Ask HN: If we could redesign the Internet from scratch, what should it be? - <AUTHOR> I ask the question purely out of interest, not specifically about tweeking HTTP and TCP/IP but also about the underlying hardware, much of which is decades old. If we could completely divorce the Internet from history, what would be the best design. Would it take much more inspiration from OSI, or look radically different? Perhaps the question doesn't make sense: if we radically changed the Internet it would no longer be the Internet, much as the Internet is not simply an improved version of the phone network. <comment><USER3> IPv6 is key. I think if we never had to do NATs we would be a lot better off.

Security. HTTP and other similar protocols without encryption by default are not appropriate for today's Internet. Similarly, we wouldn't have to use opportunistic encryption of email.

Better support for protocols other than TCP and UDP. SCTP is a great protocol that fits many application level protocols so well. Instead corporate IT very often sets up the firewall to simply drop anything but the two most popular protocols.

Sadly, we still wouldn't have a more widespread web of trust. Once you buy into WoT, it can be an invaluable tool, but the problem is largely orthogonal to the development of the Internet: publicist crypto is just too difficult to make easy _and_ robust. I only list this here because I believe a more widespread WoT would mean the end of CA's, government snooping, and many other evils.

<comment><USER4> NAT as become a pillar of internet security in spite of itself. So with IPv6 as to come improvement in security. As you said the generalization of SSL/TLS as well as ND and IPSec that comes with IPv6 but we also need the generalization of stateful firewalls to emulate what NAT was doing for us. Ironic...

<comment><USER5> NAT does little to nothing for security. NAT != firewall, and if your security depends on keeping internal IPs secret you have a problem. You can easily firewall without NAT.

<comment><USER4> In theory we agree. But in practice there is little to no firewalling in the default configuration of home routers BUT there is masquerading NAT which behave as a firewall of sorts. NAT under linux is actually done with iptables which is considered to be an "interface to the linux _firewall_ ", although it's only for practical reason, once again.

Now I do agree that my point was kind of moot because it's indeed easy to firewall without NAT. I am all for IPv6 if it's done well. I especially like the idea of finally moving away from ARP Spoofing attacks thanks to Neighbor Discovery (ND).

<comment><USER4> I meant IPSec, ND is functionally the same as ARP. Also IPSec support is no longer required with IPv6 so IPv6 might not really help with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Internet got a lot of things right - in particular, it is an excellent design for evolution. None of the original hardware is still around, it's grown by orders of magnitude in both size and speed, and almost all the most popular applications today hadn't been thought of in the 1980s.

Having said that, there are definite deficiencies. It's fragile in many ways: it shouldn't be possible to launch flooding DoS attacks; encryption should be baked in to all the transport protocols; the ability to connect to a computer should be much more under the control of the recipient (today's firewalls are a poor workaround for a design deficiency). The routing system is pretty fragile.

The ability to handle multiple networks simultaneously, and gracefully move between (or use more than one simultaneously) isn't something that was originally necessary, but is today with mobile devices. We're working on fixing that with MPTCP, but it will take a long time to univerally deploy.

So, lots of architectural issues, but it's important not to lose sight of what is good about the current network too.

<comment><USER7> > the ability to connect to a computer should be much more under the control > of the recipient (today's firewalls are a poor workaround for a design > deficiency).

Erm ... no, it is absolutely intentional that the core of the network doesn't keep any flow state, because that doesn't scale.

<comment><USER6> It's not fundamental to keep per-flow state to have more control over reachability. Once you step back from the current Internet architecture, there are a whole host of possibilities. Here's are a couple of (rather old) papers for example:

[http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/M.Handley/papers/dos- arch.pdf](http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/M.Handley/papers/dos-arch.pdf)

[http://nutss.gforge.cis.cornell.edu/](http://nutss.gforge.cis.cornell.edu/)

<comment><USER7> Splitting the address space into "client" and "server" addresses, supposedly for some security benefit? Come on, you can't be serious about that?!

I have only skimmed the paper, but it seems to me to be a collection of bad ideas, and I can't really be bothered to read all 8 pages. If you think there is actually something useful in there, would you mind condensing that into one paragraph?

<comment><USER6> We already have "client" and "server" addresses, courtesy of NATs. NATs are a huge pain from an architectural point of view, but all the same, many people like them because they provide some measure of security as a side effect. That paper was all about trying to capture this within the architecture, and providing the same effect in depth, rather than just at the NAT itself. It was a thought experiment more than a serious proposal, but that's the way new ideas come about - someone proposes a radical-but-flawed idea, and others see some merit in the principle, but find ways to avoid the flaws. I wasn't trying to push this solution on you - just responding to the over-general per-flow state point.

<comment><USER7> Except that the stateful packet filter that sometimes comes with a NAT gateway (and that provides the security that people like) depends exactly not at all on NAT and the pain that comes with that kind of address class distinction.

<comment><USER4> Well I don't have stats but from personal experience (perhaps I have a bit more experience with french rather than US providers), home routers do not use a specific stateful firewall, and use masquerading NAT. So it would depend on the way NAT is done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> * Everything encrypted by default. Dan Bernstein has talked about a few such ideas in the past [1], and there's also the more recent MinimaLT [2].

* The ability to be anonymous baked into the hardware infrastructure [3]. In the Internet's life, people have been more "anonymous" than not. Even in the Facebook age, many still communicate under pseudonyms on the Internet (thinking they are anonymous - but unfortunately the surveillance state and all the ad-tracking has made that wishful thinking)

* Being a lot more censorship-resistant/decentralized. If the Internet was being redesigned, stuff like the Great Firewall of China shouldn't be made possible. The Internet has been such a democratizing force _because_ people have been (for the most part) out of reach of the governments' might. I can only see a _strengthening_ of that feature as a _great thing_. Yes, bad things will be done, too, but in balance, I think the _free_ Internet has been proven to be an overwhelmingly net positive thing.

* As others have said, much better support from the Internet stakeholders of modern secure standards. There has just been so much reluctance to change things for the better from major Internet stakeholders. That's why I'm a huge fan of Google's recent pushes for SHA2, HTTPS, etc (some would say "forceful" pushes, but I think that's unavoidable if we want them done within a few short years, instead of decades. Considering how large the Internet is today, they are bound to step on a few toes anyway).

1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNkz5PtoUrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNkz5PtoUrw)

[2] - [http://cr.yp.to/tcpip/minimalt-20131031.pdf](http://cr.yp.to/tcpip/minimalt-20131031.pdf)

[3] - [https://code.google.com/p/phantom/](https://code.google.com/p/phantom/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Two relics that haven't (and couldn't have) scaled past the late-90s magnitude of the Internet, and yet we're still with them:

TLS: CAs. TLS/SSL is largely "security on the internet", and any of thousands of CAs could sign a cert for any of our websites. Very few exceptions apply here - to protect against this, you effectively need to be on the client (see certificate pinning on chrome). We need something like TACK[1] here. The current state of the TLS CA system is _very_ convenient for malicious actors of any size.

Routing: BGP is an overly trusting protocol[2]. Any of thousands of ASN can advertise a route and its peers will happily chug that traffic along to it. This would allow, for instance, a Pakistani ISP "taking over" YouTube, or more recently, Indosat trying to take over the Internet[3].

There's many things that would be "nice-to-have" fixes, but these two are pretty urgent in my opinion. They were designed for a much friendlier Internet.

[1] [https://tack.io/](https://tack.io/)

[2] [http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/56069/what- secur...](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/56069/what-security- mechanisms-are-used-in-bgp-and-why-do-they-fail)

[3] [http://www.bgpmon.net/hijack-event-today-by- indosat/](http://www.bgpmon.net/hijack-event-today-by-indosat/)

<comment><USER10> TLS can work perfectly well with DANE, and BGP trusting is a non-issue once you have a TLS-like protocol to secure your communication.

I don't think BGP needs to be fixed at all, the underlying problem is inherent to the Internet, changing the protocol will only close one of the several different ways for stealing data.

About TLS, yes, we need something better. Your link currently does not work, but I've never seen a proposal that's actualy better than TLS + DANE.

<comment><USER9> BGP trusting is only a non-issue if you didn't really need to access that resource anyway. Out of the infosec CIA triad, this is still an Availability fail. Your one and only available recourse is... "keep refreshing", hoping that the Gods of Routing will put your request on the right path, which in the case of intentional sabotage would probably be never[1]. Let's emphasize at this point that you don't need MiTM for this, just a rogue ASN somewhere advertising a super-quick route to $ta.rg.e.t. In most cases, that would sinkhole at least the continent. So, IMHO, still broken, even if we will be able to know _when_ it is broken (at some point in the future). Which brings me to DNSSEC/DANE.

TLS can indeed offset its CA burdens onto DANE, when DANE becomes a thing[2] _and_ DNSSEC becomes ubiquitous[3]. We are so far away from that, that even google hasn't bothered with DNSSEC[4]. Considering the enormous infrastructure changes that this requires, we'll hardly be getting our money's worth - <USER2> a strict top-down system: IANA/Verisign have the root-root zone/keys. Verisign "owns" .coms (root zone), as well as most (all?) other gTLDs.

TACK is a proposed TLS extension for certificate pinning for the masses. It doesn't solve DNSSEC problems (not its scope), but requires far fewer infrastructure updates to be implemented. It is also not perfect[5] but still a much closer/realistic goal than DANE. We need something _yesterday_ \- the green lock icon means fuck-all right now.

