com/2010/01/29/newspapers-partner-with- allmenus-com-online-orders/)

<comment><USER13> I think he was referring to actual restaurants, not "restaurants" like pizza hut. When I think of restaurant I imagine a sit-down place that is not fast food.

These site-down restaurants without take-out/delivery should have all of their information easily available online for potential customers to find before they make a reservation. So, yes, I think that it is still very important to have an easy to use website for a restaurant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As with most things, form trumps substance when you're selling websites to a local business. They want to have a sexier website than their competitors. Their competitors all have sites with big Flash intros and cool animations and stuff. This is what your layperson cares about when viewing your portfolio; they don't care about functionality across platforms, they don't care about accessibility or immediacy of pertinent information. They just want something that looks "pretty", and even "pretty" usually just turns into useless gobs of Comet Cursors, background music, and Flash.

<comment><USER15> I agree wholeheartedly. It is a lack of understanding on the part of the business owners for about what a website is FOR and a lack of interest in educating them on the part of the developers on these websites.

I'm sure this isn't an original idea but web development firms should offer a subscription package to owners. This subscription would assist them in monitoring the performance of their total web presence (not just the website which is becoming less relevant these days) and assisting them in improving it. It could certainly prove a point of difference in a saturated market especially if you got a great case study or two behind you to present to customers.

The difficulty is that site developers are just programmers and designers and not salesmen and marketers so they either don't understand or care about what I just talked about or don't know how to sell it to the business owners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Most of the fx that restaraunts want to do on their website could be done with jQuery. The <http://www.frenchlaundry.com/>, for example, is simply a bunch of fade in/out's and a few picture slideshows.

</comment><comment><USER17> My hunch is many websites are made 1) with a small budget or 2) by a family member or friend who has a pirated copy of a WYSIWYG web dev app (usually flash).

<comment><USER18> For most your hunch is dead wrong the family member or small budget websites are the ones that look like MSFrontpage and other such website designs.

Flash websites are usually payed for and in good amounts to and they are done by people who don't really understand usability but do know marketability (for themselves) and how to make things look pretty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like there is some money to be made here.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll never understand the complaint in scenario #2. Use the device in your hand for what it was originally intended, and CALL them.

<comment><USER20> I'm deaf. How would you suggest that I do this?

Seriously, I do understand the point you're making, but keep in mind that not everyone is interested in the phone portion of their smartphone, or able to make effective use of it. :)

<comment><USER21> Are there no TTS gateway apps for the Sidekick/iPhone? I know there's websites that let you type phone conversations.

<comment><USER20> (Missed this comment earlier)

There are. I'm actually a customer of Sprint IP Relay and have a personal number set up with them that's linked to my Google Talk account. However, making a relay call is generally massively frustrating for the parties on both sides of the line, so I tend to avoid it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Online Wireframe Tool for Software and Websites - <AUTHOR> http://mockflow.com/ <comment><USER2> If you're serious about having decent tool for mocking up websites, I'd highly recommend the latest OmniGraffle Pro, and the Konigi stencil set: <http://konigi.com/tools/omnigraffle-wireframe-stencils>

It's expensive, but wasted time is also expensive. As soon as you run into the limitations of using Flash for mocking up your app within mockflow, you'll end up having to redo a lot of things which all takes time.

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks slick, but…

        1. Create an account (30 secs)
        2. Check my email (5 secs)
        3. Press a "Click here to activate" button and be redirected (5 secs)
        4. Wait for the Flash to load (5 secs)
        5. Fill in my email and password (5 secs)

…quite frankly, you'd have lost me at step 1 normally. The only reason I signed up was to see how many steps it took to try it. Conclusion: too many.

The button on the homepage should say something like "Try now", which immediately launches the flash applet and lets me use it. When I want to save my mockup, _that's_ when I want to enter my details.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like a pretty slick tool.

The one hesitation I have with using tools like this "in the cloud" is the access its developers and administrators have to concepts. I understand the "release early, release often, tell everybody about your ideas" mantra, but my instinct still prevents me from dumping wireframes for a yet-to-be-released product in such an early stage onto such a site without some mechanism of protection wrapped around my content.

</comment><comment><USER5> I really like the clean cuts and color scheme of the design, the sign up process could be better as @ashleyw states, I am currently testing 2 other wirefreaming web apps, and let me tell you, I have needed this (and no OmniGraffle Pro does not solve everything) for a while.

Looks promising but I did not receive confirmation e-mail :(</comment>


Ask HN: Best day/hour to post on HN? - <AUTHOR>

What's the best time to post something on HN? The weekends are "boring", what's the best day?
Does anyone have a study describing the relationship between number of comments/votes VS day/hour? <comment><USER2> This guy did some of the research: [http://blog.itlater.com/whats-the-best- time-to-post-to-hacke...](http://blog.itlater.com/whats-the-best-time-to-post- to-hackernews/)

Anecdotally, mid-afternoon PST seems to have been the most successful time for my submissions. Posting before PST folks are at work is risky.

