There's a WebGL talk at WWDC 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.playcanvas.com/apple-embraces-webgl/ <comment><USER2> Wild speculation: iOS 8 will bring an out-of-process, heavily sandboxed webview, which was the missing piece for enabling webgl for everyone. The greatly increased attack surface (with almost direct gpu access via shaders etc) was too risky to host in in-process web views - explains why webgl was only enabled for iAds (since those would be vetted by a review team)

<comment><USER3> > The greatly increased attack surface (with almost direct gpu access via > shaders etc) was too risky to host in in-process web views

What really?

Were they seriously even pretending to use that excuse?

Everyone I've ever talked to was 100% certain it was simply because they didn't want anyone by-passing the app store for games and other immersive content they would then have no control over.

I'm not denying that webgl is an attack surface; it totally is; but surely it's a bit rich to say that the webgl implementation in webkit has been switched off for the last _3 years_ because of security concerns.

If _that_ was the only reason to not having feature parity with other OS's, they'd have some something about it.. oh, you know. 2-3 years ago.

<comment><USER4> > Everyone I've ever talked to was 100% certain it was simply because they > didn't want anyone by-passing the app store for games and other immersive > content they would then have no control over.

This never made sense to me as an explanation, if only because for a very long time iOS had a far more sophisticated browser than Android; Android only really reached feature parity with Chrome for Android, and for years iOS was a much better platform for webapps. If they were so protective of the app store, they would hardly have put so much effort into best-in-class modern web support; offline web apps are in principle as much a threat to the app store as webgl stuff.

<comment><USER5> While true, to be fair they've hardly put much effort into the browser since iOS 3 or 4. Still far behind on many important web standards. Still do releases like once a year. Haven't improve homescreen webapps at all (every time you click the icon it starts the app from-scratch, even if it was already open).

<comment><USER4> > While true, to be fair they've hardly put much effort into the browser since > iOS 3 or 4. Still far behind on many important web standards.

Well, it's much, much faster, and they've added plenty of stuff since IOS4 (web sockets, for instance, which it had a fair while before Chrome for Android).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title is misleading. It should read, "There's a WebGL talk at WWDC 2014."

This blogger spotted a talk at WWDC 2014 on WebGL. He speculates this means there's a forthcoming release of Safari with WebGL enabled by default, thus predicting Apple is embracing WebGL.

But we don't actually know that.

<comment><USER7> Thank you. We changed it.

The HN guidelines call for changing titles when they're linkbait or misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like convincing to me, well somewhere around 75% convincing. :)

This will signal the true start of the WebGL era, because the lack of WebGL on iOS has been a real buzz kill for commercial adoption of WebGL outside of pure enthusiastic circles -- I know this first hand unfortunately in trying to do B2B deals with [http://Clara.io's](http://Clara.io's) interactive embed technology -- it is nearly impossible to sell to major clients once they realize that it doesn't work on iOS:

[http://exocortex.github.io/audi/](http://exocortex.github.io/audi/) \- Car

[http://exocortex.github.io/klaas/](http://exocortex.github.io/klaas/) \- House

<comment><USER9> Perhaps you could use Ejecta when they ask for iOS support ? Sure they'd still be disappointed that it doesn't run directly in Safari Mobile, but alternatives like Unity or AIR don't run in it either.

Although you probably don't need it anymore now that you have the remote rendering embeds :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If Safari gets WebGL, combined with the new FTL JIT it could end up being pretty darn awesome for gaming.

<comment><USER11> Safari already has WebGL behind a flag as the article notes, but most users do not enable it.

<comment><USER12> I think they meant for mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And for those already wanting to experiment with WebGL on iOS there's always [http://impactjs.com/ejecta](http://impactjs.com/ejecta) – which will likely still be preferable for packaged games even if embedded webviews will start supporting WebGL as it will still have less overhead than the webview.

</comment><comment><USER14> I also wonder when is Apple going to update Safari with WebRTC support. It's something many users could really benefit from.

<comment><USER4> WebRTC's still in draft and expected to change a fair bit; Apple rarely implements draft standards unless they're draft standards it made (Canvas etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope this allows Javascript games to completely displace Flash -- without becoming as big an attack surface as Flash and Java became.

Right now implementing an HTML5 or JavaScript multiplayer game is still a considerable exercise in navigating browser differences.

</comment><comment><USER16> I found in current version of Safari, the rendering of webGL still have some issues on Retina display, It also cost too much energy.

So I will be satisfied even if Apple can only solve the most of these problems on desktop platform and make it on by default.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really hope WebGl+javascript kills CSS and html and all the other web stuff and we get back to desktop rich applications.

And a URL can map to some state/object too. Google can then think about searching for things richer than just textual.

<comment><USER11> Not sure if you are trolling...

HTML and WebGL are mostly orthogonal. For example, you do not want to render text or form controls in WebGL.

We can improve HTML rendering with GPU-accelerated compositing, but that's mostly behind the scenes.

<comment><USER18> I don't think they're trolling - I have some similar feelings about this too. I think the main point is that outside of document-centric websites (say, Wikipedia), rich webapps are basically grossly abusing HTML to wrangle it into a semi-sane (but not really sane) way to render desktop-style UIs.

Think GMail, think Pandora - neither of which parses logically as a document, but are made from HTML: horribly hacky, horribly complex HTML at that.

It would seem to me that we're making HTML do something it was never meant to do, and that there are many applications on the web today that really don't need that stack at all, and really just need code and a renderer (like, say, a desktop OS).

Of course, this is a double edged sword. Simply tossing a renderer to devs is just going to invite a whole slew of confusing, non-standard UIs. Though, that said, if you look at GMail et al, we're already there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this mean jailbreaking will become a lot easier?

</comment><comment><USER20> I hope their screening will remain strict. I foresee a whole wave of... "quality titles" scripted in JS.

<comment><USER21> What screening? WebGL is used on... the web. That's the beauty of it.

<comment><USER22> I think CmonDev refers to apps made with PhoneGap, Cordova etc., and I agree that using this type of solutions for 3D games might not be the best choice in order to offer a good user experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ah the heady days of spring and summer speculations.</comment>


Zappos CEO Reveals His Radical Plans To Change Las Vegas - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-hsieh-plans-for-vegas-2012-6#

<comment><USER2> I was just in Vegas...how about a 100kt nuclear weapon for urban renewal?</comment>


Memms.io v2: Share pictures and video from any phone, no app required - <AUTHOR> http://memms.io

<comment><USER2> Interesting web app. Gotta remember this for my next CHIHTML5 meetup.</comment>


Narrowing the gap between serverless and its state with storage functions - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2020/01/29/narrowing-the-gap/ <comment><USER2> Coming from the other side (stateful distributed processing), Apache Flink has an interesting proposal:

[https://statefun.io/](https://statefun.io/)

Functions are deserialized along with their state when woken up by an input.</comment>


Facebook Turns Platfrom Open Source Via fbOpen - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/facebook-turns-platfrom-open-source-via-fbopen/ <comment><USER2> Here are some thoughts I think are worth discussing.

1\. Did Facebook do this out of competitive pressure from projects like OpenSocial?

2\. Is Facebook doing this because they're a good citizen or because there's something in it for them (or both)? Are they looking to have other people improve the platform? Are they looking to make it easier for other SNs to adopt their technology?

3\. Do you think people outside Facebook will actively contribute patches back to the project? Do you think Facebook thinks this?

4\. Does this in any ways indicate a diminished importance of the platform in Facebook's overall strategy?

I'm not sure what I think, myself. They've released Thrift as OSS already, so this is just another release in that vein?

I think the most likely scenario is two-fold. One, they want to look like the good guys, especially in the eyes of the technical set. Releasing a major component as OSS goes a long way towards doing that.

Two, they want other platforms using their technology rather than Google's. The platform license is the CC Attribution license, so the only restriction on using their code is that you have to attribute Facebook in there, somewhere.

