Can a broken Net neutrality with a tier system make the internet better? - <AUTHOR> If we pretend that Net neutrality is repealed and almost all ISPs start having just the major websites ( Netflix, Facebook, google... ) for a basic price and the rest cost extra.
Wouldn't that sort of bring back the internet to how it used to be before all non-technical people started using it. Because the people who would actually put down the extra money to get access to all sites would probably be those who really care about technology, freedom and so on.
If the rest of the internet outside these free basic services was small enough there might also be a lot less pressure from industries about copyright and so on because it wouldn't be worth it for them.
So in the end it might actually lead to that the internet would be a lot more free in the way it used to be and the people would be more caring.
Could that happen? <comment><USER2> "The rest of the internet" as you call it. Depends on the traffic of people coming to it. If most people don't bother than those sites won't make money and will shutdown. That's assuming it will still be possible to pay for an account that allows you to host a website or access your host. The internet is not just a bunch of content providers. It's a communication network.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes but people have also been running things voluntarily before, and there can still be donations and so on.

But "That's assuming it will still be possible to pay for an account that allows you to host a website or access your host."

Do you think that they wont at all offer access to all of the internet to private citizens or at unreasonable cost? They might of course do either, but I personally believe ( maybe naively ) they will because they can make money but I might be wrong.

<comment><USER2> It's not just about changing to a tiered internet. They want to change the fundamental way it works from a connected network where you or I can send and receive any packets we want to any other machine connected. They want to change it to a system similar to cable where information is provided only from certain sources. If packets are monitored and metered they can decide what machines you are allowed to communicate with and the kind of communication you are allowed. They can charge you depending on what you look at, block anything from competitors and monitor everything you do. Right now, I could host my own webserver, pay for a domain name and ooen my server on port 80 and anyone could connect to that machine. If my server became popular i'd probably need to pay for more bandwidth but that's about it.

If there was no net neutrality they could charge me anything they wanted to do that or just outright stop me. They could add whatever terms they wanted to 'hosting' accounts or whatever they call it. They could remove my website for posting content they disagree with.

And when I say they I mean ISP's whose sole function should be to provide access ro the communication network that is the internet, not be the gatekeepers of global communication.

The internet is far more than people hosting content for other people to consume. But they're trying really hard to turn it into nothing more than that.

I grew up with dialup internet where you got charged by the webpage. Fucked if I'm going back to that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, that post brought more insights in how they want to change it in a way that I hadn't thought about much. My view was more black and white, some basic internet or all internet.

I need some time to think about this, but I will probably be back later or tomorrow.

Thank you again.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


It's time you stopped worrying so much about video game addiction - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/video-game-addiction-facts-statistics <comment><AUTHOR> The only reason I posted this article on HN is because I needed a place to rant about it. Or at least about the title. The author seems to have valid credentials to write on this topic (based on his bio at the bottom), but the title chosen for this article (and I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps it was chosen by eyeball hungry editors of Wired) is wildly overstating the situation.

The author acknowledges the wide spectrum of opinions in the sociological literature about this controversial issue, but then dismisses the contrarians outright with little more than anecdotal data. He provides one -- ONE -- study (withOUT attribution, no less) to substantiate the title's claim, and then proceeds to contradict his own position by describing in detail a not-widely recognized but pernicious problem in the gaming community ("loot boxes").

A more accurate title would have been, "The costs of Video Game addiction may be even higher than we thought."</comment>


The Moderate's Position on iPad Openness - <AUTHOR> http://al3x.net/2010/04/05/ipad-openness-moderates.html

<comment><USER2> _"Finally, there's the issue of the App Store. I'm on the fence about it. My hunch is that Apple should follow Palm's lead and allow users to install applications from the web, albeit after prompting for the user's consent and warning against whatever security issues might arise despite the platform's sandboxing... However, I don't feel strongly enough about these positions to make them part of my "platform" above."_

I don't get how one would feel less strongly about this point than the others. To me, the notion that smart kids would stop tinkering with things never seemed like a real threat. It's more fun to tinker with things when it's against the rules, anyway. My concern has always been the long term implications of embracing this closed app distribution platform.

I've read plenty of arguments for and against it. Inevitably, I am left with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Yes, I understand that this gatekeeper system could help keep users from hurting themselves. But Apple has also shown that it is not just looking out for its users — it's also being anti-competitive, namely with its decision to block new Google apps.

I've seen people try to argue that Apple is in fact very open because it includes Safari, which is HTML5 compliant. But I've yet to experience many HTML5 apps that are as snappy or easy to use as their native counterparts, and it seems like 'native' will continue to evolve faster than 'web' for quite a while.

I bought an iPad. I really like it, and was thrilled by how quickly my parents learned to use it. But I can't shake this feeling that the App Store's entirely closed ecosystem is a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> In general a well-reasoned article, but I don't really agree with the contention that private APIs should be removed: when you're shipping releases of something infrequently and you want to avoid breaking client code, APIs have to be something you can commit to supporting long-term without significant changes. Keeping APIs private allows you to provide functionality that you want to have without risking a bunch of stuff breaking client-side on upgrade, since you can update your applications to work with your API as needed. Getting APIs right enough that they can be supported indefinitely is really, _really_ hard, and it's not reasonable to expect that every bit of required functionality will be implemented and designed to such a high level of completeness the first time around.

<comment><USER4> Personally, I'm with al3x on what he says about private APIs in this post. Here's a few of my favorite moments that I've personally encountered with Apple and private APIs:

* There are APIs that date back to 2.2.1 (at the very least) that haven't changed but won't be made public. And these are APIs that - nearest I can tell (and this is with a rather large amount of testing) - work perfectly fine. Or, better yet, APIs that have existed on Mac OS X since 10.0 (and likely taken from NextStep) still being considered private! (Well, until very recently in at least one case; NSAttributedString was made public without any UIKit additions)

* The docs suggesting the use of private APIs located in PrivateFrameworks. (They still suggest this, by the way.)

* This one is probably my all time favorite: All but calling the task the API performs does trivial and pasting a few lines of code (using APIs that have existed publicly since 2.0) that can reimplement the function in the report, rather then make the API public.

If the API is that trivial to do and the engineer behind the radar is so sure that the code won't cause any problems that they can tell people to use said code, then, why wasn't it simply public in the first place? Someone obviously felt it was useful enough for _Apple_ to have..

* Reimplementing something that the system can already do. In what is, in all likelihood, the exact same way the system implemented it; in a lot of my cases, I end up (unknowingly) creating methods and vars with the _same names Apple used_ for their methods and ivars.

Yes, there are legit reasons to keep APIs private. Big Hacks™ to get a release out the door do happen. But, in my experience with the iPhone/iPad (which is, admittedly, one sided towards what I've experienced), Big Hacks™ and things disappearing between releases isn't the case and keeping many of the APIs private is more of a hinderance than anything else.

And FWIW, relevant radars have been filed for many of these issues as the situation arose, mostly to what feels like an unvarying degree of futility; Radar doesn't get called a black hole for no reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The AppStore is a huge deal and was barely even mentioned. Censoring what they sell in the AppStore is fine with me. Maintaining a monopoly on the sales of software for use with their devices by exploiting contract law and the DCMA is not. Yet we are supposed to forgive them because they are doing cool things with hardware/software? Enjoy.

<comment><USER6> I'd actually be O.K. with the restrictions in the App store if there was any non-jailbreak method of loading apps _outside_ the app store. That would allow you to install things like Google Voice, Opera, or whatever if _you_ the user want to, while still providing a squeaky clean simplified view to the average user.

For example, on an Android phone, by default you can only install apps from the Android Market. However, by checking one checkbox in the phone's preferences, you can install non-market apps. Those might be apps you upload using the Android developer tools (if you're a dev), or you can download and install apps from a website, or you can use a third party market (like SlideMe).

<comment><USER7> I think you might have trouble really maintaining squeaky cleanliness.

The 'average user' still might want or need Google Voice, Opera, or something she needs for work. She sees it on someone else's phone, she asks how you get it. The tell her: Go to preferences, untick 'allow only app store apps', click OK after scary warning, download app to your PC, follow installation instructions... The iphone just got a bit more difficult. People outside of the top 5% users will be exposed to this stuff, on their phones or on other people if it is available and semi-sanctioned.

Precisely because Apple is heavily censoring and annoying developers in the app store, average users are likely to want non-app-store-apps. Maybe even more on the iPad.

This power user who is a programmer vs average user who log in to facebook via readwriteweb is not really a useful description of the world. Most iPhones are in in between hands.

<comment><USER8> > The iphone just got a bit more difficult.

And a bit more dangerous. Malware lies not far down this path.

I think Apple is even more concerned with malware than they are with the difficulty part.

<comment><USER9> The AppStore approval process does not guarantee that something is not malware. At best it's just a superficial filter. It's like creating a mail filter that puts any email that contains the word 'viagra' into your spam folder and calling it a 'spam filter.'

<comment><USER8> Unlike the non-functioning spam-filters you speak of, the AppStore approval process actually has a flawless record of keeping it out.

Now, I'm not saying that's squarely because of the diligence of the reviewers. Most likely, it's just as much or more because there's a paper trail from every app to its publisher, a long with the fact that someone is at least going to make a _cursory_ review of the app before giving it the 'OK'.