And finally:

> I don't think BGP needs to be fixed at all, the underlying problem is > inherent to the Internet, changing the protocol will only close one of the > several different ways for stealing data.

Strongly disagree. If it _does_ close off one of the ways of stealing data, it definitely needs fixing.

        /summon moxie

[1] never -> until Humans intervene to manually block the BS route

[2] DANE Browser support matrix: [ [] ] (2d array, versions on the X axis)

[3] For this to really work for the end client, you need nearly ubiquitous support. The client must be its own recursive nameserver (don't trust your ISP), and all recursive nameservers until the authoritative one need to speak DNSSEC as well (I think). Of course, the g/cc TLD also needs to support DNSSEC (not all do), the owners of the site must have set it up properly, etc. After all that is ubiquitous enough to you _enforce_ DANE for proper TLS ("green icon"), you just need to update all clients everywhere with the new rules. We're currently at step 0.1 of this process - the root zones for most g/cc TLDs are there, and that's about it.

[4a] [http://dnsviz.net/d/google.com/dnssec/](http://dnsviz.net/d/google.com/dnssec/)

[4b] [http://dnsviz.net/d/whitehouse.gov/dnssec/](http://dnsviz.net/d/whitehouse.gov/dnssec/) (for comparison)

[4c] [http://www.dnssec-name-and-shame.com/](http://www.dnssec-name-and- shame.com/) (NOISY site - be warned) Test out a few top alexa sites. You'll be surprised.

[5] It can only protect your second (and subsequent) visits to the site. If your first time hits a malicious impersonator, you're shit out of luck. Furthermore, the impersonator could "tack" its own malicious certificate for some lols when you actually get to talk to the actual target.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Overall, I think, Internet proved to be quite reliable (we still use basically same infrastructure for decades). The key problems mainly arise from centralization (DNS) and weak/insecure protocols (BGP, HTTP). Internet 2.0 should be p2p based with end-to-end encryption everywhere, not sure if that's possible to achieve with current protocols/technologies, but torrents and Tor network are step to the right direction imho.

</comment><comment><USER12> One thing I miss a bit is that I cannot just run a small server somewhere, because of things like NAT. Although this "addressability" problem is slowly solved by using a bigger address space.

With the influx of low power devices, implementing distributed versions of many of today's centralized services could be much more fun.

<comment><USER13> I'm torn on the NAT dilemma. One the one hand, it obviously makes point-to- point communication harder. But on the other, for each one of us wondering why we can't ssh directly into a home machine, there are 10 people with insecure machines protected from automated attacks by the box running NAT.

It's probably helped at least as much as it's hindered

<comment><USER7> You are confusing NAT and a stateful packet filter. NAT doesn't contribute anything there, the stateful packet filter does, and a stateful packet filter works just as well without NAT, just that it's much easier to make some services accessible if you want to.

<comment><USER14> >> a stateful packet filter works just as well without NAT

True, but NAT doesn't work without statefully filtering/routing packets, and unlike generic packet filters, the use of NAT is basically a requirement for most people connecting devices to the internet.

The question is: if IPV6 was around 30 years ago and no one ever needed to use NAT to stick a whole address space behind a single address, how would things be different today? How long would it have taken for packet filters to become a default feature on home routers, and what would their default settings be?

<comment><USER7> Routing isn't stateful at all, and NAT doesn't need a stateful filter, it just needs connection tracking (which is also needed for a stateful filter, if you have one).

How common are stateful packet filters on home routers today? I don't really know - thanks to NAT, you can get away without for most attack scenarios nowadays, so I wouldn't be surprised if vendors don't really bother with it. But given that connection tracking doesn't seem to be that difficult with home router hardware, I would have expected stateful packet filters in home routers as a default feature early on, with everything inbound blocked by default (and then some UPnP like protocol for opening ports as needed, just without the stupid address collisions you get with NAT).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The internet has proven to be quite resilient. So there's not much to be changed. I can think of:

* More security baked in by default.

* Quicker implementation and standardization of features the market demands -- so Java, Flash and ActiveX could be avoided.

* Lesser reliance on central nodes (nameservers, etc), with a larger emphasis on a network of peers, which dynamically grows with actual need.

* Oh and somehow fix domain system. I don't think there's any value that domain squatters provide to the network that don't have simpler alternatives.

<comment><USER16> Honest question on your last point: What would you offer to prevent the somewhat dark-market forming around the limited number of meaningful identifiers? Using non-meaningful identifiers worked with phone numbers when they were bound to a region, but the web is global so I suppose you would not be happy with something like newprotocol://europe.germany.berlin.101010.servicename ?

<comment><USER17> I would use the GNUnet name system:

[https://gnunet.org/gns-implementation](https://gnunet.org/gns-implementation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think anything designed by committee could match the flexibility and resilience of the currently evolved system. The current internet works because its been evolving in-situ for 20 years, reacting to problems and vulnerabilities as they occur. Anything starting again from scratch would be broken at first and then also need to go through a long period of evolution.

<comment><USER19> But the internet was designed by a comittee...and guiding its evolution as you call it:

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

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

And I am sure DARPA and whomever worked on the original networking protocols would horify you by their style of design by comittee...

<comment><USER18> But are the things that actually got used and flourished the things that the committee expected?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Now that encryption on the fly of web pages adds virtually no overhead to the loading of a website, we could build encryption right in. The SSL business if one of the main pain points on the Internet: a more decentralised system could be designed to know whether to trust remote servers or not, effectively removing the certification authorities from the equation (CA are an — almost — single point of failure and make a lot of profit from that monopoly).

The SPDY spec and the HTTP2 draft have a lot of good ideas too regarding the implementation of the communications.

</comment><comment><USER21> More separation between message encryption and identity verification. ie. something better than the CA system and "untrusted certificate" warnings.

I realise these are actually SSL criticisms but oh well.

</comment><comment><USER22> RINA is a possibly solution to a number of problems.

[http://csr.bu.edu/rina/about.html](http://csr.bu.edu/rina/about.html) [http://irati.eu/nextworks/](http://irati.eu/nextworks/)

The theory has been around for ages but it's starting to gain traction with a prototype stack released recently.

[http://irati.github.io/stack/](http://irati.github.io/stack/)

</comment><comment><USER23> 1\. DNS has some problems. I dislike some of the ways ICANN works and squatting is a real problem. Right now some of the problems of DNS are getting remedied but the influx of new TLDs is causing its own problems. I think that "Internet 2.0" will consist of a broadcast oriented, more than likely free and in some way federated DNS system.

2\. The HTML/CSS/JavaScript stack is a mess. HTML as a technology is a sack of warty dicks that has evolved in far too many ways to properly define its use. CSS has slowly grown to encompass all sorts of things (because your HTML at one point was supposed to be semantic), but there are still very basic things that are unreasonably hard to do with CSS that were quite easy to do the wrong way with HTML. JavaScript is a fine language, but has become a bastardized do- everything language in ECMAScript 6 for no other reason than it's the only language you can use directly in the browser.

</comment><comment><USER24> Append only; the ideal internet would never forget. Persistent databases such as Datomic make that feasible. Websites would be views on top of those DBs. APIs would be a thing of the past as we'd just subscribe to a service's public dataset.

Homoiconic; code would be part of the internet. Views on datasets would themselves be stored in a persistent database. Clients would simply subscribe to the code feed and can update automatically, while still being able choose to run old clients, apps er even just particular versions of functions.

Conversational; interactions between services consist of exchanges of immutable data between services (just like conversations.) I publish some code; you publish your interactions with that code. I publish a question; you publish an answer to that question. This has the added benefit of being able to map it onto existing encrypted communication protocols like OTR.

</comment><comment><USER25> A User Protocol (UP). It would be similar to IP but specific for each user. Basically, a user for all your devices and webpages. It'd be managed on the browser-side and synced across devices. A User might have and use several profiles, much how you can send emails with several "from" or when you browse in private mode.

It would basically delete all the throw away accounts that we have to do nowadays and the security risk with repeating passwords. It might even get rid of email as we know it since you could do communication user to user.

Development nowadays

\- Mozilla's Persona: [https://login.persona.org/](https://login.persona.org/) getting adopted slowly.

\- Facebook/twitter/linkedin/etc login apis. Not ideal since you are tied to the place.

Pros: emails and communication, p2p, payments, development time (no difficult login).

Cons: stolen id = stolen life, privacy

</comment><comment><USER26> The "improved version of the phone network" metaphor is the exact reason why we should thank our lucky stars for the Internet we have today.

If a global architecture of this scale were to be planned out today, every nation would have its own competing standard for civilian oversight. There would be dozens of competing commercial standards...and Sprint would change theirs every 24 months.

Copyright interests, ISP billing meters, Computer A only working with Network A...all these things would be a part of an Internet designed from the ground up instead of what we have today.

The Internet certainly has its warts, but at least it's gotten us this far.

</comment><comment><USER27> I would have gone to Berkeley and swayed the decision to use 48bit ipv4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEEr6dT-4uQ#t=2067](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEEr6dT-4uQ#t=2067)

</comment><comment><USER5> (1) IPv6, and anyone implementing NAT for it should be set on fire. Or alternatively, go back in time and make the original IP 48 or 64 bit instead of 32.