I usually save longer articles and papers for weekends, when people have the time to read them.

<comment><USER3> I hope people don't start holding off on their submissions for the "optimal" time. I'll have to find a different way to procrastinate in the mornings.

<comment><USER2> Don't worry, it's like the stock market: as soon as people start optimizing their submission times, any advantage of optimizing your submission time diminishes to zero.</comment></comment></comment>


Stripe considers move out of San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/35-billion-startup-Stripe-considers-move-out-of-14453688.php <comment><USER2> Working link:[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/35-billion- star...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/35-billion-startup- Stripe-considers-move-out-of-14453688.php)</comment>


How I hacked my apartment building - <AUTHOR> http://josecasanova.com/blog/how-i-hacked-my-apartment-building/ <comment><USER2> That's pretty cool although there is an enormous security issue with this. Now anyone that sees the video and/or reads the post, can pretty easily (a quick google search) determine where you live, and has free access to your building. If I were a fellow tenant, I would probably be a little upset if I found out that anyone could bypass the security of the building because of another tenant hacking the phone system. One idea to increase security may be to have to push a button on the keypad once the Twilio number answers to trigger a different script.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed! That is why I removed the hack after I posting. The current system requires a pin.

Appreciate the feedback on the security issue!

<comment><USER2> It is a great idea though.

I have been known to lock myself out by accident so this would be very useful for me. Many of those type systems have emergency codes (i.e. dial #0911 or #9110) that will also automatically unlock the doors for the fire/police.

On the other hand, I could think of emergency or family uses where combined with a PIN code something like this could allow emergency access to a family member's apartment and also notify authorities at the same time. Or for a hack to have the system notify authorities while entering the building without alerting someone else.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Free VPN with good privacy - <AUTHOR> Which is a free VPN service with a good privacy reputation? I'm currently using VPNBook [1] but then I came across this [2]. I premise that I'm not going to use it for something critical: I just don't like the idea that my ISP can see anything I do online and being tracked by other companies for marketing purposes. So given this VPNBook is probably fine, but I wish to know your opinion about other services. [1] www.vpnbook.com [2] https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/7168/anonymous-accuses-vpnbook-of-being-a-honeypot/ <comment><USER2> There is no such thing as free service. if you want to really hide yourself. look at the tor project.</comment>


Ask HN: I can use your advice on Microservices VS Monolith - <AUTHOR> Our current architecture at work is: |frontend angular| -> |Node.js MW Layer| -> |1 large microservice + 3 smaller ones all in Node.js|
A new engineer on the team suggests that we merge all the applications together. We render the frontend using express, and combine the microservices together.
He's argument is that monolithic apps can still scale well. Furthermore, it'll be easier for engineer to roll out features since the entire code is in one project, and a feature can be developed all the way from the back to the frontend.
I'm finding his argument hard to believe. An app of that size can end up very coupled. It will be a single point of failure. If one child process crashes so much damage can be done. DB ORM will run slower because of how DB intensive the app will be.  Obviously many of these issues can be solved with sufficient scaling. Which would also cost more since we're not scaling whats in demand, but instead the entire app. -- Even if we decide to split the app down the road that only means a way larger effort.
Lastly a very smart person told me once to shard early. It's hard enough to shard early he said, so why do it when you're running out of time.
That engineers argument is to just keep scaling up the DB. While I agree that's a temporary solution, in a world that produces and collects more data each day, sharding in my opinion is inevitable. <comment><USER2> Unless your app is going to hit massive scales (hint: it won't. the chances that you are one of the few that do is so minuscule, it's not worth assuming it will happen), optimise for simplicity, not scale.

Micro services are the exact opposite of simplicity. What used to be a method call, is now a network request.

With a monolithic application, you have to worry about the application process (which may be Node directly, or may be an application server like Phusion Passenger), and the associated services it depends on: database, caching, possibly http/tls front-end.

With a micro services architecture you have to worry about all those processes for each and every micro service. Sure, they may be sharing a database, but they also may not. They may be sharing a caching layer, but they may not. They may not even use the same caching/database software.

Unless your app _already_ works when one of the four micro services is down, any argument about "single point of failure" is moot, because you currently have 4 single points of failure.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think I'm convinced. But maybe I'm missing something ?

You can't go on assuming user base won't grow. Also massive is not a quantifiable amount. There are certain thresholds that require the application to scale, and those depend on the functionality expected. If I hash passwords, but I can only hash 100 at once. If I offer integration API's that get hit more often than my actual site. Will I need to scale my monolith app for those specific cases?

