Exposing Malicious Tor Exit Relays - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.kau.se/philwint/spoiled_onions/

<comment><USER2> You can include or exclude particular exit nodes in your torrc file, syntax is:

       ExcludeExitNodes <node>, <node>, <node> ..

to exclude. to only use particular nodes:

       ExitNodes <node>, <node>, <node> ..

where <node> can be a fingerprint, IP address (CIDR), country code.

Examples:

Use only US exit nodes:

       ExitNodes {us},

Block the nodes listed in this report (we block all of Russia, since listing each node slows down the matching):

       ExcludeExitNodes {ru}, 8F9121BF, 229C3722, 5A2A51D4, E455A115, 02013F48, 02013F48, 02013F48

edit: blocking by IP/range might be a better idea since fingerprints are easy to regenerate:

       ExcludeExitNodes {ru}, 22.214.171.124/29, 184.108.40.206/32, 22.214.171.124/12, 184.108.40.206/32, 220.127.116.11/32, 188.8.131.52/24, 126.96.36.199/32

edit 2: also make sure strictnodes is set to true:

       StrictNodes 1

<comment><USER3> That's not necessary. Most of the relays in the report were already BadExited by the Tor Project. That means that the network consensus has the "BadExit" flag set which tells Tor clients not to select a particular relay as the last hop in its circuit. In fact, by interfering with your path selection algorithm, you reduce your anonymity over time.

<comment><USER4> Could you elaborate on why manually blocking known bad exits is worse for anonymity than letting the network decide this?

<comment><USER3> Manually blocking known bad exits won't really hurt your anonymity but it's also not really necessary as the Tor Project does that for you.

I was actually objecting to stuff like this: ExitNodes {us}. By interfering with your path selection algorithm in such a strong way, you make it easier for attackers to narrow down your path over time (which gives them an idea of which exit relays to monitor) and intersection attacks also become easier. Then again, you might have good reasons to do exactly that. It depends on your threat model, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That is interesting. Most exit nodes that were tampered with are in Russia. I wonder why that is so. I expected that it would more or less mirror the geographical distribution of exit nodes.

<comment><USER3> I'm one of the authors. We believe that the Russian relays are actually controlled by the same person/group. More details are in Section 4.2 of the paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So what's next - how do users of Tor protect themselves from these malicious exit relays?

<comment><USER3> First of all, it's not that big of a problem. While our list looks long and scary, there are around 1,000 exit relays, so the chance of selecting a bad one in your circuit is not high. Furthermore, Tor's path selection algorithm is weighted by a relay's bandwidth for load balancing (one of the many performance/anonymity trade-offs). Many of the fastest relays of the network are run by well-respected people and organisations such as the CCC. Also, the Tor Project "removes" malicious relays from the network (see Section 1.1 in the paper).

Finally, we published our scanner for a good reason: to crowd-source the hunt for more malicious relays :)

<comment><USER7> I've only glanced at the paper and haven't looked at the code at all so forgive me if I'm asking something that's easily answered in one of the two.

Regarding your scanner, is it possible to "set it up and forget it"? I work for an ISP and have plenty of machines and bandwidth available. If I can set this up on a box and let it do its thing without needing to babysit it or look after it constantly, it makes it much easier for others (like me) to help out with the "crowd sourcing".

<comment><USER3> That's a good point. It's not possible right now (unless you wrap it into a shell script) but we want to add some sort of "continuous scanning" option over the coming days/weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some of the attacks might actually be due to ISP misconfiguration or legal (court order) compliance. For instance, The Pirate Bay is blocked by several ISPs and exit nodes in their network would inadvertently be unable to route traffic to that site.

<comment><USER9> Most of the attacks such as HTTPS MitM are _not_ ISP misconfigurations ;)

Indeed, they list the DNS censorship separately:

> We also found exit relays which were unintentionally interfering with > network traffic because they were subject to DNS censorship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great article!

Always mind that Tor relays _can harm you_ [1].

[1] [https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https](https://www.eff.org/pages/tor- and-https)</comment>


McDonald's Staff Denies Physical Altercation With Steve Mann  - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/07/18/mcdonalds-staff-denies-physical-altercation-with-cyborg-scientist/

<comment><USER2> There's a shocker. Employees lied about altercation. Stop the presses!

It would have helped if Mann hadn't blocked out the faces of the "perps". They deserve no anonymity.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Now go away or we shall taunt you a second time." - McDonald's France.

</comment><comment><USER4> Uh, he has it on camera.</comment>


The Antidote to Burnout is Progress - <AUTHOR> http://tomtunguz.com/burnout/

<comment><USER2> I think most the people who write these posts are clueless as to what burnout is. You can give people money, pats on the back, pizza parties but if you run them hard enough they will burn out.

I have been working without rest for a year on a project (<http://www.stremor.com>) that has had huge amounts of progress. It pays well enough, I like the people I work with, we have achieved great things, and we have gotten recognition. So by all these measures I should have no burn out.

I have been burned out several times. You can't do genius level work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks and not burn out. The Addiction to progress I have had me doing 80 and 100 hour weeks. I was burning my self out. Not because my needs weren't met, but because the brain just can't do that much work for that long.

I would sleep through an entire weekend after 2 weeks of 100 hours. But the addiction to progress and the excitement of the work meant that I didn't want to "go play".

What it really comes down to is people have limits. Those limits are additive. If you are at 40% of your financial stress limit, and 40% of your relationship stress limit, and 40% of your Micro-Manager driving you batty limit, then you are at 120% of your limits. And you can run for a while at over 100% but not indefinitely.

Even when all my Career, financial, physical, sexual, and other limits are at 5% if my Hours of intense concentration limit has been hit I will burn out. And so will employees.

The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can maximize the employee output. Every time you push the employee at 150% for 2 days, you need to let them recover at 75% for 4 days.

Burn out isn't a bad thing as long as you can refuel and keep going. It is about managing the sprints, and preventing the burn out from causing failures.

<comment><USER3> > The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the > Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can > maximize the employee output.

I find it ironic that you describe the very real negative effects of burnout, but then describe a recipe for inducing ... burnout.

May I suggest that you read Tom DeMarco's book _Slack_? It specifically addresses what I'll term "operational fallacies" like this regarding knowledge work, and covers making an organization more effective (doing the right work) vs. merely efficient (doing lots of work) by adjusting the character and pace of work.

<comment><USER4> I personally feel that a manger's responsibility to his team is to have enough people so that an individual doesn't have to be pushed to his/her mental limits like this (and also rebuff demands from upper management that go beyond the team's reasonable limits).

It's a difficult balance between one's responsibility to his team members and to the bottom line of the company, but at least for me, a manager (I guess), I like to side with my team. Shareholders can expect a "reasonable return" (like it says in J&J's credo), not "maximum return".

 _"When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return"_

[http://www.jnj.com/wps/wcm/connect/c7933f004f5563df9e22be1bb...](http://www.jnj.com/wps/wcm/connect/c7933f004f5563df9e22be1bb31559c7/jnj_ourcredo_english_us_8.5x11_cmyk.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a little tired of seeing all these posts about what burnout is, and how to prevent it, written by people who doesn't have any experience in clinical psychology.

"Burnout is caused by working and failing". "Prevent burnout by clicking this list of TODO items". Please don't approach these complicated issues from a "this is a trend" angle.

I'm pretty sure there are other, better, and way more complicated reasons why you can feel miserable at your job. Burnout can be linked to a medical illness, malnutrition, depression, etc, etc...

<comment><USER6> I think we're seeing what usually happens after psychological concepts "go mainstream". First they start to get over diagnosed (actually, in most cases, over self-diagnosed) and then they get so overused in the public discourse that almost anybody thinks they can chime in.

For me, the opener captured the problem:

> Burnout is a motivation problem, a listlessness, a defeatist attitude, and > perhaps even a hopelessness, triggered by the lack of progress.

Even a quick glance at wikipedia tells you that the major component in Burnout is _Exhaustion_. Making it about motivation sounds analogous to telling depressed people that they really need to cheer up more.

If your main focus in trying to deal with Burnout is to micro-manage yourself better and track your probably already obsessive introspection on work even closer, the only thing you end up doing is driving the car even faster against the next tree.

Motivation issues might coincide with burnout, they might play into the spiral of self loathing that feeds your burnout. But they are just one of the components that make you _exhausted_.

The main thing you need to do when you are _exhausted_ is to stop and give yourself time to heal.

However:

The author isn't talking about Burnout, he is just accurate in using the term as it is broadly understood. It is reasonably accurate for the early stages of a Burnout. Even the title, citing 'antidote' is reasonably accurate since antidotes are mostly given quickly after a person was poisoned. Not when that person is already deathly ill.