(2) IPSec implementations that work well, and are used from early in its history. Encryption should be the norm, not the exception. It's arguable that if this were done right SSL, SSH, etc. would not be strictly necessary.

(3) IPv6 mobility designed in from the start too. Nobody thought mobility was going to be this common. With a mobility protocol you could have roaming IPs, which would be really valuable for a lot of situations. There are standards for this but nobody supports/uses them.

Other than that, I think the Internet got _most_ things right the first time. Doing more in the core would be second system effect. Anything beyond what I described above should be transport or application layer.

Multicast would be nice, but I think it ought to be implemented in L3 or above (e.g. network virtualization, BitTorrent). Multicast at Internet scale baked into the core would probably be too much cost for not enough benefit... unless someone came up with a _really_ great way to do it without introducing tons of DDOS vulnerabilities and complexity.

</comment><comment><USER28> Bernd Paysan is trying to do this with his net2o project: [http://net2o.de/](http://net2o.de/)

</comment><comment><USER29> IMO the greatest change would not be in tcp/ip and below, but in http and up. If you had no knowledge of the current web, and I would pitch you html, css and js, you'd probably think it was a bad idea. Why would you use interpreted scripts over binaries if speed is mission critical. First you encapsulate your data in a markup language only to be parsed/converted back by the receiver, ridiculous. It also lacks semantics to make dynamic web applications readable for machines, not to mention the XSS vulnerability in the markup language that would make server side application unnecessarily complex. What a weak proposal, would never work.

<comment><USER30> I agree, there aren't that many problems in IP compared to the www stack. Imagine if we had bytecode instead of Javascript, the web would be years ahead in terms of being able to create games, video editors, etc. and other high performance apps in the browser. Javascript has basically become a poor substitute for an actual assembly language.

<comment><USER31> I actually disagree. I think the "view source" menu item probably helped the web evolve faster. I think the trade-off made tons of sense at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think it's pretty clear we need to separate the "document" aspects of the web from everything else. HTML and CSS are really useful technologies for dealing with text content, but they're only one tiny part of what the web is about now. Conceptually, building web apps with HTML and CSS just does not make sense, and almost necessitates using some clunky framework built on top of JS. (And I'm not JUST talking about Facebook and the like. I think most websites with a nav bar count as "web apps", in a sense.)

Perhaps this will involve building the layout and plumbing of a website using straight (sandboxed) code, and then filling in the content using the same old HTML (or Markdown) and CSS. If the site has no content — if it's an online tool like a file converter or an uploader, for example — you could omit the HTML/CSS part altogether. Think UIKit: build up your view controllers, your tables, your data sources, and your nibs, and then provide the content in the form of HTML/CSS like before. (Of course, you don't have to work like this if you don't want to. Just throw up a blank view and keep working in HTML/CSS/JS if you prefer.)

(Yes, you can create a blank page and populate it with JS today — and indeed, this is what frameworks like Ember do — but you'd still using divs and the like to do it. I think this is backwards. We shouldn't be using a text rendering engine to produce web apps; we should be using web apps to host text rendering views. In other words, Ember should exist on the top level, not the bottom.)

One question that will let us know if we're on the right path is, "Can we make websites that feel just as good as native apps on mobile?" Not just "good enough", but so good that nobody will even think to write native web apps ever again. Same responsiveness; same support for gestures and touches; no more misclicks and accidental navigation.

Fundamentally, the web is for content, so it'll always be vital to be able to do things like hyperlink to arbitrary pages and open multiple links in succession. But now that most of the web's content is inside these overarching web apps, and also that websites are being used for purposes other than content, it's important that the tools we use grow along with the web.

<comment><USER33> If you use react.js and rcss you will be able to build your whole app with just js. Well organized and modular. No html, no css (not directly, of course. You still have to fix css issues).

<comment><USER32> Yeah, I added a comment about that. It's true that web frameworks essentially work like this, but I still think it's massively backwards that we're building web apps by using JS to manipulate a text rendering engine and not the other way around. In my opinion, this is one of the primary reasons why web apps never feel as good as native.

To look at it another way, this means that HTML and CSS are sort of the web's "layout and appearance bytecode", and they're pretty mismatched for that purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> John Day, a protocol and ARPANET developer, answered this exact question most completely and wonderfully in his book "Patterns in Network Architecture: A Return to Fundamentals" [1].

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Network-Architecture- Fundamen...](http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Network-Architecture-Fundamentals- paperback/dp/0137063385)

</comment><comment><USER35> Some form of content-centric networking ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_centric_networking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_centric_networking) ) would be good to help up publishing and broadcasting over the internet, and eliminate the slashdot effect / reddit hug of death.

<comment><USER36> I wasn't familiar with the term, but that looks terrifying from a net neutrality standpoint. Deep packet inspection wouldn't even be needed to sort traffic, no?

Also, making the network content-aware to a greater degree gives me nightmares of bloated XML / WS-I style schemas making their way into core specs.

That said, your points are a definite need with the size of the modern network (and the order of magnitude difference in traffic spikes). Imho, it'd be great to have a more formalized caching system, whereby the server could tag content as recommended-cache (core page content) or not (comment threads) & invalidate asynchronously if it became necessary.

I'd be interested to see what we could do with SSDs / future technology with feasible latencies to assemble such a system.

Hypothetically, there's no reason it couldn't be incentivized via a peering- style agreement: e.g. I cached and served X amount of traffic that you didn't have to, therefore you'll pay me Y% of the cost of you serving that traffic yourself (where Y < 100% & it still makes sense for both parties).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So much was got right the first time round, that I would assume we would fail whale if we tried to redo it - in the end the internet was amenable to evolution - and that is how it should proceed, from where it is now.

I know it's now in the spirit of your question - but everyone else seems to have answered those well (DNS, https, routing at AN)

</comment><comment><USER38> Not sure about web vs internet, but content-addressable sounds like it could potentially be a big win. Particularly if you factor in encryption, it would be pretty great if static assets + signatures could be more easily + globally cached, while encrypted personal content could go in separate packets closer to what we currently do.

</comment><comment><USER39> \- the URL notation <proto>://<bla> should loose the //

\- changing the IP address or having other temporary interruptions (e.g. train in tunnel) should not force me to re-open all my SSH sessions

I have no idea what that means from a technical POV though.

<comment><USER40> But the // is useful.

[http://stackoverflow.com/a/2216721](http://stackoverflow.com/a/2216721)

<comment><USER39> Yes thats a good point, protocol-relative links are useful, but IMHO they don't necessarily depend on the "//". If URLs would look like "http:google.com/bla", a different syntax would have been invented instead, e.g. ":google.com/bla".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> In addition to RINA (mentioned below), also check out [http://www.ccnx.org/](http://www.ccnx.org/)

</comment><comment><USER42> No ads.

Instead, an easy-to-use and affordable micropayment system, something like flattr (but with an option for paid-only content), that can be used by Internet users to pay for content, maybe as a part of the ISP subscription.

The cynic in myself outlines a world full of pay-to-win online games, but I suppose people will learn about them and they will vanish sooner or later anyway.

<comment><USER43> I actually don't mind ads anymore - more specifically, targeted ads - as long as they don't auto-play sound or get in the way. I'd rather see a few non- intrusive ads relevant to my interests, instead of paying for content myself.

I used to find ads annoying and intrusive. Maybe I'm becoming subliminally subservient to my advertising overlords, but I like to think it's the targeting that makes a difference. Also, the fact that they've become less intrusive, and I have the option to skip ads not relevant to my interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The IP address of a computer should never be known. It should be impossible to ping a computer directly. DNS servers should be the proxy who get requests and fetch data on behalf of a client. They cache and mask DoS attacks. Clients and user-facing machines only communicate with proxies

<comment><USER45> This "solution" is about on the same level as saying that you just have to pour more stronger lasers into a bigger thicker metal cage that contains hydrogen in order to obtain fusion reactors. That won't get you the pressure and temperatures you want yet? MOAR LAZOR!

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> No browsers. Just a package manager and applications for different things.

</comment><comment><USER47> Urbit is trying to answer this question. Have a look [http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/12/a-brief- int...](http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/12/a-brief-introduction- to-urbit.html).

</comment><comment><USER48> !) Sessionless web 2) BaseN (quantum) 3) <>Internet

</comment><comment><USER49> Just one thing : no Javascript pretty please :-)

<comment><USER50> Or perhaps just a more mature Javascript?

<comment><USER49> I think I could probably live with something like Typescript, but really between JS and me it's a purely subjective matter.

I'm sure if I put my heart to it I would come to love JS (you know like in Stockholm syndrome ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The web would be semantic.

</comment><comment><USER52> QML EVERYTHING</comment>


Kids in US can't read analog clock - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIe2auW9EMI <comment><USER2> I once had a clock that runs backwards, i.e.: counter clockwise. There are so few clocks in the wild, that after a while I realized it was the only analog clock I saw regularly. Not only that, but I became used to the backwards rotation, so that when I did see an analog clock, I had to re-adjust so I could read the time!