One of these, or all three in combination is keeping malware out of the AppStore. Whichever, the end result is that the AppStore review process is stopping malware _extremely_ well.

<comment><USER9> > _Unlike the non-functioning spam-filters you speak of, the AppStore approval > process actually has a flawless record of keeping it out._

Those non-functioning spam-filters also kept spam out when all you had to filter on were the words 'real estate,' 'viagra,' and 'cialis.' Lo and behold though, the world does not stagnate and those same filters are woefully inadequate today.

> _Most likely, it's just as much or more because there's a paper trail from > every app to its publisher_

There are marketplaces out there where a person's entire identity (not just their credit card number) are bargained and traded. How closely does Apple monitor the information that is given to them? Does Apple continually pull credit reports on people to make sure that their information does not turn up stolen?

> _a long with the fact that someone is at least going to make a cursory > review of the app before giving it the 'OK'._

That cursory review means nothing. There are many apps which are nothing more than wrappers around websites. How long does it take to to build an app that is such, but waits for a trigger (at some point _after_ the app is approved and has an installed base) to enabled its malicious features?

None of this even addresses possible zero-day exploits in apps that access external content (email worms, browser exploits, etc). If jail-breakers can run unsigned code on the iPhone, so can someone that exploits an app.

<comment><USER8> Fact remains: no malware on AppStore.

<comment><USER9> Absence of malware does not prove that the AppStore model is superior. It just proves that there is currently no _known_ malware. It is much easier to disprove something (i.e. find malware on the AppStore; therefore the model is flawed) than it is to prove something (i.e. there is no malware on the AppStore; therefore the model is perfect).

<comment><USER8> It also certainly doesn't prove that AppStore's malware filtering is broken. It _suggests_ that it does work, very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's the rare person who changes their mind when they've taken a very strong position. Kudos to Alex for being willing to take a real look at the iPad and figure out what his real concerns with the device were.

<comment><USER11> Agree. I did not expect to read this.

Great article, Alex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple has demonstrated ingenuity in a segment that showed little of it for years. I had and still have reservation about this device, and as it stands, after playing with it a good amount, I will hold on till version 2 (soon i am sure) or when a real credible competitor surfaces (soon perhaps).

This is not to distract from the fact that the Ipad is pretty amazing, and i think anybody who engages with technology, and is able to look beyond his own personal passions and biases will concede this is a ground breaking elegant device.

There is much to like about this brilliant device. but for me, who relies (and prefers) Linux, the reliance on Itunes is a complete no for me, and many other aspects are giving me pause. The centralized approach Apple projects as a philosophy is very troubling to me, on level that goes beyond just tech. it gives me the creeps (while Google still at a level that merely annoys me and keeps me suspicious)

Open source models largely failed (don't bite my head on this one) to gain a real substantial piece of the desktop environment, however, on specialized devices such as pads and phones the platform demonstrates stability and capabilities that give it a real chance.this approach is by and large promoted by Google, and it certainly has the potential for a very strong showing.

in terms of stability and capability of the engine we can argue on merits here and there, but the end user experience is largely successful when there is a tight coherence in the metaphors used, that is the winning ticket.

Apple understands this very well, Open source designers need to figure out a better way to make the metaphors used coherent, it remains to be seen if its possible in this environment. Style is not trivial

</comment><comment><USER13> "Here is my position, restated as clearly as I possibly can:

1\. Apple should not charge to put applications you've written onto your personal iPad (or iPhone, for that matter). If you purchase one of these devices, you should be able to install software of your own creation on it without any intervention or approval on Apple's part, other than creating a free developer account. Essentially, take today's iPhone/iPad developer program, and make it free."

This is key to me. The day Apple allows me to program whatever I want and deploy to _my_ device without giving them an _annual_ "developer fee", I'll buy an IPad, ITouch and MBP.

I am no Open Source Zealot and am perfectly fine with the closed OS and somewhat ok with the AppStore policies, but I find "developer fees" a very patronizing idea, specifically when I have to pay it every year! wtf! if I paid for the damn device. why should I _rent_ my right to develop on it with 20% of the device cost annually?!.

So hopefully someone in Apple will listen people like Payne and revoke the developer fee (at least the "annual" bit).

<comment><USER14> I am an "Open Source Zealot". If Apple waved a magic wand and killed all the open source software on my Macbook (not even counting the stuff they bake in themselves) then it would be useless to me.

The App store process seem to break the open source model for no obvious gain. I can't modify some app to suit myself, my company or my family. I can't find a bunch of willing collaborators. Everyone has dollar signs in their eyes and is forced to invest in a Mac, a yearly fee and dealing with bureaucracy to get releases out. This is probably accidental but I want the same process that creates all the code I appreciate on my other computers to be at least tolerated, and preferably encouraged on my mobile ones.

I thought we'd left the shareware and freeware days behind, yet here we are again.

<comment><USER9> The issue isn't so much Apple and the iPad/iPhone, but whether this will start a trend. In 10 years time will all computer platforms be closed, unless you shell out top-dollar for a laptop/desktop computer? I hope to hell not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Personally, I'd prefer that Apple would release all their code on some sort of open-source license that enables me to compile and study it at will, in addition to the freedom of letting me re-distribute that software any way I want to.

The main problem with any company that releases a piece of software and demands that you pay for it is that the company is trying to create value that isn't there. Information, be it code or anything else, is not valuable because it isn't scarce; I can get the number of copies I have of any piece of data arbitrarily close to infinity very easily. Apple, however, denies this simple fact and decides to use copyright law to extract some artificial value that would not exist under true free-market principles. Granted, Apple is not the only company that does this, but they're not more moral than Microsoft or any other corporation that uses these same tactics.

The main problem with this imaginary value is that it's very difficult for companies to adopt open-source licenses when they don't want to lose their steady stream of revenue. Of course, customers should be free to pay for code if they want, but they shouldn't be coerced by government-granted monopolies in the form of copyright law.

</comment><comment><USER16> >the device launched with a PHP IDE in the App Store on day one, amongst other code-related applications.

I can't seem to find any of these applications (I'm not sure how to browse for iPad specific apps in iTunes). Does anyone know which apps he's talking about?

<comment><USER17> Given the rule against scripting on the device, it can't be a particularly useful IDE...I would guess maybe it's an app front-end to some online PHP sandbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> after thinking a bit about it for a while, ipad to me, seems to be more of a media consumption device than either a computer or a phone. i can read books, play video-games etc on it, and it seems to be of the just right form-factor for such activities.

given that, i don't think i would be interested in running any arbitrary program on it. i would prefer my computer for doing that. apple store thus becomes more of a alternate clearing-house of published information. i am probably more concerned about some fundamental erosion of fair-use-rights here than anything else, as building strict copyright controls on such a device is probably much simpler .

if content-providers/distributors find ipad to be a viable platform for disseminating media, then copyright would be back with a vengeance. libraries / physical books might then be passe...</comment>


Ask HN: What programming language would you learn in 2019 - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I have this developer roadmap [http://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer- roadmap](http://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap) that is updated every year and has a bunch of recommendations on everything if it may help

</comment><comment><USER3> Elixir, Julia, Rust.

Elixir - Tried Erlang a long time ago, totally sold on Lisp and message passing since then.

Julia - Interested in multimethods and sort-of typing as core language features.

Both of them: I miss macros.

Rust - Some of my hobby stuff is in C/C++ but I don't particularly enjoy the compilation model or lack of safety.

Out of the three, Elixir is probably the most immediately relevant to me (web developer), so that's probably what I'll end up exploring next.

</comment><comment><USER4> no love for python? that's my plan. general purpose, easy on the brain, good for statistics

<comment><USER5> It is still a great choice

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Java or C# for a guaranteed job

</comment><comment><USER7> WebAssembly (WASM) compile target from Go.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is that GoLang is not cool anymore ?

</comment><comment><USER8> Flutter

<comment><USER9> Flutter is a framework, Dart is a language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Python

</comment><comment><USER11> Haskell

</comment><comment><USER12> Rust, TLA+, MiniZinc

</comment><comment><USER13> Clojure only

</comment><comment><USER14> prolog

</comment><comment><USER8> flutter</comment>


We Can't Let the Impending Apocalypse Delay Our Photo-Sharing App. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/we-cant-let-the-impending-apocalypse-delay-the-release-of-our-photo-sharing-app

<comment><USER2> Rarely have I read darker humor. Ouch.</comment>


Flying Cars Are Closer Than You Think - <AUTHOR> https://wrgms.com/flying-cars-are-closer-than-you-think/

<comment><USER2> Smaller aircraft powered by more modern tech and engineering? Sure, I don't doubt that.

But when you compare it to a car, you imply something that the average person might buy (or be able to afford) and I just don't see that happening soon. Even hobbyist quadcopters and "drones" are throwing the FAA for a loop so I can't imagine more than the private-jet-set buying a smaller, personal aircraft and paying to license and fuel the thing just to make a run to the grocery store or commute to work.

Smaller, "smarter" aircraft aren't the same thing as flying cars in the way most people will interpret the term.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. Also, it is still technically a plane, so you'll need to be a licensed pilot before using one. It's not that you'll just borrow your friend's flying car for a spin on the weekend.