I would agree with you, however, that this article probably does more harm than good. Particularly hand-wavy "...and exercise, diet, reading" in the last sentence do leave a stale aftertaste, making this more blog spam than content.

Funnily enough, it's blog spam around a HN Comment thread. Go figure. Meta article on Burnout articles should surface any day now.

<comment><USER7> And hey, "reading." Since I'm reading right now, I hope to be motivated again RSN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Burnouts come in various forms and one of the symptoms is exhaustion. As another comment already stated a person has a limited amount of energy that can be spent. Working at more than 100% it's possible but consumes a lot of energy.

One of the sources of this energy can be excitement (adrenaline) because you intrinsically like what you are doing or because you get a sense of ffulfillment in completing things. Which brings us back to the antidote suggested by the post. The suggested actions are typical measures for improving one's self-esteem. When one's self-esteem is low one tends to suffer from the same symptoms as exhaustion.

The post suggests that burnout is caused by repeated failure of obtaining success after spending a serious amount of effort and commitment. This however is a classic example of something that induces low self-esteem.

So be sure that you are not primarily fueled by this need for success when working over your max. Because if that is what is giving you energy you will lose it once you have some failures.

</comment><comment><USER9> This guy is completely clueless about burnout. Lack of progress or lack of success lead to depression and not burnout. Burnout is caused by "sprinting" for too long resulting in prolonged exhaustion. "Sprinting" is ok for very short periods of time, but running a (never ending) marathon like it's a sprint results in a burnout. No success or progress can fix that. Plain and simple...

<comment><USER10> Have you ever experienced burnout yourself? Generally severe burnout will result in depression as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of Dan Miller's 7 Areas of Success:

      Career
      Financial
      Personal Development
      Physical
      Relationships
      Spiritual
      Social

As he often says on his podcast [1], you must be making continual deposits of success in every area, and career is only _ONE_ area. For example, if you experience a temporary "interruption of employment status", the first thing you should do is start an exercise regimen (if you don't already have one).

Each one feeds into each other, and I know after a particularly terrible day, I personally feel a hundred times better after a challenging CrossFit workout with friends.

[1] <http://www.48days.com/category/48-days-podcast>

<comment><USER12> Ah yes. A list of less than ten things that must always apply to everyone by which we can measure things x and y and prevent things z and mu.

If you can't do #1, you can do #2 and #3 and feel fulfilled! That's how people work -- _all_ people -- so take my advice! If any part of this happens to work for you, by the way, it's because _I am completely right_ , and not due to the fact that I'm wrapping obvious things in swaths of bullshit to sell or gain subscriptions so I can get more popular and sell more speaking engagements.

Sorry, this just smells like crap.

<comment><USER13> It smells like crap? No, it smells like you have a thing against self-help books. I've never heard about this before but it strikes me as a potentially useful way of looking at personal life a bit more systematically than a simply stated "work-life balance" that everyone uses rhetorically but is rarely defined.

Maybe instead of indignantly demanding "how dare this guy attempt to define me according to his own pop psychology metrics!?" or "this clearly does not work for everyone so it's utterly useless crap!", you could suspend judgement for a few microseconds and discuss the actual content.

<comment><USER11> Thank you! I was thinking along the same lines but I figured I should quit posting since everyone seemed to be attacking me.

Thank you for making me feel like my attempt at a positive message was worthwhile. +1 Upvote from me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Right_. Burnout also happens with success.

</comment><comment><USER15> For outstanding research on the meaning of progress in your work, take a look at "the progress principle" by Amabile and Kramer: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/142219857X/>

Gist: yes, progress is essential to feel good about your work.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's no such thing as burnout, it's really heartache in disguise.

</comment><comment><USER17> Clickable link: <https://idonethis.com/></comment>


10 Tech Movies to Get You Coding Again - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/zpalexander/10-tech-movies-to-get-you-coding-again <comment><USER2> Loved The Social Network movie. But the movie's soundtrack (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) has had the greatest effect on my coding. Still listen to it while working almost every day. Maybe matched only by Sigur Ros's Takk as my favorite Getting Shit Done soundtrack.

<comment><USER3> Ah yes, the movie that replaced Travis Kalinick with a random jealous girlfriend. Still, fiction aside, it was compelling. Sorkin is a master.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That was a great list, kudos!</comment>


Smart Plug Resets Router Until It Works Again - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/when-your-internet-goes-out-this-smart-plug-resets-you-1774424411 <comment><USER2> That's only one of the functions a truly open source smart plug can do. I don't want to advertise, but these are the functions we have been working on:

The <redacted> has many functions that can help you around the house. Device recognition is an important enabler for this. Think about:

1) Identification of an electric kettle: fire can be prevented if somehow the kettle stays on (this happens with a lot of them if you forget to close the lid).

2) Identification of the television: if someone unplugs the television at night or when you're not at home, you might want to know.

3) Identification of phone chargers: remind someone to recharge their phone (especially useful if you use your phone as a wake-up alarm).

4) Identification of a modem: automatically reset modem when anomalous behavior is detected.

5) Identification of the fridge: when you leave the house, everything will be turned off except for the fridge!

6) Identification of devices such as vacuums: if you want to know the power consumption of a vacuum, this should be monitored over multiple power outlets.

7) Identification of lamps: not all lights can be dimmed, your power outlet can automatically detect this for you. The <redacted> can dim both LED lights and normal lights.

8) Identification of electric furnaces and heaters: a furnace or heater uses a lot of energy and shouldn't be on when you're not home.

9) Identification of no device at all: child-lock protect your power outlets; sockets don't need to be on when you're not nearby.

This proximity/presence detection of this device is through BLE.

I think only open-source smart plugs have the future. Let's hope I won't be wrong. :-)</comment>


Awesome GitHub Repository Badges - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bevacqua/awesome-badges?HN <comment><USER2> Looks like it is doing something with shields.io, but hard to know what to make of it without any real README. Also, some of the badges consistently fail to load for me.</comment>


The Last Question by Isaac Asimov - <AUTHOR> http://www.multivax.com////last_question.html <comment><USER2> A perennial favorite:

<http://searchyc.com/submissions/last+question>

<comment><USER3> Yes, but always good for a chuckle followed by a deep thought or two :).

<comment><USER4> I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but The Last Question is what made me become an AI master student instead of a regular CS master student.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read another one after this, "The Last Answer" "<http://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-answer/>

<comment><USER6> I actually prefer this one to The Last Question

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Audio read by Asimov himself: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/113545/The_Last_Question.mp3>

</comment><comment><USER8> As the Cosmic AC was not in space, but "in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy", there should have been no objections to it taking the role of Maxwell's demon and reversing entropy, powering the universe through its hyperspace computational powers.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon>

</comment><comment><USER9> Asimov was a great popularizer of ideas that most people never come face-to- face with in a lifetime. And though some criticize his style, I always find it to be servicable and effective; he stays out of the way of his story.

On a side note: if you enjoy galactic timespanning of this sort, Alastair Reynold's "inhibitors" (a "race" of machines forming the backdrop of most/many of his novels) makes for some fascinating reading from a working astrophysicist. I found myself impatiently reading through the story, trying to get to the next bit of exposition where the Inhibitors are discussed. I wish he'd done even more of this. Ah well.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+can+entropy+be+reve...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+can+entropy+be+reversed)

</comment><comment><USER11> Entropy can be reversed: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluctuation_theorem>

It just happens with very low probability. But even very low probability events have to happen sometime, given enough time.

</comment><comment><USER12> Beautiful.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The story reminds of the Futurama episode where Bender meets god.

</comment><comment><USER13> Truly epic! Nice sunday reading!

</comment><comment><USER14> for those who've never read Asimov, this story is not really his best. his most famous and beefy works are the Foundation series and the Robots series, and highly recommended. They influenced many many things that came after, both in science and in science fiction. you can't call yourself a true SF fan unless you've read at least his main works.

for example: when I read HHGG for the first time, and the parts about the Deep Thought computer, I assumed it was inspired by and/or a humourous tribute/riff on Asimov, because there were so many strong similarities in structure and narrative techniques.

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought that all energy is conserved. That is, if the sun dies, the materials that made the sun are not destroyed as such, thus, the sun can never die nor the universe.

</comment><comment><USER14> ah, the SF master at work. one of my top favorite authors of all time. such a cleak thinker and writer, and teller of so many big powerful stories

</comment><comment><USER16> why is this story so hyped? I thought it was pretty lame.

<comment><USER17> I don't get it at all either. Can someone who found something particularly special about this story please explain what that was?

<comment><USER18> The notion of the sun as the fundamental power source driving the earth was somewhat novel to me. I mean, we all know humanity wouldn't exist without the sun, but I hadn't thought of the stars as the batteries of the Universe before.

<comment><USER11> It may be novel to some computer scientists, but the idea can be found in any introductory ecology textbook.