</comment><comment><USER3> print on nearest PS printer:

      %!PS-Adobe-3.0
      %%Creator: Toby Thurston
      %%Title: (Pages of pedagogical clocks)
      %%CreationDate: (2014-02-14)
      %%BoundingBox: 12 12 600 780
      %%Pages: 1
      %%EndComments
      << /PageSize [612 792] >> setpagedevice
      %%BeginSetup
      /clock {
          /mins exch def
          /hour exch def
          /r exch def % radius
          /cr r 100 div def
          % draw the minute marks
          12 { .5 setlinewidth 4 { 6 rotate r 0 moveto r 20 div 0 rlineto stroke } repeat
    	   2 setlinewidth     6 rotate r 0 moveto r 20 div 0 rlineto stroke } repeat
          % numbers
          /fontsize r 0.14 mul def
          /Helvetica findfont fontsize scalefont setfont
          /s 2 string def
          /rr r 0.9 mul def
          1 1 12 { /n exch def /theta 90 30 n mul sub def
    	       /st n s cvs def st stringwidth pop /dx exch 2 div neg def
    	       rr theta cos mul rr theta sin mul moveto dx fontsize 3 div neg rmoveto st show
    	     } for

          % draw hands (unless hour is negative)
          -1 hour lt {
    	  gsave % hour hand first
    	  90 60 hour mul mins add 2 div sub rotate
    	  newpath
    	  0 2 moveto
    	  15 cr mul  3 cr mul 33 cr mul   0 cr mul 50 cr mul  3 cr mul curveto
    	  55 cr mul 15 cr mul 60 cr mul   0 cr mul 76 cr mul  0 cr mul curveto
    	  60 cr mul  0 cr mul 55 cr mul -15 cr mul 50 cr mul -3 cr mul curveto
    	  33 cr mul  0 cr mul 15 cr mul  -3 cr mul  0 cr mul -2 cr mul curveto
    	  closepath 0 0 .677 setrgbcolor fill
    	  grestore
    	  gsave % minute hand on top
    	  90 6 mins mul sub rotate
    	  newpath
    	  0 2 moveto
    	  15 cr mul 3 cr mul 33 cr mul 0         50 cr mul  1 cr mul curveto
    	  65 cr mul 3 cr mul 83 cr mul 0         97 cr mul  0        curveto
    	  83 cr mul 0        65 cr mul -3 cr mul 50 cr mul -1 cr mul curveto
    	  33 cr mul 0        15 cr mul -3 cr mul 0         -2 cr mul curveto
    	  closepath .635 0 0 setrgbcolor fill
    	  grestore
          } if

          % finally do central dot (to cover starts of hands) and outer band
          .5 setlinewidth
          0 0 moveto 0 0 r 20 div   0 360 arc fill
          0 0 r 1.07 mul 0 360 arc stroke

      } def

      /emptyclock {
          /r exch def % radius
          /cr r 100 div def
          % draw the minute marks
          12 { .5 setlinewidth 4 { 6 rotate r 0 moveto r 20 div 0 rlineto stroke } repeat
    	   2 setlinewidth     6 rotate r 0 moveto r 20 div 0 rlineto stroke } repeat
          % numbers
          /fontsize r 0.14 mul def
          /Helvetica findfont fontsize scalefont setfont
          /s 2 string def
          /rr r 0.9 mul def
          1 1 12 { /n exch def /theta 90 30 n mul sub def
    	       /st n s cvs def st stringwidth pop /dx exch 2 div neg def
    	       rr theta cos mul rr theta sin mul moveto dx fontsize 3 div neg rmoveto st show
    	     } for

          % finally do central dot (to cover starts of hands) and outer band
          .5 setlinewidth
          0 0 moveto 0 0 r 20 div   0 360 arc fill
          0 0 r 1.07 mul 0 360 arc stroke

      } def

      %%EndSetup
      %%Page: 1 1
      %%BeginPageSetup
      /pgsave save def
      %%EndPageSetup
      297 480 translate
      120

      (%Calendar%) /IODevice resourcestatus {
          pop pop (%Calendar%) currentdevparams
          dup /Running get { dup /Hour get exch /Minute get }{ 0 0 } ifelse } { -1 -1 } ifelse

      clock
      pgsave restore
      showpage
      %%Page: 2 2
      %%BeginPageSetup
      /pgsave save def
      %%EndPageSetup
      50 -55 translate
      4 {
          5 { 0 165 translate % a page of clocks for learners
    	  50 rand 12 mod rand 60 mod clock
    	  % line underneath
    	  gsave [1 3] 0 setdash 50 neg dup 1.8 mul moveto 50 2 mul 0 rlineto stroke grestore
    	} repeat
          146 5 165 mul neg translate
      } repeat
      pgsave restore
      showpage
      %%Page: 3 3
      %%BeginPageSetup
      /pgsave save def
      %%EndPageSetup
      75 -55 translate
      4 {
          5 { 0 165 translate    % whole multiple of five minutes only
    	  45 rand 12 mod rand 12 mod 5 mul clock
    	  gsave [1 3] 0 setdash 50 neg dup 1.8 mul moveto 50 2 mul 0 rlineto stroke grestore
    	} repeat
          146 5 165 mul neg translate
      } repeat
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      %%Page: 4 4
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      75 -55 translate
      4 {
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    	} repeat
          146 5 165 mul neg translate
      } repeat
      pgsave restore
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      %%Page: 5 5
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      75 -55 translate
      4 {
          5 { 0 165 translate    % empty clocks
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      %%Eof</comment>


The Secret of Billions - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jaltucher/the-secret-of-billions-4a42b256eb7#.1b5xc3lr0 <comment><USER2> "Insider Trading: But basically, if you know information that is private ("Company A is buying Company B") then you are not allowed to make money on that information."

I see this misconception all the time & I'm really surprised to see it in this context. The sine qua non of "insider trading" is being _an insider_. If I know of a merger because I overhear the parties talking about it in a restaurant, or I've hired private investigators to see who's visiting who's offices, there is no issue. There has to be some relationship that obliges me to keep that information private. The only way markets work is by surfacing "private information".

"The essence of stock market law in the US is this: every transaction has to have risk in it. If you eliminate risk by, for instance, paying for information that nobody else knows, then you have committed a crime."

That's just completely wrong. If I hire a satellite to track car dealer inventories, buy Ford as a result, and make a ton of money, I'm doing my damn job. No one has committed a crime. Ditto if I sell that data rather than trading on it directly.

<comment><USER3> The SEC prosecutes people for trading on privileged information.

They also prosecute people for trading linked securities.

Everything you wrote was wrong.

[http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/insidertrading/cases.shtml](http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/insidertrading/cases.shtml)

You see friends, hackers, recipients of information, and more charged, successfully.

<comment><USER4> No, he wasn't wrong. You can trade on nonpublic information. From [1]:

 _" The Supreme Court said in 1983 that people who trade on confidential information can be prosecuted only if the insider reaped a benefit from the leak."_

The convictions in this case were recently overturned:

 _" With Nvidia, the disclosure began with an employee in the company's finance unit who provided earnings numbers to a friend, who then passed the information to an analyst. The information made its way to Newman and Chiasson through the same circle of analysts involved in the Dell leak....Prosecutors said the information earned $4 million for Newman's fund and $68 million for Chiasson's."_

Of note: _" In overturning the convictions, the appeals court said prosecutors needed to show that the person disclosing the information received a clear benefit -- something more than the nurturing of a friendship...The appeals court also said the person being prosecuted had to know about the benefit."_

In short, the only way to be convicted of insider trading is to directly pay off someone inside the company for the inside information.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/insider- tr...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-05/insider-trading- cases-imperiled-as-top-u-s-court-spurns-appeal)

<comment><USER5> I know at least once case where the insider (a famous Ohio State professor) didn't profit, but his friends and relatives made $1M on his tip. He still got 5 years in prison. [http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2005/12/12/daily...](http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2005/12/12/daily33.html)

<comment><USER4> He and his friends probably took plea agreements. There is nothing that says the feds can't pursue bad cases, and if you don't take it to trial, then you go to prison. But according to the most recent rulings, there are only very limited circumstances where someone can be convicted on insider trading.

<comment><USER6> > There is nothing that says the feds can't pursue bad cases

It's unfortunate that there isn't something that says that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Insider trading increases the speed with which information is encoded into prices and thus speeds up price discovery, which is the core function of the market.

But it does so by creating agency problems. Either directly or indirectly, the information being traded on in these schemes comes from people who work for the shareholders of the company. A particular problem is that insiders can profit both from the wins _and losses_ of their employers; it's the magnitude that matters, not the sign.

There's already a lot of evidence that company insiders, particularly in management, will routinely harm their employers for their own personal benefit (see, for instance, abusive stock buybacks). It doesn't seem smart to create new mechanisms for that to happen.

<comment><USER8> Insider trading, as it is actually enforced in real life, only rarely inconveniences true insiders like CFOs and board members. Rather, the public's prosecutors typically concentrate on "outside insiders" like celebrity homemakers and golf buddies of golf buddies. One could speculate on what motivates this preference of prosecutors.

Informed trading is a prisoners' dilemma, in which loyalty to "the pact" distorts markets while defections from it make information public. As you observe, C-suite reptiles benefit most from informed trading. Please note, however, that insider trading laws actually _increase_ the benefits they receive, by punishing "outside insider" defectors. Eliminating this ill- conceived and inconsistently-enforced law would actually decrease the advantage that management takes of owners of public stock.

