Colorado communities secure the right to build their own broadband - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/11/05/7-colorado-communities-just-voted-themselves-the-right-to-build-their-own-broadband/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad to see this. Internet service is a necessary utility like electricity, water, sewer, roads, and police and fire protection. Particularly at the level of last-mile infrastructure, it's inevitable that there's going to be a monopoly on high-speed service. So it makes sense for it to be built out by the municipalities themselves. In fact, the federal government should be helping this along. Once we have fiber to everyone's house, ISPs who want to offer something beyond the raw connectivity the city provides can do so, and make use of that last-mile infrastructure on a resident-initiated opt-in basis.

<comment><USER3> You have enumerated a list of the worst services available to today's consumer. In none of those areas has there been any significant improvement in service level, cost, efficiency, or technology for many years (, though you could argue 'smart meters' will be a small step forward for electricity). Governments regularly use all of these utilities as revenue-raising 'businesses', which they consistently strip of any capital that could be used for infrastructure improvements.

In addition, some of the services have consistently proven unreliable, as they are run for the benefit of certain special interest groups at the expense of everyone else. Water is subsidized for farmers and golf courses, and this often causes everyone else to suffer droughts. Roads are often subsidized for truckers, which causes everyone else to pay higher gas taxes than they should, and suffer damaged road surfaces. Police departments are poorly regulated, and the policemen protect each other, resulting in the consistent and horrific violation of the rights of many people on a regular basis. Fire departments are run for the firemen, as can be seen from the fact that the number of paid firemen has been consistently increasing over the last 50 years, despite the increase of fire resistance of buildings, and the decrease of blazes.

All of these utilities also have some of the worst customer service available. On could argue that it is possible to get roads fixed through the city council, but this is the only one of the utilities mentioned which gives the consumer a modicum of recourse.

In short, if you are going to argue that ISPs should be a utility, please describe how it will be different from the existing ones, not how it will be the same.

<comment><USER4> It's like you live in a parallel universe from me.

My water, electricity, etc utilities are _far_ more reliable (probably by an order of magnitude) than any private service I've experienced. They don't cut corners in design or safety, and when there is a problem, it's _far_ easier to get in touch with them (they're usually already aware of it and don't pretend to act surprised like say your Telco or ISP) and scheduling is more flexible.

Case in point: I was wondering if my home water pressure could be increased at the meter. I'd gotten conflicting advice from plumbers. I called up one afternoon. They said they'd send someone out to check. I got a knock on my door at 8PM that same evening. I told him I measured 42psi at the hose bib, which was over the zone's minimum of 36. Which was disappointing to me. But still. The level of service just floored me. I've never experienced anything close to that from Time Warner, DiSH, AT&T, T-Mobile, you-name-it. I replaced my 150amp electric meter with a 200amp meter (city provided), it was inspected for less than most people would bother getting out of bed for and I had a fire hazard from our "new to us" house replaced with almost no cost from the utility.

I also feel like I get a lot more for my dollar. _Obviously_ the power grid is far more complex than Time Warner's cabling. Not to mention it can kill you. From TWC I get internet access. From the electric company I get 100% Wind Power generated electricity (for an additional $0.5 I believe), and hundreds of kilowatts of power each and every month.

I never give a thought to wether my sewer service is going to work. It doesn't have "off" days where it backs up a bit. My water doesn't decide to stop flowing every once in awhile so I have to try turning the faucet off and on until it works. When we moved in a couple years ago, I thought I smelled gas outside near the meter. Someone came out within 30 minutes. They found a minor leak (someone in the alley actually ran into the meter!), had it fixed up in no time flat. No charge.

If an ISP could come close to my Utilities experience I'd be overjoyed personally. And it'd be the last time I ever saw an Early Termination Fee, obscene equipment charges for commodity hardware, it'd actually work 99.999% of the time, and (maybe the biggest issue of all with ISPs) I'd actually get the service level I'm paying for.

<comment><USER5> seemingly good point but I think you're comparing apples to oranges. Providing electrical power, sewage lines, etc.. is not very difficult compared to handling Internet traffic. To make more clear what I mean, I wonder how your electric company would deal with a set of problems like when a torrent shows up on one of your customer's computers? Not to mention that IT support is probably more expensive than having your gas line checked for a leak.

<comment><USER4> To check for that leak they had to have customer service reps, city vehicles, fleet insurance, technicians qualified to work on a live, potentially leaking gas line, gasoline for the vehicle, and they arrived at my home in less time than a phone-call to TWC generally takes. I really doubt some IT staff costs more.

As for the Torrent: Give the customer what they pay for, and no more. If my internet issues are because of Torrents, I have to ask: Why does the lack of competency ISPs have never seem to work in _my_ favor?

edit: Also "not very difficult compared to":

I have an amateur's idea of the utility side (mostly from DIY and having relatives in the trades) and I think you're sorely underestimating the skill and care involved in making sure this stuff actually works. Large scale projects for anyone can be challenging, but it'd be amazing if anything ever worked at all if utilities put the same (lack of) planning care into their projects that most tech companies do.

Most people probably don't even know what a P-trap is for. Or ever noticed that their gutters are actually sloped for drainage. What material their plumbing is made from. How many receptacles can be placed on a circuit. That the brick on your house isn't actually load-bearing. What weeping holes are for.

This stuff has to last _decades_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one surprised by the fact that "the people" have to secure right to start a business for the common good in a democracy? I may be misinformed but in India I can not ever imagine having to need to do this.

p.s. I am not trying to show anyone in a bad light, just wondering if things like this are possible in a democracy.

<comment><USER7> What's funny is that a lot of people are worried about the "government" limiting their liberty, whereas in cases like this it's the big corporations that need to be defeated to win back your freedom.

Maybe freedom-above-all folks need to rethink what freedom is all about in this new reality.

<comment><USER8> Huh? It's the state government that has the law mostly preventing municipal broadband. If the government wasn't so powerful, the corporations couldn't use it as a tool against us.

<comment><USER9> That is some fucked up doublespeak right there.

If corporations weren't so powerful, they wouldn't be able to manipulate the government into passing laws that restrict choice among citizens.

<comment><USER10> You are talking around each other because there isn't one "the government", but rather a bunch of different levels constantly pushing and pulling against one another. It's very reasonable to be a small government ideologue while simultaneously wanting a more powerful city government. Many people who want "small government" simply want a less powerful _federal_ government. A few states are playing with this balance (Colorado certainly among them) at all levels. Should the federal government control the state's drug policy? Should the state control the county's or municipality's infrastructure or natural resources? What about schools, who should control those?

These sorts of questions are where you see major differences between lots of different people who would all identify themselves as "conservatives" and agreement with many people would would identify themselves as "liberals". It isn't a simple system!

<comment><USER7> I could not agree more with the liberty-above-all folks - in terms of sentiment. I could not disagree more with them that the greatest threat to individual liberty is the "government" \- that was true back in the day of Paul Revere maybe. But times have changed.

Nowadays the greatest threat, and a much more intelligent and subtle threat, too, is from Big Money. There's a war out there for people's minds, and we- the-people are currently losing.

Chaining up the bodies is so medieval and inefficient, so why bother, when you can chain up the minds and then the slaves will passionately defend their own chains. It's easy, too, just set up some "think tanks", or promote some newfangled ideologies that seem to promise "liberty" while in fact weaken the very defenses that support it. Problem solved.

I lived the first 2 decades of my life under communist dictatorship, so I think I know from first hand experience what freedom, or lack thereof, truly mean.

<comment><USER11> _I could not disagree more with them that the greatest threat to individual liberty is the "government" \- that was true back in the day of Paul Revere maybe. But times have changed._

You've got to be kidding. Most of the violations of human rights that occur in the world come from governments. What other entity is powerful enough to take everything you have and thrown you in prison?

<comment><USER12> There's no such thing as a world without governments. A large scale stateless society is impossible. If you weaken the power of democratic governments, non- democratic entities will take their place as the de facto government.

<comment><USER11> That didn't answer the question. If the world can't exist without governments, that doesn't imply that governments won't take away your freedoms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "unfair competition" is all you really need to hear to understand that these companies hate the free market. so do the politicians that make laws to secure oligopolies.

the doublethink on this issue is amazing: the telecom companies are providing crappy internet, so let's make a law preventing competition, which is the nominal foundation of our economic system.

<comment><USER14> I'm fine with the phrase "unfair competition"; I want the competition between peers regulated. The horrible part is the assumption that the public is a peer, rather than the authority under which corporations are allowed to operate. If the public decides that it will be more efficient to provide some service itself, why would it grant special status to a project to provide that service less efficiently?

It's unfair to private corporations that we can do it cheaper without them?

<comment><USER15> it does tend to cut into giant ceo earnings; it's much harder to be a parasite when you have to compete with public utilities run at or near cost

it also puts a dent into the size of bribes available to the more venal politicians...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish this would happen in Minneapolis. When ISP's get in bed with politicians creating laws that subsequently shut out all competitions, the ones that suffer the most are the consumers. Comcast has been the bane of my existence: slow speeds, high price, terrible customer service. The CEO has the audacity to say that people don't like COmcast customer service? Right, because I enjoy paying $90/month for 50mbps. Allowing municipals/counties/districts built their own will benefit the consumer overall, it might even improve neighborhoods to foster businesses to open up (or local offices, what have you).