It resolves the apparent 'paradox' between increasing entropy and increasing complexity of life: life thrives only because of the initial low entropy of the sun.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Universal Music accused of using fraudulent DMCA notices as a negotiating tactic - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/youtube-dmca-takedown-grabs-track-for-eminem-110719/

<comment><USER2> Do we know how much of this is really true? The only actual quotes in here are a pair of vague tweets.

This could be fear-mongering by the anti-music groups, or it could be a stunt to give Skepta more attention/credibility. Or it could literally be false or an otherwise non-story.

Of course, it can be true after all. It just sets off alarms in my head saying "this doesn't seem vetted."

<comment><USER3> "Anti-music" groups? Is there some group of librarians out there trying to hush anyone playing music or something?

We may not know why the complaint was issued, but we know that the artist released it on his own YouTube account and we know that the video was replaced by a copyright notice. Those are all things that any person browsing the web could verify for themselves.

Only the copyright holder or their agent can authorize a DMCA notice, so it's pretty hard to understand why the artists own upload got taken down.

<comment><USER2> Poor wording on my part. I meant anti music _industry_ groups, (all of the RIAA haters, torrent websites, etc.). I count myself among them, although my reasons are a little different.

There were tons of stories about companies (especially TV studios, I believe) where the PR/Marketing team would post stuff to YouTube, and then Legal would file DMCAs to take it down. I believe that was even a part of the lawsuit against YouTube. So, the idea that something similar happened here isn't ridiculous, especially if Skepta thought he had rights to the music he signed away that he did not in fact have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it fair to call this "hacking" the DMCA system? Or should we frown and prefer the more pejorative "exploiting?"

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's really "hacking" the DMCA when you are simply committing fraud and breaking the law. If anything I would call it simple bulling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Earlier submission --> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2785126>

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, that's one way to get someone's attention.</comment>


Luakit: Fast, small, WebKit-based browser framework extensible by Lua - <AUTHOR> https://luakit.github.io/luakit/ <comment><USER2> Just yesterday I spoke with the creator of the Uzbl browser - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbl) \+ [http://www.uzbl.org/](http://www.uzbl.org/) \- who said that out of all the minimalist browsers out there, he thinks Luakit is the best, and even recommends it over his own.

<comment><USER3> I recently switched from LuaKit to Qutebrowser and haven't looked back:

[https://qutebrowser.org/](https://qutebrowser.org/)

The project is actively developed (author recently did some crowdfunding to work on the project full time: [1]), and work is underway to support QtWebEngine as a backend (Blink/Chromium-based rendering engine).

[1]: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qutebrowser-a-keyboard- fo...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qutebrowser-a-keyboard-focused-vim- like-browser)

<comment><USER4> Wow - that's brilliant. I have used firefox + pentidactyl for ages, on and off, but usually end up removing it as it mucks up web dev stuff too frequently.

But this for a daily browser and then firefox for heavyweight stuff looks cool.

Thanks!

<comment><USER5> FWIW, I'm currently trying out VimFX (largely because vimperator has yet to be ported forward to work with latest firefox nightlies) - and while I'm not certain I like all the decisions the project makes (I probably want more of a vi(m) monster) - the project is well thought out, and the decisions are motivated - not random. And it appears a much simpler, more compact and self- contained project that vimperator/pentadactyl (note, I've only seriously looked at modifying VimFX - and the dev documentation is excellent):

[https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx](https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx)

[https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx/blob/master/documenta...](https://github.com/akhodakivskiy/VimFx/blob/master/documentation/tools.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This project has been dead for some time, unfortunately.

As has the more interesting idea the idea of a lua-based mail-client using Luakit: [http://dieter.plaetinck.be/post/luamail_a_mail_client_built_...](http://dieter.plaetinck.be/post/luamail_a_mail_client_built_into_luakit/)

That said I did write a console-based mail-client with lua support:

[https://github.com/lumail/lumail2/](https://github.com/lumail/lumail2/)

<comment><USER7> Why do you think it's dead? Most recent update is 3 days ago.

<comment><USER8> It appears that mason-larobina has ressurected it. There are a bunch of commits then it's nothing until 2014.

<comment><USER9> Yes, there were a few commits recently, but doesn't look like it's suddenly awesome again.

That said, I really have to try it again.

I used to use it extensively (1-2 years ago) as one of my off-browsers (prefer that to profiles) but at some point most bigger websites (like Facebook) were wonky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> there was a talk about the state of luakit recently and the original author has created its dedicated organization and migrated the codebase. So there's some new interests in developing it future, adding webkit2 supports etc. this fork at [https://github.com/aidanholm/luakit](https://github.com/aidanholm/luakit) has seen some new developments on the webkit2 front.

</comment><comment><USER11> The project seems to be quite dead? My favorite is dwb, which is not dead yet (tm) but not that active, too: [http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/](http://portix.bitbucket.org/dwb/)

<comment><USER12> QuteBrowser is a good replacement for dwb. It's [very] actively developed and also uses QtWebkit instead of Webkit-gtk.

[https://github.com/The-Compiler/qutebrowser](https://github.com/The- Compiler/qutebrowser)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've used a number of these lightweight webkit / vim browsers. I really enjoy them but they don't seem to last very long. I've probably used 5 different ones in the past.

<comment><USER14> Same. And I also do this with distros, window managers, etc. I find myself bouncing back and forth between convenience and simplicity - the grass is always greener.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those who prefer simple code along with a simple interface, there is surf [1], a thin C wrapper around WebKitGTK+.

[1] [http://surf.suckless.org](http://surf.suckless.org)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm in love with the hypothetical browser that has the security features of xombrero and lacks GTK.

<comment><USER17> Is xombrero still being developed? I used it for quite a while and liked it but the lack of updates made me think it was probably falling behind on security. Granted WebKit is the biggest part of that.

<comment><USER16> > Is xombrero still being developed?

AFAICT, no. I actually did some work on the build process to sanitise it for fixing some stuff later (use bmake on tree root and use a single platform.h with ifdefs instead of cd $OS && make stupidity, which the author of xombrero seems to like; tested only on freebsd tho), but I didn't have any spare time for that yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It seems rather dishonest to push a few commits to an unmaintained project and then pander for attention on Hacker News.

<comment><USER19> Maybe its an attempt to gain like-minded contributors? I'm certainly interested in pushing the project forward, and wouldn't have thought about it if it weren't for a HN article about it today .. or is HN only supposed to be about the cool, finished, new stuff, always and only?</comment></comment>


Cursory hack – Fake address bar interaction - <AUTHOR> https://jameshfisher.github.io/cursory-hack/ <comment><USER2> Credit where it's due. It seems this is illustrating a sinister use of the original code found here:

[https://github.com/benfoxall/cursory- hack](https://github.com/benfoxall/cursory-hack)

<comment><USER3> Demo: [https://rawgit.com/benfoxall/cursory-hack/gh- pages/](https://rawgit.com/benfoxall/cursory-hack/gh-pages/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless I'm completely getting myself confused then it's doing something I didn't think was possible and drawing over the browser chrome.

Can anyone explain what's going on here.

<comment><USER5> After a first look, it seems like this hack involves setting a custom cursor, which is defined as a canvas image that is 128 px tall. This 128px high image is mostly transparent, and has a fake "cursor" image at the top of it. The bottom of this image tracks your real cursor, and the fake cursor at the top of the image makes it seem like your real cursor is hovering over the browser chrome, when in fact it is ~128px lower than it appears. The rest of the effect is achieved via animating the canvas used for the custom cursor.

In terms of mitigation, it seems like at a minimum custom cursors should never be rendered outside the bounds of the page content.

<comment><USER6> Hello! Author here (along with my inspiration benjaminbenben). This explanation is perfect. And yes, I think the TODO is to not render the custom cursor outside the viewport.

<comment><USER7> Are you sure that is possible?

At least on Windows, i'm reasonably sure all the API does is tell the OS which image to render as cursor and the cursor is rendered entirely by the OS; meaning there's no control over whether the cursor is being rendered partially outside the viewport or not.

Solutions where the browser would have enough control would likely require rendering the cursor by itself, which would impart it noticable input latency.

Edit: Quick addition of a bounding box to the demo: [https://wchristian.github.io/cursory- hack/](https://wchristian.github.io/cursory-hack/)

<comment><USER8> The browser could check whether the cursor image would be painted outside the page viewport.

In this case the browser could create a clipped version of the cursor image and set it as the new cursor.

<comment><USER7> That would be very expensive computationally, and as seen in the padlock, accompanied by latency and jitter.