Still, it can be a lot cheaper and a lot more convenient than helicopters, and create significant progress to personal transportation.</comment></comment>


Men Are Sabotaging the Online Reviews of TV Shows Aimed at Women - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/men-are-sabotaging-the-online-reviews-of-tv-shows-aimed-at-women/ <comment><USER2> Does it really surprise people that men do not like a show that is primarily written for women? I'm sure women don't like a show that is primarily written for men.

From the article, (a) fewer men than women voted (40% compared to 60% of women), and (b) they gave it a slightly lower rating on average (8.1 for women and 5.6 for men).

To me this makes sense, out of all the men that watched the show, some had stronger opinions about it and so voted. Those that voted had neutral or negative opinions about the show, and so the rating was lower.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> That men tend to "crap on", to use the language of the article, things they don't happen to like, seems to be born out by my experiences here on Hacker News, which is clearly male dominated.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you still use Antivirus in 2019? - <AUTHOR> I have not installed a single antivirus software in the past 5 years or so and haven't been infected either(used to get constantly infected during the XP days). I think Windows  Defender is pretty good these days. Do other HN'rs feel the same way? <comment><USER2> As a computer nerd who is confident about identifying shady websites or email attachments, I do not use any anti-virus software. All of my important files are backed up, and I know how to reinstall an OS. I'm sure I can probably be tricked eventually, but if I am, my over-confidence will result in me ignoring any security warnings from anti-virus software, so it won't help.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't use it in 2019, just as I didn't in 2009, or in 1999.

Furthermore, have had to remove it from plenty of machines of non-techie people asking for support, where it was not only doing NOTHING to protect them, but also preventing their systems from working as intended.

Now, if you want to talk about uBlock Origin and the likes though, that's a good conversation to have these days about actually essential protection.

Times have changed. The biggest virus today is convenience.

</comment><comment><USER4> I do not. Window's built-in stuff and plain macOS are very good these days. I'm not very convinced that third party anti-virus software provides much additional value. Would love to hear an expert's thoughts on this subject!

</comment><comment><USER5> Windows 10 of 2019 is much much more safer than windows 7 or xp as example. Much safer security defaults and dozen more security features. So firewall, hosts and unlock origin is what I use. Backups also. Sometimes I do test on VM or via clamav. Defender is off. I did setup 'run only from predefined folders policy' and non admin users for my relatives.

</comment><comment> luka-birsa I still install antivirus software, but given the feedback from you guys - I'm not sure it's still worth it.

What can I say, I moonlighted as a computer technician during W95-Win7 years and old habits die hard.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't. I found anti-virus software slows machines down (especially live scanning) and causes some of the very same problems as malware.

</comment><comment><USER7> Antivirus is like taking penacillin because you eat food from a dodgy takeaway. Instead just eat at trustworthy places.

</comment><comment><USER8> Linux.

<comment><USER9> Using Linux will not save you.

<comment><USER8> Have you ever used Qubes?</comment></comment></comment>


Apple doesn't care about your PWA - <AUTHOR> https://johanronsse.be/2020/08/30/apple-doesnt-care-about-your-pwa-and-a-little-rant-about-holding-back-the-future-of-computing/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like he is navigating to a link that doesn't match the PWA manifest's scope?

Also, I have a few PWAs installed, and they do show up in the iOS 14 app library for me. Starbucks, Twitter .. no problem. Same in Spotlight. They show up as any other app does when you search for them.</comment>


How To Replace a $600 Piece of Software with 100 Lines of Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wekeroad.com/building-things/video-encoding-rack-attack?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wekeroad%2FEeKc+%28Rob+Conery%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> been there, after tens of experiments like that and using stuff like pandastream I ended up using zencoder.com. reasons?

1) its FAST(are you seriously explect someone will wait 5-40 mins on your site while vid is encoding?). 2) ffmpeg doesnt support some weird non-open source codecs that users keep sending to our site. 3)it just works. always. and takes much less than 100 lines to hook.

So, i didn't get what exactly $600 piece author referring to. i dont know any sw that costs $600 and can be replaced by these 100 lines.

<comment><USER3> "So, i didn't get what exactly $600 piece author referring to. i dont know any sw that costs $600 and can be replaced by these 100 lines."

Sorenson Squeeze. It's right in the article.

Now, whether this Ruby code replaces all of what Sorenson Squeeze does is another matter. (I'm betting the answer is "No." <http://www.sorensonmedia.com/quality-video-encoding/details/>)

ffmpeg is pretty sweet, but I've run into problems converting one or another video (swf, for example) so as you've noted it won't solve everyone's conversion issues.

<comment><USER4> No - it doesn't replace all of it. Just the parts that I need. As I mention Squeeze is a fine tool but I don't need integration with Sorenson's hosting platform, and you can pretty much write whatever workflow you need in Ruby.

So I take it back - I do think this replaces Sorenson pretty handily :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's just like "Replacing the blog software with HTML file I created myself with Notepad". Sometimes it will work, sometimes it wont.

If you will need two or more encoding jobs running in parallel, or to push video properties for each file to the site, you will get into trouble very soon, and 100 lines will grow to 10000.

</comment><comment><USER6> The short version: guy wraps FFMPEG with a little script and suddenly thinks himself to be gods gift to man.

He didn't produce high value software ,the guys who wrote the software he used did.

<comment><USER7> Not fair. Takes all kinds of software. The packages he ref'd were supposed to manage the process, but didn't deliver for $600. His script Did do what he needed.

Its an argument for homebrew over bloated packages, at least when dealing with process. And it was a great tutorial on Ruby for managing that.

<comment><USER6> I was refering to FFMPEG, not the various ruby packages he used. All he really did was wrap FFMPEG with a script that called it with predefined arguments and kick it off to S3. He could have seen the same dramatic improvement with a handful of lines of bash.

Probably worth noteing that he doesn't even seem to know how his own script works. He was puzzled that it was burning all of his CPUs without him having to make it do that, when that is _exactly_ the behavior you would expect.

<comment><USER7> True, it was at a low level. I guess I'm just a sap for enthusiasm, which (s)he has in spades.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who is PG referring to as the fastest growing YC startup? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/paulg/status/341229908078501890 <comment><USER2> And the real questions: why not a log scale for the vertical axis, and what _is_ the vertical axis measuring? [is it $/month, $/week, total revenue, profit?]

</comment><comment><USER3> my guess would be instacart, goldbely or teespring. But there are probably some B2B contenders I haven't thought of

</comment><comment><USER4> anyone know who launched around july 2012 or earlier?

<comment><USER5> coinbase June 2012...</comment></comment>


Are Facebook apps worth it? - <AUTHOR>

I've been toying with the idea of developing a couple of facebook apps. I think they are decent ideas and initial feedbacks been good.
I'm just wondering if they are worth it? How are developers monetizing these apps?
I think at the very least I'll buy a couple of domains, throw up a landing page and collect interest, but would enjoy hearing your feedback. <comment><USER2> It depends on what your app does and how you get traffic. Writing a game? [http://cd34.com/blog/boring/social-gaming-design- requirement...](http://cd34.com/blog/boring/social-gaming-design- requirements/)

Monetizing becomes - ad network (rockyou, adsense) or selling virtual currency through offerpal/superrewards, etc. There is a section in the developers forums that talks about monetization (<http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewforum.php?id=8>) and mentions all of the latest players. Offerpal was super on another app I did - it just didn't get the traction it needed to make more than a handful of bucks.

If you go with a completely viral app that isn't a game, you don't get the return visitors but you might get the mass numbers. If you can get into a vertical niche, you can go to connectcommerce/cj.com or something similar and run targeted ads for affiliates.

I did a quick two page survey app that hit 40k DAU at it's peak and has about 400k total installs that made roughly $800. Not a bad return for 40 minutes of work, pylons/nginx/uwsgi and a small database. Replicating that with different angles never met the same success. Timing probably was just lucky on that app. Once in a while a small uptick on adsense comes in - and someone has stumbled across it and their friends all start taking it again, but, never with the original zeal.

I have an idea for a social game that has a different twist. While I found I could write software, knew the psychology behind it, I found out I'm not a game designer. I wrote all of the code but lost the motivation to finish it.

It works, you can make money at it. Writing a Mobwars/Mafia Wars clone is the quickest way to money. However, designing something viral just requires a lot more traffic to make the same cash. Neither is incredibly difficult.

<comment><AUTHOR> what were you doing to drive traffic to your survey app?

<comment><USER2> nothing. :) It was just luckily timed with a few events, appealed to a particular demographic and took off. I tried a few others, but, between finding topics that had decent affiliate payment options and a few duds, I started writing the game based on that survey and lost interest. As movies in that genre are released frequently, I think it is repeatable.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting. My idea isnt much of a game, but I could see implementing a gaming type of system with in, which might help it go viral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks in advance!</comment>


Ten Borders: One Refugee's Epic Escape from Syria - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/ten-borders <comment><USER2> The map resembles one depicting the route taken by a Germanic tribe of the fifth century, only with the directions of the arrows reversed: [http://www.newyorker.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/151026_r...](http://www.newyorker.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/151026_r27183rd-925.jpg)

This "refugee" became an economic migrant shopping around for benefits as soon as he transited beyond Turkey, a modern, prosperous, 99% Muslim country into which he could have easily assimilated.

<comment><USER3> Have you ever moved somewhere in order to improve your economic prospects? (For a job, or school, for example.) If so, what makes you any better?