<comment><USER7> My impression of this is that, like most issues of prosecutorial equity, this simply traces to the difficulty of making a case versus the rewards (yes, primarily to the prosecutor, but in theory also to the public in the form of deterrence) of actually winning the case.

We also tend to forget that prosecutors are only supposed to be bringing cases that they are certain they can win. Criminal prosecutions aren't speculative.

Finally, people like to point at the Martha Stewart case as evidence that prosecutors are celebrity obsessed. But Stewart was swept up in the earlier prosecution of several other people associated with ImClone.

<comment><USER8> For other crimes, we accept various imperfections in the judicial system. After all, murder is really bad, and the facts that some murders go unsolved while others are pinned on innocents don't cause us to reconsider our laws against murder. The imperfections don't make the problems posed by murder worse for _everyone_ than would not enforcing the laws at all. (Convicted innocents are an important exception, but let's set them aside in this discussion.)

I consider insider trading laws to be of a different nature. As mentioned above, these laws create a situation in which naive investors suffer more harm and self-serving executives reap more gain than they would in the absence of these laws. Without insider trading laws, new "inside" information would set off a race on the part of all knowledgeable insiders to profit from that information, thereby quickly informing the broader market. The positions of public firms would be much clearer, to every investor. Investors could still gain or lose money in the market, but executives could no longer structure their investments and incentive packages over the medium term so as to profit most directly from their inside knowledge.

In this new more permissive regime, I'm sure some executives would attempt some straight-up shareholder robbery. But the speed required to succeed at such schemes would make their actions obvious to the investing public, to prosecutors interested in charging more prosaic crimes like fraud, and to tort lawyers interested in breach of contract. After a time we'd have at least some executives who had been incentivized toward honesty enough to actually become generally honest.

<comment><USER9> I have been thinking of anti-discrimination laws. Not all kinds of discrimination leave evidence. I have a feeling that they should be restricted to certain job categories. Similarly, sexual harassment leave evidence more often, but this don't mean they are worth the costs. I have been thinking of this Ask HN for example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's the idea with sounding important: short sentences. It makes you sound urgent. Even knowledgeable. Don't believe me? Throw in a question. And then answer it. Exactly.

But the big gun, to hold in reserve?

New.

Paragraph.

</comment><comment><USER11> Showtime "Billions" is probably the smartest show so far this year (maybe before Mr.Robot S2).

Fun background info: even though the author denies it, the show is loosely based on Steve Cohen of SAC Capital (now family office Point72, after insider trading charges from US Attorney), who the author had a short encounter with. And the "career coach" psychiatrist in the show played by gorgeous Maggie Siff bears resemblance of the famous psychiatrist Ari Kiev floating on the SAC floor.

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/showtime-s...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/showtime- s-billions-greed-is-gripping)

[2] [http://nypost.com/2015/08/14/embattled-hedgie-inspires- showt...](http://nypost.com/2015/08/14/embattled-hedgie-inspires-showtime- series/)

<comment><USER12> Except Bobby Axelrod doesn't have a "Billionaire Pig" which gets to live in it's own room and retire on a vegan farm: [http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-cohen-did-have-a- pig-20...](http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-cohen-did-have-a-pig-2015-6)

<comment><USER11> maybe that's what Lara's vegan farm (for her farm-fresh restaurant) is based on??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd love to make a small change to the English language. When speaking of speculation and rent-seeking activities, don't say "make money", say "obtain money". Reserve the term "making money" for activities which create value.

Just try it: how successful and glamorous does your rich banker friend seem when you describe him as an obtainer, rather than as a creator of wealth?

<comment><USER14> Speculation actually does deliver value. Whoever sold to the speculator gained value - they got rid of some risk, and gained enough cash to make it worthwhile. The speculator might also deliver value to whoever they sell to, particularly if the speculator lost money on the deal. Plus they provided liquidity, which sounds like BS until you need that liquidity (eg, try selling a house in a slow market)

Banks deliver value too, unless you prefer to do all your transactions in cash that you pull from under your bed and you never need a loan for anything.

Rent-seeking is indefensible pretty much by definition, although I think people tend to perceive many things to be rent-seeking that actually aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How hard is insider trading to catch, really? I'd assume a high level conversation between two executives over golf and bourbon is pretty damn hard to audit.

<comment><USER16> Yup. Cigars, Masons, Yacht clubs, Golf clubs, vacations to Ibiza. There's an endless list of rich only completely private locals. If people can just keep their damn mouths shut then it's all good.

And I would suppose that there's an acceleration with wealth, right? Like a cosmological constant of wealth gap, reset in some places every once in a very rare.

<comment><USER17> Isn't the extreme upper end of a progressive tax code essentially an understanding that "look, if you're making this many multiples of everyone else's income, you're probably doing something illegal. So help fund the military / social welfare and we won't prosecute you"?

 _Edit_ : I realized I didn't use the most accurate language. "... you're probably doing something _unfair_ " would be a better characterization.

<comment><USER18> It doesn't even have to do with making a lot of money. Everyone breaks laws every single day. It isn't a question of 'if', it is a question of 'when'.

Did Bill Gates 'break the law' by essentially creating a monopoly? Technically yeah, but is that really a law anyone actually cares about?

<comment><USER19> Creating a monopoly is not illegal, it's illegal to use monopoly power to damage opponents.

<comment><USER20> > Creating a monopoly is not illegal

No, read section 2 of the Sherman Act.

> Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or > conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the > trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall > be deemed guilty of a felony

The only legal form of monopoly is one that comes into existence without anyone intentionally creating it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Being hedge fund psychologist seems to be much safer bet than being a trader.

Regardless of market direction - you always win (a stressed clientele with reasonably deep pockets).

<comment><USER22> A form of selling pickaxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> 5 years ago Altucher advocated not buying stock as lead into buying his system:

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/10-reasons-you- should-n...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/10-reasons-you-should-never- own-stocks-again/)

Last year he started selling a system for buying stocks:

[http://www.timothysykes.com/2015/09/the-best-new-stock- marke...](http://www.timothysykes.com/2015/09/the-best-new-stock-market-tool- with-6-month-money-back-guarantee/)

[http://www.thealtucherreport.com/one- percent.html](http://www.thealtucherreport.com/one-percent.html)

<comment><USER24> is James Altucher just another charlatan?

<comment><USER25> And he'd be the first to tell you that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm calling bullshit on this guy being who he says he is (a former hedge fund manager) based on the following two passages:

"I would estimate 90% of hedge funds commit crimes along the way."

No way. It's a material number, but it's not 90%. Even if the author is using "hedge funds" here to refer to "long-short equity hedge funds"; the latter are often quite sketchy and operate close to the line in terms of hiring consultants who basically traffic in insider information. But the 90% estimate is asinine hyperbole.

"The 20% is the percentage of profits that the hedge fund manager takes. So if a one billion dollar hedge funds returns 10% (about the same as most mutual funds on a good year), then the profits are $100 million and the hedge fund manager makes an extra $20 million for himself (20% of $100 million)."

NOOOOOOO NONONONONONO.

The 2/20 fee structure gives GPs 20% of the carry _above a specified hurdle rate_ that is usually in the mid-high single digits. So, in this example, if the hurdle rate were a relatively industry-standard 8%, the GPs would have earned $4mm. Not $20mm.

<comment><USER27> There are several things that give away that he is unlikely to have been a real hedge fund manager (oh well, maybe he managed $5mm of friends and family money, but that does not make him a pro!), but what he says on the fee structure is not one of them: several hedge funds would have the standing to claim 2/20 (or even more) without hurdle rates.

A tiny fraction of hedge fund managers would be infringing any laws, if at all. Excluding the over-the-counter markets(!), the better you are as a hedge fund manager, the more you know what can make you money, what can lose you money and which of your decisions were wrong and which were right: there is no room to blame it on other people doing insider trading.

<comment><USER26> Interesting, I'm not familiar with any funds that have no hurdle rate whatsoever. I've heard of some that have what people in the industry describe as arrogantly low hurdle rates (like in the 3-4% range), but have never heard of a situation where there is none at all.

I agree with you that there might be a few funds that are considered so hot that their GPs could get away with not having a hurdle rate; do you know of any by name?

FWIW, my understanding is that if you're a super-in-demand fund, the power move is keeping the same hurdle rate in place (maybe even raising it as a demonstration of confidence in your skills as a money manager) and also raising the carry rate.

In other words, going from a 2/20 structure with an 8% hurdle rate to something like a 2/33 structure with a 10% hurdle rate. I believe a few of the Tiger baby funds have done this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well, one of the secrets is this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspan_put](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspan_put)

Which is a form of subsidizing speculative bubbles.

</comment><comment><USER29> These colorful exposés by jaded ex-financial insiders are all the rage, and I'm not saying Wall Street rules/ethics aren't important to talk about, but it's easy to ignore more fundamental processes. The Fed, with the touch of a keyboard, writes money into existence out of thin air, purchasing securities with it. It amazes me that so few discuss the ethics of where the money comes from in the first place.

<comment><USER30> I have noticed that any comment on HN that mentions the Fed's money printing gets downvoted to hell quickly

<comment><USER25> Funny, I've noticed that most comments about "the Fed's money printing" are ignorant, paranoid nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Maybe I'm jaded, but reading this I came away a little disappointed at not learning anything much. A lot of the behaviour seems strange, and yes, a little crooked. But "evil"?