It would also break the case where pages have legit uses for crosshair style cursors, or cursors that are rotated 180° in order to not overlay contents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So I thought this was just doing something on click (showing the fake HTTPS info), but that it maybe didn't work on newer or non-Chrome browsers, e.g. Chrome 52, Safari 9.1, and whatever bug was fixed there. But then I noticed that it causes really weird interactions at the top of the browser, at least on Mac; if you open the page in either Chrome or Safari and move your mouse towards the address bar, it jumps around on Safari and does a "double take" on Chrome. Really interesting!

<comment><USER10> I'm using Firefox on Windows and it's awfully flickery but it does work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The original linked hack is clever. But this page is just confusing (in Safari on OS X), for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the page _is_ in fact served over https, and if I mouse over the padlock and click it, everything behaves correctly (and even if the page was specially designed for Safari and could figure out where the url bar was, it can't even replicate the behavior Safari has for clicking the padlock because web pages can't show sheet dialogs).

Part of the problem here is the fact that the fake cursor never actually escapes the page on this one. When my mouse is near the top of the page it reverts back to the system cursor instead of the fake one, before it even leaves the frame of the page. The original linked hack worked much better.

</comment><comment> angry-hacker There are several similar reports on chromium project.

All of them are nofix.

<comment><USER12> Really? That is strange, because there is ways this could be exploited... Can you link them to me?

<comment> angry-hacker [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260444](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12260444)

Sorry, I'm on mobile. But several similar reports as the HN link shows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't seem to work in Safari.

<comment><USER14> Or Firefox

<comment><USER15> or on HiDPI

<comment><USER16> Or on Netscape Navigator

<comment><USER17> Or in lynx

<comment><USER18> Confirmed in cURL

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> On both Firefox and Chromium on Linux the true place of the real cursor stay visible (Firefox displays a thin cross, and chromium a light blue star). The menu position of course doesn't make sense in Firefox :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Link to the source on github for anyone else without a view source button:

[https://github.com/jameshfisher/cursory-hack/blob/gh- pages/i...](https://github.com/jameshfisher/cursory-hack/blob/gh- pages/index.html)

It's using a canvas to draw the address bar and adjusting the position every time the mouse moves, but I don't understand the details of it

</comment><comment><USER21> Note: If you have the home button always visible in chrome, or the bookmarks bar hidden, you'll notice that the demo doesn't work properly.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting... Can this 'hack' be used to convince people that, say, they're in a different/secure website when they're in a malicious website? I ask because since the 'fake' cursor is visible even on the address bar, the page must be able to overwrite the pixels there?

<comment><USER23> As this demo is now (and probably even with a lot of work) no due to the vast number of browser chrome (UI, not google chrome) configs. It's also very jittery in the demo. That said there is plenty of room for abuse in clicking things like like/tweet/etc buttons it would appear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Source code: [https://github.com/jameshfisher/cursory- hack](https://github.com/jameshfisher/cursory-hack)

</comment><comment><USER25> Someone should combine this with a "change the address bar url without reloading" in javascript to make it complete.

Edit: looks like it only works on the same origin.

</comment><comment><USER26> Whoa that is a sweet hack. You should have submitted it to Google for a bug bounty. It should NOT be possible to clickjack the browser's address bar.

<comment><USER16> It isn't though. This merely changes the display of the cursor. Go to windowed mode (not fullscreen) and pull the cursor down into the address bar and tabs area to see that this does not prevent access to the address bar. It only changes how you perceive the position of the cursor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Even if that's not able to directly take over the web browser, it's really annoying to have your mouse taken over like that.

</comment><comment><USER28> Before you click on that remember.

Alt + Left

to go back :P

<comment><USER29> For those on mac:

⌘ + Left (go back)

⌘ + W (closes the window)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> On Safari on OS X 10.11 it just blinks the page.

</comment><comment><USER31> in firefox, you can't</comment>


Five Common Rails Mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikeperham.com/2012/05/05/five-common-rails-mistakes <comment><USER2> _Without schema constraints, your data will slowly corrode due to bugs in your codebase until you can't depend on any fields being populated._

Don't tell that to the NoSQL people.

 _use :limit = > N to size your string columns appropriately. Strings default to 255 characters and phone probably doesn't need to be that big, does it?_

Is this a Rails limitation? A lot of DBs, like Postgres, treat all strings as varchar anyway.

<comment><USER3> How big do you think an index on a 255 character string is (at least in MySQL)? And if you're not putting limits on your strings, do you think it's likely you're putting limits on your indexes?

<comment><USER2> I avoid MySQL as much as possible, so I couldn't say in that case. However, according to the Postgres docs:

[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/datatype- character...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/datatype- character.html)

The fixed-size field is actually _slower_ in their implementation.

<comment><USER4> Warning, fixed-size and limited-size is not the same thing. VARCHAR(12) is a VARCHAR which can not go beyond 12 characters, CHAR(12) is a fixed-size string which will _be padded_ to 12 characters.

I'm pretty sure Rails uses VARCHAR (or its equivalent in other DBs) exclusively. But unless a size is specified it will use VARCHAR(255). VARCHAR(16) will enforce a maximum size (through truncation) and may (depending on the database[0]) lead to optimizations by storing the string differently and/or ending with lower row (and table) sizes.

As for TFA, his example using phone numbers is not very good because while there are standard sizes for phone numbers (E.164 allows for 15 digits including a country code of 1-3 digits, giving national number maximums of 12 to 14 digits depending on the country) people usually fuck them up hard (by using the sizes — and formattings — of their home countries), and when adding local formatting conventions it's an even bigger messes (depending on the country, you can have up to half a dozen format characters interspersed between digit groups)

[0] it does not in Postgres: as your link notes, Postgres will dynamically decide how to store a string — in-row or out-of-row for instance — on the spot based on its size. On the other hand maximum string size has an effect on Postgres indexes: b-tree (the default) will blow up on strings beyond 4k chars, and this is _not_ statically checked by postgres, it will blow up while trying to insert a string of more than 4k chars.

Of course if you're trying to index a string column with such sizes using anything but full-text indexes you're probably doing something wrong anyway, but if you're using VARCHAR (which maxes out at 1GB due to implementation details) you _may_ find yourself in that situation even though you're only storing 4-letter codes.

In that case, you're better off using VARCHAR(4).

<comment><USER5> > VARCHAR(16) will enforce a maximum size (through truncation)

Thankfully, real databases won't do that. They will blow up and leave the application to do the truncation.

If there is one feature I want a database to have, it's that I'm guaranteed to read the data back that I stored there.

That also means that if I store "foobar" in a varchar(3) field that I don't want to read back "foo" with no way to ever find out that I didn't actually ever store foo there to begin with.

Storing a 6 character string into a field dimensioned for three characters is an error and not something that would warrant silent data corruption.

<comment><USER6> If you read the PostgreSQL docs you'll see that it only truncates spaces and throws an error if any non-space data is present. Apparently, this behavior is required by the SQL specifications.

So, in your example of storing "foobar" in a varchar(3) field, PostgreSQL will throw an error and not store the data. You could however store "foo " in that same field without any problems and you would get back "foo" in return.

<comment><USER7> MySQL will silently truncate it without throwing an error however. And even when you know about it, you'll still get bitten occasionally and SERIOUSLY kick yourself when you realise the error.

Postgres is better for the little things, but when it goes wrong it tends to be harder to find the reason why. At least in my experience. That said, I'll still reach for Postgres over MySQL these days.

<comment><USER8> _MySQL will silently truncate it without throwing an error however._

It will indeed, for folks that prefer that or haven't looked into enabling alternate behavior. Set STRICT_TRANS_TABLES (for InnoDB) or STRICT_ALL_TABLES (for any storage engine) in MySQL's config and it'll throw the following error instead of silently truncating data:

 _[Err] 1406 - Data too long for column '[some column]' at row [XYZ]_

Does that help?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm interested in point 4: use SQL. Is there a way of doing a find that only returns the primary key value and then do a delete only based on this value _without_ using SQL and only via Active Record?

<comment><USER10> Do you mean something like this?

        ids = Post.where(:published => true).pluck(:id)
        Post.where(:id => ids).delete_all

or this

        Post.where(:published => true).delete_all

    ?

<comment><USER11> You might want to use 'destroy' instead of 'delete', as 'delete' skips all ActiveRecord callbacks (i. e., if you had a dependent: :destroy callback for post comments, using 'delete' would leave them intact)

<comment><USER10> `destroy` instantiates active record models which kind of defeats the purpose of fast deletion :)

<comment><USER11> You are right, well in that case, you would have to delete associated records manually if you didn't add any foreign keys at the db level

<comment><USER9> I'd suggest deleting or dealing with those records anyway, regardless of whether you added FKs! But... if you don't add FKs, you've got bigger issues to deal with :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is Rails as prevalent as it once was, or has something emerged to overtake it for whatever it is that Rails excels at?