To say that a large application let's you focus on just dev work is a bald statement in my opinion. A large application is harder to test, harder to deploy, changes have a higher risk, risk of data leaking by mistake, very coupled, and not simple -> harder to design for -> harder to move stack. Just on boarding an engineer into a monolith app from my experience is hard..

I'm not sure how with micro services you're worried about the processes? I lost you there..

I have a quick script that spits out a microservice with basic health endpoint. I made a communication module that uses sockets and parent as a bus to communicate through.

A bank offers some sort of signin application, statement generating (sent to email), some api's for payroll, and maybe an integration with a credit card where it notifies customers about any purchases made. When sign in is down, it doesn't mean you shouldn't get alerts about CC purchases, or that reports shouldn't be generated. Even when you're signed it's possible certain feature might not be active. With a mono if a bug took down the application every service you offer is down. --- This scenario is very much around the kind of service we want to provide.

<comment><USER2> > You can't go on assuming user base won't grow.

The number of developers today who assume their user base _will_ grow, and optimise for that, when it's not required, _far_ exceeds the number who assume their user base _won 't_ grow, and have growing pains because of it.

> If I hash passwords, but I can only hash 100 at once

What do you mean _if_? Why would you ever _not_ hash passwords?

Also, this is exactly what horizontal scaling is for, which you need to deal with regardless of whether you're using micro services or not.

> A bank offers some

first off - you're still comparing yourself to a massively different field. If you _are_ working for a bank, you shouldn't be asking for this type of advice, unless you've lied to them about your skills.

secondly - those things you described are all different applications within a bank. There may be _some_ integration but more likely the common point for them all is a massive mainframe system that they all interact with. That is not micro services.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The number of developers today who assume their user base will grow, and > optimise for that, when it's not required, far exceeds the number who assume > their user base won't grow, and have growing pains because of it. I think > discussing this point is useless. For the same of the argument assume we > are.

> Also, this is exactly what horizontal scaling is for, which you need to deal > with regardless of whether you're using micro services or not. I give you > that. You can. I don't think it's a correct approach, but you can def just > scale once you hit your smallest bottlenecks and you'll be fine (I think).

>first off - you're still comparing yourself to a massively different field. If you are working for a bank, you shouldn't be asking for this type of advice, unless you've lied to them about your skills. >secondly - those things you described are all different applications within a bank. There may be some integration but more likely the common point for them all is a massive mainframe system that they all interact with. That is not micro services.

I'm confused. How do you know which field I'm working in? I am comparing us to a bank because like I said, the services we offer are very similar. I shouldn't be asking for advice? That's plain ignorant. I am asking for the advice because I am a strong believer in micro services but I figured I'd rather ask people for their opinion to see what I get without the title giving away my thoughts. I doubt you would have clicked this thread if what you read was an opinionated title saying "Micro services are the only way" at least I wouldn't. I'd assume that persons mind won't change. Instead I wanted to get as much feedback as possible (including yours :) ).

While the banking world moves slow, and tends to make up new terms for anything they do to make them sound cooler. The newer core banking systems (check out cloud banking, micro service banking) are usually composed of smaller services that communicate through some buss and managed through one uniform API. I'm pretty sure that's along the lines of micro services or at the very least more micro than mono! -- When I say new I mean within the last 10-15 years. I worked at Citigroup and they had that structure implemented on so many of their products.

<comment><USER2> You're asking for technical advice for a financial platform, on HN, watering hole for flavour of the week, cargo culting, me-too cool kids who change software stacks, libraries and development methodologies more often than they change their underwear.

 _That_ is why I said you shouldn't be asking for advice here, if you're working on a banking like platform.

It's like a brain surgeon going to <comment>webmd.com<comment> reddit.

As for the bit about horizontal scaling: if you have a limit like # of hashes per second you can generate, microservices isn't going to solve that - whatever is running your password checking code has that bottleneck, and the answer is either (to a point) faster cpu's, or more frequently and eventually inevitable at scale, distributing the workload. That means multiple servers running the same code to handle more clients - aka horizontal scaling. That's unrelated to whether it's monolithic or microservices based.

Edit: more appropriate analogy

<comment><AUTHOR> You just sound angry..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> its an art not a science. use your best judgement

in my opinion, a small collection of core services is better than a monolith or a large collection of tiny services

Somtimes it makes sense to have multiple services live in a single "monorepo" for shared tooling and other resources. 1 repo, deployed to multiple places for different purposes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh how I would love to hug you right now.

My initial response to the team when I heard the proposal was that programming is an art form. There is a beauty how software is organized and orchestrated.

Given that the microservices do very different things, combining them together will do nothing but clutter a the code base. JS gives an excellent module system which allows for maximum code reuse. That should be emphasized. But combining 6 code bases together into a project that is planning to expand extensively over the next year makes little to no sense at least to me.</comment></comment>