<comment><USER2> No, actually, I haven't. But it's quite telling that the concept of a nation has no greater significance to you and those who share your sympathies than the economic prospects it offers. And were I to emigrate, it would be to a country that I actually shared some cultural, ideological, or other sympathies with and not just the one that offered me the most free stuff, and I would actually make a good faith effort to assimilate into it and not demand special treatment and endless accommodations.

<comment><USER3> I didn't just mean between nations. Have you moved cities? Neighborhoods? Streets?

Please explain, if it's "telling" that the concept of a nation has little significance to me (and I would completely agree that it does not, for me) then what exactly does it tell you?

<comment><USER2> It tells me that you don't understand or outright reject the very notion of citizenship and the obligations it entails and should be viewed with suspicion by those who still subscribe to it.

<comment><USER3> That's hardly a surprise. It's just a special case of the eternal conflict between those who distrust authority and those who side with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems that also in this situation, money is key. Does this mean that most refugees that make it to northern Europe were rich people in Syria?

Also interesting that he left his wife behind. Is she not in danger? Or is the reason for going to Europe mainly for prosperity, with the idea that family reunification will allow his wife to come later?

<comment><USER5> Once he's in he'll be able to bring his wife and family cheaply by air.

EU regulations state that any airline that takes on a passenger that will be denied entry, seeking to enter the country illegally, or is likely to violate the conditions of his visa will be liable to cover the costs of deportation so airlines filter out any potential cases.

So they often send out young males to through the smuggling routes since they are more likely to prevail, that said even if the man isn't married they often sell themselves for marriage once they settle within the EU and then bring their new family.

In many cases this can run well pass a spouse and include additional family members especially when they can be put as dependents like parents and grandparents.

Because of this some countries like Denmark now published new regulations that delay the family reunion the new regulations in Denmark state that family reunions will only be possible after a year has past from the point in which the person has received their ILR and has been officially settled which in it self can take anywhere between 6 months to a few years.

This is one of the main reasons why the current refugee numbers mean absolutely squat with the majority of current refugee and migrants being predominantly male in their mid 20's to early 30's the final immigration numbers for settled refugees will inflated through family reunions once they've been settled.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the explanation. That still leaves the question why he left his wife in Syria, and not in Turkey or Lebanon?

<comment><USER5> He's an Alawite (A relative minority but the ruling cast in Syria) which means that his an upper-middle class or even more likely upper class, due to this his family is for the most part more likely to be safer in Syria than in the refugee camps in Turkey or Lebanon, especially when considering that those Refugee camps are filled with Suni's, Kurds, and other minorities that do not look at Alawites in a very friendly manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He'd "escaped" by the time he hit Lebanon. Everything after that was just seeking economic advantage.

<comment><USER7> I guess that makes him human. Or would you settle for the worst paying job with bad career prospects? Because otherwise you'd be guilty of job-hopping. Why are you judging people who are trying to make the most out of life?

<comment><USER8> I hope you apply the same logic to the homeless that move into your local parks and community areas. They are just trying to seek economic advantage, wealthy people have more money to give. It normal to strive for maximum return on minimal output.

It just makes him human.

<comment><USER7> Not sure if you're being sarcastic but yes you could apply the same logic to homeless people. But minimal output? You can't prove that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Aside from any moral, ethical or legal consideration surrounding this issue, I must say that I admire this guy's determination and perseverance that he set a goal to reach and worked very hard to realize it.

Now back to the story, I find it quite telling that he insisted on making the journey to the North and not to the South where his sister in Saudi Barbaria was helping him financially wiring the money for the smugglers payment.

He knew it that living in a hellhole like Saudi Barbaria isn't worth it even if you make tons of money and making a a modestly good living in Sweden is still the most prudent choice to make.

I wish him the best and that he be as tenacious in his efforts to integrate in Sweden as he's been during this long journey and I can't see why he can't do it.

Syrian and Lebanese people did it in the 19th & early 20th century when they immigrated in droves to South and Central America fleeing wars and political turmoils as usual and built a flourishing diaspora there that's the epitome of assimilation and integration in the society.

<comment><USER3> You make some great points which are sadly overshadowed by your custom spelling of Saudi Arabia. Trying to score points in that way is a good way to make people disagree with you, or agree with you but wish they didn't.

<comment><USER9> That's your "the fly in the ointment" moment but if you really think that alluding in my prior comment to the fact that the Saudi regime is barbaric would render any reasonable and substantive point I made void or would result in an inner conflict emerging inside you on whether to like me or not (which is beside the point by the way), it's a shame.

<comment><USER3> It's not the allusion that bothers me, it's the childish way in which you make it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


We Should Think Twice About Colonizing Space - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/-why-we-should-think-twice-about-colonizing-space <comment><USER3> This seems kind of silly. Yes, there's good chances that there will be balkanization and space wars when we colonize widely. That's no reason not to do it. Should we stay confined to a tiny island on Earth just so that we don't get big enough to form nations that sometimes fight each other? Maybe there would be less war overall, but we'd never progress from being hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers, and would always be vulnerable to a whole bunch of things that are inconsequential to our current global society.

<comment><USER4> Moreover, staying confined here has not prevented us from forming nations and waging wars... With the added drawback that all our eggs are currently in the same planetary basket.

I'm not even sure that "space wars" will be that common. War is expensive, even more so when you have to do it on top of space travel. I think that, without either some extreme commodification of space travel, or some insanely huge reward, space wars won't be a reasonable option in most cases.

<comment><USER5> > I'm not even sure that "space wars" will be that common. War is expensive, > even more so when you have to do it on top of space travel.

Using the example from the article, if Earth considered "Gliese 581 d" Space Commies or something and sent an army NOW at c/4, we would get a message saying "We're here, will engage" in 2118. That's beyond the life expectancy of anything but a small percentage of people being born now.

Using xkcd logic, it was like WW1 Germans deciding "We will invade Russia", send his Pickelhaube corps and when they get to Moscow its 1998 and the Soviet Union has collapse already. They would be using Gewehr 98, they would be slaughtered by a single T-34 out of a museum. News of 1998 Moscow (and pictures of McDonald's on Red Square) would arrive to Angela Merkel.

100 years is a damn long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > How can humanity migrate to another planet without bringing our problems > with us?

What ? Our "problems" are inherently human, they won't go away, they've been there from the beginning, they evolve like everything else. This question doesn't make sense. There is no "us" vs "our problems", our problems are us.

> And how can different species that spread throughout the cosmos maintain > peace when sufficient mutual trust is unattainable and advanced weaponry > could destroy entire civilizations?

Spreading, fighting and destroying civilisations is what makes us human (and what makes up life, for that matter). No matter at what scale you look the universe is creation and destruction.

> Some of these outcomes could have been avoided if only the decision-makers > had deliberated a bit more about what could go wrong

Everything is easy to comprehend in hindsight. Chances are people will look at our generation and find everything we fought for as useless and non sensical.

It's nice to think that humanity will one day attain an utopia in which violence, hate and wars don't exists but that's highly unlikely. Life/death, love/hate, peace/violence, are not separate entities, they can only exists with their opposite. Just like you can't have valleys without mountains.

</comment><comment><USER7> At some point, all of the 'non-expansionary' attitudes will be evolutionary dead ends.

See: Luddites, those against exploring the New World, etc.

<comment><USER8> Those opposed to exploring the new world were basing it on ignorance and rumors. Dragons! Sea monsters! The edge of the earth! None of which was true, you just need to have enough supplies, keep the crew from mutiny, and hope there's decent weather.

In contrast, what we know from facts about space travel: even real sea monsters might leave you alone once in a while, but space is actively trying to kill you at every moment. There are real problems to be solved, like rocket equation, radiation, having enough bandwidth once you get there to stream Netflix. The monsters out there are quite real and quite deadly.

Luddites were just worried about job security.

<comment><USER9> In contrast, what we know from facts about sea travel: even real land monsters might leave you alone once in a while but the sea is actively trying to kill you at every moment. There are real problems to be solved, like fresh water generation, bad weather and having enough food supplies to last until landfall. The monsters out there are quite real and quite deadly.

Did you know that the sea is still deadly? Not all of these are fatalities, but some are: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_2018](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_2018)

<comment><USER10> It's worth pointing out that nobody has 'colonized' the sea yet. Not once in the history of the world. Sure there are ships and large platforms but nothing as self-supporting as a _colony_.

As has been said before by others: I'll believe we're ready to colonize Mars or space after we've colonized the Sahara Desert, Antarctica, and the bottom of the ocean - all of which are _vastly_ easier.

<comment><USER11> I don't think the difficulty of the entreprise is what matters, but rather the ROI. Not to mention that no one has a claim on space (yes, there are treaties, but should one nation / group of nation leave others in the dust, I doubt they would pay much attention to those treaties).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ,,In other words, natural selection and cyborgization as humanity spreads throughout the cosmos will result in species diversification. At the same time, expanding across space will also result in ideological diversification''

I see the opposite happening already. There was a comparison on instagram made, that concluded that the cafe places all around the world are converging to the same look. There are still tensions between countries, but the number of people killed in wars is exponentially decreasing compared to the number of people living.

<comment><USER13> All of which is happening on the planet earth. Not sure how your argument relates to colonizing space

<comment><USER14> Where do you draw the line though? Planet Earth used to be a lot bigger than it is now (metaphorically speaking).