<comment><USER17> If you're paying $90/month for just the 50mbps (no TV) then I recommend you call and be utterly furious. When they attempted to bump me to that price it took a phone call and insisting on escalations through 4 people but here I am- back at $40/month where I started a few years ago.

The first several people you get on the phone will tell you there's nothing you can do, just ask to be elevated to "somebody useful". It's rude but it's the game they force you to play, so go in swinging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone live in Boulder? It sounds like a nice place, or is it just a suburb on Denver? I couldn't tell from the map.

<comment><USER19> Heh, yes. I live in Boulder. I am not quite sure where others get the 40 miles to Denver number. To South Denver, sure, but it's about 23 miles to Downtown.

I don't consider (nor do any of my friends) consider Boulder to be a suburb of Denver. If anything it serves as "the city" to places like Lyons, Longmont, Lafayette and Louisville.

Of relevancy to this article, Longmont approved municipal fiber a year ago.

<comment><USER20> Taking 93 or 36 it might as well be 100 miles away :) The commute between Denver and Boulder (which I did for 3 years) is brutal no matter how you slice it.

<comment><USER19> Very true. 36 is 101 levels of bad at times. Thankfully for me I walk to work right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's an "interesting" counter-point from an academic who has strong ties to the cable industry.

[http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_26474974/no- municipal-b...](http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_26474974/no-municipal- broadband-is-risky-proposition)

[http://daniels.du.edu/faculty-staff/ronald- rizzuto/#sthash.X...](http://daniels.du.edu/faculty-staff/ronald- rizzuto/#sthash.XejKuEyU.dpuf)

This is discouraging to me because, in my idealistic mind, academia should transcend "lobbying" and produce information for the public to consume. I don't have a problem with academics earning a livable wage from their research efforts, but I have an increasing sense of corporate "plants" in the academic realm that generate the results from research that benefits the corporation. It seems like things have gotten backwards - research used to be used to make a better product/service/commodity for which a company can charge a premium. Now it seems like research is used to justify stagnation tactics.

Anyway, germane to the actual content of the article, this is encouraging, but as has been noted, many of these are very small communities anyway. There's not as much of a loss if they are not part of the larger loss of a metro area. The notable exceptions are Boulder (which is, honestly, considered to do its own thing) and Cherry Hills Village. CHV is a curiosity for me because that's where the extravagantly wealthy of the Denver metro area live and is a fairly "red" area so I wonder if this is becoming enough of an issue that it's transcending party lines and affiliations. Poor service knows no political alignment, I guess. Enough rambling.

<comment><USER22> Can you elaborate on this sentence? > There's not as much of a loss if they are not part of the larger loss of a metro area.

I appreciate you posting the link, it was an interesting counter-point. Yet your comment doesn't really address anything he writes about, instead going off-topic with something about lobbying.

Focusing on his article, what is your response to his study of 75 municipal- operated ISPs/telecoms all costing the region (often significant) money?

Is there a reason you consider his main point wrong? (Specifically, his point that the discussed regulations only require voter approval before undertaking a costly ISP infrastructure business.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> City hall != community. Eventually this will become just another tax on house, impossible to opt-out. In Germany you MUST pay for privileges such as TV or rain water disposal.

There are many community networks build by volunteers, for example CZFree had almost 1M users at its peak.

<comment><USER24> The city government in Boulder is claiming that they intend to lease out the 100+ miles of fiber in the city to interested ISPs so that they can provide fiber to the citizens. Right now, my understanding is that the majority of the fiber is dark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wolf in sheep's clothing. In a few years a big internet company will bid to be the "provider" of said broadband. Voila, you now have to buy comast with your legislated tax dollars.

Freeing the markets would have been the win.

<comment><USER26> I'm not saying this isn't going to happen in Colorado, but it hasn't happened in Chattanooga, TN. They've had municipal broadband since 2009 [1] which far outstrips the national averages for speed and price.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chatta...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chattanooga- internet/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Colorado is leading the way to freedom on multiple fronts. Maybe they have taken the place of California in terms of moving forward with innovative ideas like municipal broadband and removing wasteful laws.

</comment><comment><USER28> Of the communities listed in the article, Boulder is by far the largest (with a population just over 100,000.) The rest of the counties and small towns _combine_ for a population of under 25,000.

These projects are going to have a very different profile in terms of cost and difficulty compared to the same project in a major metro area.

[Sources: wikipedia. Plus, my great grandparents homesteaded in Wray in the 1890s, and relatives in the area still host family reunions.]

<comment><USER29> I would like to point out that Longmont had already been doing this, a town of 90,000 near Boulder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wish this could happen everywhere. In Weston, FL we had one local provider (Advanced Cable). The customer service (and product in general) was much better than that of Comcast/ATT. I guess competition forces better products/service to be offered to the individual, go figure.

What laws prevent other communities from doing the same? And what justified their existence?

<comment><USER31> Because ISPs sign deals with cities for exclusive rights to provide broadband in the city. The offer incentives to the government (providing cheaper/faster service to schools and government buildings) in exchange for exclusivity.

Part of these deals prohibits local governments from becoming ISPs.

The root of the problem is that ISPs are not classified as common carriers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "[..]states have laws limiting the ability of local governments or their partners to offer their own broadband services, often passed with the encouragement of big commercial broadband providers who complain about _unfair competition_."

Amazing statement considering that the providers in question are likely to be local monopolies.

</comment><comment><USER33> Here is a video explaining some developments in the area of community rights by the Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmJS6sjBbHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmJS6sjBbHg)

</comment><comment><USER34> and the nearby city of longmont did the same thing, and it hasn't gotten the people anything, last i checked. (not that voting for it was a bad idea; i'm largely ambivalent.)

digging under ground and laying cable is significantly more expensive than most people realize, and when they get the quote, they're suddenly a lot happier with 100Mbps.

comcast probably didn't fight it because it doesn't matter. or they figure they can lease some, and it'll be that much less they've got to bury for their business customers.

<comment><USER35> This is not true. Longmont has proceeded with building out a fiber utility for its citizens [0] called NextLight. As I mentioned in another comment [1], my understanding is that Boulder city has required private telecom operators to lay city-owned fiber alongside its own.

[0] [http://longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments- e-m/long...](http://longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-e-m/longmont- power-communications/broadband-service) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568436)

<comment><USER34> ok, so starting 3 days ago, some people are maybe getting something. that's a lot better than i expected, but let's be clear to folks not clicking the link, the whole city isn't magically rolling in gigabit, and won't be for some time yet.</comment></comment></comment>


How I built ghit.me, hit count badges for GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://benwilber.github.io/nginx/syslog-ng/redis/github/hit/counter/2015/12/25/how-i-built-ghit-me.html <comment><USER2> How does this deal with GitHub's caching of images?

[https://github.com/blog/1766-proxying-user- images](https://github.com/blog/1766-proxying-user-images)

They refer to it as "proxying", but they also call out that it proxies using their CDN, which seems to imply there isn't a 1:1 relationship between user requests and hits on the backend server

<comment><AUTHOR> Github's proxy[1] respects Cache-Control headers, so it will just pass through since we use Etags and Cache-Control: no-cache.

[1][https://github.com/atmos/camo](https://github.com/atmos/camo)

<comment><USER3> Heh, someone should tell BitDeli[1]. They had to effectively shut down due to this, but if the fix is a simple as that then they will be hitting themselves.

Edit: Would it not be possible/better to just serve the SVG image direct from nginx? There is a LUA plugin, or even some direct redis stuff you could use.

1\. [https://bitdeli.com/](https://bitdeli.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> their analytics service still won't work since Github's camo proxy scrubs all cookies, referers, remote addrs, etc.

edit: and regarding lua or nginx redis2, yes you could certainly do that. I happen to like the asynchronous nature of incrementing hit counters outside of the request cycle and just using nginx to serve the static badge files. But yeah there are a bunch of ways to do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Back to geocities websites with hit counters! I like how it was implemented though, I simply hope I won't start seeing this everywhere from now on because it doesn't add anything to a repo to have that badge.

<comment><USER5> The only thing missing here is some tacky, irritating animation, but I've even seen that being rediscovered in some recently posted articles...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone that is unaware, "hit count" functionality has been present in GitHub for at least several months. If you're the owner of a repository, you can view it at [https://github.com/<username>/<repo>/graphs/traffic](https://github.com/<username>/<repo>/graphs/traffic) which gives you a breakdown of visitors, clones, referring sites, and which pages within your repository are popular.

<comment><USER7> Is there a way to make this cover a period of >2 weeks? I can only see 2 weeks of traffic for my repos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you ever wanted to filter by IP so you don't end up with tons of duplicates, it would be a nice usecase for the native hyperloglog support in Redis:

[http://antirez.com/news/75](http://antirez.com/news/75)

[http://redis.io/commands/pfadd](http://redis.io/commands/pfadd)

[http://redis.io/commands/pfcount](http://redis.io/commands/pfcount)

<comment><USER9> You can't, image urls on github are rewritten to be fetched trough a proxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If people fork/clone the repo, then wouldn't it also update the count on the main repo?

</comment><comment><USER11> If anyone's trying to use ghit.me - beware that api rate limit from github is preventing the tool from working. May be, try again:

      {
        "message": "API rate limit exceeded for 22.214.171.124. (But here's the good news: Authenticated requests get a higher rate limit. Check out the documentation for more details.)",
        "documentation_url": "https://developer.github.com/v3/#rate-limiting"
      }

</comment><comment><USER12> This got rate limited by github's API...