I think a better explanation is hidden in this phrase. The authour writes:

>> Trading is very stressful. I hate it. I would make a bad trade and I would feel my blood pumping all over my body all day long. And then if the trade was a loss I would cry at night. I was so scared all the time. I hated it.

On one hand it makes me feel a little better that this happens to even successful people. But on the other hand, you cannot be a trader with this kind of attitude.

Suffice to say that not everyone has the same problem. Sounds to me like he's justifying his own actions in retrospect, at least a little. Does recounting a grab-bag of fun anecdotes say anything about the real problems in finance? I like James Altucher a lot, but I expected more here!

</comment><comment><USER32> Excellent article. Loved the informal style!

If you haven't already watched "Billions" [1], it is an absolutely thrilling show. I was uncertain about it after the pilot, but I continued because of my experience with Showtime's "The Affair" [2].

I did not regret that decision. It is in my opinion the second best show of last season, after "Fargo" [3] of course.

[1]: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4270492/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4270492/)

[2]: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699110/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699110/)

[3]: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802850/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802850/)

</comment><comment><USER33> >> And if you can't make it there, as the song sort of goes, you can't make it anywhere.

The song sort of goes the complete opposite of that :).

If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere. It's up to you, New York, New York.

</comment><comment><USER34> The section "Hedge Fund Compensation" was very simple and clear, yet a really effective explanation of the problem with current incentive structures.

</comment><comment><USER35> The US Attorney is widely believed to be loosely based on Preet Bharara. This is a good recent profile: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/09/the- man-who-ter...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/09/the-man-who- terrifies-wall-street)

</comment><comment><USER36> Some investors like Calpers, biggest pension fund in the U.S., are falling out of love with hedge funds. [http://wolfstreet.com/2016/04/21/whats-hammering- hedge-funds...](http://wolfstreet.com/2016/04/21/whats-hammering-hedge-funds/)</comment>


Ask HN: Which Terrible Products/Services Have Succeeded? - <AUTHOR> As in, which poorly made, poorly thought out products or services have ended up becoming wildly successful because of either good marketing, brand recognition or simple ability to understand their target audience?<p>Any examples? Cause if we've discussed great products that failed and better ones that failed due to a lack of marketing (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19625319), we may as well discuss the opposite too. <comment><USER2> The Discovery Networks and ESPN. These are successful because they understand their target audience are a handful of cable companies and have managed to avoid the unbundling of their undesirable overpriced offerings from all but the literally means-tested "basic" cable packages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lunchables and other nonbiodegradable-packaging-heavy, minimal-content products.

</comment><comment><USER4> Atlassian products

<comment><USER5> Uh, why do you think they are horrible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> linkedin</comment>


We need more PyCon US 2013 submissions - <AUTHOR> http://pydanny.com/we-need-more-pycon-us-2013-submissions.html

<comment><USER2> Who still uses Python you ask?

Easy!

This Year: <https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/>

Last Year: <https://us.pycon.org/2012/sponsors/>

And I've got about 14 more pending for 2013 :)

There's some big names there. I know there are more. Almost every company listed there is hiring there, both on the site and at the on site jobs fair:

<https://us.pycon.org/2013/sponsors/prospectus/>

Join us.

<comment><USER3> "Almost every company listed there is hiring there, both on the site and at the on site jobs fair"

It's true. That's how I got my job at (2013 Gold sponsor) TrueCar, back in 2011. It's a great event to attend, just to be around that many like-minded folks.

I was actually on "Startup Row" and wandered around a bit during talks when the exhibit hall was empty and was asked if I'd like to work two blocks from the beach. The line worked.

Speaking of Startup Row, do you have plans to run that again this year? It was great to see all the young companies using Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who's never given a speech at a conference before, but is very interested in sharing his newfound knowledge and love of Python, is there anywhere people would recommend reading up on the form or content of such a proposal?

Thanks!

<comment><USER5> The PyCon site has a page of advice that links to sample proposals and relevant blog entries: <https://us.pycon.org/2013/speaking/proposal_advice/>

<comment><USER6> This is a much better answer than mine above :)

<comment><USER4> Either way, thanks to both of you. I appreciate the guidance as a relatively new member of the community.

And with any luck, you'll see me at PyCon this spring!

<comment><USER7> I'll echo Simon - just submit a short proposal (I've posted 3 :-). New speakers are encouraged as they help the community to grow. Consider adding a Poster Proposal as a backup so you could still talk about your subject even if you don't get a speaking slot. The Poster sessions last year were huge and very good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> PyCon is still my favorite conference by a long shot. I did think that 2012 felt like it was losing some of the community vibe, with evenings dominated by big sponsor events instead of BoF sessions, but in a way I guess that's a good problem to have.

<comment><USER9> I felt the same way for 2012

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some people want to talk but aren't sure what to talk about, so what were your favorite topics from last year? Some of mine were:

* Sketching a Better Product

* Building a Robot that Can Play Angry Birds on a Smartphone

* RESTful APIs With Tastypie

* Documenting Your Project With Sphinx

</comment><comment><USER11> How many is enough? Is it encouraged to spam with many presentations to see if any stick? I submitted one tutorial, three talks...

</comment><comment><USER12> I just watched Robert Hancock's talk on coroutines [0]. More of that or him would be awesome!

[0] <http://lanyrd.com/2011/pygotham/shppw>

<comment><USER13> BTW, anybody interested in python coroutines should go read the greenlet source. It's pretty readable, well commented, and is the best way to get your head around what's happening to the stack when you do a coroutine switch.

[https://github.com/python- greenlet/greenlet/blob/master/gree...](https://github.com/python- greenlet/greenlet/blob/master/greenlet.c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Gosh, it seems like Pycon 2012 was just yesterday. I considered contributing to PyCon 2013 but time just flies.

</comment><comment><USER15> Python is dead.

<comment><USER16> If a language is not making the front-pages of /r/programming and Hacker News much it does not mean that it is dead. Maybe just not as "hip" or even "hyped" as it used to be.

<comment><USER17> Python makes the front page here almost every day. I think this thread is being trolled.

<comment><USER18> Yes, by 2 accounts created about 20 minutes ago for the purpose. <https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=leopy> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=darmon>

<comment><USER19> Might be time to put a 24 hour wait period on allowing comments. You know, to let them think about what it is they're about to post.

<comment><USER20> In that case, make it a year?

<comment><USER19> Why not ten years?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Who still uses Python?

<comment><USER22> Google, NASA, Intel, AMD, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Canonical, Red Hat, Amazon, Netflix, and thousands upon thousands more.

<comment><USER23> Facebook as well.

<comment><USER24> I'm sure Python is used prevalently at Facebook, but if you search their career page for 'Python' you get zero results.

[https://www.facebook.com/careers/search?q=python&locatio...](https://www.facebook.com/careers/search?q=python&location=)

If you search for 'PHP' you get goose eggs too. Does anyone know if language names are intentionally filtered out of career searches at Facebook? 'GIS' and 'Logistics' work as search terms.

<comment><USER25> (Work at Facebook, but not on this system, and know nothing about it.)

It looks like the search matches on job title/position, and not content. That does seem a bit unexpected.

In general, Facebook does not place much emphasis on programming languages that people know before they start at the job, and part of the Bootcamp process includes the expectation that people will be learning at least one language they don't know (unless they already know C++, Java, PHP, and Python at a production-code-writing-ability, and then they'll have to learn our libraries anyway).

We obviously discuss the languages we use and what we use them for during the hiring process so that people know what they're getting themselves into - people might be looking for something familiar to ease themselves into it, or they might be looking to explore a new language when they start.

(Yes, we use Python for a bunch of stuff. And I know we had a few people working on talk abstracts for PyCon to try meet the deadline that explore a few ways we use it.)

<comment><USER24> Great answer. Thanks. Hopefully I'll get to see some of those talks at Pycon.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Abusing Python exceptions to turn a recursive function iterative - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/razimantv/1b33d4a090a5bc9ed94928012b37c3f0 <comment><USER2> Abusing python can really save your life sometimes. I think my favorite recent hack has been accessing and MODIFYING callers variable, due to inability to get it passed through the Django module to the callback.

      def invite_accepted(sender, email, **kwargs):
          import sys
          caller = sys._getframe(2)
          request = caller.f_locals['request']
          request.session['invite_accepted'] = True

<comment><USER3> I love how _everything_ is available at runtime. Python's "we are all consenting adults here" philosophy has been super useful in a pinch.

I was monkey patching an external library in JavaScript today, rather than having to fork the thing for one slight modification, and thought about this philosophy again.

<comment><USER4> Monkey patching is something that you should know _how_ to do. And then learn _not_ to do.

Monkey patching is how you get into situations where the order in which libraries get loaded causes software to unpredictably work or break. Or, worse yet, to work reliably on the developer's machine and break in the wild. (Because the external library on someone else's server loads slower for the developer than their local library, and faster for some users.)

<comment><USER3> Never say never. I saved hours on proof of concept code that dies in weeks.

I think you learn _when_ not to do it, which is most of the time.

<comment><USER5> > dies in weeks.

Code can end up living a lot longer than people think it will (see Y2K bug).

<comment><USER6> >see Y2K bug

One of my biggest pet-peeves is how since popular media hyped Y2K up as a potential world ending disaster when nothing happened people thought the whole thing was a myth. When it was not a myth (though it was overblown), it was just avoided because people engineered around it. I can't wait to see how people handle the Year 2038 Problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This isn't abuse.