That's a really low barrier to adoption.</comment>


Surge of virus misinformation stumps Facebook and Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/technology/coronavirus-misinformation-social-media.html <comment><USER2> The most interesting bit of misinformation that I've seen develop is the claim that N95 masks do not help when you are in public, despite the fact that they factually do help. The chain of events:

1\. Concerns arise that respirator inventories will be depleted, leaving few or none available for medical personel. Media outlets spread this news.

2a. Thorough and factual news outlets spread the news that respirators have some effectiveness but are not a silver bullet. They may be used among other preventative measures. They talk about the differences between levels of effectiveness of dust masks and respirators.

2b. Sloppy outlets, and the ones more interested in helping the greater good (preventing hording), start lying, claiming that the dust masks do not work and respirators do not work. They often conflate the two. They go to the effort to shame hoarders and praise other people who practice washing and sanitizing hands, not touching your face, etc.

It's been fun and terrifying to watch. News outlets do not have an interest in giving a nuanced message. They are willing to lie if they think it helps. It's a good case study of when you should explicitly not trust a claim made by the media.

Meanwhile, I have a stack of 20 N95 respirators I bought for woodworking a year ago that I've been offering to friends and family. I've had no takers yet.

<comment><USER3> Here's why masks are useless: You are going to take your mask off with your dirty hands. You're going to wear your mask dutifully while outside, then you're going to walk inside your house and the first thing you will do is take your mask off - with your dirty hands.

There are so many gotchas with wearing masks that it's best to just leave them for the people who are closest to the crisis. They're the ones with the greatest need and they have the training to make them effective.

And besides... the coronavirus is not airborne, you need to be hit with a droplet from an infected person's cough or sneeze. There's such a small chance of that happening while you're out-and-about that it's not worth it to wear these things. The real solution is to wash your hands because _that 's the main vector of infection_.

<comment><USER2> You are claiming that the masks are useless. They are not. They have some effectiveness, and that effectiveness is limited. This is well-understood. Aerosol-based transmission is well-understood. Claiming that there are "gotchas" does not change the fact that wearing a mask reduces your risk.

You are doing the very thing that I pointed out as incorrect: removing nuance.

A more honest expression of your position would be "the limited effectiveness of the masks and their limited supply means that it is reasonable for the masks to be reserved for those who need them most." The honest debate around this position regards how much supply there is, how much individual liberty should dictate demand, and other such factors. The latter half of your post comes around to this, even though the first half is incorrect.

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree with you, but the risk reduction they provide is so little that you may as well call them "useless".

You should go buy a lotto ticket! There's a chance you could win!

<comment><USER4> the risk reduction is actually very high. But the probability of being in the presence of the virus is very low. Health care workers treating infected patients have a 100% chance of being exposed so epidemiological risk reduction is large.

I think the "useless" part actually refers to the the fact that the public at large wont be wearing masks so a few people wearing masks might protect themselves, but does nothing to alleviate the overall spread of the virus.

<comment><USER5> I understand that wearing a mask doesn't prevent the wearer (for most common masks) but instead protects other people. Should you be a carrier. It slows the spread, which is a good thing?

<comment><USER6> It's a matter of terminology; 'mask' has a narrower meaning than in colloquial use. [https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/UnderstandDifferenceInf...](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/UnderstandDifferenceInfographic-508.pdf)

(Compounding the confusion is that a reusable rubber _respirator_ is also called a 'half mask'.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It certainly is not helping Vice President Mike Pence is requiring government health officials and scientists at CDC to coordinate all public health information through him for vetting and possibly censoring.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us- coronaviru...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us-coronavirus- pence.html)

<comment><USER8> Seriously what is wrong with you, Americans? Your bipartisan political fundamentalism is stronger than religion, people just have to draw snark comments about either party or president. Can't you be reasonable for even once when there are crisis going on? It's just pure insanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The biggest problem is that this information compounds with the reality on the ground (for example the stringent test requirements in King county - symptomatic patients being turned away from testing) which further breeds mistrust in the government, panic and susceptibility to any explanation which makes sense.

<comment><USER10> This is kind of the problem. Tbe symptoms are basically the same as flu and many other things at least in mild cases, pretty much nowhere is testing all patients who have them, and the reaction of medical professionals to the idea that they should tends to involve words like "dangerous" and "irresponsible". But the mainstream media, including publications like the Times, fed the idea that not aggressively testing was basically asking for an epidemic, tied it to powerful partisan narratives, and now there's no going back.

<comment><USER9> > Tbe symptoms are basically the same as flu

there are some nuances to that and the symptoms are not basically the same. One of the MSFT employees who ended up testing positive was initially turned away from testing at the hospital as there was no travel abroad involved. She/he self-quarantined and ended up being tested by the 'Seattle Flu Study' which came up positive. A lot of reactions to that were along the lines of 'well, if the result is the same (you need to self-isolate, same treatment as the flu) why is it useful to know if you have the novel virus?'.

This is bad, IMO. It sends the message that there's some entity who wants the numbers to stay low via denying testing, while at the same time sending people on their way thinking 'it's not serious' who would then get back to their daily routine which would infect others.

As a King county resident looking at what's happening in Italy, I have this constant anxiety that this is only going to get worse. Coupled with the amount of bullcrap thrown around on Facebook, I'm worried that some people who were on the edge prior to this outbreak would snap. There's a Facebook group full of preppers (because of the Seattle big earthquake thing) which completely blew up with this outbreak. I'm talking people stocking up on ammo to ensure nobody steals their stash.

<comment><USER11> Or maybe reserving limited testing capacity for severe cases in which proper diagnosis makes all the difference? Would sound legit to me. Not saying that limited testing isn't a problem, the very least of which is biasing the numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This isn't just a Facebook/Twitter thing. A person on MSNBC just said that 20% of the US will die from this virus. Why would you say that? No stat backs that up.

<comment><USER13> Italy's current stats show 463 deaths, 724 recoveries.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20200309190730/https://en.m.wikip...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200309190730/https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_outbreak_by_country_and_territory) (archive.org to show status as of my comment)

(WHO's SITREP 49 shows 366 deaths, doesn't list recoveries: [https://www.who.int/docs/default- source/coronaviruse/situati...](https://www.who.int/docs/default- source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200309-sitrep-49-covid-19.pdf))

The raw CFR represented is quite high. Whether that represents a virulent strain or insufficient monitoring (I suspect the latter) isn't clear.

<comment><USER12> On the contrary the death rate in Germany is almost 0%. The median age for those that have passed in Italy is ~81. Most of the US deaths currently were from an end-of-life care center. A massive percentage of the deaths in China are from the original province. I'm not saying this isn't an issue, and we should especially look out for our elderly, but the stats simply aren't there to claim a 20% death rate.

[https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)

<comment><USER13> Germany's rate is suspiciously low, though 2 deaths are reported today.

<comment><USER11> Could we just stop real-time counting of _each and every single case_? Germany has more than 81 _million_ people, just to add some perspective. People die, it sucks, and that virus is not your common cold, but this case counting, in media and the internet, is really getting ridiculous.

And please refrain from using words like "suspiciously" which tend to transport negative messages. There is nothing suspicious about these numbers what so ever.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, no conspiracy intended. Only the observation that, relative to experiences elsewhere, Italy's mortality is high, Germany's is low. Far more than expected, which suggests other dynamics (again: unlikely some conspiracy) at play.

When you're used to dealing with numbers, numbers that don't match up to expectations are "suspicious", in that they suggest some underlying issue, though whether in data or ground truth can be hard to say.

<comment><USER12> The theory I've heard and find most probable is that Germany has more ICU beds per capita than Italy. A lot of people think hospital beds in general are most important, but a lot of experts disagree. You could setup a hospital bed anywhere, ICUs are much more involved. Both Germany and the US have very high ICU per capita rates relative to others. Were it not for the nursing home and some cruise ship patients not getting the ideal care early on, the US rate would probably be about as low as Germany's.

According to this article, Germany has 4x as many ICU beds per capita as the UK (the most in Europe,) and the US has upward of 10x as many. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/icu- do...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/icu-doctor-nhs- coronavirus-pandemic-hospitals)

<comment><USER13> Interesting and possible.