</comment><comment><USER13> nice. I just added it to my hackernews chrome extension repo: [https://github.com/boomeasy/hnlinks](https://github.com/boomeasy/hnlinks) perhaps it will reach double digits by next year :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> Cron? Syslog? Seriously? This could, in real-time and fewer lines of code, just directly get and increment a counter...

<comment><AUTHOR> yep it's a pretty trivial task and there are a lot of ways to do it. i like just serving static files and incrementing hit counts outside of the request.</comment></comment>


Friday is my new Saturday - <AUTHOR> http://v4us.posterous.com/friday-is-my-new-saturday <comment><USER2> and the fact that you can enjoy the weekday lunch deals around

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right!</comment></comment>


A tiny group of people can see 'invisible' colours that no-one else can perceive - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140905-the-women-with-super-human-vision <comment><USER3> Antico's painting of an eucalyptus doesn't "give us a hint of the extra shades she is seeing". It's just another instance of the [El Greco fallacy]([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/a-new-look-at- per...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/a-new-look-at- perception_b_2867621.html)): art historians used to think that El Greco's elongated figures were a result of his having a severe form of astigmatism. But, of course, if that had been the reason, he would have also seen an elongated canvass when painting, with the net result of figures painted in standard proportions.

Here as well, if the tree painting was somewhow a reflection of Antico's tetrachromatism, she would have chosen colors that matched those that she sees on the eucalyptus. Such colors would be indistinguishable to us trichromats from the colors the tree does have, with the net result of a normally colored tree painting.

At best, Antico is using something of a metaphor to convey her tetrachromatism. But no real insight on her vision.

<comment><USER4> what about the "night vision" painting. if it's pitch black and someone has the ability to see a vase, and then remembers the vase and paints the vase green in another room brightly lit...

well, they wouldn't paint a pitch black canvas and claim they can see a vase in that painting.

if el greco had some kind of condition that made him see elongated figures at thirty feet away, would a small normally proportioned figure drawing two feet away really look elongated also?

<comment><USER3> The night vision painting recovers quite a bit of the visual experiences: how shapes are arranged in space, for example. What is recovered in the multicolor eucalyptus from the tetrachromat's visual experience?

El Greco usually paints figures close by. Portraits, mostly. Your question does not apply to his most famous paintings, I don't think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's hard to compress what's known about the subject of color perception differences among people with nominally normal color vision.

Hypothetical tetrachromacy has been demonstrated, that is, M and L cones with minor differences in peak spectral response existing in a retinal mosaic. The question arises whether this difference is capable of being propagated through the bipolar connecting neuronal paths (which form the "blue-yellow" and "red- green" channel paths conveying color info to the brain visual cortex).

Several studies found no evidence for a "fourth channel", and some perceptual studies did not show confirmation of tetrachromacy. However a couple of studies do hint at rare female subjects who do seem to have good evidence for this trait.

It is postulated that because of the differences in the exact genetic encodings on the 2 X chromosomes in females, that up to 50% of women have a retinal mosaic of 4 populations of cones, S M M' L, S M L L', and so on. The theory is that this allowed greater distinction of yellow to red color distinction which may have helped survival by avoiding toxic plants based on subtle color distinctions.

In art, there are great colorists and those who are virtually incapable of subtle use of color. If anyone interested in finding out about their own abilities, check out: [http://www.xrite.com/online-color-test- challenge](http://www.xrite.com/online-color-test-challenge)

The on-line test is only a rough estimate, but it's fun and challenging. I suspect there's a spectrum, aka normal distribution of color discrimination ability. I should't say how well I did, though the results of trying it several times were remarkably consistent despite different computer systems that I used.

BTW I encountered one very intriguing article reporting on a large sample of retinas obtained post-mortem. As expected, ~50% of females showed retinal mosaic of 2 M or L cones where only one each was expected. Most fascinating was the fact that of male retinas 8% showed a similar tetrachromat pattern. How that could arise is a mystery considering males have only one X chromosome. (There are pigment gene variations with greater number of CNV and TR which could be activated? But it's still a mystery.)

<comment><USER6> > _Hypothetical tetrachromacy has been demonstrated, that is, M and L cones > with minor differences in peak spectral response existing in a retinal > mosaic. The question arises whether this difference is capable of being > propagated through the bipolar connecting neuronal paths (which form the > "blue-yellow" and "red-green" channel paths conveying color info to the > brain visual cortex)._

Adding genes for extra cone types into normally dichromatic mammals (mice or something? I don't remember off hand and I don't have the citation at my fingertips) has seemed in studies to result in trichromatic vision, so it's not _too_ big a leap to suspect that tetrachromacy of the type described in the article might happen for some humans.

As you say there hasn't been any study which showed this conclusively (that I've seen anyhow). I'd love to see more thorough research on these subjects who supposedly possess such vision.

> _In art, there are great colorists and those who are virtually incapable of > subtle use of color. If anyone interested in finding out about their own > abilities, check out:_ [http://www.xrite.com/online-color-test- > challenge](http://www.xrite.com/online-color-test-challenge)

Note, this online test is a bit easier than the paper version of the Farnsworth–Munsell hue test, since the colors in the screen version end up with some lightness differences that make it a bit easier to keep some sections of the chart in order. Either way, the test IMO mostly measures (a) whether someone has "normal" trichromatic vision, and (b) how patient and willing to fiddle with fine details they are. I don't personally think Farnsworth–Munsell test scores are super meaningful, though a very poor score does indicate some color vision deficiency. [FWIW, if I take the time to do the test slowly, either on screen or on paper, I consistently score ~0, occasionally mixing up one pair or another.]

But anyway, I think the ability to be a good colorist in art has a whole lot to do with practice. Spending a lot of time mixing paint or color correcting photographs is likely to heighten awareness of tiny distinctions. For instance, I know that after a couple years of photography courses, several of my friends got much better at noticing color casts in photographs. Not that they couldn't physically see them before, but after experience they more often spontaneously noticed the casts and started to have a feel for just how much adjustment in which direction would be necessary to counteract them.

<comment><USER7> I scored 0 on the test first time (perfect color vision), no practice, and I have pretty much no experience with any kind of art. (27 male for ref)

EDIT: Had another 2 tries, got 4 and 12. Turns out practice does more harm than good - after 3 tries it's a bit disorienting trying to read off the screen. Gonna have to take a break from machine.

<comment><USER8> A test like this needs to isolate the subject to only one spectrum at a time. I gave up after the first two because of too much noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm from Australia but hadn't heard of the Rainbow Eucalypt before (the tree that the featured tetrachromat painted). That's not so unlikely as there are a lot of Eucalyptus species.

Still, I was curious and so looked it up and was very interested to find that it is a Eucalypt from outside Australia and, more than that, the only one whose native region partly lies within the northern hemisphere. Another name for it is the Mindanao gum, as it is native to the tropical rainforests of Mindanao in the Philippines (north of the equator).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_deglupta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_deglupta)

</comment><comment><USER10> From my photography experience I noticed a lot more abnormalities than just tetrachromacy, which is not uncommon amongst artists. I had a model that was "seeing" colors in the sounds (synaesthesia) - she was often saying you talk to me in blue or that person has such a nice white voice.

I've been tested for color vision and I am 100% accurate meaning I can discern subtle shades from each other precisely with no effort. I also have a very light form of synaesthesia manifesting itself by seeing a flash of light in the night right before an unexpected sudden loud noise (yet with observable latency) - like seeing a lightning just before hearing a thunder, even if the noise is not accompanied by any light.

I was also always wondering if what I perceive as "blue" is the same as other people perceive as "blue"? What if the neural response in my brain wires the color sensation in the same way as other people perceive "green"? That would help to understand individual preferences for colors. Also, we know there are special cells in retina doing direction detection, edge detection etc. - <USER2> if this had a profound impact on how we individually perceive world around us? Somebody can have a strong edge or directional detection present in their view all the time, logically assuming it's normal for the others as well that are lacking that ability. We are just too diverse, and people are rather quiet in order not to risk being considered abnormal and marginalized, a common problem for artists in general.

<comment><USER11> Do you also see a pattern in the white flash (zebra stripes, lines, checkers)? I always assumed that was a normal side-effect of being startled while resting; changing from your brain-vision to eye-vision, though I'm not sure of the patterns significance.

<comment><USER10> I can't recall any pattern - all I remember is a dynamic amorphous shape with different light intensities in different parts, and this just quickly flashes in front of my "eyes", right before loud sound hits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mantis Shrimps have 12 photoreceptors, they can also see in all polarisations. They don't do paintings so it's hard to know how they experience this. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp#Eyes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp#Eyes)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not that they see a few colors that no one perceives, it's that for them color is a 4 dimensional space instead of a 3 dimensional one. So it's a whole new world of different colors.

<comment><USER14> Even though our eyes detect color in 3 dimensional space, that doesn't seem to be how we perceive it. E.g. I can't tell you how much red, green, or blue is in a color, just that it's close to the cluster of colors I recognize as "purple" or "blue" or "orange" or whatever.

See this chart for example: [http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/satfaces_map_1024.png](http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/satfaces_map_1024.png)

Interestingly there is some evidence that culture and language might affect our perception of color.

<comment><USER6> You are incorrect about that, and Randall's drawing is misleading you (it shows the gamut boundary of an RGB cube, rather than the full three- dimensional color space he asked about in his survey).