 _This_ is abuse: [https://github.com/ajalt/fuckitpy](https://github.com/ajalt/fuckitpy)

<comment><USER8> > The web devs tell me that fuckit's versioning scheme is confusing, and that > I should use "Semitic Versioning" instead. So starting with fuckit version > ה.ג.א, package versions will use Hebrew Numerals.

Heh.

<comment><USER9> ה.ג.א is 5.3.1, not 4.8.1:

[https://github.com/ajalt/fuckitpy/blob/master/setup.py#L16](https://github.com/ajalt/fuckitpy/blob/master/setup.py#L16)

<comment><USER10> It doesn't use SV yet (as evidenced by the fact it's stil using Arabic numerals).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I couldn't read this on my phone – it seems GitHub doesn't format Jupyter notebooks on mobile Safari at least. Here's a mobile readable gist: [https://gist.github.com/dfee/00c1d7e70abfdbc3ef03d8ec165a104...](https://gist.github.com/dfee/00c1d7e70abfdbc3ef03d8ec165a1043)

<comment><USER12> Or even better, here it is on the online jupyter notebook viewer. [http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/gist/razimantv/1b33d4a090a5bc9ed...](http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/gist/razimantv/1b33d4a090a5bc9ed94928012b37c3f0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> On somewhat similar note dfsch implements tail calls by essentially throwing C-level exception (the VM contains somewhat ugly C macrology that implements exception handling in C in a way that is somewhat similar to WinAPI's exceptions, this is then used to implement TCO, tagbody and condition system). The implementation is arguably ugly, but the end result is that anything that you can do in scheme code you can also do in C native functions.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've got a sneaking suspicion this is one of those clever, elegant, kind-of- awesome-thanks-python, yet _entirely evil_ things you can, but never actually should do in a production app.

Is there a use case for something like this?

<comment><USER15> Absolutely not.

If you want an iterative function, write one. It's not harder than writing a recursive one (although sometimes a _bit_ less readable).

Writing an iterative function is also both faster than the recursive function, and _much_ faster than the hack.

Still a neat hack, though.

<comment><USER16> Well, sometimes it is harder. Think, any problem related to traversing a tree, or similar problems related to trees and/or graphs.

<comment><USER17> You can just replace the call stack with an explicit stack in your function – that should never be hard, just a bit less readable :).

<comment><USER16> Yes I can see how this makes sense, but I wouldn't say it is easier than recursion! Maybe a good exercise, but when traversing a tree the recursive solution is very easy to understand. The iterate solution ...

Then you have other problems, where the recursive solution is actually not super easy to understand why it "works" immediately (think, balanced paren generation) and going on to create an iterative solution, while not insanely hard, is not something super obvious.... what's your condition to stop iteration, again?

Maybe I'm thinking about that the wrong way, I'd love to learn more about it!

That problem is closely related to tree traversal, anyway, I should fool around with those two ideas a bit more to properly understand.

<comment><USER15> I never said it was _easier_ , I just said it was not much _harder_. :)

Like I said, it is sometimes a bit less readable (tree-walking is a good example of such case), but at the same time, what the code actually does is much clearer. You have no hidden costs, and the code is easier to optimize this way.

You mention a case where you do not fully understand why the recursive solution works, in which case you obviously can't easily write an iterative solution. However, in this case, you are poorly equipped to make _any_ implementation, recursive or iterative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a cool hack. Our project (Stopify.org) can do this transformation on source JS programs and _automatically_ give you heap bounded stacks transparently.

A cool result of doing this in JavaScript is that any language that compiles to JavaScript (python, ocaml, Scala, c++, clojure...) can _transparently_ get heap bounded stacks by just using our compiler.

For some more examples, look at pyret (pyret.org) that also supports heap bounded stacks. (In fact, we were able to strip out the Pyret compiler and just use Stopify to get all these benefits)

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's a neat bit of Python abuse I stumbled across recently... you can define a method to return itself:

        >>> def recurse():
        ...   return recurse
        ...
        >>> recurse
        <function recurse at 0x1083b5f28>
        >>> recurse()
        <function recurse at 0x1083b5f28>
        >>> recurse()()()
        <function recurse at 0x1083b5f28>

<comment><USER20> Id don't know when this us useful.

Also, what does `recurse()()()` mean? What are we looking for exactly?

<comment><USER21> Means "take the function recurse, execute it, then take the thing it returns and execute that, and then take the thing that returns and execute that."

<comment><USER20> Any scenario where it is useful to do so?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I haven't done more than skim the code, but is this basically unrolled trampolining via exceptions?

<comment><USER23> It's a little more devious than that. The key is that the decorator maintains a stack of call parameters, and a map from parameters to results.

When a recursive call happens, it aborts the top-level call, runs the recursive call directly, memoizes the result, and then _re-executes_ the original call. Hence the warning about this only being usable for pure functions.

EDIT: also I just noticed that the map keys aren't the parameters themselves, but their _string representations_. So heaven help you if you try this with a data type whose str() method isn't one-to-one.

<comment><USER24> Better to use the method demonstrated in functools' lru_cache: [https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/3.6/Lib/functools.py#...](https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/3.6/Lib/functools.py#L421)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reminded me of an abomination I made a little while back allowing you to simulate haskell List monad behavior by decorating a generator function. [https://gist.github.com/spitz- dan-l/d305ee410e1393a4df19065b...](https://gist.github.com/spitz- dan-l/d305ee410e1393a4df19065b94d6f51d)

</comment><comment><USER26> My internship (trying to compile graphs into cobol) involuntarily ended up abusing java exception because I didn't know how to write graph rewriting systems, induction and backtracking.. I think my employer never ever used that.

</comment><comment><USER27> I just can't help thinking of [https://blog.codinghorror.com/monkeypatching- for-humans/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/monkeypatching-for-humans/)

</comment><comment><USER28> note to self: python ppl discovered unwind-protect in 2018.

<comment><USER29> Nope, we've had "finally:" (the equivalent of unwind-protect) for decades. And this code doesn't use it.

<comment><USER28> Good. Now discover call/cc.

<comment><USER29> No thanks, it's a terrible control structure. We already have coroutines for doing most of what you can do with call/cc without its problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> OT, but as a non-Pythonista, I very much appreciate the way Python does function annotations. Neat and obvious!

</comment><comment><USER31> Or you could just use generators</comment>


Social engineering 101 (or how to exploit startups) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kobigurk.com/social-engineering-101/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Feel free to ask if you want to know any additional details!</comment>


An Open Letter from Freelancers at Nautilus Magazine - <AUTHOR> https://nwu.org/an-open-letter-from-freelancers-at-nautilus-magazine/ <comment><USER2> As a subscriber, I find it unfortunate that this issue has been dragging along for the past year or more. This is not the first time we're hearing about it. But it doesn't appear that there has been any material change in the situation.

I've stopped receiving my print copies of the magazine. I mind, but I haven't raised the issue because I want the publication to survive and assumed they might be focussing their efforts on more existential threats. As an otherwise happy subscriber, I'd rather miss a couple of paper copies now and let some sort of fundamental business restructuring happen in order to allow for the publication to survive. But I suspect this isn't happening now, at least in an effective way.

I have first-hand knowledge of how similar publications operate. They're kept alive by a publisher who lacks the business expertise needed to do more than keep their baby on chronic life support. It will never thrive on its own, and consequently, never realizes its full potential either.

As a publisher, if it gets to the point where you're so in debt to people who have otherwise contributed in good faith to the business, your livelihood and baby, you owe it to them to admit that you need help. Not help in the sense of asking customers for donations or by having fire sales on subscriptions, as Nautilus has. This is just a way of chasing future debt obligations. Rather, you owe it to them to get help with fundamentally restructuring the business itself.

I'd prefer to avoid speculating too much on why that hasn't happened yet. But I suspect this all boils down to good old publisher control and/or equity. For the publication to have a future, all options should be on the table no matter how undesirable they might be for the publisher.

</comment><comment><USER3> Update and additional context:

[https://undark.org/article/freelance-writers-nautilus- paymen...](https://undark.org/article/freelance-writers-nautilus-payment/)

full disclosure: I work at Undark. We interviewed John Steele, the publisher of Nautilus, this morning, and there are quotes here — from both Steele and unpaid contributors.

<comment><USER4> This is my first time hearing of Undark. It has my attention now.

<comment><USER5> I've listened to their podcast. It is quite good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The magazine is great as a "New Yorker for Sience," but its non-payment of writers is a shame. Moreover, as Jeremy Kun out points below, quality is bound to suffer for it.

I, along with others here on HN, subscribed earlier this year to help Nautilus with its financial difficulties, so it could pay writers. And yet, many writers are still unpaid.

Is there anyone here from Nautilus who can explain what the heck is going on?

<comment><USER7> I subscribed for the same reason 4 months ago and actually have yet to receive anything. Their support advised me they are experiencing "delays" :(

wtf nautilus

<comment><USER8> I've experienced the same problem, for about six months I never received any issues. The entire time I thought there was a mail delivery issue or some other anomaly. It's a shame because it's a great publication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The more I read Nautilus the less I like it. It seemed good initially, and now it feels like bad pop science. Maybe that has something to do with paying writers. I prefer Quanta Magazine.