</comment><comment><USER13> Forgot 6: Using Rails.</comment>


An Introduction to Domain-Driven Design – DDD with TypeScript - <AUTHOR> https://khalilstemmler.com/articles/domain-driven-design-intro/ <comment><USER2> It's easier to model domains with FP than OOP.

<comment><USER3> Can you provide concrete examples?

<comment><USER4> [https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ddd/](https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ddd/)</comment></comment></comment>


Mobilegeddon is here - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webflow.com/avoid-mobilegeddon-with-responsive-design

<comment><AUTHOR> Check if your site is Mobile Friendly here: [https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile- friendly/](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/)

Hacker News? Not mobile-friendly (Surprise)</comment>


5 Questions with Sam Tarantino, CEO of Grooveshark - <AUTHOR> http://blog.360i.com/social-marketing/5-questions-with-sam-tarantino-ceo-of-grooveshark <comment><USER2> Wow - the second post about Grooveshark to hit the front page today. The other one was deleted by the poster:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7975137)</comment>


Pigeons as Trainable Observers of Pathology and Radiology Breast Cancer Images - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141357 <comment><USER2> Popular Science article about this [http://www.popsci.com/pigeons-can- identify-malignant-cancer](http://www.popsci.com/pigeons-can-identify- malignant-cancer)

</comment><comment><USER3> Direct to the paper: [http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:d...](http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0141357&representation=PDF)

New Scientist article: [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28506-pigeons- taught-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28506-pigeons-taught-to- diagnose-breast-cancer-on-x-rays/)</comment>


Jacob Appelbaum allegedly intimidated victims into silence and anonymity - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/politics/jacob-appelbaum-tor-project-suspension-sexual-misconduct-victims/ <comment><USER2> Appelbaum's response:

[http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1soorlp](http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1soorlp)

Obviously this topic needs to be treated with extreme care, as assuming innocence would be just as damaging as assuming guilt.

Though it _is_ rather interesting that Appelbaum would receive such similar accusations as Assange - especially given his history of gender advocacy and related activism.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Three current Tor employees—two of which agreed to be named on the record—have confirmed that they personally know the authors of the alleged victim statements on the site, JacobAppelbaum.net. Although they continue to maintain anonymity for the authors of the stories, these Tor employees are now publicly vouching for the site's authenticity, which Appelbaum has called into question."</comment>


The best way to learn something? Teach it. - <AUTHOR> http://delw.in/the-best-way-to-learn-teach/ <comment><USER2> This tendency to learn by teaching has also given rise to a class of people who start teaching on their websites and blogs a little too early. They haven't yet got the right intuition, and still try to teach their audience, which leads to wrong assumptions or false answers/ conclusions. Sal is in complete contrast to this, coz he is so well prepared on the subject he is teaching. And he has a depth of knowledge of his subjects which anyone just learning it can't hope to have.

<comment><USER3> I think this is entirely depending on the attitude or mindset you have when approaching the teaching task, at least for technical subjects.

If you're trying things in a vacuum, do not get reviews from people in know of how things work, do not do research past "this seems to work for me, time to disseminate", you will probably be missing on a lot of content.

People who get to the task by actually forcing themselves to learn first, get some peer reviews, go straight to sources and take a broader mindset of "I have to get this right because it costs more time and energy to undo bad teaching than teaching in the first place" might do better. In fact, they might get the benefit of teaching while still having a fresh perspective on a given topic, something extremely lacking with some teaching material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm experiencing something similar.

Many universities have some kind of "teaching assistantship" or "teaching fellowship", that is, they pay students who've already taken the class (or a similar class) to teach and hold office hours for other students.

This was my first semester doing it, and I learned quite a lot on a subject I thought I already knew very well. The thing is, when you have to teach something to someone during a section (or recitation, or whatever you call it) or during office hours, you must be prepared to answer unexpected questions, or explain the difference between two concepts that are very close. Best of all, you must come up with different examples and mental representations of your subject, hoping that one of the approaches will resonate with some students.

Now some mentioned the fact that certain bloggers where going live way too early. Well, my guess is that they can do it because they don't receive real feedback. And no, a comment is not the same as a student telling you that you don't know what you're talking about. You don't want to become a TA to early, lest you make a fool of yourself, and trust me if students can burn you, they will (although most of them are really nice people, they tend to loose patience when confronted with incompetence, as most of us do).

But the process of writing down some kind of explanation in a clear way is still a good thing. Often, when I'm programming and come up with a neat way of doing something, I write a blog post about it, but I usually don't publish it for the same reason many of you mentioned. Publishing a post would require thinking more about the subject, trying different approaches, testing the code for edge cases, etc, etc.. all things I don't have time to do. But it doesn't matter, writing is enough to wrap my mind around the subject.

</comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't agree more. I saw that in two situations:

\- I started blogging recently, and found that having to actually write my thought in an organized way forces me to really learn and understand the topic

\- When I was a student preparing for a competitive exam (one where your rank determines the school you go to and the other students in your class take it "against" you), some people refused to help others, thinking they would beat them in the exam. In fact, I found that helping other actually helps you even more, and overall, the "helping students" fared much better in the exam

<comment><USER6> I restarted blogging as well recently, and found the same thing. I've got a couple of under-documented JavaScript topics that I appear to be blogging about (one just under-documented, one brand new). Only catch is, I don't really know Javascript. I mean, I know it in the "sure I can make that thing bounce around your screen" way, but I've never worked with it on the server side, ever.

Blogging about my progress has reinforced how little I knew. In going to explain a topic, then suddenly realizing I didn't know _how_ to explain it, I just knew how it was supposed to work. This has put a spotlight on what I didn't know, and I find great value in it.

The other upside is that people apparently think I'm kidding when I say "I'm just learning this" in my blog, because I routinely get questions via IRC of a much more advanced nature from people trying to extend what I've taught. I like to help, so I always give it a shot, and usually that means diving into source and learning more -- win/win.

Of course, sometimes I'll go answer a question on something I thought I knew really well, only to find out that I don't. I found out the other day that I don't _really_ know how Django's form binding works. Somebody pointed that out, and now I do.

A sub-topic about this could also be that "Discussing something is the second- best way to learn something." I've never been one of those guys who hung out in chat rooms all day, but honestly, I didn't know what I was missing. Lurk around in #python for a day and I almost guarantee you'll see something you didn't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is something I learned in my Grad. Cert. class when I started lecturing at a University (for a few years).

We retain:

5% from lecture.

10% from reading.

20% from audio-visual.

30% from demonstration.

50% from group discussion.

75% from practice.

90% from teaching.

(above copied from somewhere but there is a lot of information on this subject: John Biggs is a good source).

I would have students lecture classes for me (I would have them lecture to me the day before to make sure they had the lessons figured out).

<comment><USER8> The idea behind your claim is reasonably strong, but your numbers are so imaginary that they actually harm this discussion. There are no universal "rules for learning" like this. If there were, education research would have been wrapped up a long time ago.

Learning is an incredibly complex combination of content, medium, background, strategy, mental state, mental ability, and more, and it varies widely based on subject material. There appear to be some advantages for certain teaching strategies under certain conditions for particular populations, but there is very little research that clearly establishes a more generalizable trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is why I'm a contributor on Stack Overflow.

The more I teach others, the more I learn myself.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a relatively well known technique already. In college, lecturers/professors often deploy it - we students would do the reading & research, then present the topic to the class with interactive questions where possible. (We didn't ever worry about not quite getting it right, perhaps because the prof was there to correct us.) It works fairly well for the actual sub-area you're assigned to work on, but you don't learn so much about your teammates' sub-areas (expectedly). And you learn even less from other teams' presentations, unless you're an excellent learner anyway.

Still, it's a good reminder to take the teaching approach wherever practical.

</comment><comment><USER11> I totally agree that teaching a topic forces you to learn it much better than static consumption.

But... Probably the absolute best way to learn something is have a deadline where you have something to lose.

That's why I have moved to volunteering to teaching training courses whenever I can.. It forces me to learn it better than anyone, and the pressure of losing reputation if you get up and make a fool out of yourself is a great motivator to get it right. When you are done, you find you learned it faster than anyone, and are now the expert.

<comment><USER12> does this mean oral exams are the ultimate teaching tool? Something to loose (bad test score) + you have to be able to think on your feet and respond to questions (which I find broadly similar to teaching; it tests the depth of your knowledge).

<comment><USER13> To some extent yes, but in my ~1 yr recent experience giving oral exams (moved to Europe, coming from the U.S. university system that rarely uses them), I've found that students' personality has a larger influence on the process than I'd like. When oral exams work well they're hard to beat with another method, but the setting tends to favor more gregarious personalities with social confidence, and penalizes students who get very nervous or flustered in that kind of on-the-spot, face-to-face situation.