For people with "normal" trichromatic color vision, the color we perceive when looking at a particular spot does indeed fall into a three dimensional "color space". You're right that without careful attention/training it's hard to state colors in terms of coordinates in terms of cone cell responses directly or color opponent signals (blue–yellow, red–green, white–black). It's easy to train someone to give reasonably accurate color coordinates in terms of lightness, hue, and chroma, however.

If you want to understand human color vision in detail, I recommend this online resource: [http://www.handprint.com/LS/CVS/color.html](http://www.handprint.com/LS/CVS/color.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a good study published recently documenting the ability for patients with eye surgery who could see into the UV spectrum.

The cornea blocks some UV light so if you have eye correction surgery your cornea is now modified/thinner and you can see slightly into the UV spectrum.

Probably has some downsides too.. Cataracts are probably more probable seeing as people tend to get them more frequently at higher altitude.

The Tibetan people apparently have a high rate of cataracts since there is higher UV light at the higher altitude.

<comment><USER16> It wasn't the cornea, but an artificial lens that was responsible. [0] UV passed through the artificial lens, but not through our natural one. It was replaced because of cataracts.

[0] [http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/14/165202/followup-u...](http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/14/165202/followup- ultraviolet-vision-after-cataract-surgery)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The thing is, the woman doesn't seem to perceive new colors that other people do not; the colors others don't see are being aliased to familiar colors like "pink", and "red". (When she says "do you see that pink", is it a pink that we could see elsewhere? Or some color that we have no concept of, but which she relates to pinkness.)

I'd be curious if she still sees the same thing in a digital image of the scene, or does the RGB system destroy it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Also of interest is that birds have little oil droplets, often colored, as part of their visual set up. There are five different known types of color- filtering oil droplets (a sixth that is transparent) but it doesn't appear every bird has all of them.

I'm no bird sight expert but it's suggested here [0] that a particular bird may have 8 effective color receptors (5 cones, 3 cone-droplet pairs) for a huge number of colors humans can't see. Diagrams of the receptors themselves can be found at the wiki [1].

[0] - [http://watchingtheworldwakeup.blogspot.com/2008/11/mountain-...](http://watchingtheworldwakeup.blogspot.com/2008/11/mountain- biking-moonlight-color-vision.html) [1] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_vision#Light_perception](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_vision#Light_perception)

</comment><comment><USER19> It's learnable and takes a lot of practice mixing colors and you need the right teacher. I picked up this ability in art school and it absolutely makes a sunset more beautiful. But to keep seeing this way you have to practice regularly. Use it or lose it. If I'm not painting regularly, it's gone.

Like if you play chess for hours and hours every day, eventually you start to experience everything in terms of chess moves. It's the same with color. Look at just about any flat surface long enough and you'll notice it has a hue, saturation and value. Just go into Photoshop and you'll see that boring white wall has variations in hue, saturation and value, it's no medical mystery in my opinion.

This part is a tiny more green, that part is a tiny more blue. I'm not giving you an art lesson here but you get the idea. Artists know they can make things look farther away by painting them blue/gray, decrease saturation with distance, etc. The painter learns to exaggerate because she just has a 2D surface to work with. Anyway, through the process of painting our perception of color improves, even when we're not painting.

K-12 the goal is just paint the sky blue and the grass green, color inside the lines and get your grade. But if you want to be a serious painter at some point, you may want to look at things fresh, more intently. When people see your paintings, don't expect them to care how long it took to mix the color. Only a few artists will notice and they're not the ones buying your work.

So even for artists, seeing color is not terribly useful, because mixing color is very time-consuming. It's more a hindrance than anything because I can finish an ink wash in 1/100th the time and sell that for the same price as an oil painting of the same subject.

If you have all the time in the world and don't need money, I say go for it, buy some expensive oil paint and send me an email, I'll tell you what to buy. Stretch the canvas yourself and go all out.

</comment><comment><USER20> > _Jordan's "acid test" involved coloured discs showing different mixtures of > pigment, such as a green made of yellow and blue. The mixtures were too > subtle for most people to notice: almost all people would see the same shade > of olive green, but each combination should give out a subtly different > spectrum of light that would be perceptible to someone with a fourth cone._

From what I understand, a modern monitor is capable of displaying the entire range of colors perceptible to the human eye. Am I mistaken about that?

So would it not be possible to create a web-based version of these "coloured discs", and then we can test ourselves.

<comment><USER21> Google 'tetrachromacy test', first hit [http://www.blogadilla.com/2008/06/08/are-you-a- tetrachromat/](http://www.blogadilla.com/2008/06/08/are-you-a-tetrachromat/)

<comment><USER22> that claim is quite dubious. I don't think it's possible to create metamers for people with normal 3-color vision on an RGB monitor. To do that you need an extra degree of freedom.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_(color)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_\(color\))

<comment><USER23> Hmm... I'm not sure about that. It's an interesting question. It's equivalent to the question: can we create two images on a computer monitor that appear the same to a person with normal color vision yet appear different to a colorblind person?

I think it would depend on the particular mapping from 3 to 2 dimensions... it might be possible.

<comment><USER24> > _can we create two images on a computer monitor that appear the same to a > person with normal color vision yet appear different to a colorblind > person?_

It surely depends on the type of colorblindness, there are many [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness)

If you're monochromate or dichromate, I doubt that this is possible. Monochromates or dichromates are simply missing one or two color components out of three.

If you have anomalous trichromacy, you can by creating a monitor with pixels of different colors.

In any case, I don't see how it is possible to identify a tetrachromate with a trichromate (RGB) monitor. I tried to increase the contrast and change the hue of the color test to understand what was different between the apparently similar colors but I wasn't able to find any difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > The crux of Jordan's argument lay in the fact that the gene for our red and > green cone types lies on the X chromosome. Since women have two X > chromosomes, they could potentially carry two different versions of the > gene, each encoding for a cone that is sensitive to slightly different parts > of the spectrum. In addition to the other two, unaffected cones, they would > therefore have four in total – making them a "tetrachromat".

Why couln't this happen for either of the other cones?

<comment><USER26> The male equivalent is "Anomalous trichromacy" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#Anomalous_trich...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#Anomalous_trichromacy). You have one of the color receptors tuned to a slightly different frequency, so you see the word in a different way. (Which way is the correct way?) This condition is easy to spot with the standard Ishihara color test, so it's easy to measure the % of the population in these cases.

\--- Green

The most common case of male anomalous trichromacy is the "wrong/unusual" green receptor case, so the most common case of woman tetracromat is one that has 2 copies of the usual blue receptor, 2 copies of the usual red receptor and 1 copy of the usual green receptor 1 copy of the unusual green receptor. This is the case discussed in the article.

To reduce the text size I'll denote this kind of tetracromat with BBGgRR, where the capital letter denote the usual color receptor and the noncapital letter denote the unusual color receptor. (This is unrelated to recessive and dominant genes that are usually denoted by capital and noncapital letters.)

\--- Red

The second most common case of male anomalous trichromacy is the "wrong/unusual" red receptor case, so the seccond most common case of woman tetracromat is BBGGRr (1 copy of the usual red receptor an 1 copy of the unusual red receptor).

Obviously, you can have both mixed copies, so a woman can have BBGgRr and be a pentacromat. At least have the genes to "see" in a 5-dimensional color space. If she can use this ability is less clear.

\--- Blue

The least common case of male anomalous trichromacy is the "wrong/unusual" blue receptor case, so the least common case of woman tetracromat is BbGGRR.

It can be mixed with the other cases, so a woman can be pentacromat or hexacromat.

The interesting part is that the blue gene is not in the X chromosome, so both male and females have two copies. So a male can be tetracromat BbG_R_ . But this chromosome is not inactivated as the 50% of the X chromosomes in females. So I'm not sure if it's possible to have a different kind of vision in this case.

\--- It's more complicated

Actually you can have more than 1 copy of the color genes in each chromosome, and there are more than two variations of each gene, so it's more complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The radiolab episode about colors talks about tetrachromats and some other very interesting stuff, worth a listen: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/)

</comment><comment><USER28> For an excellent fantasy take on this, see Brent Weeks Lightbringer books.

</comment><comment><USER29> The frequency sensitivity curve of rods is different from reach of the cone types, too. If some rods contribute to daylight vision, then everyone is tetrachromatic to some extent.

</comment><comment><USER30> Invisible colors? Boring. How about imaginary colors?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_color](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_color)

<comment><USER31> How about David Lindsay's Arcturians (Voyage to Arcturus) who were able to see two extra colors namely jale and ulfire. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Voyage_to_Arcturus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Voyage_to_Arcturus)

<comment> andrey-p ... and a lot more fun to be had over here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_colors](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_colors)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can actually see infrared on the dark quite easily. But I think it should be due to some falloff of the light spectrum emitted by the LED.

</comment><comment><USER33> Am I the only one who thinks her painting of the tree looks the same as the photo color wise?</comment>


Central Europe Backs Out of Copyright Deal After Protests - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/02/07/central-europe-backs-out-of-copyright-deal-after-protests/ <comment><USER3> I'm from Poland. It's pure BS propaganda. All lawyers say this putting on hold means nothing legally, and the famous "debate" we had on monday was ridiculous and made for publicity, they are just trying to save their butts and put the public to sleep.

So, until we all hear that ACTA is no more, don't get too excited please and act like everything is still on.

<comment><USER4> Well - Tusk admitted that there were certain problems with ACTA, so I consider it a big step. As for debate - yeah, it may not have been very nice, but what did you expect?