<comment><USER10> Second the recommendation for Quanta magazine.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org](https://www.quantamagazine.org)

And Quanta is well backed. They aren't going away anytime soon. And unlike Nautilus, they probably won't run thinly veiled submarine pieces for Two Sigma:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been fearing that this would happen. I subscribed around 6 months ago, but have yet to receive a print issue in the mail to date. After contacting support they gave me the runaround claiming delays. Over the last few months the number of clickbait articles and blog posts increased and the hard reporting / science in the main publication has reduced.

Nautilus has been an amazing publication over the years though. My household has subscribed since its launch. It's a shame to see it suffering. The writing staff deserves better. The brand deserves better.

</comment><comment><USER12> I subscribed to the print Nautilus magazine and was supposed to receive my first copy 1.5 months ago. Something is up.

Me - Oct 28:

> have yet to receive my first issue of Nautilus after signing up for Prime. > When can I expect it?

Nautilus - Oct 30:

> Your first issue in our next shipment, which should be mailed out in early > November. Please let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks for > subcribing!

Me - Dec 2:

> I never received my first issue this month. Is it possible that it is still > on the way?

Nautilus - Dec 5:

> We're sorry for the wait, but we are working on our Sept/Oct issue shipment > (the digital version is already available on Prime if you'd like to start > reading it now). Thanks for your patience.

<comment><USER13> I still haven't received the last three issues. Seems like support is responding at least... I should contact them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I saw the writing on the wall when Nautilus had a promotional piece for the multibillion dollar hedge fund Two Sigma as their leading article a couple weeks ago. While at the same time asking for donations to help them remain independent. They apparently are desperate for funds at this point and cant even afford to pay their staff.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you can't run a business successfully* for a year after spending through a $5M grant, then your entire idea might be deeply flawed.

* - Honoring your debts.

<comment><USER16> A magazine in the process of failing that hasn't paid it's writers and editors isn't really news. It is a very difficult business.

I think the only surprise is that it's still going. Didn't problems start almost immediately?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I subscribed to the print version about 6 months ago and I think I've received one issue. I like the articles, but something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

<comment><USER18> I was a subscriber for the last two years, and about 5-6 months ago issues stopped coming. I emailed them a few times and got replacements sent but finally just stopped bothering. Content's gone downhill anyway and it's worth less than my time to track down a partial refund at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nautilus started well, but now it's just another clickbaity content mill. Fancy-looking, polished and with more intricate language, but still clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a remote front-end freelancer I absolutely always charge my clients at least 30% and usually 50% up front for the job that I'm doing.

When you charge client a percentage up front it's beneficial for both parties. We both get invested in the work we're doing and look forward to it getting completed.

<comment><USER21> Most writers aren't in a position to dictate terms, unfortunately. All the freelance work I've done over the years was payable on delivery.

<comment><USER4> As art director at Silver Gryphon Games, I made it a point to pay artists in full after they had completed the work, but before they'd delivered the final full-size version. That way, both sides had some protection.

That's harder to do with writing; you can't really peer at a thumbnail of a manuscript and say "yeah, that looks good, here's your payment." I'd be amenable to a 50 up front, 50 on delivery split for writers, though, if I ever got back into the game publishing business. Just seems sensible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The early releases of Nautilus as a quarterly back in 2014 were the best. I stopped subscribing in 2015 and have since gotten my fix by seeing Nautilus articles here on HN. I remember BJ Novak had a fiction piece [1] in one issue, might have been the same one with the excellent "Bridge From Nowhere" [2] piece by Amanda Gefter. If they can get back to that quality, I'll be re-sold!

[1] [http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/kelloggs](http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/kelloggs) [2] [http://nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/the-bridge-from- nowher...](http://nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/the-bridge-from-nowhere)

<comment><USER23> Not sure when the article about butcher Ding came out, but it's absolutely my favorite whenever I feel like digging it up again. Of course the original story was great in and on itself, but the article really managed to bring the story into today's pace of storytelling.

<comment><USER16> This?

[http://m.nautil.us/issue/10/mergers--acquisitions/trying- not...](http://m.nautil.us/issue/10/mergers--acquisitions/trying-not-to-try)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I really hope the majority of these writers are working somewhere else and are just waiting to get paid for their work. Once you reach to a certain point with these startups, you'll never see any of that money, even if you win a court case or small claims court.

If the money is gone, you just have to live and learn and move on.

source: I've been apart of many startups that went tits up. As someone who got burned really bad in the mid aughts, I've always had my radar up for red flags and troubling signs in subsequent situations with other startups.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nautilus has fine writing and I enjoyed both print and online editions. I assume it is not easy to run magazine like that. So I hope they will resolve this to everyone satisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why can't I set up a monthly donation to Nautilus like I can for my local PBS station?

(No, I'm not looking forward to "we need your support" interstitials either.)

<comment><USER26> I'm surprised there's no monthly donation option, I'd also like to do the same. I don't need the magazine but would happily donate to see it available in more schools and libraries because I want more quality science education in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am dismayed to hear this. I was an early subscriber and the print quarterlies were the best magazines I've ever received. I subscribed for 2 or 3 years but did not renew because live intervened. Now I'm feeling guilty.

</comment><comment><USER28> The concept is great. Perhaps new management is what's needed?

<comment><USER29> Perhaps more customers willing to pay for content is what's needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Our numbers span many time zones, from London to New York, Colorado, Utah, California and Alaska."

Aren't Colorado and Utah in the same time zone? This is a minor bug, but it stuck in my mind and I thought about it through the whole piece.

</comment><comment><USER31> How is the Writer's Union a subset of the UAW? At what point do we consider this Union a monopoly itself. I am sick of their tactics.

<comment><USER32> These writers never got paid for their work, and your complaint is that they have _too much power?_

<comment><USER31> I'm talking about the UAW. Yes they have too much power. It's only a matter of time before they run Tesla out of this country.

As for the writers, I would love to see their contracts. An open letter doesn't mean much to me without any facts to back it up.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: So what happened to Vox? - <AUTHOR>

So vox.com is closing, what happened? Is it mainly used by spammers? Is it too costly to run? Is usage shrinking? If it's still popular with a certain amount of users, I don't immediately understand why it would be closed? <comment><USER2> Vox was Six Apart's social web 2.0 blogging entrant a few years back. I don't know the details, but I'm guessing the following were factors:

* Six Apart already owns/maintains Typepad and Movable Type. So there may have been some product overlap/redundancy (I believe Vox accounts can be migrated to free Typepad accounts)

* Six Apart has already sold off another of their properties, LiveJournal. So Vox may be another attempt to shed and streamline their overall business. In this case they are closing down the service unlike LJ (maybe they couldn't find a buyer?)

* Tumblr and Posterous as well as Twitter have largely "won" the social blogging war (microblogging in the case of Twitter). I don't think Vox ever had the traction of either of those products and in the economic downturn it may be time to cut their losses.

Just my $.02</comment>


Steemit Community Will Launch Hive Hard Fork to Get Rid of Justin Sun - <AUTHOR> https://forklog.media/steemit-community-will-launch-hive-hard-fork-to-get-rid-of-justin-sun/ <comment><USER2> I've been pretty out of the loop in crypto but I am so anti Justin Sun. He's obnoxious, attention hungry, inarticulate, but with enough money that none of those negative traits actually matter to people. The BitTorrent acquisition was sort of brilliant, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could someone give some context as to what's going on here? Is Hive a crypto currency? Why do they want to get rid of this guy?

</comment><comment><USER4> Stories like this always make me appreciate Bitcoin more. Satoshi disappeared without a trace for nearly a decade already and yet the project continues to work, progress and self-govern without a hiccup. That's the ultimate decentralization test.

<comment><USER5> The infamous blocksize debate disagrees that it's been progressing "without a hiccup". It's instead proven that really beneficial upgrades can be blocked by a small number of developers and a large amount of propaganda. This is why Bitcoin fees have been so high.

<comment><USER4> The market, the miners, the developers, the merchants and the users - they all disagree with you.

There's been plenty of time for "the flippening", and yet it seems that more conservative system is valued more than rushed in non-solutions led by conmen.

The BCH split is in fact a perfect demonstration of how checks and balances prevent any constituency from taking over the system. Miners own the hashrate but they don't own the protocol. Miners mine and get rewarded for it. Nothing more, nothing less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I understood barely half of the words in the title. I must be getting old.

<comment><USER7> Some Cryto Currency's Community will Launch a Hard Fork to Get Rid of an Annoying Dude.

What continues to astound and fascinate me is how after all this time we still have so many different crypto currencies. Also, how so many of them manage to retain value after massive violations of trust and failures.

<comment><USER8> Can anyone point to coverage of crypto companies from the perspective of how they make money? I've never really dug into this, would love this decent leads.

<comment><USER7> I'll leave the web searching up to you, but fundamentally crypto companies make money the same way banks do:

\- Transaction fees when you transfer funds in or out of your wallet. (or they buy and sell at different prices which amounts to the same thing in the end)

\- Float on deposited funds

\- A few make money on other transactions or on mining.

The different currencies operate differently so the ways to make money as an exchange vary, but transaction fees are usually the big way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Steem is down -30% [https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/steem](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/steem)

<comment><USER10> It went up 30%?! Wow!</comment></comment>