Being able to handle that setting is also a useful skill, of course, so you could argue it's fair to test. It's not the only useful skill, though, and it's not clear to me if it's being overweighted (even when I actively try not to). For example, in a computer graphics course, there are students who could do brilliant work if you let them sit alone for 60 minutes with a compiler (or with a piece of paper and some formulas), but who don't shine when examined orally, and vice-versa. There are some students who will do well in all modalities, and some who'll do poorly in all, but I think there's a significant number who will do differently depending on whether your exam is a 30-minute oral exam or a 3-hour take-home exam, so that choice really changes what you're testing for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> gives the phrase "those who can't, teach" a whole new meaning...

</comment><comment><USER15> This might be good to way to weed out all the weak points in your thinking - but for a more beginner phase I recommend organizing panel discussions instead.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wholeheartedly agree with this.

However, I think it's weak that the 'best example' is to 'hazard a guess' that Sal Khan learns more from teaching than just reading. There's no actual evidence in that statement, it's effectively just backing up 'I think' with 'I think.' I find it disappointing because I'm sure there are good arguments that could be made for his point.

</comment><comment><USER17> That's so true. I noticed this when I started teaching iOS development (both on my own and at The Big Nerd Ranch). Teaching a subject forces you to see it from many different perspectives, as many as students you have. It still astonishes me the completely different ways each person approaches a same subject.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is notabene part of the model that universities are build on: Students learn from those who know (arguably) the most about a subject matter; those who do research in that area. However that relationship is mutually beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is a point that I take to heart but I find it difficult to make that last step to show others what I've learned out of fear of being factually incorrect. How do you overcome this hurdle?

<comment><USER20> IMO, when you are in a situation where you have to teach, ultimately you realize that you both know your subject material well enough to help out people who are new to the material even if you might get minor details wrong. And in the event that you get something important wrong (it's happened to me, FWIW), people know that you are human-- as long as you're willing to own up and figure out where you are wrong (and actually do have a bit of mastery over the larger material) most students are happy to be learning along with you. The only way to overcome is to actually make mistakes and practice dealing with them. Fortunately, the more you teach, the more you will find opportunities to deal with your misunderstandings of the world.

<comment><USER21> Language-wise, though, while I might know a certain language up to a certain level of fluency, I won't offer to teach that level to someone else. If I'm fluent (or intermediate), I'll have no problem teaching up to intermediate (or beginner) level.

Teaching something to show you are retaining it isn't the best way to go, though teaching something to show you have retained it is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a lot of truth in this article. Most things I remember are bits of information I have had to tell others about. Maybe schools should adopt this technique for helping kids learn?

</comment><comment><USER23> teaching is still a bit different than deeply understanding it. when i was in high school, i always tried to teach my younger sister what i have learned in class when i got home hoping it will help me remember stuff. but over time i found out rememebering is still different than understanding. to understand better, u might have to sit in front of desk alone and put alot of thoughts on what u learn quietly.

</comment><comment><USER24> Oh, definitely. That's how I learnt Japanese. Not sure my students got that much out of it, though.

</comment><comment><USER25> I once heard about 3 levels of knowledge: 1\. Understanding 2\. Remembering 3\. Being able to teach

<comment><USER26> There are many ways to slice and dice what learning and knowledge can be understood as. I'm no expert, but my daily work is in educating youth organisations (Scouting) and occasionally with training leaders for such organisations.

I'm in the school of Bloom's Taxonomy for learning objectives. It goes like this:

1\. Remember

2\. Understand

3\. Apply

4\. Analyse, evaluate and create

This grading goes from the known and concrete to the unknown and abstract. But, as said, there are many ways to look at this. Some say that the fourth point can be separated into three points, other's argue they are of equal level of skill. Just take a look at the Wikipedia article for Bloom's Taxonomy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blooms_Taxonomy>) and you'll see that it even portrays several different perspectives to one (actually two) theory.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Scala connection pool library? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to use Squeryl in a new Scala project. This is my first project in Scala, so I'm looking for a good Scala library to handle connection pooling. Of course I might as well use a Java library. What would be a best fit for SQueryl? Amongst java libraries I'm considering DBCP, C3P0, Proxool and BoneCP, being BoneCP a serious candidate looking at their benchmarks. <comment><USER2> I don't have an answer for you, but a great place to ask this question would be on stackoverflow.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'll follow your suggestion.</comment></comment>


Color Psychology in Logo Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.logocritiques.com/resources/color_psychology_in_logo_design/ Color offers an instantaneous method for conveying meaning and messaged in your logo designs. It's probably the most powerful non-verbal form of communication we can use as designers. <comment><USER2> Of course, these color interpretations vary across cultures:

[http://webdesign.about.com/od/colorcharts/l/bl_colorculture....](http://webdesign.about.com/od/colorcharts/l/bl_colorculture.htm)

<comment><USER3> Yellow increases appetite... now it makes more sense why so many fast food chains have yellow in their logo.

<comment><USER2> And apparently blue has the opposite effect:

<http://www.colormatters.com/appmatters.html></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: At what point am I a useful developer? - <AUTHOR>

I've got about a year of procedural C under my belt, along with two years of Objective-C in the jolly realm of iPhone/OS X development. (Where else?)
I'm self-taught but I can build things on my own. If we look at the spectrum of developer skill as starting at "Cut-and-Paste Crap Cobbler" and ending in "I can write a filesystem," I'm probably about one quarter of the way in. I've imagined, built and shipped code that users have used.
I like the barn-raising feeling when your code starts to mesh together into a working system. Hacking is definitely fun -- enough that I've been doing it for hours a day for the last couple of years.
So at what threshold do I pass into being a useful developer? Is there a way to approach it faster? What do I do with my career once I am useful? Building someone else's boring stuff seems like it would kill the fun I have building things for myself. <comment><USER2> You have a few years of programming experience, and you are aware that that's not a lot. It sounds to me like you are useful _now_.

On a team with more experienced developers, I'd probably have you working with parts of our test suite and the build system. Of course, you'd have to understand object orientation, which I can't assume from your description.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean, maybe I'm talking out of my ass here but can you really learn any sort of software development these days without also picking up OOP? In the beginning I knew OOP existed and was a good idea but it took the better part of a year to really grasp how to make the best use of concepts like inheritance and separation of concerns.

With enough practice, though, it just becomes part of the fun -- building tidily organized systems, refactoring the code into specific objects to iron out redundancy.

I'm weak on TDD, though. I have a hard time getting excited about writing unit tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Useful is a very broad term. My definition would be,once you can take a problem (whether it be your own or anothers) and solve it through code, your useful. Even if it is small, it's still useful

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, okay, that's fair. But what about all the issues of code quality, modular architecture, and anything else that would make you a developer someone else would want to work with?

When I first got started on the iPhone, for example, I could solve certain problems through code, but that code was _crap_. I cringe to look at it now.

<comment><USER4> I would suggest reading a book on "meta" programming. Code Complete would be a good starting point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the guidance. What benefits might I enjoy from meta programming?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates on Charlie Rose - <AUTHOR> http://www.hulu.com/watch/586723

<comment><USER2> US only. So not much video for us here across the pond unless we tunnel our traffic...

<comment><USER3> Here's a proper link: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7120293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7120293)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do small/new startups survive in the SV? - <AUTHOR> I always wondered how do small companies survive in the SV when they need to offer ridiculous salaries ? Lets say you get an investment of 3m$. How do you even pay for all the stuff, offices and equipment, accounting before even starting recruiting ?
I know that co-working offices are a thing but do these small startups heavily optimize their costs when in such financially constrained environment ?
If they offer relatively subpar salaries compared to medium sized companies is it even worth it to stay in the SV? Or do they always aim for the mythical 10x engineer and offer similar salary like everyone else in the valley ?
Do they think that getting a mythical 10x person in SV is better than recruting more people somewhere else ? <comment><USER2> Don't hire employees. If you must, hire remote or part-time. (There's a whole ecosystem in Silicon Valley of folks and/or apps who are willing to be your part-time lawyer, part-time accountant, part-time admin for a much lower fee than a full-timer, and then they work maybe 1 week/year for you and have 50 other clients.)

Most of the tiny startups that actually make it start with an initial product built entirely by the founding team. Once you've got something people like, use, and ideally pay for, _then_ you seek investment and get your $3M or so, which pays for an initial team of ~5-10 employees for a year. By then you'll have many more customers, which justifies a higher valuation and more investment, and so on. And you'll often have actual revenue to extend your runway further.

The track record of companies with entirely non-technical founders that take $3M and try to hire a bunch of engineers to build the product is pretty abysmal. I can't think of a single company that this has worked out for - it's mostly just dumb money being thrown at dumb startups because it worked out for _other_ people, without realizing everything that went on behind the public facade to make it work out.</comment>


ICQ Now Supports IFTTT - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Dimitryophoto/icq-now-supports-ifttt-5a3e6118e03f <comment><USER2> My biggest takeaway from this article is that ICQ is still around.