I suspect that Italy may have had undetected community transmission longer than Germany, that German testing is more comprehensive, and that we're seeing more case, detected earlier, and less advanced than Italy's, typically. In another week or two the gaps in experience may narrow.

Germany's recovereds are only 18 (of 1,224 cases), so the vast majority of cases are still ongoing. At a rate comparable to Italy's, we'd be looking at 88 recoveries.

For much of this epidemic, different countries aren't so much doing better or worse so much as being earlier or later in the process. Italy seems 1-2 weeks ahead of Germany.

Corollary: look for nationwide quarantine in Germany in 7-14 days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/)

I've spent a lot of time in recent years warning about disinformation and the value of flagging or deplatforming bad actors who exploit the valuable principle of free speech to deliberately make others worse off. Free speech is good, but the economics of information distribution often end up giving free _reach_ to purveyors of information with negative truth value.

<comment><USER15> I'm not on board with the idea of distinguishing between speech and "reach." Forcing everybody to exercise their free speech in isolated 3'x3' cells would be functionally identical to silencing them, but you could use this same distinction to argue that you were only ensuring that they didn't have a platform.

One of the purposes of free speech is to make it possible to say things about authorities that holds them accountable and makes them uncomfortable. If the authorities had the ability to limit your "reach," they would use it to silence you in exactly the same way and to the exact same end as if they could silence your "free speech."

<comment><USER16> Any kind of censorship can, and will be abused. Today it's the "bad actors" tomorrow it's the enemy of the state (you).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Theres a huge influx of virus misinformation in China itself, not just Taiwan, worth noting. See: [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05/wang-xiuying/the- wor...](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05/wang-xiuying/the-word-from- wuhan)

</comment><comment><USER18> I am getting a ton of messages from friends that seem to be in a panic.

I am no expert, and I don't have answers.

I did read about a simulation called Operation Dark Winter that was done years back. One of the conclusions was that it was incredibly difficult to get correct information out to the public.

This was before mobile phones and social media were common. There is definitely a higher noise ratio out there. I don't know how to solve this problem.

My governor tweets out that they have these meetings, but he provides no detail. I think giving more detail would help comfort people. Perhaps it they would not flock to unreliable sources online if they had more details.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm about ready to throttle the next "it's just a flu" person I read. It's real; it's serious and we should be taking rational actions to mitigate and contain it. Don't go to events, avoid restaurants, bars, gyms. Work from home if you can. Have a supply of food for home.

In some of the worst hit areas of Italy, it looks like they're already triaging people or considering it.

<comment> teshier-A How about "Follow official recommendations" instead ? In France Macron made a show of going to the theatre urging people to live normally (within the new regulations, e.g. no mass gathering above a certain size).

Advising people to stockpile food this early is sure to make the situation even worse.

<comment><USER20> These kinds of stunts are happening everywhere, with governments left and right oriented. My parents remember how everyone was panicked because of the Chernobyl disaster in Turkey, how Cahit Aral (then Turkey's industry and trade minister) drank tea in front of the cameras to prove the Black Sea region, which produces most of Turkey's tea, wasn't contaminated, and how Turgut Özal (then Turkey's PM) commented that radioactive tea tasted better (huge sigh).

Funny, it occurs that the little increase of radiation in that region really had no significant effect on cancer rates, but those people didn't know that. I still can't explain why government officials keep doing such stunts. Maybe there should be a Wikipedia list for these.

<comment><USER15> > _These kinds of stunts are happening everywhere, with governments left and > right oriented._

It reveals how leaders think of their constituents - they are not approaching this from the perspective of informing the public on how to best deal with this real but not world-ending danger, instead they are thinking of it in terms of "stopping the cattle from stampeding."

<comment><USER21> If the danger is real but not world ending, then stopping the cattle from stampeding is the appropriate priority.

Because the cattle stampeding can actually be world ending. Particularly for the trampled cattle who were likely in little danger from the start.

<comment><USER22> Waiting until things actually get bad before giving people permission to take reasonable precautions is only going to make stampede worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't even know why facebook could possibly be considered useful for news, considering the high density of plain idiots who post. Twitter is quite better , because you can unfollow idiots; they aren't forced upon you by social convention by being real life friends. But i d like to extoll the virtues of Reddit. Communities like r/china_flu or r/covid19 are moderated, contain a reasonable amount of rumors and early information that a moderately smart person can benefit from, and the density of information is quite high.

Makes one wonder why those facebooks and instagrams get all the advertising money ...

<comment><USER24> Seriously. At this point I'm ready to accept that the world is what we made it. If that means we kill ourselves because we're too daft to read social media critically then as a species we get what we deserve.

There's a cute, loose correlation between internet access:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage#/media/F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage#/media/File:InternetPenetrationWorldMap.svg)

and covid spread:

[https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations- confirme...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed- cases.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It could be exactly the same thing as "forward this email to at least 20 people and Bill Gates will give you a million dollars," or "Facebook is checking for account activity, share this."

It's not necessarily malicious intent, but regardless of whether it is, it is truly idiotic; just like the above examples.

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://archive.md/3GPHv](https://archive.md/3GPHv)

</comment><comment><USER27> If everyone wore even cheap surgical masks coughs would be coughs by the mask reducing spread even by nonsymptomatic people. Think of it like reducing the effective range of infection to a couple of cm instead of maybe a meter. They don't have to be n95 or better to help reduce r0

<comment><USER22> Just wear a simple surgical mask regardless of whether you are sick.

People avoid you like the plague (reducing the chance that they will spread anything to you).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think its okay,if I want gossips, or cats, I'm going to social media, for information, Reuters, WSJ, etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well at least they are trying for a change so that's refreshing

</comment><comment><USER30> This feels like the ultimate outcome of both companies' lax moderation policies. Ironic that about a year ago there were several articles about how Facebook will suppress misleading anit-vax content but will not remove it [1]. I imagine a lot of managers saying "let's just treat this virus misinfo. the same way."

[1]: [https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-anti-vaccine-crack- down...](https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-anti-vaccine-crack-down/)

</comment><comment><USER31> otoh you have people saying 150 million people will die? Is that better?

</comment><comment><USER32> It's worth noting that finding that delicate balance between suppressing false information and preserving freedom of speech (plus privacy) still requires a lot of human attention. At the same time, many thousands of workers at Facebook, Twitter, and just about every other major service are adjusting to working from home (in Facebook's case having to overcome what's often a _severe_ addiction to in-person interaction). Plus a good many know somebody who's affected and might not be at 100% effectiveness due to anxiety. So response might be a bit attenuated, and even before that it was always easy for NYT reporters to cherry-pick examples from the company they consider a threat to their own livelihoods. Should these companies do better? Of course. Is it realistic to expect that they'll do a lot better than more traditional sources, including NYT itself? Of course _not_.</comment>


Is a dream reminder worked for an empty guy? - <AUTHOR> http://dreamss.bluesolocean.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone give me some opinions?</comment>


PPP Loan Recipients - <AUTHOR> https://sba.app.box.com/s/wz72fqag1nd99kj3t9xlq49deoop6gzf <comment><USER2> I can confirm that Index Ventures did not apply for a PPP loan at any point. The entry listed is in error, as although it lists us as a business name, it is not our address or correct information about our fund. Our legal team is looking into why our name is listed and look to correct it ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently the list is inaccurate: [https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/06/heres-a- list-of-tech-compa...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/06/heres-a-list-of-tech- companies-that-the-sba-says-took-ppp-money/)

I've taken specific company names out of the title above. It breaks the site guideline against editorializing to cherry-pick specific names to mention anyhow.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I believe every leader owes it to their company to utilize these government facilities. PPP loans are forgivable and they allow the company to maintain its staff during historically uncertain times.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Others tech cos spotted:

Boring Company, Hyperloop, GetAround, Metromile</comment>


Why aren't more Americans working?  40.2% of 16 and older don't have jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-04/why-aren-t-more-americans-working <comment><USER2> It is real simple, automation has eaten some jobs. When someone write a web site, an app, an AI program, it automates work that people used to do by hand.

I used to write business apps for a law firm, when I wrote a VB program with Crystal Reports to do a series of reports, the people who used to do the reports by hand got fired and lost their jobs. I felt bad about that as well. Some of them did reports in MS-Office using Excel or Word or did it on paper before that.