"All of which is happening in the Solar System..."

"All of which is happening in the Milky Way..."

"All of which is happening in the Observable Universe..."

It's probably a cycle that will occur as we make advances in communication technology.

<comment><USER15> The speed of light puts a hard limit on places that can easily exchange ideas and customs. At the very latest when we leave the solar system there will be significant diversification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Silly idea. We could not possibly come up with all the possible outcomes (positive and negative) of space colonization in order to make an "informed" decision. If Phil Torres and his friends decide for us that space colonization should not proceed, how do they enforce that decision?

</comment><comment><USER17> No, we really shouldn't. Our civilization will be dead if it doesn't distribute across planets and other stars, it's just a matter of time. A concern about political issues between colonies is just putting the cart before the horse.

<comment><USER18> I mean, we're welcome to give it a second thought, but doing so is unlikely to result in a different conclusion that "the only way to go from here is out"[1].

[1]: [https://youtu.be/ab_mH8R0KTM](https://youtu.be/ab_mH8R0KTM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apart from the silliness of pretending there won't be future wars, there is an assumption here that space colonists will be even able to communicate with each other. The ones who travel fastest can be constantly outside the spacetime cone of the others, and if they re advanced enough even their lightcones. the universe is vast for everyone to live long and prosper, and sometimes kill each other.

</comment><comment><USER20> Lots of click-baity material here, and plenty to tear apart.

I think the best way to understand this essay is like this: it's all received wisdom based on what we've experienced so far. That doesn't make it right or wrong. It just makes it highly speculative.

Like to see why? Dial back the calendar a few hundred years. Some bozo named Columbus just got back from a trip. He says there's tons of wealth awaiting us in some far-off, plentiful, perhaps-utopian paradise.

Now that we've rewound the clock, you can read through this essay in the same way, substituting the new world for space. It's all the same.

My fear for our species is that 1) we get exactly what we want, ie, we create AGI that caters to our every whim, thereby making our entire species superfluous, and 2) if we don't do that, we argue our way out of exploration and adventure and into introspection and conflict. Who knows, maybe we do both.

I wish this had been a better essay.

</comment><comment><USER21> Getting to mars and colonizing there seems like an awful life: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqKGREZs6-w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqKGREZs6-w)

<comment><USER22> Depends on what you see the point of life as.

I'd agree it would not be a luxurious life. Luxuries and comforts will be scarce, work will be extensive, and there will almost certainly be extremely high mortality rates relative to Earth. And I am willing to pay an extremely large price to be one of the first to go!

Because in exchange for all of this you get to experience things nobody else has ever experienced, or ever will be able to experience in the same way. You get to play a part in creating a society that will likely exist for so long as humanity itself continues to exist. You will also get to challenge yourself in ways - physically, mentally, and psychologically - that you'd never imagined possible. Perhaps the biggest benefit of all is that the selection bias is going to lead to one hell of an interesting group of people in this society. My wife is afflicted of the same apparent insanity as myself, so this sounds like a pretty great life from a different perspective.

<comment><USER19> it is a question whether it is attractive enough after the novelty. People went to the moon once, twice, a few times and then meh, they 've lost interest to even build a habitat there. A colony will have to be actually attractive for people to go there. The bulk of settlers in america for example did not end up there for the thrill of exploration.

I think mars will be similar to Luna: a few exploratory human missions and then silence for many decades, until terraforming technology has become commodity.

<comment><USER22> "People" didn't go to the moon, the US government went to the moon. And they were primarily driven by the motivation of military development and the growth of soft power. After the landing on the moon there was unprecedented public support for further expansion. Aside from the general public the astronauts themselves, practically all of academia, and even people such as Wernher von Braun, the chief architect of the Apollo program had expressed not only desire by technical capability and ideas of how we could get to Mars.

But the wills of the people and the wills of government often conflict. And government generally wins. As the military and soft power tasks had been effectively achieved, government interest in space rapidly waned. There were also extremely petty reasons. Nixon, in part, also did not want to drive what he felt was JFK's legacy, and instead aimed to create his own; something he certainly achieved. There's a great writeup on his views and decisions regarding space and NASA here [1]. He is one of the biggest reasons that space died, though it must be said that any president following him (with a compatible congress) could have just as easily resuscitated it as he killed it. Trump reportedly was willing to offer NASA an 'unlimited' budget if they could get a human on Mars before the end of his first term. Something that's unfortunately almost certainly technically impossible given the state of our dilapidated space program (relative to where it could be today).

The point of this all is that the 21st century will be the first time the _people_ go to space, let alone to another celestial body. And there's no reason to expect we'll turn back. The nice thing about a capitalist system is that so long as the money is there, things will happen. You can look at society as a venn diagram between money and desires for space. There's far more than enough of an overlap there to sustain space indefinitely even without the incredible wealth of certain players such as Bezos.

[1] - [http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/jason- callahan/20...](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/jason- callahan/20141003-how-richard-nixon-changed-nasa.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > To put it differently: If conflict were to break out in some region of the > universe, could the relevant governing authorities respond soon enough for > it to matter, for it to make a difference?

Surely the relevant governing authorities in this case would be local - <USER2> planet or station analogous to a country rather than a region? It wouldn't make sense to try to "govern" from light years away.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is idiotic. It's a rehash of a very old argument that one shouldn't have children because eventually your descendants will fight on opposite sides of a war. He's just replaced "country" with "species".

<comment> rising-sky I don't see how this is idiotic or even a rehash of that argument. The author is simply saying proceed with caution, not that one should not proceed.

The last paragraph summarizes the intention of the article:

> The lesson of this argument is not to uncritically assume that venturing > into the heavens will necessarily make us safer or more existentially > secure. This is a point that organizations hoping to colonize Mars, such as > SpaceX, NASA, and Mars One should seriously contemplate. How can humanity > migrate to another planet without bringing our problems with us? And how can > different species that spread throughout the cosmos maintain peace when > sufficient mutual trust is unattainable and advanced weaponry could destroy > entire civilizations?

> Human beings have made many catastrophically bad decisions in the past. Some > of these outcomes could have been avoided if only the decision-makers had > deliberated a bit more about what could go wrong—i.e., had done a > "premortem" analysis. We are in that privileged position right now with > respect to space colonization. Let's not dive head-first into waters that > turn out to be shallow.

<comment><USER25> The last phrases of the article sound like we didn't think long ages already about colonizing space.

We're thinking about it from times immemorial, and last century we think about it too, taking into account our latest understanding of possibilities and dangers. One would hopefully think our expansion is limited mostly by our abilities, not by our doubts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Space? ... no. Another planet maybe?

</comment><comment><USER27> We should think a lot about colonizing space, and plan, and then do it.

</comment><comment><USER28> > But for many "space expansionists," escaping Earth is about much more than > dodging the bullet of extinction: it's about realizing astronomical amounts > of value by exploiting the universe's vast resources to create something > resembling utopia.

But they literally just quoted the argument from Elon Musk where he says: "there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multiplanetary…to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen."

This article is an interesting mix of philosophical essentialism (lives outside of a single, united planet would be meaningless and dystopian: "But would these trillions of lives actually be worthwhile? Or would colonization of space lead to a dystopia?" \-- requiring that life having meaning before being considered worthy of existence) and fear-mongering (being close-ish to other settlers-diverging-to-species would result in asteroid throwers). It also presumes the outcomes of capitalism are necessarily negative.

Is this some iterated form of Luddite-ism?

</comment><comment><USER29> I have to say this is not a very well thought out argument. Plus the kinds of arguments he makes about hierarchy, control and the state are extremely authoritarian. It seems to boil down to, we can't enforce a galaxy wide police state, so let's stay here on Earth where we can really keep people under control. There might be lots of reasons not to colonize space but that's not one of them.

Also, if it takes decades or centuries and a huge amount of resources to even travel from one system to another, what reason could there possibly be to send an _invasion fleet_? The idea is ludicrous. If you can't meaningfully control some other system, doesn't that _remove_ the justification to go to war?

</comment><comment><USER29> This guy seems to think that the reason people get into wars is because they don't like each other's faces, or something. That's not a reason to risk your life in a violent conflict. The reason wars start is because the king/emperor/CEO or whoever is at the top of the food chain has an _interest_ in expanding their dominion because it _makes them richer_. That's why wars get started. To think that wars just randomly start because people are crabby or don't have an adult to supervise them- that's the thinking of a child.

But he says right in the article that there's no meaningful way to actually control people in another system! So what would be the reason to go to war?

<comment><USER29> You can downvote me but it's still true. Wars of conquest are started by princes not peasants.</comment></comment>


A Dead Simple VPN - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jedisct1/dsvpn <comment><USER2> >\- Runs on TCP

Tunneling TCP over another TCP is usually a bad idea because if any packet loss occurs both TCPs will detect it and start issuing retransmits on their own. This can lead to packet storms and really ruin your day.

There are ways around that (like to proxy instead of tunnel), but they are not "dead simple" like this.