<comment><USER3> was gonna say the same!

<comment><USER4> uh oh

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://medium.com/@Dimitryophoto/icq-is-back-and-there- are-...](https://medium.com/@Dimitryophoto/icq-is-back-and-there- are-11-things-you-should-know-about-it-b993dddfc234)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the 'John Oliver Effect' Is Having a Real-Life Impact - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3674807/john-oliver-net-neutrality-civil-forfeiture-miss-america/ <comment><USER2> John Oliver's show has honestly taken things to a far better level, dealing with real issues in approachable ways.

The Daily Show is just cluttered with inside gossip about crappy news TV which I don't give a shit about either. Basically, the Daily Show has had a handful of great segments but is mostly straw-man stuff that's kinda nice, kinda meh. Colbert is fantastic but rarely really took on real issues — although his Super PAC thing was superb.

Fact is, John Oliver's show is totally amazingly great. The best of its kind, hands down (says me, someone who basically avoids TV shows and actually has only a modest sense of what's out there).

<comment><USER3> It's hard to cover much substance in 23 minutes or however long The Daily Show gets. I think they understand this and treat the show as a time to make jokes, but use the interview segment to really dig into current events. The extended interviews especially are fantastic because they're so candid, sometimes tense.

If you're just watching Jon Stewart for 12 minutes of news jokes, you're only getting a small taste of what the show has to offer.

<comment><USER4> Jon Stewart is often a terrible interviewer. Especially when he either hasn't found any respect for the guest or when he likes the guest so much they can't take the promotional point of the interview seriously.

In one case he fails to address the perspective of the guest (which means he emotes a lot and asks questions they don't answer) and in the other they more or less just smile knowingly at each other for 5 minutes.

I suppose another way to say it is that much of the problem is that he tends to make the interview about himself.

<comment><USER5> What you say is certainly true when he is interviewing entertainers, but I do think the parent is correct: if he's got a serious guest on and they are discussing an issue Stewart cares about, he really lets them use the time effectively. He mostly stays out of the way and just helps them stay on topic.

Promoting his agenda through guests is his reward, I suppose, for stumbling through so many interviews with vapid celebrities.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the less antagonistic serious interviews go okay. That's why I was so specific about guests that he can't find respect for.

I also don't think he is really stumbling through the celebrity interviews, he's playing himself as above them. When his (lack of) relationship with the guest makes it so that won't work, the interview goes along just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I grew up watching Jon Stewart and occasionally Colbert. I always thought it was interesting how Jon Stewart would defend against his critics by saying something along the lines of "my show is preceded by puppet prank callers (crank yankers), this is a comedy show first and foremost."

That was his defense against people saying he was contributing to news imbalance or accusing him of not doing anything useful to alleviate the problems of biased journalism. He took a hard line (and still does I think) that he was a comic and was not responsible for anything beyond that.

I remember once he had a segment about a 9/11 first responders bill ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM6cvbjZmQE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM6cvbjZmQE)), which may have reversed the course of that bill for the better ([http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/business/media/27stewart.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/business/media/27stewart.html)).

John Oliver seems to have grasped the power of that particular segment and has, in my opinion, drastically improved the form of the political satire. It will be interesting to see how his perceived influence will affect next season.

<comment><USER7> That's part of the reason I never really liked Jon Stewart. He knew he was the primary, if not only, news source for a large demographic; yet, he would consistently hide behind the Comedy Central logo in the bottom corner when he was criticized.

It's like he felt he---and only he---was allowed to turn on and off his "real" journalist at whim.

<comment><USER8> To be clear, you are saying that you didn't like Jon Stewart because, even though he was the _best_ news source, he wasn't better enough for your desire?

<comment><USER9> He's saying there was genuine criticism on bias and presenting stories making light of one side, and presenting the other side too favorably.

Knowing full well that a large number of people looked to him for news, and that his reporting (de facto news reporting, that is, despite him not naming it like that) received genuine criticism, how one can then hide behind the notion that 'oh it's just comedy don't take it seriously' for years and years is a bit disingenuous.

In fairness however, Jon has always said that he is biased and flavored. And that's okay. And add to that the fact that it IS also comedy, it's hard to ask of him to be completely objective. Especially when it's a counterbalance to the media landscape which is COMPLETELY biased one way or another, whether it's Fox News or Democracy Now!. And if you then look at where the ciriticism comes from: Fox News, which isn't comedy but just news, but is worse in its reporting, and is pretty much more biased than anyone in media AND is more powerful and watched than anyone, I can easily see why Jon will look at that and say 'YOU guys pretend to be fair and balanced but aren't, pretend to bring news but it's crap, have responsibility as journalists to be objective but aren't, while I'm admittedly biased and run a comedy show'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article says so briefly, but what makes his show wonderful is the comedy mixed-in with in-depth news research and assessment. It's the kind of thing you'd want or expect on a constant basis from massive, 24-hour news networks, but is either largely absent or lost in the noise. I personally gave to the Society of Women Engineers ([http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/](http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/)) after his show because he did such an effective job of conveying his message. More news programs could learn from him.

<comment><USER11> What I don't get is why it's necessary to have comedy to get people engaged? What is it that news requires the 'chaser' of comedy? I don't think we can attribute it to people being base/vulgar. Why can't a serious, well researched news program do well? Why does there have to be a chaser to make it successful?

<comment><USER12> So I'll put it to you this way, through highschool and university the best teachers or professors I ever had were comedians. Maybe "entertainers" is a better word.

One of them even specifically told us about his strategy before he started his series of lectures. Basically, when people get bored they stop absorbing. Once in a while he will "trick your mind" (i.e. confuse it), and you will pay attention again. To be honest, its why I know as much about operating systems, locks and threads, as I do.

To make this story relevant. Humor is just that, a trick someone plays on your mind.

<comment><USER11> I think you might have a point there. For an instructor I can attribute it to personality or style. They know you a bit and try to engage but broadcast is simplex so i think its something else. I think they're trying to reproduce a type of gossipy jocular delivery of news. Maybe a bit like a town crier but still different.

My feeling is they're trying to seem like they're your friends, so you feel more engaged and listen and don't mind the bias because, you 'know them, and you accept that trait'. The unattached news delivery was not engaging us psychologically (for whatever reason we may need that) so they came up with this new recipe.

Never the less in other countries I've had news delivered pretty matter of factly --with built in biases of course but the news wasn't chased with comedy satire etc. There might have been irony but anyhow there's something about the need for comedy to make it digestible for us

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think one reason why Oliver enjoys so much success is the fact that HBO posts the main news story section on Youtube after every show. The ready availability of these digestible segments helps extend the show's reach. For Comedy Central shows, if you don't watch the episodes on TV you have to use the Comedy Central website or Hulu, neither of which have the appeal of Youtube.

I like Oliver, but Colbert is (was?) still my favorite. I didn't watch him for the news, I watched him for the comedy. I don't think either Stewart or Oliver can match Colbert when it comes to being really really funny.

</comment><comment><USER14> Before Stewart, Colbert, or Oliver the UK had Chris Morris.

Morris created the radio show "On The Hour", which transfered to tv as "The Day Today", and followed that with "Brass Eye".

You really should seek these out if you're interested in news and current affairs satire.

(Morris then went on to co-write "Nathan Barley" with charlie Brooker.)

<comment><USER15> Especially brilliant was the Brass Eye Paedophile Special which satirised the media's obsession with paedophilia at the time so perfectly it did actually change things for the better. After the initial, predictable storm of protest that followed of course. I'd be interested how a US audience would react to that special. I'm sure you can find it easily enough on Youtube.

<comment><USER16> > it did actually change things for the better

{{Citation needed}}

<comment><USER15> Just a personal opinion. I feel that after the broadcast the hysteria dropped off dramatically. Well at least until the whole Jimmy Savile thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone who likes Last Week Tonight should also check out the Bugle podcast Oliver hosts with Andy Zaltzman. Satire at its best: [http://www.thebuglepodcast.com/](http://www.thebuglepodcast.com/)

<comment><USER18> The bugle podcast once made me laugh during my entire commute home (45m) - episode 205 [1].

Andy and John are comedic geniuses.

[1] [http://thebuglepodcast.com/bugle-209-the-bugles-5th- birthday...](http://thebuglepodcast.com/bugle-209-the-bugles-5th-birthday/)

<comment><USER17> Agreed. My favourite's got to be episode 152. The world is indebted to John Oliver for the term "fuckeulogy": [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVb84n-FFx4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVb84n-FFx4)

<comment><USER19> I host an archive of old Bugle episodes, if you want to relive the late 00s: [http://gamesplusone.com/thebugle/](http://gamesplusone.com/thebugle/)

<comment><USER20> I owe you my thanks, I used your site years ago when I first discovered the Bugle and was religiously listening to all the older episodes that had fallen off the Times feed.