I changed paper forms into electric forms stored in a database. The people who used to handle and process those forms got fired as well.

Robots now are ready to replace cheap labor, they can cook food or do other things as well.

We really need a Basic Income for people who lost their jobs due to automation, and almost everything we invent in software puts people out of work. If they don't learn new skills for new jobs, they could become unemployed.

Edit: Sources: [https://public.tableau.com/profile/mckinsey.analytics#!/vizh...](https://public.tableau.com/profile/mckinsey.analytics#!/vizhome/AutomationandUSjobs/Technicalpotentialforautomation)

[http://singularityhub.com/2015/11/19/automation-is-eating- jo...](http://singularityhub.com/2015/11/19/automation-is-eating-jobs-but- these-skills-will-always-be-valued-in-the-workplace/)

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-09/automation- doesnt-j...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-09/automation-doesnt-just- destroy-jobs-it-destroys-profits-too)

[http://www.industryweek.com/automation/future-automation- and...](http://www.industryweek.com/automation/future-automation-and-your-job)

<comment><USER3> Well, automation is what was said in the article. You think it accounts for most of the 40%? That's pretty hard to believe.

<comment><USER2> I didn't say it accounts for most of the 40% but it is a factor in killing jobs. I wanted to give an example of stuff I wrote that replaced people.

The typists used to have a room of 100 people typing on typewriters to copy letters and memos. Once the laser printer and word processor was developed you only needed 1 person to type up a letter or memo and press 100 copies. So the other 99 got fired, and the person with a new skill set got the job. I want to use that example to show how automation can cost jobs. But people just learned how to use a computer and word processors and spreadsheets and got new jobs with new skills. The typists just learned how to use a computer keyboard and then switched to a new job, those who didn't learn new skills couldn't find work and became unemployed or had to get a different job.

My father for example worked at AT&T on 1ESS Bell Labs switches and phone equipment. When AT&T was broken up they replaced the 1ESS Switches with IBM System/36 computers and my father was put into early retirement. He even knew Unix but it was the PC era. So it is also a matter of outdated skills that can lead to a job loss as technology changes and new skills are not learned to adapt.

I'm sure there are other factors to that 40%, I just wanted to talk about automation because that is what most of us do, and don't think about the people that lose their jobs as a result. Not all of the 40% but some of them.

I've known people who worked in Novell Netware, IBM OS/2, Wang, DEC VMS/VAX, and others who lose their jobs when the company switched to PCs with Microsoft Windows and NT Servers with SNA Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, etc. So having outdated skills can lead to job loss when a new technology becomes popular and replaces old technology. I also worked with companies who migrated from these old platforms to Windows NT Server and did the data conversions and file structures for network shares.</comment></comment></comment>


The meme that summarizes student entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3og1qw/

<comment><AUTHOR> FYI, my startup is called Fetchnotes. You can get into our beta here: www.fetchnotes.com/invite/hackernewsrocks

We'd love your feedback!</comment>


The Troubled Quest for the Superconducting Wind Turbine - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/wind/the-troubled-quest-for-the-superconducting-wind-turbine <comment><USER2> The inner workings of the magnomatic gear they mention are a thing of beauty

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAELukfr2oY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAELukfr2oY)

<comment><USER3> Holy crap, it's a magnetic version of a harmonic drive!

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first illustration is terrible. It's making multiple comparisons at the same time, the most prominent being the difference in blade size, which isn't variable between the 3 technologies the article is actually talking about. Whilst at the same time making it harder to see the pertinent data, differences in the generator size and weight.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm just gonna trot this out one more time: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator)

very simple design (it's basically one half of a Lord Kelvin's Thunderstorm turn on it's side and powered by wind instead of gravity.)

</comment><comment><USER6> This article reminded me of the concept or an airborne turbine [0]. Interesting to think what would happen if we had thousands or more of these immersed in jetstream somewhere, siphoning terawatts. Environmental impact could be noticeable (or not) [1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_wind_turbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_wind_turbine) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream#Possible_future_pow...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream#Possible_future_power_generation)

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know why the rotation force is not transferred mechanically to ground level?

<comment><USER8> Hydraulic transmission has been proposed.[1] That would move the generator to ground level. But even its enthusiasts say the hydraulics won't scale beyond the 500KW level. This article is about scaling to 20MW or so.

Vestas is up to 9.5MW for their biggest offshore model. It has a gearbox; it's not direct drive. Probably because at that scale it only turns about 10 RPM.

[1] [https://www.machinedesign.com/energy/hydraulic-wind- turbines](https://www.machinedesign.com/energy/hydraulic-wind-turbines)

<comment><USER9> I wondered about that, longer blades, lower RPM means very slow RPM which means massive magnetics. But gears are problematic as well. Low speed means high torque which also mean large heavy gears. ($$$)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's up with vertical axis wind turbines though?

<comment><USER11> Don't they still suck?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: .NET or not .NET... - <AUTHOR>

...THAT is the question. Well, kinda.
I am a mid-20s programmer, in the UK. I've spent 5 years in the games industry and enjoyed it but didn't really settle. I've been neck-deep in C/C++ since Uni and also done a fair amount of C# (desktop, not web). I also do a lot of Python in my spare time and that includes some web programming. I consider myself to be a good 'all rounder' and that seems to be part of the problem.
Being unable to settle at my last couple of jobs, I have been punting my CV about and I keep on getting the same feedback; it's not specific enough. As far as the recruiters are concerned, it seems like to get a job you need to commit to ONE language and framework combination. And lets be honest, 80% of jobs are .NET/ASP.NET.
Besides the fact that what I'd REALLY like to do is find a start-up to join - Birmingham start-up scene is meager - I guess the question is, is it worth my while getting to know ASP.NET in the hope that I'll find a decent, stimulating, well-paid job? Or should I hold out for that dream role in a start up that might never come along?
Thanks for any guidance anyone can give. <comment><USER2> Let me give my thoughts on this, being a .Net developer and running a company in Croatia. A bit of background on me first, to understand my thougts better - as Croatian economy is structurally in a really bad condition for IT, I've been trying to join some company/project on a telecommuting basis.

Now, this is where I'm having a problem - as most companies that would consider remote workers are startups unable to find enough local talent, I've noticed that there really aren't any/much startups running on .Net stack.

Which I find a bit unfair, as .Net ecosystem has a lot to offer, if you just look out of the walls of Microsoft a little bit. And with the raise of cloud platforms, the license price difference will be a less of an issue than before. For development tools, there are programs within MS where a development company gets all the tools for a negligible amount of money. Still, it seems it's not enough for most of the startups to adopt that technology.

On the other hand, I've gotten into Rails lately and I find it really interesting platform to work on, so I'm expanding my skills in that space trying to reach companies willing to have remote workers on that stack. I haven't fixed any deals yet, but I've had several contacts compared to literally none in the .Net ecosystem.

You've said you're into Python, if you look this month's "who's hiring" theme, you'll notice a bit of a rise for Python. So, if you're targeting startups, Ruby and Python may seem better opportunities than .Net. If you're targetting getting a job in some (stable) company outside of the lights of the startup scene, that's where you've said .Net is in demand. After all, it's mostly what are your goals.

Hope it helps...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Zappan, glad to hear it's not just me struggling :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Doing a .Net startup myself, I'd like to think I'm not the only one. I'd surmise that there's actually quite a few people using a Microsoft stack in the startup community. They just don't talk about it much.

Obviously, if you choose the .Net path, getting a developer job at a WAMP/RoR/Python/etc startup won't really be feasible.

But if you are a good developer, I would advise you NOT to join a startup that's already established. Why invest your heart and soul in somebody else's vision/company for a paltry equity percentage? It just doesn't add up in my mind.