<comment> chupa-chups Quote from README:

> TCP-over-TCP is not as bad as some documents describe. It works surprisingly > well in practice, especially with modern congestion control algorithms > (BBR). For traditional algorithms that rely on packet loss, DSVPN couples > the inner and outer congestion controllers by lowering TCP_NOTSENT_LOWAT and > dropping packets when congestion is detected at the outer layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Discussion from 4 days ago Dead Simple VPN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20487707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20487707)

</comment><comment> chupa-chups Thanks for that link. That looks awesome, especially compared to an OpenVPN setup (and yes I am aware of the fact that this project is not as sophisticated by far, but the default use case - VPN - is covered good enough :)</comment>


Hacking Scrabble (part 1) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zephod.com/post/14167418899/hacking-scrabble-part-1

<comment><USER2> Note: apparently he's using the SOWPODS (combined british & north american) 2 letter words. The tournament word list used in north america only contains 101 2 letter words:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Tournament_and_Club_Wo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Tournament_and_Club_Word_List#Current_edition)

Here's the TWL 2 letter word list:

<http://wordsolver.net/?tpl=twl2>

<comment><USER3> I'd vote that memorizing a hundred 2 letter words (many of which you likely already know) is easier than memorizing 26 mnenomics. or, you can just know a bunch and guess every once in awhile, gambling that your opponents also don't know all 101 for certain and don't want to risk challenging the one you put down;)

<comment><USER4> actually, once you move to even the low-division tournament level, pretty much everyone knows all the 2 letter words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if you could devise a series of phrases where every consecutive pair of letters in the phrase is a valid two-letter word. Then it might be possible to mentally retrieve the entire list by remembering a handful of phrases, instead of one-per-letter.

[Edit: Turns out you can get kinda close: <https://gist.github.com/1474006>

This is really quickly scratched together (and there may be bugs), but there don't appear to be that many valid words left completely out when using this strategy against an american dictionary of 3k words. I'll bang on it more later, or someone else feel free to do better]

[Edit: After seeing @msluyter's comment, I adjusted to look for only the American 2-letter words. Ended up with much better results. This list of words (and possibly a subset of them that I'm not checking for yet):

      'MELINE', 'ESOP', 'HEMAD', 'SHERE', 'WER', 'UNENAMORED', 'MYOHEMATIN', 'REHONOR', 'HEMATOSIN', 'ANEMATOSIS', 'TORET', 'HEMATID'

Covers all but these valid words:

      'AA', 'OE', 'ZA', 'QI', 'UH', 'AW', 'AY', 'BY', 'XU'
    ]

</comment><comment><USER6> On the topic of Scrabble, can anybody provide some insight into how they'd go about architecting the database for a game like WordSquared? <http://wordsquared.com/>

It's similar to Scrabble ... but it has no playing-area boundaries. I'm curious what the best way to represent this type of game-board data in a database would be and was hoping somebody smarter than me could help make me smarter.

<comment><USER7> You're pretty free in how you want to represent the database, because you're unlikely to ever want to query (quickly) based on the contents of the tile, so representation doesn't much matter. My first cut would be a 64x64 tile, indexed by x & y from an arbitrary 0, each of which contains a 64x64 = 4096 (4K) string representation of the contents of the tile. There will be lots of spaces, so my first cut at efficiency would be to simply do inline RLE and embed ASCII numbers in the stream that represent the number of spaces, ie, "4096" = empty tile, "2047a2048" represents a tile with one a in the middle, etc. (This preserves some human readability, where gzip does not, but you could use that too.) But frankly, at 4K+noise per tile, and no compelling need to ever refer to the entire table at once, even the stupid string representation will get you a _long_ way before it bothers any serious DB server; that's enough to store about 250-ish million tiles in a single terabyte (a bit of fudge in there for overhead). (And the live set would be small enough to fit in very little ram so I'm not too worried about that.)

By the time that representation is your Biggest Problem, you'll be able to afford someone to do something more clever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I upvoted this in hopes of generating some discussion about whether there might be a better way to do this. Here's one idea:

With very few exceptions, all of these words will contain at least one vowel. This suggests that we can (for the most part) compress the data from: (1) a list of 24 lists of words, to (2) a list of 6 sets of 2 lists of words.

So now "a" looks like this: bdefhjklmnptyz -a- abdeghilmnrstwxy

Now you can apply the same mnemonic trick to each of these word lists as the author does in the article, but you wind up only having to memorize 12 lists instead of 24, plus a slight overhead for non-vowel words (there are 4).

This can perhaps be improved further by removing redundancy somehow (though maybe not, as the redundant structure might be easiest to check mentally).

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. To be honest I posted it in the first place to hopefully generate some discussion about whether there might be a better way to do this(!). I think memorising 26 mnemonics is possible (and i disagree with the below commenter who says 124 individual words might be easier...) but perhaps the information can be further compressed. Can you elaborate on how your method works a little? How are the two lists derived?

<comment><USER8> Oh sorry, classic case of not realizing not everyone hears your thoughts :-)

For "a", there's a list where "a" is the first letter, and a list where "a" is the second. What I wrote out above is an attempt to show the structure. The letters on the left are possible prefixes for "a", the letters on the right are possible suffixes. Then I stuck "-a-" itself in the middle because that seems like a good visualization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a very good review of what it takes to build a state-of-the-art AI Scrabble player in the following paper (appears to be open-access, apologies if not):

World-championship-caliber Scrabble, Brian Sheppard, _Artificial Intelligence_ , 134(1–2):241–275, 2002. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370201...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370201001667)

There's more to it than you might think. In particular, I was initially surprised about how much of the game is about rack management. Although I know this won't be a surprise to people who've played Scrabble seriously.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't really think it is worth generating these mnemonics. A lot of the words in that list are really common words so you're making it harder for yourself by re-remembering them in mnemonic form.

I think you should remove all the words you know first, as this will make it much easier to remember. After that if you want to use the mnemonic approach, then if that works for you then great.

Although, I learned most of the weird ones by just playing against a computer which used them a lot. Eventually you remember them all. Incidentally, this way you actually learn a couple interesting new words. Three-toed sloth anyone?

</comment><comment><USER11> It's not that hard to memorize the 2-letter words. Most of them do have a meaning that makes sense. So it's easier to remember

aa = lava

ab = your abs

ad = tv ads

ae = scottish "one"

ag = agricultural

ah = ah that feels good

ai = a sloth

al = a tree

am = i am happy

an = an apple

ar = arrr i'm a pirate

as = as you were

at = where you at

aw = aww that's cute

ax = the weapon

ay = ay caramba

than it is to memorize "abdeghilmnrstwxy".

<comment><USER12> Comparing his approach vs yours I can't help but think a: _birthdays mangle wax_ is easier to remember than that list.

<comment><USER13> But it is easier to check the the GP's solution:

        return definitions.get(candidate) != null;

vs

        foreach c in definitions(candidate.charAt(0)) {
            if c == candidate.charAt(1)) return true;
        }
        return val;

That leaves aside the general usefulness of knowing the definitions of words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is very similar to anamonics[1], which are usually used for remembering longer words.

Here is a massive list of them: <http://www.poslarchive.com/math/scrabble/anamonics-twl2.html>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamonic>

</comment><comment><USER15> I think these may be easier to memorize these if the mnemonic started with the letter in question, where possible.

</comment><comment><USER16> A while ago I put together <http://twoletterscrabblewords.com/> to visualize the two letter pairs that were possible. If you click on any of the tiles you'll see the valid pairs, unless the tile is grey, in which case there are no pairs for it.

I was hoping that it would be useful as a study tool for people who are more visually inclined - I wouldn't have considered using mnemonics originally.

</comment><comment><USER17> What about instead using a little base 2 to memorize? So 'b' can follow 'a' or 'o' and be followed by 'a', 'e', 'i' or 'o'. Take a as 16, e as 8, i as 4, o as 2 and u as 1. So if you memorized '18b30' you could decode that in your mind to the right combinations for 'b'. Obviously this doesn't work for the combinations with two consonants and the words ending in 'y', but it's a start. I think you'd pretty quickly learn common values like 30 is 'aeio'.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looking forward to the conclusion of this! Interesting and as a side benefit might help me finally get a leg up on playing my wife in Scrabble :-).

</comment><comment><USER19> Funny I've been thinking about just this .. .my gf is far too good ... I'll probably never beat her but getting within a reasonable percentage seems reasonable. Maybe writing some minigames would help. Not just for learning two letter words, but helping with stuff like being able to quickly spot popular prefixes and suffixes..

</comment><comment><USER20> How about approaching the problem from the suffix point of view?

Instead of having 25 prefix having suffixes, you have 20 suffixes having prefixes.

The prefix technique has an average of 4.96 suffixes per prefix, and the suffix one has 6.2 prefixes on average for each suffix.

Maybe this would be easier to deal with?

</comment><comment><USER21> Looking at your Python script. Might want to learn about the built-in set() functionality. For exmaple:

def uniqueletters(s): return set(c for c in s)

def intersect(word, charlist): return len(uniqueletters(word).intersection(charlist))

<comment><USER21> In fact:

max(wordlist, key=(lambda w: intersect(w, charlist))

should replace a good portion of the create_mnemonic function. But now I'm just showing off. Just letting you know that Python is much cooler than you know.

Haskell, however, could probably do this in a few lines.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got a pull request sitting on GitHub showing me exactly this. Awesome! I'm about eight months into Python but my knowledge isn't particularly deep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's unfortunate that some Scrabble players are more likely to know dozens of obscure two-letter words than how to spell "mnemonic".