Somehow, I trust that the signing of ACTA was because Tusk was misinformed. We've made him rethink the whole thing, and he's starting to back off.

PO has much to lose if ACTA gets signed, and not much to gain. They seem to get it now.

<comment><USER5> _We've made him rethink the whole thing_

This is what has really given me hope in this entire process. The shady back room deals sound great when it's just the content industry in the room - <USER2> know how to look cool, and who wouldn't want to be on the Cool Kids' side? But then the public finds out, and the public is _really pissed_ \- and that makes them think, "Why did I listen to those guys?"

If we can get the politicians of the world to think, "Why did I listen to those guys" more about _every_ topic, the world will be a much better place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would have never believed Eastern Europe would be leading the way in freedom. I guess when you have had to fight for it, it is actually valuable to you.

<comment><USER5> In 2006, we were in Budapest, watching TV, and they had a thing where you could SMS a number and your text would scroll across the screen. My daughter, then 12, was amazed that people were allowed to criticize the government in public like that.

Chew on that a bit.

<comment><USER7> A lot has changed since (again) in Hungary, and to many this is no longer the case, unfortunately.

The most popular call-in radio is being killed, because officials feel, that they need the frequency for another music station. It is an open secret, that it is the prime forum for the criticism of the current government.

[http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/media-pluralism- hunga...](http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/media-pluralism-hungary/)

For the record, the call-in show's radio station also obtained the frequency in a shady way, displacing classic fm to be a traffic news station (hence its original name), then ending up being the outlet of the most senior professional journalists -- whom have seen much of the old regime.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, my wife's Hungarian, and we're coming to Budapest this summer (and maybe staying; she still hasn't decided), so we follow this stuff. Orbán is trying to do everything at once and doing most of it wrong, and I _really_ don't like his media policy. But come on - you don't need media to communicate in Budapest; everybody knows what's going on - because of the jokes they tell each other, if nothing else.

But if a radio show of this nature were shut down in America, most people wouldn't even notice. The media _never criticize the people in power_ here, because the people in power simply own them outright. And by "people in power", of course, I don't mean the government. That hasn't been true for a long time.

In Hungary, this government has been really pushy (of course, the last government was far more corrupt), but Hungarians actually care about that.

Anyway, you don't need to worry, because my wife is going to be there in May and I'd hate to be in Orbán's shoes when she gets off the plane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quite irrelevant to this link, but interesting to note here anyway:

in Slovakia, anti-ACTA protests are right now joined together with protests against the current political system, thanks to leaking of so-called "Gorilla" police file, that proves links of political parties to big money.

The reality of Czech and Slovakia is that corruption is much more prevalent than in the west. People are getting really angry here. But the message that these protests tell is also "I got noone to vote for".

<comment><USER5> Dude, look at the ongoing travesty in Washington and tell me again that Slovakia has more prevalent corruption. I'm just not sure I believe it. It's just less smooth and more obvious in a small country.

<comment><USER9> Seriously: the influence of big money on US politics is a bad thing. But it's far, far away from the worst corruption out there.

<comment><USER10> Out of interest, what would you view as "the worst corruption out there"?

<comment><USER11> Well, like Putin & Co owning/controlling most of Russian enterprises larger than a certain threshold? Oil, machinery, aviation - you name it, they have it. Like not being able to get health care beyond the very basics without spending a fortune in bribes. Like having a price tag on signagures of everyone in parliament/government, or on becoming an MP or the like. Corruption can really be bigger problem than it is in the US, and when quality of life is so low, it becomes a problem of surviving it rather than it being an abstract long term threat to development or something.

<comment><USER10> Yes, that is bad.

FYI I'm currently in the middle of reading the book "Treasure Islands" about tax havens, which spends a lot of time explaining how these places play a key role in facilitating truly global corruption:

<http://treasureislands.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's all well and good making your secret deals to make the rich richer, but when the people find out, they're often not too pleased. Central Europe still remembers throwing their bums out - and in some cases lining them up against a wall in the process - and so it's not too surprising they're the first to take action.

</comment><comment><USER12> After growing up in the sixties listening to this commercial for Radio Free Europe, which was meant as much to highlight the west's freedom of expression as it was to advertise RFE

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LWSOKOqh2c>

I am disappointed in the west's descent.

</comment><comment><USER13> Meanwhile in Canada, the government is limiting debate on its own copyright legislation. [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/02/08/pol- copyright...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/02/08/pol-copyright- time-allocation.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> In all fairness, the Slovakia probably backed out because it's just a few weeks before parliamentary elections and politicians need to earn good points. There were anti-acta protest and petitions, yes, but not so strong as in Poland for example. The protests were also in the shadow of anti-corruption protests taking place in similar times (as was already mentioned in comments).

<comment><USER15> It's just so sad that all this "backing out" really means nothing after already signing the EC proposal.

> Some critics said the government's decision violates the Vienna Convention > on the Law of Treaties of 1969. In Article 18, the convention states that > treaty signatories are "obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the > object and purpose of a treaty."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Latvia also suspended ACTA ratification today.</comment>


Kolab - private email, recommended by Groklaw's last post - <AUTHOR> https://mykolab.com/

<comment><USER2> Here's what PJ said:

If you have to stay on the Internet, my research indicates that the short term safety from surveillance, to the degree that is even possible, is to use a service like Kolab for email, which is located in Switzerland, and hence is under different laws than the US, laws which attempt to afford more privacy to citizens. I have now gotten for myself an email there, p.jones at mykolab.com in case anyone wishes to contact me over something really important and feels squeamish about writing to an email address on a server in the US.</comment>


Santa Cruz's plan for a ubiquitous fiber-to-home network - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@scrawford/these-cities-have-brightened-their-future-with-dark-fiber-dc89a5d6a1d2#.y67ebd4dn <comment><USER4> Oh Santa Cruz how I miss you. And now with fiber, even more reason to return.

I'm not sure why it works that way, but you go looking for surf at Ocean beach and you wind up in Santa cruz. Santa Cruz turns any crappy surf day into perfect waves. Only problem is there are about 50 other people there surfing too & they all know each other, but still.. such great surfing!

And now with fiber. What could be better?

<comment><USER5> Indeed; we currently go to the University of California, Santa Cruz, when we need a speedy connection. : o )

In 2015, I was getting 96Mbps download from their freely accessible CruzNet campus wireless network.

<comment><USER6> It's hilarious. They only have 10 Mib/s in the on-campus housing, but if you go to any lecture hall after hours you can get 100 Mib/s or so (synchronous!) over the wifi. Good luck getting anything but dropped packets over that same wifi network when the lecture hall is full, though.

<comment><USER7> That's Mb or Mbit, not Mib. "mibi", the binary mega, is 1024 * 1024, which is almost never used for data transmission rates given in bits.

<comment><USER6> I measure my data transmission rates by timing how long it takes to transfer 100 MiB of random noise, so I do end up with mibi rather than mega unless I do extra maths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who lives just off Highway 1 on the Santa Cruz west side (closer to the University of California, Santa Cruz), at least our household has looked forward to this with excitement, for some time now. : o )

Currently using local ISP Cruzio's Velocity Internet + Phone ADSL (Residential)[1], which, due to distance from the nearest telephone exchange, delivers ~1.0 Mb/s. Note: those closest to the telephone exchanges get speeds up to 75 Mb/s; first world problems, for sure.

We chose to support the local ISP, rather than throw money at Comcast/AT&T, so we've accepted the performance. Note: Comcast[2] and AT&T[3] seem to have their own troubles/past performance issues, in the area.

In 2015, Cruzio began surveying existing customers, regarding prioritizing fiber buildout plans[4]. It seems you can still view results/vote and even help champion your local area, online.[5]

[1] [http://cruzio.com/services/broadband/economy/](http://cruzio.com/services/broadband/economy/)

[2] [http://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity/santa- cruz](http://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity/santa-cruz)

[3] [http://downdetector.com/status/att/santa- cruz](http://downdetector.com/status/att/santa-cruz)

[4] [http://cruzio.com/santa-cruz-fiber/](http://cruzio.com/santa-cruz-fiber/)

[5] [https://cruzio.servicezones.net/santacruz](https://cruzio.servicezones.net/santacruz)

<comment><USER8> how are the local WISP's in the area?

<comment><USER5> We actually seriously considered using a WISP (wireless Internet service provider). Cruzio offers "Business Broadband"[1], with "50 Mbps typical download and upload speeds" and the sales representative suggested we use that, instead.

At the time (early 2015, I think?) Cruzio had just finished installing a wireless presence on/near the old Wrigley Gum building (now a business park). They visited our site, to see whether we had line-of-sight to their antenna, and Cruzio engineers concluded they couldn't guarantee service, due to some trees.

So, it fell through, for us, but working with Cruzio staff has always seemed like a positive experience.

I'm not sure what other WISPs exist, but that's our story.

[1] [http://cruzio.com/services/broadband/business/](http://cruzio.com/services/broadband/business/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I live in Santa Cruz and have for over 25 years, visiting for longer, friends with people who have been here generations. I live on the east side of town near where Hwy 1 and 17 meet. For years, I have various DSL offerings (sonic.net was one), through one of the local trunks I was able to get 6Mbps down, 768kbps up. It was...yeah, no.

A couple of years back, Cruzio started putting up point to point Wifi. They started on the North (west) side of town at the old Wrigley Building. A former colleague was one of the early residential customers. 20Mbps/sec @ $99/year. Real speeds, a bit higher (using speediest).