Instead, start your own. Go find a hustler to partner with or just build your own product. If you get into a startup pre-development phase and you're the hacker on the team, then the technology you use is irrelevant. The only relevant thing is that you can deliver.</comment>


SyncFree: Large-Scale Computation Without Synchronization [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KP_pxFhlVU

<comment><USER2> For anyone else that's confused:

What they're talking about: [http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/theory/why- riak/](http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/theory/why-riak/)

Their github: [https://github.com/basho/riak](https://github.com/basho/riak)

CRDT = "Conflict-free Replicated Data Type" or "Convergent Replicated Data Type" or "Commutative Replicated Data Type"

This page explains what the heck CRDT is: [http://basho.com/tag/crdt/](http://basho.com/tag/crdt/)</comment>


The Origins of the <blink> tag (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe%3Cblink%3Etag

<comment><USER2> This has been submitted many time. Most popular previous submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1490069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1490069) (158 points, 1727 days ago, 33 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7797878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7797878) (13 points, 307 days ago, 8 comments)

Also relevant. Remotion of the blink tag in Firefox:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6170392](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6170392) (101 points, 599 days ago, 93 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6182690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6182690) (309 points, 597 days ago, 146 comments)

This last submission has two interesting comments, that I'll copy partially:

> _I fixed blink in Mozilla twice in the old days, back when I was running > around looking for things to fix._ [...]

> _You can put jwz 's blink in your browser profile's userContent.css to make > it work on all websites_ [...]

</comment><comment><USER3> Great Read! I have been mulling over the idea of creating a curated list of interesting Programming Stories. Here are some of those which I can remember from top of my head:

* 500 Mile Email [[http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html](http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html)]

* Infinitely Profitable Program [[http://peetm.com/blog/?p=55](http://peetm.com/blog/?p=55)]

* The PGPi Scanning Project [[http://www.pgpi.org/pgpi/project/scanning/](http://www.pgpi.org/pgpi/project/scanning/)]

* DirectX vs OpenGL [[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055/75581](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055/75581)]

Think anyone can contribute?

<comment><USER4> I've always liked The Story of Mel: [http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html](http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html)

<comment><USER5> The Royal McBee LPG-30 was the computer that Edward Lorenz was using to solve his simplified atmospheric model when he noticed a difference between different runs of the program depending on the rounding error when typing in parameters from the printout of a previous run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Juuuuuuuuuuuuust in case anyone hasn't seen this before...

[https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?q=blink+tag#safe=off&q=blink+...](https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?q=blink+tag#safe=off&q=blink+tag)

</comment><comment><USER7> I suspect the title has been Bowdlerized, omitting the relevant "<blink>" from it.

Understandable, but annoying.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this is from an old newsgroup post, if i'm not mistaken.</comment>


The current state of JavaScript- Is it broken? - <AUTHOR> https://javascriptjam.com/blog/state-of-javascript-in-2019/ <comment><USER2> I do think they have added some good stuff to JavaScript, such as typed arrays, big integers, arrow functions, strict mode, generator functions, WeakMap, symbol type, etc.

But some features of JavaScript, I don't like much, such as automatic semicolon insertion. Some features I find unnecessary.

And some stuff I thought they ought to add but didn't, such as a goto command, macros, a popcount function for big integers, a built-in regular expression quotation function (it can be implemented easily enough, but it seem the thing that should be built-in), and a big integer date function (low priority, but maybe in the far future, it ought to be added).</comment>


A Jewish Woman's Appeal of Murder in Thirteenth-Century England - <AUTHOR> https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2018/08/17/a-jewish-womans-appeal-of-murder-in-thirteenth-century-england/ <comment><USER2> 'The day of the murder, Josce breakfasted (gentaculavit) at Olympias's home. The jurors skirted around the issue of why Josce was present in Olympias's domicile at such an early hour. One cannot help but speculate whether the "abominable mixing" which seems to have kept Pope Innocent III up at night dreaming of ways to prevent inter-religious coitus, may have been to blame.[11] Apparently, discord broke out between Josce and Olympias before they had even finished their breakfast. Josce then withdrew, and was immediately killed, although the record does not disclose the identities of the perpetrators'.

The murder appears to have been a crime of passion, not uncommon in that era?

<comment><USER3> What is the Latin root of this word "gentaculavit"?

<comment><USER4> The form _gentaculavit_ implies it's a 3rd person singular perfect indicative of a regular 1st conjugation Late Latin verb _gentaculare_ "to eat breakfast". Knowing that, it's clearly derived from this Late Latin noun:

[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/jentaculum#Latin](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/jentaculum#Latin)

From Wiktionary:

 _gentaculum_ "breakfast" (alternate spelling of _ientaculum /jentaculum_). That form ultimately comes from the adjective _ieiunus_ (alternate spelling _jejunus_ ) "fasting".

The adjective is a standard word in Classical Latin, but the noun and verb above are not. They are probably later developments or Vulgar Latin (spoken by the common people) that was not preserved in Classical texts. The standard word for breakfast in Classical Latin would be _prandium_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have any idea what "secretam familiaritatem" meant from a legal and social perspective? Google didn't yield anything.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure that means sex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a reason that the premise of every one of our Jewish holidays is, "they tried to kill us, we lived, let's eat!"

<comment><USER8> Passover, Purim, and Hanukkah are not every Jewish holiday.

Shabbat, the High Holidays, Sukkot, etc.

<comment><USER9> You're right that it's not every holiday, but just to be accurate Shabbat is not, strictly legally speaking, a holiday. It is "fixed" from creation, not dependent on the declaration of the new moon and not categorized as a Yom Tov at all (though it does share laws in common, on the surface, with Holidays).

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the clarification, but I was interpreting it colloquially. Also, while it may not strictly be a holiday, it is a holy day. :-)

<comment><USER9> Also, a counterpoint: Shabbat is referred to in the text of Kiddush as a "remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt". There are various approaches to explain why this is (it's more obvious for the other holidays mentioned, but less so for Shabbat), but Maimonides' approach is:

"This difference can easily be explained. In the former, the cause of the honor and distinction of the day is given: "Therefore the Lord blessed the day of the Sabbath and sanctified it", and the cause for this is, "For in six days," etc. But the fact that G-d has given us the law of the Sabbath and commanded us to keep it, as the consequence of our having been slaves; for then our work did not depend on our will, nor could we choose the time for it; and we could not rest. Thus God commanded us to abstain from work on the Sabbath, and to rest, for two purposes; namely, (1) That we might confirm the true theory, that of the Creation, which at once and clearly leads to the theory of the existence of God. (2) That we might remember how kind God has been in freeing us from the burden of the Egyptians."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Puts the UK Labor Party today into perspective - England's attitude towards the Jews didn't start as "anti-Zionism".

<comment><USER11> How did you reach that conclusion? This was about racism in the thirteenth century. I would love to read more about these links.

What is your purpose into bringing the Labour party into this discussion? Seems like you are trying to paint the Labour party as anti-semitic. Is it because of foreign-policy positions with respect to Israel?

<comment><USER12> Probably because some Labour MPs have left due to antisemetism, and many high- profile members are on the receiving end.

Antisemetism is a popular view in the west, and globally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Racism is one of the most profoundly transformational forces in human history, and yet it is entirely contrived, arbitrary, and voluntary.

<comment><USER14> It's a Prisoner's Dilemma[0] situation. Even if one arbitrary group is inclined to behave in a unbiased way, they know that they stand a lot to lose if the other groups take advantage of the situation. The other groups knows this as well. It takes a lot of trust on all sides for the "prisoners" to cooperate and be better off for it. The group with the weakest cohesion loses, unless they all weaken at the same time. And too many interests benefit from keeping everyone tribal and mistrusting.

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)

<comment><USER15> Your explanation begs the question. Racism is at its core, based in the idea that superficial characteristics somehow convey deeper information. Your explanation assumes that this is true, that superficial characteristics correctly signal group affiliation, something that is simply not true.

<comment><USER16> > Your explanation assumes that this is true, that superficial characteristics > correctly signal group affiliation, something that is simply not true.

It is, because in a society that has racism as status quo, you can be sure that these superficial characteristics are shared between you and your immediate, as well as extended family - people who you can rely to be in your group.

<comment><USER15> What? Extended family is a tighter group than any group based on physical resemblance.