<comment><AUTHOR> A very good point. Poor quality control... I can fix that now :-)

<comment><USER22> Sorry, that probably came out more snotty than it should have.

My beef with Scrabble is that it really isn't a word game, so much as an exercise in memorizing arbitrary strings of symbols. It's unfortunate, because it doesn't really encourage people to develop their vocabulary, as in "learning new words and their meanings", which is generally useful. Rather, it encourages people to learn what arbitrary combinations are legal in a given word list.

Ad absurdum - at one point, the world Scrabble champion was a fellow who didn't actually speak English.

<comment><USER23>
      Ad absurdum - at one point, the world Scrabble champion was a fellow who didn't actually speak English.

That's not too surprising unless he played in English. Scrabble has editions for many languages.

<comment><USER24> The guy being allied about is Panupol Sujjayakorn (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panupol_Sujjayakorn>). He is Thai. In Thailand, scrabble is used to learn English.

Unlike with Chinese, it is not impossible to make a Thai scrabble, but I doubt there is one, given the size of its alphabet (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_alphabet>)

<comment><USER4> i've been to the king's cup tournament in bangkok a couple of times. there's a children's tournament run in parallel in the same venue, and it was a truly amazing sight to see thousands of kids squaring off across scrabble boards. i truly wish school scrabble would take off in india; as it is, this year we didn't even manage to find two kids to go for the world youth scrabble championship :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> this was pretty much the way i memorised the 2s, except i did the mnemonics by hand. (i've written a lot of little apps like this but from the inverse point of view - i type in a hand-generated mnemonic and it tests it for correctness, and tells me what letters are missing or incorrectly there)</comment>


Android pulls ahead of Windows Mobile (June mobile OS market share stats) - <AUTHOR> http://androidandme.com/2009/07/mobile-analytics/android-pulls-ahead-of-windows-mobile/

<comment><USER2> ...in terms of requests for mobile web pages served by AdMob.

The Android browser is pretty good and Mobile IE stinks, so I'm not sure this is a 100% accurate reflection of actual devices in use. Also, I bet enterprise users do less casual web surfing than consumers.

Still, pretty interesting.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think it's interesting alright, especially when the browser is becoming the OS.

I didn't realize that Google plans to implement Google Voice on the iPhone by writing it in HTML 5. Thanks to This Week in Google podcast for telling me.

The Google purchase of On2 last week really makes me think Google plans to round out the HTML 5 spec for video by open sourcing all the codecs and patents they now own.

If they do that, the only OS I'd need would be eerily similar to what Chrome OS is rumoured to become.

What fascinates me is how quickly this is all coming together. Linux has been around for years, but it's growth accelerated with the Internet exposing more and more people to the platform.

But what's happening around HTML 5 will do far more good for me as a netizen than the total of what the open source movement has brought about so far.

The HTML 5 demos of audio and video and gaming are very expensive from a processing point of view today. My newest Mac breaks a bit of a sweat when running some of these demos. But processors will get better and browser performance will improve.

I'll be interested to see if/when Apple launches its tablet whether it contains a 3G chip. If they're prepared to sell those things without a voice contract to go along with the data contract, it means they see what Google sees too.

If they don't, my next phone may run Android (2.3 years left on existing contract). HTML 5 with a robust specification for audio and video means I will no longer need iTunes. I will simply stream to the browser from my cloud at home or on someone else's farm. The only time I would need stored content is when I'm off the grid, and Google's figuring that out too with Gears and parts of HTML 5.

It's suddenly a Web world, and we all live in it. If I'm Apple or Microsoft, I'm scared to DEATH of Google, at least in the consumer market. And the ironic thing is Google's not actually competing directly with either of them. Their deaths will simply be byproducts of doing the right thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those struggling with messy Android contact importing (via Gmail): [http://blog.endpoint.com/2009/07/gmail-contacts-notes- conver...](http://blog.endpoint.com/2009/07/gmail-contacts-notes- converter.html)</comment>


Rust  Python bindings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dgrunwald/rust-cpython

<comment><USER2> I would rather have the reverse. Python bindings for Rust.

<comment><USER3> That's just plain old FFI, at least as a start. A library that did some of the type conversions for you might be good though.

<comment><USER2> That's my point. It would be wonderful to have rich inference or automatic generation for cffi based bindings.

Not every Python programmer is familiar with c style languages and making it easier for them to use would encourage adoption and improve code safety.</comment></comment></comment>


Why does Google Calendar use Vevay, Indiana (pop. 1,651) as a standard EDT city? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Jess_Riedel/status/1265357954162675713 <comment><USER2> They get the locations from the tz database.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana#tz_database](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana#tz_database)

<comment><USER2> From the source:

        # Shanks partitioned Indiana into 345 regions, each with its own time history,
        # and wrote "Even newspaper reports present contradictory information."
        # Those Hoosiers!  Such a flighty and changeable people!
        # Fortunately, most of the complexity occurred before our cutoff date of 1970.
        #
        # Other than Indianapolis, the Indiana place names are so nondescript
        # that they would be ambiguous if we left them at the 'America' level.
        # So we reluctantly put them all in a subdirectory 'America/Indiana'.

[https://github.com/eggert/tz/blob/e6c1f0e7daa0b6c5131b2976c6...](https://github.com/eggert/tz/blob/e6c1f0e7daa0b6c5131b2976c6be9190845d2b49/northamerica#L853)</comment></comment>


Howmet TX – The Only Turbine-Powered Car to Win a Race - <AUTHOR> https://columnm.com/howmet-tx-the-only-turbine-powered-car-to-win-a-race/ <comment> King-Aaron Shame there's not more photos of them lifting it's skirt - I would have been interested to see how the turbine sat in it.</comment>


The First Roman Fonts (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://ilovetypography.com/2016/04/18/the-first-roman-fonts/ <comment><USER2> When buying (reference) books was still 'really' a thing, I always liked reading the colophon in O'Reilly published works to explain the animals, typeface(s), process used in their creation.

<comment><USER3> Particularly the Ritchie and Kernighan books where they dog-fooded roff etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're wondering why every other image seems to use red for highlights, it's typography tradition: [https://www.gwern.net/Red](https://www.gwern.net/Red)</comment>


What Killed Smalltalk: My Balls - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-killed-smalltalk-my-balls.html <comment><USER2> On professionalism: Giles and Martin are using different definitions of professionalism. Martin was explicit about his definition: adherence to quality standards, even under external pressure. Giles uses that to rant about suits, which is completely beside the point.

Of course programming doesn't need more "professionalism" in the sense of suits and firm handshakes. It does need more professionalism in the sense of "I'm sorry Mr Sales Guy, but your deadline is unrealistic. Let's discuss the features we can cut to make that deadline, or the schedule revisions that we need to complete the project."

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice rant. Haven't seen the presentation so I can't comment on that. But it sure is a nice rant.

<comment><USER4> Why can't you say "nice article"? Why use the perjorative term "rant"?

If you disagree with something in it, just say so.

<comment><USER5> The article is a puerile rant; it borders on incoherent, lacks any rational supporting argument, and does little to convince the reader besides advancing emotional declarations.

"The only question is, how big a dick move was it?"

"It's only a good thing for people who fuck up a lot."

<comment><USER4> Oh well; I liked it, especially the part about "professionalism". There is a place in the dialogue for puerile rants. Some topics deserve nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't normally like Giles' stuff much, but I read this one and kept thinking to myself; "yep. Yep. Yeah, he's right there. Yep."

Nice one, Mr. Bowkett.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's amusing to see that his prose style is between Atwood and Zed Shaw.

It'd be interesting to study the cross-pollination between bloggers and to chart that.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a reaction to this presentation: <http://blip.tv/file/2089545>

</comment><comment><USER9> Consultants need to make a living somehow, just waiting for the next fad to come along. The most sane approach to TDD is by Cedric Beust (author of TestNG: <http://beust.com/weblog/>).

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems to have alot of quotes and intention taken out way of context. I think Uncle Bob would agree with alot of the points you made had you not redefined and distorted what he said.

To take an easy example: "A high standard of professional ethics, behaviour and work activities while carrying out one's profession" is not the same thing as acting like Henry Rollins.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professionalism>

<comment><USER11> That was a joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The presentation was great... this reaction, not so much. I appreciate the link to the presentation though!</comment>


Ask HN: Is it a good time to bootstrap? - <AUTHOR>

I am planning to quit my job and bootstrap my startup idea. Unfortunetly i can not do things while employed. I can effort 6-8 months of run way, paying for incorporation and launching v1.0. I feel like it will rain but can not read the forecast and dressed like in summer with no umbrella. I know nobody can know exactly but looking forward to your advice(s). <comment><USER2> No, it is not a good time. It will be a huge mistake. There will be not much VC money after 6-12 months and you will most likely end up in a time frame where big companies start laying off people. Good luck! Please read more on HN about stress and boom related posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have more information about your VC case? Are you talkin about .com boom 2.0?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do it! Good luck. [http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/bootstrap.pdf](http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/bootstrap.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> My gut is also saying "Do it!" but don't want to do a stupid move. Could you please tell me more about your thoughts about market, VC funds and etc.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> WTF, where those all helpful people!</comment>


FBI Memo Concerning Roswell Incident - 22nd March 1950 - <AUTHOR> http://vault.fbi.gov/hottel_guy/Guy%20Hottel%20Part%201%20of%201/view

<comment><AUTHOR> Just before anyone thinks this is a smoking gun. It is only from an informant. The FBI has this disclaimer:

The FBI's Reading Room contains many files of public interest and historical value. In compliance with the National Archives Record Administration (NARA) requirements, some of these records are no longer in the physical possession of the FBI, eliminating the FBI's capability to re-review and/or re-process this material. Please note, that the information found in these files may no longer reflect the current beliefs, positions, opinions, or policies currently held by the FBI.