I was the first to sign up in my neighborhood when they eventually lit up the 911 center. Their network engineer lives a few blocks from me, he was the first over here :)

20Mbps/sec allows me to work well from home. Fiber would be a good thing. It will take awhile for Fiber to be fully deployed, so I suspect I will stay on the direct Wifi for a few years.

Do I see this changing the economic development outlook for Santa Cruz? No. The University is the biggest employer, has a great deal of real estate around town and pays no property taxes and hasn't built enough housing to keep up with enrollment. The growth of administrators to staff/students is another issue.

Santa Cruz is mostly built out. There are a lot of infill projects going in Santa Cruz, but the uptick in actual tech isn't where it was 2000s. There aren't really any large employers like there were then. Amazon has a small presence, Full Power has been here awhile, Imprivata has a presence, Looker, Cruzio and Next Space have incubators. Apple and Google have shuttles -- yeah, no.

Santa Cruz has serious social ills as well. It has had a tolerance for "alternative lifestyles", but the weather, the tolerance, and a blind eye being turned have made things a cesspool too. Prior to the 89 quake and even into the 90s, most of the homeless here were the older drunks, maybe a vet, who were down on their luck. Meth and heroin have taken over, gang issues, the local police blotter is a revolving door of many of the same names -- several (many homeless) arrive here from other areas. Private residents are having to invest in alarms and camera systems. Local hotels are telling people not to leave their bikes on their cars even when parked in a monitored lot.

Where things go, I don't know. Personally, I see my days here as being on the decline.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if it's too late for fiber, with companies like starry talking about working phased-array technology delivering hundred of megabits at low install costs?

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601442/wireless-super- fas...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601442/wireless-super-fast- internet-access-is-coming-to-your-home/)

<comment><USER5> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11070584)

What might you say to the Starry skeptics (?) For example: "hurdles of needing line of sight, weather and obstacle sensitivity, degradation due to exposure, antenna positioning and leasing space, plus all the required maintenance."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If Santa Cruz had the will and might, what would stop it from becoming "New San Francisco"? Seems to me that creating a competing city is easier and quicker than reforming one.

<comment><USER5> Several possible limiting factors:

1) Population - As of 2013 the U.S. Census Bureau estimated Santa Cruz's population at 62,864 [1], versus ~860,000, for San Francisco alone, as of 2015.[2]

2) Water - "The SCWD currently has four water supply sources: 1) surface water diversions from three creeks and one natural spring on the Santa Cruz Country Coast; 2) surface water diversions from San Lorenzo River; 3) surface water from Loch Lomond Reservoir; 4) groundwater extracted from the Purisima Formation by the Live Oak well system."[3] The recent drought represented a sobering reality for residents, regarding capacity of the existing system.

3) Geography - Perhaps someone more knowledgeable on this might weigh in, on this, but the area comprises a number of marine terraces; you go from ocean to hilly redwoods in about three miles, or less, with most people living primarily on the marine terrace plateaus. You could develop it, I guess (?)

It's a gem, for sure, and not saying it's impossible; I guess we'd have to define the characteristics of what a New SF would represent, for you. : o )

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz,_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz,_California)

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

[3] [http://www.ucsc.edu/conserving-water/water- supply.html](http://www.ucsc.edu/conserving-water/water-supply.html)

<comment><USER12> Water is the biggest limiting factor. The campus has plans to expand further into the redwoods and build additional student housing, but can't do so without an adequate water supply. Currently their plans would further endanger local fish e.g. the smelt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, am I reading this correctly when I come to the understanding that there is going to be a single company in control of delivering service on this wire? That seems like a recipe for more of the same, where a single provider has little incentive to price competitively or improve service in the absence of competition. You could probably decay from exciting internet to under- performing in as little as a decade.

On another note, can the trunk lines be kept to a relatively low capacity, and then scaled later, or is this not feasible? I'm wondering how much you have the chance in the implementation of this to start with limited bandwidth (but still very high for residential users) and then scale up once you have users and all the connections to the homes.

<comment><USER5> To add to the comments by @justinlaing:

"Under the terms of the partnership, the City will own the network, and Cruzio will act as the developer during engineering and construction and as the operator when the network is complete. Financing for the development of the network will be through City-backed municipal revenue bonds, repaid through the revenue from the sale of network services (and not by the taxpayers). The project will be financially self-sustaining and 100% of the profit generated will stay in the City of Santa Cruz." [http://cruzio.com/2015/06/the-santa- cruz-fiber-project-2/](http://cruzio.com/2015/06/the-santa-cruz-fiber- project-2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Comcast upgraded their network in Santa Cruz in response to this. Amazing what a little competition will do.

</comment><comment><USER15> Who owns the poles?

If not the municipality, what is the cost to the city to use the utility poles?

<comment><USER5> Excellent question; thank you. I'd like to know, but I don't. At least one of the Supplemental documents, from the City of Santa Cruz December 2015 City Council meeting, mentioned microtrenching. I've also seen mention that they may have right-of-way via existing railway. That's about all I know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unable to understand why is the City partnering with one local ISP?

<comment><USER5> tn13, see @justinlaing, above, in response to yompers888, as a start.

The City of Santa Cruz has ~62,000 people, as of 2013. [1] A 2013 boosterism whitepaper, "Broadband Infrastructure in the Monterey Bay Region" [2] [note: published by an investor; salt ready (?)] describes some of the then-current issues experienced with larger broadband providers, which include Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and/or Charter Communications, depending on where you live in the greater Monterey Bay area.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz,_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz,_California)

[2] [http://www.tellusventure.com/downloads/ccbc/Broadband_Infras...](http://www.tellusventure.com/downloads/ccbc/Broadband_Infrastructure_in_the_Monterey_Bay_Region.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who actually needs this? Why the corporations that want to sell people on- demand movies, TV and whatnot.

If you push the infrastructure in the name of "The Internet", you look like a saint.

<comment><USER5> @kazinator, some people might prefer the ability to have video-conferencing sessions, from the comfort of the home and/or home office. That fills a real human need for connectedness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The City of Santa Cruz December 08, 2015, City Council Meeting Agenda has a number of freely available Supporting Materials, which describe the case for the Cruzio public-private partnership:

[http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/mtgviewer.aspx?mee...](http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/mtgviewer.aspx?meetid=686&doctype=AGENDA)

[1] Santa Cruz Fiber Public-Private Partnership Approv - Agenda Report

[2] Santa Cruz Fiber Public-Private Partnership Approv - CTC Fiber-to-the- Premises (FTTP) Financial Forecast Initial Report – July 2015

[3] Santa Cruz Fiber Public-Private Partnership Approv - CTC Fiber-to-the- Premises (FTTP) Financial Forecast Report Addendum – November 2015.pdf

[4] Santa Cruz Fiber Public-Private Partnership Approv - CTC Market Survey Analysis – November 2015

[5] Santa Cruz Fiber Public-Private Partnership Approv - Cruzio Internet, Inc. Market Survey Results – November 2015

[6] Santa Cruz Fiber Public-Private Partnership Approv - Public correspondence

[7] Santa Cruz Fiber Public-Private Partnership Approv - <USER3> Presentation 1

[8] Santa Cruz Fiber Public-Private Partnership Approv - <USER3> Presentation 2.pdf

[1] [http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=...](http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=published_meetings&fileid=4296601)

[2] [http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=...](http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=published_meetings&fileid=4296602)

[3] [http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=...](http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=published_meetings&fileid=4296603)

[4] [http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=...](http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=published_meetings&fileid=4296604)

[5] [http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=...](http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=published_meetings&fileid=4296605)

[6] [http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=...](http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=published_meetings&fileid=4296606)

[7] [http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=...](http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=published_meetings&fileid=4296607)

[8] [http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=...](http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/view.aspx?cabinet=published_meetings&fileid=4296608)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about HN's comment thread system? - <AUTHOR> I'm talking about the tree structure and how it gets nested into certain depth.<p>Do you think it serves the purpose well, or do you think there's a better way? <comment><USER2> I find deep threads that wander away from the topic distracting and sometimes frustrating. Especially on mobile, there's no easy way to collapse the thread you're currently on without scrolling back to the root comment, which might not be easy to find.

Maybe it would be nice (though hardly matching HN's spartan philosophy) to allow the community to assign titles to subthreads, for example: "subthread about housing costs in SF". That would allow me to skip it without having to read multiple comments before realizing I got into the rabbit hole of a topic I'm not interested in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it's a tough problem. Maybe it's a problem without a clear answer. I do think it's more intuitive when reading a tree structure until it breaks somewhere in the middle and starts again. Then I'm lost. But I think about a flat system where I have to connect all the dots myself in the head, and it's not so pleasant either. It'll probably have to be some type of hybrid system where it takes the best of both worlds and combine nicely into one. I have yet to see such system, personally.

<comment><USER3> The tangents themselves aren't really a problem - the threaded format encourages sub-discussions which diverge from the main topic.

A flat system could go one of two ways - all comments could be replies to the article itself, which would kill discussion, or any comment could reply to any number of other comments, or even other threads, which is how the flat layout of imageboards work. Although that also usually requires adding direct references to the ids of the comments or boards being replied to.

Hacker News could probably do more to make threads more readable and make navigation easier. One feature I've seen in webmail archives is links to sibling threads along with parent and OP - although that could get cluttered. Reddit also automatically paginates threads which go too deep, so the viewer doesn't see comments beyond a certain nesting level on any specific page.