My argument isn't much changed if you recast it as the generalization from family to "race" being incorrect, because races aren't actually coherent groups in the same way that many (extended) families are.

<comment><USER16> > Extended family is a tighter group than any group based on physical > resemblance.

Exactly. And in a traditional society, you can be pretty much sure that your extended family is of your race.

<comment><USER15> My point is that the generalization from a real in group of people that look like you (extended family) to the group of people that look like you, is not really a useful thing to do, it mistakes the superficial information (similar appearance) for useful information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I could have swore I saw this story float around a few days ago. I searched to see if it was in fact a re-post.

I did a search of the url [https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2018/08/17/a-jewish- woman...](https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2018/08/17/a-jewish-womans- appeal-of-murder-in-thirteenth-century-england/) into the hackers news search and got this:

[https://i.imgur.com/XyoqA83.png](https://i.imgur.com/XyoqA83.png)

I clicked on the 1 comment on the article from two days ago and it now says it was posted 2 hours ago and shows the comment from a few minutes ago.

[https://i.imgur.com/Knfp1be.png](https://i.imgur.com/Knfp1be.png)

Is this normal for re-posts on HN? First time I've seen the date something was posted change upon clicking the comments, however I'm pretty new to this space so it may be a glitch in the matrix that is known.

<comment><USER15> The mods reset the timer on stories they like to give them another chance at wider attention/discussion.

<comment><USER18> The quiet malleability of data on this site is disturbing. Titles, article links, and timestamps are all changed without notice on a regular basis. Older discussions become disorienting as their subjects are silently memory-holed and replaced. Users are shadowbanned and throttled for undesirable ideas. There is no written policy for any of this and you feel like you're crazy until you hear rumors from someone who talked to someone who emailed the internet hall monitors.

<comment><USER19> That seems a little overwrought. None of this is secret and we answer questions about it all the time, every day.

<comment><USER18> What is the full list of moderator actions that promote, remove, or change content on Hacker News which are not listed in the FAQ? Why are these actions not listed? Why is there no indicator when an instance of one of these actions has occurred?

<comment><USER19> We don't maintain an encyclopedia of HN moderation for a bunch of reasons. One is that such a compendium would only be of interest to a small subset of users, and they are just the kind who would never be satisfied by it. There's a certain sort of moderation discussion in which, no matter how patiently you answer objections, your answers are never accepted and only spawn new objections. To engage is to participate in a denial-of-service on yourself, dancing ever faster to a piper who will never stop. It doesn't take long to learn what a mistake that is. It sucks energy, razes morale, and never works.

The vast majority of HN users aren't like that. They find the site interesting, are grateful that we maintain it, and respond with happiness when we answer their questions. That's the population we're excited to serve.

So our approach is to operate by the principles outlined in the site guidelines, spend most of our resources trying to make HN more interesting (or at least stave off its decline), and answer specific questions when they come up. Not because of sinister secrets, just because of basic resource management: it's the best use of our limited resources and the best way to manage the effects on ourselves so we don't burn out quite so quickly.

It's fairly clear that the community is happy with this approach, because if it weren't, we'd be hearing about nothing else. Then there's the grousing sort of commenter who makes dark insinuations about moderator manipulation. There are actually fewer of those than it seems, because they tend to cycle through various accounts over the years. I think they have a role to play, too, and am happy to engage up to a point—but only as long as it feels like the discussion is useful for the general audience too.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple iPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRelVKWbMAv0

<comment><USER2> I love that they leave that up. It shows what was completely solid reasoning that lead to the wrong answer. In hindsight we can see that Forrester and others missed the fact that Steve and Apple saw people who wanted a pocket computer, not a pocket phone, and that was powerfully attractive to the new legion of "private" phone buyers. Its important to remember that prior to the Iphone, smart phones like the Blackberry were for Enterprises and this was no Enterprise phone, so the analysts didn't have any visibility into the same people who were buying iPods that Apple did.

My take on the history is that Apple made the iPod and made it "easy" to populate with music, phone makers started providing MP3 capabilities as competition, and Apple looked past a merged iPod + Candybar phone to a media rich pocket device, which happened to make phone calls.</comment>


Fight Club Facebook Fans A Bit Like Tyler Durden: Thrill-Seeking Non-Conformists - <AUTHOR> http://mytype.com/blog/2011/01/facebook-fans-of-fight-club/

<comment><USER2> We have not just Facebook movie data but obviously books, music and lots of other good stuff. Lots of relationships to explore between "likes" and personality, values, morals, which we plan to do on our blog, in the style of OkCupid. If anyone is interested in doing analysis with us, shoot me a note at tim [at] mytype.com. Would be cool to find someone else to write posts with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wrong link? I'm getting a Not Found.

<http://mytype.com/blog/2011/02/233/> seems to work.

<comment><USER4> Not for me.</comment></comment>


Observations of an Internet Middleman - <AUTHOR> http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/observations-internet-middleman/ <comment><USER2> In short: if you're in the US, you're paying your ISP for a certain amount of bandwidth, but your ISP is _not_ giving it to you, because its connections to middlemen like Level 3 are maxed out. Level 3 proposes to split the cost of expanding those connections (as is common), but your ISP refuses unless it gets additional payment from Level 3, Netflix, or someone else. Meanwhile, you don't get the bandwidth you've purchased from your ISP.

That doesn't seem right to me.

<comment><USER3> Disclosure: I work at a small ISP. We mostly compete with Frontier DSL and Comcast Business Class.

If you're buying residential it's safe to assume you're purchasing a burst- able speed and downloads/uploads aren't going to sustain that for hours on end.

Much in the same way that a Utility Company probably isn't gathering enough water for everyone to be maxing their pipes 24/7, residential ISP's don't operate under the assumption that every consumer will have maxed their connection at the same time, and they shouldn't have too. Smart traffic shaping and peering arrangements gives ISP's room to compete.

If consumers could afford a dedicated 35x15 connection they'd have a T1. When you're buying copper it's safe to assume it's going to be over saturated.

The real problem is ISP's for the most part don't compete. They zone of sections for eachother and rack in as much dough as they can. Consumers aren't informed about the quality of different types of connections vs others, and buy based off the cheapest Mbps down/up they can get.

<comment><USER4> _in the same way that a Utility Company probably isn 't gathering enough water for everyone to be maxing their pipes 24/7, residential ISP's don't operate under the assumption that every consumer will have maxed their connection at the same time_

That's not what's happening, though. What's happening is that the ISPs have not provisioned enough capacity to serve the actual aggregate demand at peak times. The hydraulic analogy would be if water pressure dropped every day between 0800 and 0900 because everyone was having their morning shower. That would not be acceptable to customers, and nor is the situation with ISPs.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Great analogy!

What's more, the utility company is getting water through a pipe that goes to a middleman near a river, but that pipe doesn't have enough capacity to deliver the water necessary for all utility customers to take their morning shower at the same time. So what does the utility company do? It _blames the middleman and the river_ for "sending too much water"... and demands payment from them!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I enjoy seeing those MRTG/RRDtool graphs everywhere. I find it so surreal that $X Billions in infrastructure, that is forwarding $Y Billion of internet traffic. All monitored by a single tool created by one guy from Switzerland.

Since this is HN: yes I realize that there has been substantial work subsequently, and that cacti/munin/nagios etc.. are more commonly used.

<comment><USER6> It's crazy to think that Rancid, MRTG, & RRD are all fundamentally underpinning of all of these major carriers.

<comment><USER7> It's not so crazy when you consider a huge portion of peering agreements took place over IRC.

<comment><USER8> Got any articles on this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's the part that doesn't make sense to me, and hopefully someone can explain it:

Netflix pays Level 3 and Cogent to connect them to Comcast's network. Comcast claims that only the Level 3 connection is saturated, and that Netflix is sending all their bandwidth over Level 3 because it's cheaper for them.

Doesn't Level 3 buy a contract from Comcast that says "we get to send this much data per month"? If Netflix (or Level 3) tries to push more data through that, which causes congestion, it seems like a contractual fact that Comcast is either holding up their end of the bargain or not.