Posted as it's a piece of history. Whether it is (in)accurate is not for me to say.</comment>


One customer at a time - <AUTHOR> http://www.petermichaud.com/essays/one-customer-at-a-time/

<comment><USER2> Well written. When someone signs up for my app, I check out each customer personally and write them a custom email. So immediately the customer feels part of a human-driven product.</comment>


15-year old publishes an article in NEJM - <AUTHOR> https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montrealer-15-gets-article-in-new-england-journal-of-medicine/ <comment><USER2> The study in question -- outcomes for new vs. "refurbished" pacemakers and defibrillators -- sounds like a useful question. Plus, it sounds like he did a bunch of manual work matching each refurbished device use case to similar new device use cases. So kudos to him for sure.

But it's worth noting that "[h]e was aided by his father, MHI [Montreal Heart Institute] cardiologist Dr. Paul Khairy", which helps explain why he could start rotating through groups there when he was 12. That's not to diminish his accomplishment. It's not like the NEJM accepted the paper because it's a cute story. It's more like he had a great opportunity _and_ took advantage of it.</comment>


The soccer ball that helps kids in underdeveloped areas finish homework - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2013/11/21/the-soccer-ball-that-helps-kids-in-underdeveloped-areas-finish-homework/?tid=hpModule_1728cf4a-8a79-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e&hpid=z11 More on the organization behind this - http://www.unchartedplay.com/ <comment><USER2> Old story. Follow-up by Public Radio International, "Impoverished kids love the soccer ball that powers a lamp — until it breaks"[1] suggests that this story was too overhyped by the organization that produced the low-quality lamps.

[1] [http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-04-08/impoverished-kids- love...](http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-04-08/impoverished-kids-love-soccer- ball-powers-lamp-until-it-breaks)</comment>


VW is investing 50 milion € for software school (with help from Microsoft) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cio.de/a/volkswagen-steckte-ueber-50-millionen-euro-in-software-fakultaet,3627605 <comment><USER2> VW seems like such a juicy target for vendor locking. Their own software competence is probably limited so they could be made to make some bad choices. And they have a lot of money.</comment>


Big Short's Eisman Is Shorting Tesla for 'Execution Problems' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-27/big-short-s-eisman-is-shorting-tesla-for-execution-problems <comment><USER2> I predict this will end badly for him</comment>


Game of Thrones music by computer hardware - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2CcK3VdmAA <comment><USER2> Holy crap!</comment>


Video games can be about love, not just violence - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/23/the-deanbeat-video-games-can-be-about-love-not-just-violence/

<comment><USER2> It's amazing to me that these academics have never heard about dating SIM games and visual novels from Japan which have been around for years...</comment>


Should Buddhist Meditation Make You Happy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/should-buddhist-meditation-make-you-happy/266703/#

<comment><USER2> If you're a workaholic, like I was 6-7 years ago, where you only can think about work (meaning stress) then any time practicing being out of that space - creating stress-free space in your mind - will bring you into a better place. Doesn't take much to start. Just 30 seconds of focusing on slowly breathing in and out of your nose, and then challenge yourself to see how long you can do it.. Yoga is very complementary too.</comment>


Forbes Revises Estimated Net Worth of Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2016/06/01/from-4-5-billion-to-nothing-forbes-revises-estimated-net-worth-of-theranos-founder-elizabeth-holmes/#4e430cc62f29 <comment><USER2> Ad Block friendly link (similar article) for those who hate Forbes

[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/elizabeth-holmes- net-...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/elizabeth-holmes-net-worth)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like the brioche shouldn't have risen anyway. What an interesting business fairy tale.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for a student going to Europe? - <AUTHOR>

A few friends and I (three of us total) were planning on going to go to Europe over the summer this year. We want to go to Sweden, England, France, and The Netherlands.
We're all in college and pretty much broke.
We want to spend a week in each country (probably Stockholm, London, Paris, and Amsterdam respectively), but we're not sure how we'll be able to afford the trip.
We don't exactly want to backpack across Europe and stay in hostels, so any suggestions for other stuff would be nice.
Also, stuff to do that's not touristy in those countries would be nice as well.
Thanks for the input and Happy New Year! <comment><USER2> _We don't exactly want to backpack across Europe and stay in hostels_

Why on earth not? That's half the fun! I was relatively shy and antisocial on my European tour and I _still_ have two or three hostel stories to tell.

And if you want to find a critical mass of people who know how to tour Europe on the cheap, why are you avoiding hostels? Were you planning to look for fellow bums in the lobbies of three-star hotels?

Having said that: There are relatively cheap pension rooms / B&B rooms / _zimmer_ around, and you can leverage the economy of scale of having three people that are willing to share a room. There are also persistent rumors that many European countries have awesome campgrounds. Though you might have to haul sleeping bags around.

I toured Europe by following the general advice in Rick Steves' general-advice book. His reader demographic probably skews a bit more "middle-aged NPR listener" than "college student" (advertising via PBS specials will probably tend to lead to that), and sometimes he comes across as a bit of a nerd, but then again so do I. His advice was pretty solid. If you don't like meeting fellow tourists who are clutching a copy of his book, don't go to the specific hotels and restaurants that he recommends. (This apparently also goes for all the places mentioned in, e.g., the _Lonely Planet_ guides. Guidebooks are excellent guides to finding your fellow tourists.)

<comment><USER2> Oops, forgot the most important advice: Keep most of your money, your credit/ATM cards, and your passport on your body, out of sight and in a difficult-to-access spot -- get a money belt of some type. Pack very little, and don't pack anything you're not willing to lose. I've had stuff stolen on two out of four European tourist trips, but the _second_ time all I did was laugh and go shopping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you drop by Copenhagen I'll probably be able to fix you up with a place to live for a week while you're here. I live on a boat in a Copenhagen Marina, and I'm sure I'll be able to loan a boat or something for a week.

Copenhagen is great in the summer - the beer is cold and the chicks are beautiful.

My mail is in my profile :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> For free accommodation I recommend couchsurfing.org. It might be a little tricky with 3 travelers, generally people have couches for 1 or 2 people, but all of those cities will have lots of couches available. I have hosted lots of couchsurfers (highly recommend this if you can do it) and I've couchsurfed in other countries, never had a bad experience. When you are staying with someone living and working in a city you will have a much different experience than if you are staying at a hostel or hotel.

</comment><comment><USER5> No Italy?! Why those countries? Not that they're bad, just that they're also fairly expensive (although if the pound keeps crashing, maybe England will finally be cheap) in a continent that, at least at the moment, is already expensive for Americans. Cheaper countries: Portugal, Spain, Greece, lots of places in "Eastern Europe". Italy's not cheap, but it is, of course, the most amazingly beautiful country anywhere even if it's not really run very well:-) I can't offer to put up people, necessarily, but I'm always willing to take some time to show people around Padova, my home away from home in Italy, where hopefully we will be returning soon.

Hostels aren't bad, actually, and you don't have too many other options for 'cheap'. Just try and figure out which ones are good, and which ones to avoid.

<comment><USER6> I just spent a little over a month in Europe and half of the time was spent in Italy. It was awesome.

For the OP:

Some cities were of course more expensive than others. If you stay at cheap hostels, take the metros and walk instead of taxis, and eat out at cheap "bars" or take out it's affordable.

A lot of the sights you want to see are free also, like Piazzas and fountains. So just grab a slice of pizza or gelato and enjoy the views.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the UK, instead of London, you might like to consider going to Manchester or Edinburgh instead. Both much nicer cities than London (IMHO).

</comment><comment><USER8> You can get a Europe wide rail card for a remarkably low cost - and rail travel in Europe is (largely) fast and comfortable. There are also low cost airline options (check out Ryan Air and FlyBe on-line) although sometimes they use airports a little outside major cities.

Hotel prices in Amsterdam are not too bad, Paris more expensive and London and Stockholm might well boggle your mind - still good quality, centrally located, comfortable hostels do exist and are well worth checking out.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, How much money do you think I should set aside for this trip?

</comment><comment><USER9> My advice would be to skip Stockholm and go to Berlin or Vienna.

Having been to several Scandinavian countries, I can assure you they are the most boring and American-like places you can go in Europe[1], owing to the relative newness of their cities and also mind-bogglingly expensive. Even for Europe. We're talking $10-13 US for a beer.

Berlin is dirt cheap, even with the exchange rate, and full of interesting and exciting culture and things to do and (as far as these things go) a very friendly citizenry who speak great English. Its ultimate personality is the personality of a fanastically diverse mutt of a place, and yet it all works. It feels amazingly alive.

Vienna, by contrast, is more expensive than Berlin but cheaper than visiting NYC. It is less exciting than Berlin, being more homogeneous and sedate, but still has its own incredibly distinct personality and gobs of awesome stuff to see and do.

[1] yes, even more so than London, call it the tyranny of small differences</comment>