Discovery tends to break down with long threads, regardless of the layout. I don't think there is a solution that won't require the reader to have to read a bit and possibly encounter content they find uninteresting. I liken forums to parties where you're wandering through a crowded room, listening to conversations other people are having. You can't expect to just immediately be entertained, it takes time to get context. With forums, features like karma are supposed to guarantee that the higher quality content is easiest to find (assuming some objective meaning of "quality" not defined here) but you still have to lurk and read.

In the end, though, that's supposed to be part of the fun.</comment></comment></comment>


Snow Leopard ships with vulnerable Flash Player - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=4175

<comment><USER2> The best upgrade for my Flash experience on Mac: <http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Really spotty story in terms of actual facts. Ok, it's an outdated version. How outdated? Are there any documented exploits that were fixed in the new version? The story never goes into detail about what exactly makes this version "vulnerable".

I just installed snow leopard on my computer today. I haven't checked to see if my flash is in fact out of date (I'm typing this on my iPod touch), and I'll certainly upgrade if it is, but I see no reason to get excited about it.

<comment><USER4> _first it will download any necessary software updates that have come out since the disc was pressed_

(from <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/08/28/murphy>)

Does anyone know if this covers Flash?

<comment><USER5> It does not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They should stop shipping Flash with the OS. Anyone know if Windows 7 is going to ship with Flash, too?

<comment><USER7> Windows 7 doesn't ship with flash. In fact, Windows has never shipped with flash.

<comment><USER8> I don't know if it ships with Windows 7 but it's certainly shipped with Windows before.

[http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/146623/windows...](http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/146623/windows_xp_sp3_includes_vulnerable_flash_player.html)

Googling around you can also find announcements that Flash 5 will ship with Windows XP.

<comment><USER7> That was a downloadable service pack, and it was an optional component.

At any rate, I'm using Windows 7 right now. I assure you I'm not lying.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.adobe.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2001/fp5_msxp.html>

Windows has shipped with Flash. I didn't say you're lying, I said 'Windows has never shipped with Flash' is inaccurate.

<comment><USER7> Oh, you're right. It looks like Windows XP was the first and last version of Windows to include Flash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there actually any not vulnerable Flash players? Or at least not _yet_ vulnerable?

</comment><comment><USER10> Ugghh... i wish flash would just go the fuck away.

</comment><comment><USER11> Mine isn't outdated as the article says.

</comment><comment><USER12> You know, this could be an elaborate phishing scam. The download page for the new Flash player is not secure. You could be installing a Trojan horse if you "upgrade."

<comment><USER13> A phishing scam where someone (1) compromised Adobe's web server, (2) persuaded Apple that there is a security problem that isn't really there, and (3) got ZDnet to report on it. Yeah, that's really likely.</comment></comment>


TELL HN: Wordpress.com is down (and millions of blogs together) - <AUTHOR>

It seems that Wordpress.com is down + all the blogs they host.<p>Link: http://wpvibe.com/wordpress-com-goes-down-techcrunch-com-goes-with-it-247/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1135411></comment>


An Other Python IRC Server – FyIRCd - <AUTHOR> I just wanted to have some fun with python today - https://github.com/Fy-/Fy_IRCd   - (lot of bugs I'm sure, I spent only 2 days on this version, it's running on my home computer atm). But I'm kind of enjoying this if some people are interested I will clean the code, add some helpers like user.privmsg and document the extension API. You can join my home irc server /server home.fy.to:6667 :D <comment><AUTHOR> I just started cleaning everything. This project is know know a domino [https://github.com/Fy-/domino](https://github.com/Fy-/domino) (use github for feedback, thanks)</comment>


Twitter Says CEO Dorsey Informed in Advance of Decision to Tag Trump Tweet - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/05/29/technology/29reuters-twitter-trump-minneapolis-dorsey.html <comment><USER2> I'm no fan of Trump but can't he just argue the tweet means something more doing the lines of "where there's smoke there's fire" ie "looting might lead to shooting so we need to stop things before they spiral out of control"?

The fact that Twitter previously allowed hashtags like #KillAllMen to trend doesn't really indicate a consistent policy against "glorifying violence" to me...

<comment><USER3> Re: Twitter consistent policy

Twitter does have a consistent and long track record of allowing violent Twitter posts by the military personnel of nation states.

Distinguishing acceptable violent speech and unacceptable violent speech is to Twitter a complicated exercise in navigating power and ideology in 2020 America.

<comment><USER4> Twitter doesn't need to be consistent about anything. You abide by their TOS or don't use it, the same way a store with "No shoes, no shirt, no service" can kick you out.

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's not legally necessary, but consistency is good for user trust. Plenty of things are legal that are still bad for business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hope The President doesn't find out that Dorsey is also CEO @ Square.

</comment><comment><USER6> Twitter should have suspended Trump's account (and many others) a long time ago. That they haven't suggests they're more concerned with a loss of traffic than incitements of violence.

<comment><USER7> He was asked about this in a podcast. Episode 148 of _Making Sense_. The relevant discussion starts at 56:30 and runs for 15 minutes. Unfortunately the episode is not freely available.

Dorsey talks about the 'public interest' of retaining Trump's rule-breaking tweets, how people can add their opinions, how it's expected that our leaders be 'extremely expressive', how it's a 'direct line to the people', how we can 'have a conversation about it'.

I consider his response to be extremely weak sauce. All he's doing is giving excuses for his failure to consistently enforce Twitter's rules. It's difficult to avoid your conclusion that it's motivated by traffic.

<comment><USER6> There's an enormous echo chamber of ignorance centered around Trump's Twitter account. That's a lot of ad impressions.

<comment><USER8> And about 50% are bots. I understand non US citizens having a voice but manipulation by bots is clearly not conducive to public discourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's clear Jack doesn't want to kowtow or maybe his ego is bruised but I just don't understand what he expects to come of this. The President has stacked the courts in his favor. He will get his way and twitter will take a massive hit financially.

My best guess is that Jack plans to move the company headquarters out of the US which would explain why he chose to allow remote work indefinitely. But can he get it past shareholders? The President had also stated he doesn't want foreign companies on the NYSE and no other market offers similar liquidity.

<comment><USER10> Saying that companies can't go against the president because he stacked the courts sounds a lot like a totalitarian regime to me. I really hope the US is not there yet and that anyone, individual or company, can criticise the government without fearing retribution.

Now if getting involved is smart from a business perspective is another question. But but they will have thought about that and also considered the consequences of not acting.

<comment><USER11> Not to mention the courts have been stacked using the Federalist Society's shortlist. While I personally think they're a bunch of highly educated kooks, I don't think that ideologically they'll side with the President in this fight.

<comment><USER12> How often do the courts not side with Trump in a meaningful way?

<comment><USER11> Pretty much weekly or bi-weekly? Like I don't want to go out and make a list of all the court cases and appeals that his administration has lost because it's not short.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone use Outbrain to market their software? - <AUTHOR>

On the site it seems simple, you get traffic to your site from content appearing in Reuters, Wall street journal.<p>Does anyone use it and have they seen success? How are they doing this? <comment><USER2> Tried sometime back. Didn't work for technology product. None of the clicks converted. Perhaps, it works for other industries?

</comment><comment><USER3> Outbrain is cpc. Your content will appear on other sites based on their algorithm but you pay for each click.</comment>


Always Swim Downstream - <AUTHOR> http://uncrunched.com/2012/06/20/always-swim-downstream/

<comment><USER2> I've thought about this issue a lot. In some ways I'm the very model of someone "swimming upstream" and I'm trying to reverse it. Growing up, I was really good at math. Good enough that I demolished the SAT at the age of 12 (getting a 770 I think), and got into college as a 13 year old. I did well at it for two years and then set it aside to be a normal high school student and try to become more well rounded.

In the end, the one subject I really, _really_ sucked at was foreign languages. And yet, when I did finally go back to college, I had no motivation for working at or even attending math classes; I graduated as a Japanese major. Then I moved to Taiwan to learn Chinese with _traditional_ characters, not simplified. I learned Chinese, and I can read. But I'm certainly not one of those foreigners with incredible language skills they put on TV for everyone to oooh and ahhh at. Similarly with sports, I had a natural aptitude for co-ordination based ones like bowling, fencing, etc... so I put myself through absurd training on top of the regular team training to become an okay distance runner.

Looking back on it now, in many ways I was an idiot. I could have done so much more, _been_ so much more if I'd focused more on my strengths... which is why I'm back in the US doing everything I can to get my foot in the door at a tech company where I can return to the kind of work that's more of a natural fit.

That said, I think there's a clear separation between things which should be improved if they're weak and things that aren't worth the time:

Improve the weaknesses that will hurt the rest of your life!

If you're in terrible cardio-vascular shape, that's worth improving. It will affect your health, your energy and even your brain. If you have terrible social skills, that's worth improving. They affect your work life, your personal life, your happiness and even your health in the long run. If you are terrible with money, that's worth improving. Poverty also affects the social, physical spheres.

However, if you're just not that good at stringed instruments, sticking with the piano is probably good for you. If you can't code, it's fine to become a lawyer instead and focus on your verbal skills.

Many skills really can be overlooked in favor of a substitute that's a better fit. Others are universal and worth the time to bring up to at least a 3 or 4 out of 10.