If that's true, and assuming that Comcast is transferring the contractually agreed upon part, isn't this actually Netflix and Level 3's fault? Isn't it reasonable to assume that Netflix would need to either use another entry point into Comcast's network, or build one?

If Netflix/Level 3 congest one entry point, so movies stream slowly for Comcast users, it doesn't seem like Comcast is being unneutral, in the sense of packet inspection and routing based on content/source.

The problem seems upstream from the last mile networks, and it's very unclear to me whose fault it is, and if this even has anything to do with net neutrality at all (it doesn't seem to).

Please correct me where I'm wrong, I'm sure I am!

<comment><USER10> I think Level3's issue is that Comcast is unwilling to increase the capacity of their links without payment from Level3. If Level3 engages in settlement- free peering with Comcast and their network traffic graph looks anything like the 100gbit link in the article, I don't blame them: it's a 20:1 disparity in traffic in vs traffic out.

What's happening here is that Level3 and other transit providers are starting to see their industry be squeezed by the big ISPs. If you have 5 ISPs that serve 90% of the customers in the US, and 10 service providers that generate 90% of the bandwidth, why do transit providers even exist? I think they see their market share decreasing significantly as more of their customers follow in Netflix's footsteps, so they're trying to pile on and start a grass-roots outrage like Netflix did. Problem there is that most people haven't heard of Level3, so it makes it more difficult to get people behind them.

And you are completely right about the whole Netflix issue being Netflix and Level3/Cogent's problem. Level3 and Cogent have business models based on selling transit acquired through settlement-free peering. Settlement-free peering assumes that bandwidth usage is roughly symmetric: when it's not symmetric, the side sending more bandwidth has to pay. Level3's position here seems a bit hypocritical: if they had a customer that was routinely sending data at a 20:1 ratio, they would charge that customer for sending more bandwidth. But they're expecting the big ISPs not to do the same to them?

<comment><USER11> The big trouble is that we _need_ settlement-free peering, or we'll have a very different sort of internet, or maybe none at all. Though it's hard for some to remember (or to believe), there were big consumer networks prior to the advent of consumer-oriented Internet. Compuserve and AOL were their own networks. And they were abysmal. Peering not only ruined that business model, it managed to co-opt those networks and assimilate them into the Internet proper.

If peering is untenable because it leads to outcomes like the one we have now (Netflix) where it is fundamentally unfair to one party (assuming that is the case) or the other, then we're all screwed. There might not be a fair solution that still manages to resemble the Internet.

In one alternative, the Comcasts and the AT&Ts are smited and no longer exist, and Level 3 goes into the consumer internet business, connecting things end- to-end. That's not something we could trust them with. Same if Comcast replaces Level 3.

In another, Netflix continues to pay the extortion (if it is that) which we have little doubt that Comcast will continue to ratchet up the price for. Or Comcast has to shoulder that burden alone (and can't charge customers extra for doing so, without people screaming "net neutrality!").

Or maybe services like Netflix just can't exist in such an environment. Also a bad outcome.

Or god help us, internet infrastructure is nationalized, and the same people who manage our roads and traffic lights take over.

Am I blowing this out of proportion?

<comment><USER12> You could have a situation where the government mandates net neutrality and at the same time compensates the likes of Comcast in some way (recognising their role as public utility and basically sanctioning their monopoly, but without taking over their operations entirely). You could have an anti-monopolistic legal action that splits Comcast but prevents Level3 from taking over / being present in that market. Etc etc...

There are many ways to skin an onion, and full-scale nationalisation is probably the least likely outcome (cash-strapped governments don't need another headache right now). In fact, the real problem here is that one player is leveraging a monopolistic position; remove that position, and the Free Market should start working its magic again.

<comment><USER13> > time compensates the likes of Comcast in some way

Serious question, how would one find the exact sum with which Comcast should be _compensated_ in the absence of a functional market?

<comment><USER14> Analyse the available facts and make a best guess, just like we do with private companies operating as regulated monopolies in e.g. water supply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If this is a game of chicken, Level 3 and Cogent should play it to the end game. They are powerful enough to get Comcast and the other ISPs to concede. Just null route any interconnect that consistently drops packets and fails to get negotiated for an upgrade. The catch? It must be done by both L3 and Cogent.

Comcast is playing the monopoly card against what is an oligopoly of backbone providers. Comcast isn't strategically as well positioned as their actions would indicate.

It is one thing for Comcast to have degraded Netflix service. It is a different thing to present their customers with access to only half of the Internet .

<comment><USER16> Except that it would probably violate their contracts to just stop services at an interconnect. It's not like Level 3 is losing customers or money from the congested interconnects. Their incentive to play hardball just isn't there.

<comment><USER15> If it violates their contract, doesn't a soft fail violate it also? Or will violate, whenever the rate of dropped packets goes above a given threshold. I view the hard fail as just speeding up the interconnect failure, with the positive effect of prompting action from the last mile ISP.

Whenever their performance drops towards part of the internet, their value proposition gets lower. You can view the value chain as

      (residential customer) <-> Comcast <-> Level 3 <-> (hosting customer)

Both Comcast and Level 3 have customers, in opposite ends of the currently centralized internet. The status quo is that each provider charges to the customers on their end. Comcast (and each of the other non-net-neutral ISPs) are eyeing the revenue stream on the other end of the pipeline. This revenue stream has historically not been owned by the last-mile ISP.

Level 3 and equivalents, by cutting off non-performant interconnects will hurt their own customers, of course. However, they are just speeding up the same effect being applied softly over time, by Comcast and equivalents. A softly failing interconnect moves revenue over to last mile ISPs, thus permanently lowering Level 3's value proposition. By failing the interconnect sharply, instead of softly, they actually improve the steady state of the system, in general (good side effect), and in particular (the real objective).

<comment><USER17> I don't understand what's so hard about "You can roll with us as long as you treat our rented infrastructure with respect." That sort of agreement exists in many industries. I get kicked out of my apartment if I trash it, even though I paid for it. I don't ask _my landlord_ to split the costs of an upgrade to hardwood floors because I fucked up the linoleum (because "I ended up with more pets than I expected" or something), much less pay for it himself. I pay for it or I'm booted. If he did anything else, such as let destructive renters stay on his property or paid for their damage they were responsible for, what would be the point of renting the property? That's a terrible business model. Same thing here... Comcast is damaging Level3's customer relationships on purpose and refusing to pay reasonable level-of- service costs to rectify the problem and should be thrown off the network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Summary of situation

Comcast cripples customers internet services to extort money from companies connecting Comcast to the internet for free.

<comment><USER19> It's completely crazy and just blatant extortion on Comcast's part.

The current system is pretty straight forward.

Level 3: Server(Who Level 3 Charges) -> Level 3 -> Comcast -> End User

Comcast: End User(Who Comcast Charges) -> Comcast -> Level 3 -> Server

Now Comcast wants to charge everyone in the chain that isn't them. They are attempting to do this by degrading (or at the very least not upgrading) their services for their customer.

The techno-libertarians that try to defend this nonsense are going to sink the whole ship and make every pay to receive even less.

<comment><USER20> Ahem. "Techno-libertarians" aren't the ones who gave Comcast its monopolies on the last mile. Please leave them out of this.

<comment><USER21> No, physics and economics did. When you're talking about building infrastructure that will take 20 years to pay itself off _absent_ competition, only the most profitable of the profitable locations can afford extensive physical plant competition.

In communications networks monopolies are natural, especially in last mile networks, and will exist absent any government action. That in some cases some governments have mildly strengthened these monopolies in exchange for commitments to cover otherwise unprofitable areas, its not really that important this subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone have an idea what the European ISP is that refuses to provide enough peering capacity?

<comment><USER23> They said its not from the UK and judging from their connection points, I guess its Deutsche Telekom.

<comment><USER18> Don't know they described them as a monopoly position and cable is pretty strong in Germany. I think Spain or Italy might be better guesses.

Telefonica in Spain might be a reasonable guess. Ono the cable company isn't huge.

I think Telecom Italian is dominant in Italy and there is virtually no cable at all so that would be my guess.