<comment><USER3> In complement - I have a strong tendency to approach learning by "nibbling" at problems and soaking up the low-hanging fruit, not diving into them and front- loading all the effort. This isn't time-efficient, since with a lot of skills, intense practice is eventually required to get any result. But it lets me explore my interest in the subject, so that by the time I commit to serious study, I've developed a feel for what I want to learn, and how good I intend to become at it.

Addressing weaknesses does give you a certain kind of long-term flexibility, and in my case, I tend to incrementally become more motivated as I detect weaknesses in what I'm doing - so, for example, I haven't felt too motivated to learn advanced mathematics or foreign languages until recently. But this isn't the way to get a fast result. I'm in agreement that a prodigy's talent is derived from the willingness to be unbalanced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just what we need: generic advice from Michael Arrington. Sorry Mike, but you are not the mold from which everyone else was made. It works for you, great. Other people may do better focusing on addressing and improving their weaknesses.

<comment><USER5> > Just what we need: generic advice from Michael Arrington.

"Hate Arrington" seems to be a common attitude on HN recently. What did he do to deserve so much bad will on the Internet?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: business registration and banking as a service? - <AUTHOR>

So, my friends and I have made this web service together. It started as something we were making for ourselves, but soon more and more people found out about it, and now we already have several thousand users. Some of our users are asking for a way to donate money to our project, and we could really use that money to cover our increasing hardware cost (we will likely soon need a second dedicated server just for this project alone). We thought of implementing paid accounts, however we are not sure how to organize the whole financial part properly. As I understand, to accept money from our users legally we need to be registered as some sort of company, and pay taxes. Nobody in our team knows how to do this, and, to be honest, we enjoy writing code much more than getting into those legal details.
The only easy option we see now is to receive user payments to a personal Paypal or bank account, however this will require us to pay taxes for all of that money, even though we will be spending most of it on servers and will be making zero profit.
Has anybody heard of a service that would allow us to open something like a virtual business account? We would need something that will:
- allow us to get money from our users to some sort of an account;
- allow us to pay for our servers from that account;
- in case our revenue exceeds expenses, pay proper taxes for the profits we make;
- allow us to withdraw post-tax income to our personal Paypal or bank accounts. We will then deal with personal income tax just like we do on our day jobs.
Has anybody heard of a service like that? We would appreciate any other advice as well. <comment><USER2> You can register as a company(LLC), or Corp(S or C). Right now if somehow your service harmed someone they could sue you personally for damages. Register as company, register to fed id number off of irs.gov website. go to a bank and get a business bank account. You can then open a business paypal account they charge a fee but just about anything you spend on business can be written off as an expense and you don't need to pay taxes for it. You'll need to file a seperate set of tax returns for the company at the end of the year but it will if you spend all the money on the business then there will be nothng to tax. if you use an S corp or LLC if your business takes a loss the business can pass that loss on to your taxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the reply. Unfortunately, we are not based in US, and registering a company is much more complicated in the country we are living in. And, as I said previously, we would like to keep focused on coding, and pass all the legal details to somebody more competent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a type of FI (read: a bank). Don't believe in any comment you will read in this thread, you need to seek legal help. (I own a bank/credit card company)

There are state and federal regulations regarding the type of service you want to provide. Don't even try to open a company without completely understanding the business and having extensive legal help.

Those type of companies have very strict guidelines and it is harder to adapt an existing company than trying to open another.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am afraid, legal help will cost us much more than our limited user base would be able to pay. That's why we don't actually want to register our own company, but rather are looking for a company that provides service similar to what I described.

It's hard to believe that in 2013, when you can do anything online, nobody came up with such a simple service of handing payments and paying taxes for others.

<comment><USER3> This is more about regulation, not everyone have good intentions. What you could do is to pay with your own money and charge the user later adding your services, this should be legal without going into financials. But again, you got away with the banking regulations but you could have problems with the IRS, this is why you need legal advice.

You can never have an account where others can keep their money, once you receive money in, it should be yours. So, timing is factor a here.

But again, a 30 minutes talk with an advisor is not very expensive. There are offices specialized in opening such firms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> currently your operating a business called either a <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_proprietorship>. Also, check out : [http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between- partnershi...](http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-partnership- sole-proprietorship-3951.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Also, there's a lot more rules and texes once you add an employee.</comment>


Boxama is a fun iOS game that is impossible - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/boxama/id887781277?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Boxama is impossible. Its incredibly slow at first, but before you know it, you're addicted.</comment>


'I Want What My Male Colleague Has, and That Will Cost a Few Million Dollars' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/magazine/salk-institute-discrimination-science.html <comment><USER2> That's a provocative title, so I hope people will actually read this article before dismissing the scientist who was quoted.

edit: but they didn't. :(

<comment><USER3> I vouched for it and brought it back. (You could have, as well.)

One would think, given it's the NYT, that one would've read it before flagging but it seems that we no longer seem to live in those times.</comment></comment>


A wearable device that alerts you when your kids are too far. - <AUTHOR> http://www.getkidalert.com/

<comment><USER2> This would be pretty cool if I could play around with the range.</comment>


Coronavirus Man Made According to Discoverer of HIV - <AUTHOR> https://www.gilmorehealth.com/chinese-coronavirus-is-a-man-made-virus-according-to-luc-montagnier-the-man-who-discovered-hiv/ <comment><USER2> > HIV RNA fragments are believed to have been found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome.

Several strains of covid-19 have been sequenced, if this is so it should be easily proved by publishing which is this fragment and proving that this fragments doesn't occur in wild strains.

Researching a bit more about this guy doesn't add much credibility, if you filter by date before this year you will see things about him defending ideas like homeopathy, water memory and how DNA transmit information to water via electromagnetism. Time will say.

<comment><USER3> I think I could have told you that before reading the article (which I didn't read), but thanks for taking the time to actually vet it and comment.

<comment><USER2> You lost nothing, he even proposes curing it with "waves" that i assume based on the other weird stuff is EM waves "Luc Montagnier added that with the help of interfering waves, we could eliminate these sequences and as a result stop the pandemic."

<comment><USER4> Judging from the magical thinking, Montagnier seems to have developed psychiatric issues and so is no longer a trustworthy authority. It seems cruel and dishonest for news hacks to exploit this ill man to feed a racist conspiracy theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Essentially, the scientists found that yes, there are some additions in the nCoV coronavirus originating in Wuhan that other coronaviruses don't have, which are similar to pieces of sequence found in HIV. But, the kicker here is that these pieces of genetic code are also found in countless other viruses and there's no reason to believe they specifically came from HIV, at all. " [https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/02/02/no-c...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/02/02/no- coronavirus-was-not-bioengineered-to-put-pieces-of-hiv-in-it/#480753f656cb)

<comment><USER5> There is also London bombing map in second world war which many people claimed was methodical but was later found to be random. e.g. [https://images.app.goo.gl/mdQEVE9gfQAsLHn66](https://images.app.goo.gl/mdQEVE9gfQAsLHn66)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to keep process documentation up to date? - <AUTHOR> What are the best practices for keeping documentation up to date? I find that our documentation is siloed across Visio, PPT, text docs, tribal knowledge, Quip, etc and never unified... this creates a huge headache when dealing with scenarios like on-boarding new team members, shifting responsibilities when someone is out, or just keeping everyone on the same page.<p>Realize that a large part of this is just being organized and disciplined but wondering if HN knows any good tools or best practices to address this? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Maybe automate some of your infrastructure?

I've found that running everything via SaltStatck scripts helps to keep things scripted and documented: as in, the scripts are the documentation (build and maintenance notes are inherently part of the 'process code').

Then apps like dot and similar can be used to build links from the code and attribute files.

That is, attempt to build 'single sources of truth'. And then use tools to 'view' the relationships from their original sources.

By testing the scripts and using the scripts, processes and docs are inherently kept up to date.

Rigorously use the scripts and don't do things manually.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is helpful - could you explain more about what you mean by using dot to "build links from the code"? I've used dot for process documentation in more of a business process / workflow sense but haven't heard of it in this usecase.

Zooming out, I am thinking more of "business" workflows here vs. technical steps - things like capturing our hiring and on-boarding processes for example.

<comment><USER2> For 'dot', I was considering more the machine inter-relationshps. Given ip addresses and subnets and interfaces in the configuration files, these relationships can be diagrammed given the 'sources of truth'.

SaltStack files have state files (commands and general configs) controlled by a 'top' file which lists hosts and their configurations. SaltStack files have pillar files (configuration parameters and values unique to device being configured) controlled by a 'top' file which lists hosts and the parameters. These relationships could be mapped by dot as a visual path through relationships.

Making a giant leap into the realm of general documentation, in a similar vein, document various pieces of the work flow as separate entities, where the documented entities may be common to several different work flows. Workflows then become linked version of various entities. And dot can generate work flow diagrams.

This all requires organization and effort. In hindsight, I've suggested doing documentation as though you are writing a software program. I'm not sure if tooling exists to do such a thing.

Take it all with a grain of salt. So to speak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Make "getting all our documentation in one place" a project. This will probably involve more decision making effort than actual time, if you already have the docs. The actual consolidation will likely be mostly copy and paste.

2\. Make "getting our docs up to date" a project. Time required will depend on how many docs you have and how far out of date they are.

3\. Create an index for it and a "getting started" guide composed mostly of links to other docs. Should only take an hour or so to write.

4\. Make "update the docs" an official step required for any process change.

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18674158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18674158) is a recent HN on one company's view on documentation.</comment>