<comment><USER18> Too late to fix typo: Telecom Italia (not Italian).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Level 3's filing with the FCC about this: [http://www.level3.com/~/media/Assets/legal/l3_openinternet_m...](http://www.level3.com/~/media/Assets/legal/l3_openinternet_march2014.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> If Comcast doesn't like the amount of bandwidth their customers use watching Netflix, they always have the option to notify their customers and null-route or otherwise stop Netflix from working at all. However while it "works" but sucks they appear to be doing their jobs while their customers blame Netflix for sucking while largely being unaware that it's actually Comcast that sucks.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you are experiencing a slow connection and packet loss, what is the best tool for identifying the issue? There must be a good way to find out where the problem is.

<comment><USER27> I use mtr. But reading it takes experience, so for a month or so just fire it up everywhere you go, especially when things are working well.

<comment><USER26> Thanks. MTR looks interesting.</comment></comment></comment>


6 weeks after release, Samsung S5 VZN/ATT still not rooted. Bounty at $17k - <AUTHOR> http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2728051 <comment><USER2> Ugg -- if I weren't still employed full-time right now I'd be all over this. I really miss my phone-hacking days.

There are _so many_ vectors to privilege escalation on mobile devices. The only reason I stopped working on projects like this is that (most) of the manufacturers released official "root" tools for those on "decent" carriers.

<comment><USER3> I got curious about what you actually did in your phone hacking days only to go to your profile and discover that you're the person behind unrevoked.

My first ever phone was the Evo 4G and I spent many hours tinkering with it and running ROMs thanks to unrevoked so let this be a belated thank you for your efforts.

<comment><USER2> There was a bunch of us in the unrevoked days that contributed to the success of the project (everything from the userland parts to the UI that actually drove the installer). I was one of the guys deep in the radio for hours at a time, and occasionally the Android system source but it was definitely a high- functioning team that made it happen. :)

The Evo4G was our first and biggest coup, and we used that as a shim to get lots of press coverage shaming the carriers and manufacturers, as well as contacts inside of both HTC and Sprint that led to our eventual "victory" with HTC's official unlock program. Glad you found it useful!

<comment><USER3> The early days of Android were really something else. Today we're fortunate enough to be able to take Nexus devices, one line bootloader unlocks and production devices shipping with CyanogenMod for granted.

What are you working now that you're no longer spending inordinate amounts of time unlocking phones?

<comment><USER4> You must not be a Verizon customer...

<comment><USER5> You are because you want to.

Also, the grandpatent post that eats the marketing BS of the nexus devices... You still don't have access to ALL the hardware. You can only use alternative versions of Android that Google provided you with because you have to reuse driver binary blobs and such. So stop spreading that falsehood.

<comment><USER3> I'm under no delusions that I have access to all the hardware and I hope there comes a day when we do. Till then however, it would be unfair to not acknowledge that we have made some strides in gaining more access to our devices by default compared to just a few years ago.

<comment><USER5> How? I still can't put a new kernel and use my radio chip, audio chip, camera, digitizer... Exactly the same as the first nexus.

In fact it was a little better with the g1 :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The fact that you need to "root" your own property -- I am just astounded that there isn't more yelling over this. Microsoft could _never_ have gotten away with this in the 90s or early 2000s. You probably still couldn't get away with it on commodity PCs. Hell, you can even run Linux on a Mac. But change the form factor and all the sudden nobody cares.

<comment><USER7> It's because Apple did it first. Even in the PC days Apple behaved far worse than Microsoft, but somehow they army of fans that will defend any action from them. Heck, I remember when they introduced those tamperproof screws and on this very site there were people claiming that it was actually just a better screw design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It'd be hilarious if the bounty got so high that Samsung just does this themselves

<comment><USER9> Samsung has already done it themselves (for a price, of course): [http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell- phones/ET-G900VMKAVZW](http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell- phones/ET-G900VMKAVZW)

<comment><USER10> The developer edition is $599 when getting locked phone is usually a buy one get one free kind of deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The bounty only explicitly mentions stock firmware but it is implied that the exploit should also not require disassembling your device and messing with its hardware. This makes me wonder: would a hardware exploit be easier? Modchips have been a staple of the console scene since at least the original PlayStation but I am unaware of their use in smartphones.

<comment><USER12> I'm not familiar with the S5 in particular but in principle I think all you need to do is get direct write access to the filesystem and you can write whatever firmware you want, so being able to read/write the eMMC directly should be enough --- provided it's not been encrypted/password protected/etc. Correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER13> On most (if not all), the "firmware" is under the /system partition. That partition is mounted as read-only. You need root to remount it as r/w.

AFAIK, rooting exploits in the past took advantage of buffer overflows and remote code exploits to execute code at a raised privilege levels. Now a days, that's also difficult since past vulnerabilities have been fixed and the proliferation of SE Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not being snarky at all, but why is this so important to people? Why not just buy a Nexus 5? Or a Play Edition phone?

<comment><USER15> Because some people can't "afford" the price of the unsubsidized Nexus 5 next to a "$199" (on contract) S5. Some people like better cameras, some people prefer the S5 hardware, etc etc.

<comment><USER16> If you can't afford an off-contract phone, you really can't afford an on- contract phone. You just don't know it yet ... ;-)

<comment><USER17> It's not that different than contracting a mortgage of asking for a lease to pay a car...

Maybe it's not a matter of "affording" the same way most people cannot afford to pay for a house on the spot, but I can understand that some people prefer to pay ultimately more money, but a much smaller sum over time.

<comment><USER18> If your credit is good enough for a phone contract it's probably also good enough for a credit card that could buy the phone outright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am not very familiar with mobile security and/or the differences between carriers. Right now the bounty is $10k for root@vzw and $7k for root@att. How likely is it that someone wins the bounty for VZW but is unable to apply the method to ATT or vice versa? Are VZW and ATT the usual contenders for last to fall?

<comment><USER20> AT&T and Verizon are usually the only carriers that bother locking bootloaders with no authorized unlock option. Most international/unlocked phones have some way of unlocking the bootloader. Samsung has recently started locking things down more with Knox I suppose, but I think the bootloader is still relatively open (my T-Mobile Note 3 and international Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 happily installed a custom recovery without any fiddling).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's tangential but I want to point out to those who doesn't follow the rooting community closely that Samsung doesn't lock the bootloaders of phones unless it's requested by the carrier. International editions, Play store editions, and contract phones from carriers which doesn't request locking are unlocked by default. You can install whatever you want on it. Even if it has Knox. Knox doesn't mean locked bootloader, its relation to rooting is that it voids the warranty when it detects rooting, it doesn't lock the bootloader or prevent rooting.

Corollary: I'm aware of the fact that it is not always possible, but buy your phones off contract when possible. Life is too short for fiddling with those nonsense, and also vote with your wallet.

</comment><comment> Dorian-Marie Seems like it's just people posting the amount of what they __would __give, so I would expect the hacker to receive less than $17k.

<comment><USER22> You'd be surprised. I've been on the receiving end of one of these bounties and nearly everyone fulfilled their pledge.

On top of that, donations trickled in for months after from folks who didn't originally pledge.

The XDA community is very good about these things.

[http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=499076](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=499076)

<comment><USER23> Just occasionally the XDA community really impresses me. I don't know how people deal with the SnR though.

<comment><USER24> SnR?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe he means signal-to-noise ratio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does Samsung offer an unlocking tool for the GS5? If not, they should. Google is making Android harder to root, which makes "official" unlocking all the more important, and hopefully people will keep asking for it whenever it's not available.

<comment><USER26> > Google is making Android harder to root Did I miss something? Could you > please elaborate.

<comment><USER23> [http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/9175/Android_4_3_and_SELin...](http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/9175/Android_4_3_and_SELinux) and [https://source.android.com/devices/tech/security/dm- verity.h...](https://source.android.com/devices/tech/security/dm-verity.html)

Sorry for just dropping links, I'm not particularly well versed in this area.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Redefines Disruption: The "Less Than Free" Business Model - <AUTHOR> http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/google-redefines-disruption-the-%E2%80%9Cless-than-free%E2%80%9D-business-model/

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of insight into Google's strategy regarding maps.</comment>