<comment><USER19> It was fun to put together, since the old Times Online website lost a few episodes and I had to scrounge them up where I could. I couldn't find episode 54A for months, and in the end, one guy just emailed it to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another key to Last week tonight, besides its length, is also that its not on cable and doesn't have advertisers. I can hurl as much vitrol on specific companies as they possible can without getting sued...

The GM ad was so great: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6IZ2TroruU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6IZ2TroruU)

<comment><USER22> > Another key to Last week tonight, besides its length, is also that its not > on cable and doesn't have advertisers.

It is, in fact, on cable. Do you mean not on _basic_ cable?

<comment><USER21> Ah, yes, Thanks :) I'm not too familiar with the finer points of American tv- distribution

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So _Last Week Tonight_ does longer-form, more in-depth comedy reporting? That actually seems like a terrific mix, and definitely a hole in the market. People want to be entertained and informed, and while _Colbert_ / _Daily Show_ provide good breadth, we need good depth as well.

<comment><USER24> I've watched a good number on YouTube. They are generally longer-form, and get into some more detail. I find them quite enjoyable, but I think you may be disappointed if you go in expecting a lot more depth. I don't think you want your sister telling you that's how she keeps in touch with American news (hypothetically speaking :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd like to express my hatred of websites that deliver content via javascript, requiring me to turf through 20 different scrips to figure out which one I have to enable to scroll the page.

HTML is fine people.

<comment><USER26> Just because you make choices that complicate otherwise-simple things in your life does not mean you should criticize decisions made by people who give you information you do not have to pay for.

<comment><USER25> Noscript is used far more widely then crazy over-engineered javascript based text delivery systems.

I run into a new website with this problem less frequently than once every few months. It's always the same few, like Time, still using their stupid hand- rolled content engines.

It's not my job to cater to special snowflake syndrome.

<comment><USER27> _> It's not my job to cater to special snowflake syndrome._

Oh, the ironing.

<comment><USER19> Yes, "caring about what programs are running on my computer" is a property we should look down on users for having.

<comment><USER26> I don't think we should look down on users for that. I think we should question the sense of entitlement when people change settings and it breaks websites. Websites that people provide to you for no charge.

What I find irritating is when people make the decision to use NoScript, knowing the tradeoffs involved, then are vocal about sites not working. You made the decision, easily reversible, now live with it!

<comment><USER25> This is more to the tune of friendly(if irritated) advice.

Time's website may well be for free, but they want me to buy their paid products, they need to sell themselves to me.

Wanna know how you can make sure your sales pitch fails? Try to deliver it via unverified code that could be doing anything.

Noscript is a standard part of all sensible internet users internet security, for the simple reason that there is no way to know what a block of javascript is doing unless you first capture and examine it.

If your product pitch won't work until I desecure my computer, I guess I'll never see your sales pitch.

Getting mad at me won't change that.

e: Nor will downvoting me :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> His show about World Cup in Brazil was a real eye-opening for a lot of brazilians. It was shared a lot around here and it was the best way available to explain what was wrong with Wordl Cup and FIFA. I don't know about any "real impact" other than making people more informed about what was happening, which is a great deal, as the local media wasn't able to accomplish it.

<comment><USER29> Informing people is the first step to causing any impact on this sort of thing, so that alone is pretty significant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> While he went after the Miss America foundation for its scholarships, there are many cancer and related charities who are just as bad and could do with exposure.

However like how government works, people prefer to not to know and that is very dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER31> "the Miss America Organization is the largest provider of scholarships for women in the world, he directed viewers to donate to other groups he deemed more worthy"

Personally I find John Oliver to be a dick. Things like the above quote and other stories he's covered, where I have some knowledge, shows he's playing up to the internet scream and not the realities of life. It's show business and that alone.

<comment><USER32> Maybe you should research whether or not "the Miss America Organization is the largest provider of scholarships for women in the world". You might be surprised.

<comment><USER31> I quoted the article which stated that fact so if you wish to disagree with the article, and John Oliver apparently, please show what you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> We have always known that peddling feel-good bull __ __that validates our own beliefs and biases gets many takers. I don appreciated JO 's efforts to talk about things like Net neutrality but his arguemnts are mostly plain wrong.

<comment><USER34> I would be interested in seeing more on which of his arguments are plain wrong. The net neutrality one, I honestly don't remember. Pretty much every other show, though. Bloody amazing. The lottery and the wealth gap ones were particularly fun. The Miss America one, brilliant.

<comment><USER35> _The Miss America one, brilliant._

Haven't see the "Miss America" one personally (and I won't) but I can tell you that that particular institution has been a laughingstock for decades. If he has something new to ridicule about it, kudos, but I doubt it changed any already fully-formed opinions from his viewers.

<comment><USER36> That was kind of what made it brilliant.

The Miss America pageant makes some grandiose claims about how they're the world's largest source of scholarships for woman -- 45 million in a particular year.

They showed that

(a) They were using some sleight of hand, and the real number was something like 100 times less than that

(b) That _still made them the largest source of scholarships for women_

<comment><USER8> That's actually a huge misconception, and LWT got it wrong:

Miss America's paltry scholarship program is the largest provider of _women- only_ scholarships.

Many many non-women-only programs give more scholarship money to women than Miss America.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what their claim was though. Like to the dot.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How are monopolies lost? - <AUTHOR>

Speaking about Apple's fall in the 90s, Steve Jobs says: "Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years. That's a long time." [1]
Then he asks: "And how are monopolies lost?", following with his explanation for the phenomenon, which I don't think is accurate, because he bases it on the supposition that monopolies are created by great products, which certainly has not been the case with Windows.
I read somewhere that monopolies are not lost: they become irrelevant. Although I don't know if that is correct either: at Apple's case, what made it loose its monopoly was not technological irrelevancy, but the commoditization of complements promoted by Microsoft[2], which offered a slower, uglier, less robust, but cheaper alternative for the masses, forging the base for the Windows platform that would create a vicious circle, "forcing" users and developers to use its graphical interface.
But I don't have much knowledge about the rise and fall of monopolists, and that's why I would like to hear your answers, besides the obvious answer of governmental intervention.
Do you agree with my theory about Apple's fall? And more generally, what other cases do you know of monopolies that were not lost by technological irrelevancy or intervention?
[1] http://www.businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041012_4018_db083.htm?chan=gl
[2] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html <comment><USER2> By a new technology that changes the nature of the value proposition, for customers.

Warren Buffett seeks monopolies (like Coke). He avoids high technology because of the uncertainty of technology revolutions (they can still happen but _less often_ ; and even less likely to alter the nature of the value proposition - though note that coke, chocolate and chewing gum were new technologies at one time...).

\- Schumpeter's theory of "creative destructionism"[1] shows how innovations can make monopolies irrelevant.

\- Clayton Christiansen's "disruptive innovation"[2] is similar. He tracks the disk drive industry, and notes that incumbents retain their leadership through technology changes - unless they change the nature of the value proposition for customers. ie. no longer more of the same, but different tradeoffs. More precisely: _a change in the ranking of benefits in the customer value proposition._ e.g. Today's shift from HDD to SDD. [ _edit_ : he also predicted the 1.8 inch HDD to rise in a new market that valued its attribute ranking differently - pre-iPod]

\- Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm"[3] is a more concrete analysis about the adoption of innovations. He notes that once a leader is enshrined as the leader, the market actively works to support them, granting them leeway never given to the also-rans. He gives lots of reasons, but mainly it's mainly derived from observation.

This _leadership_ has some of the qualities of a monopoly. It seems to be pretty hard to lose, except when the basis of it changes. i.e. when it "becomes irrelevant".

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter#Schumpeter_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter#Schumpeter_and_capitalism.27s_demise)

[2] <http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/christensen.htm>

[3] [http://www.parkerhill.com/Summary%20of%20Crossing%20the%20Ch...](http://www.parkerhill.com/Summary%20of%20Crossing%20the%20Chasm.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Windows was/is a great product in many senses. Great is not a word with a single application to an OS.

Windows was great in that it allowed multiple hardware vendors to compete on hardware without having to also design their own OS. It was great in that it allowed multiple corporations to market the same platform. And as it grew, it was great in that it allowed developers to write an app once that ran nearly anywhere.

There's a lot more to "great", as applicable to an operating system, than even usability, stability, graphic design. A lot of times the things you value, as a developer, aren't what the general public does. You might want an OS that's very much like Linux but with a much better GUI. Most people just want their PC to cost $300 and run any program they buy or have bought in the past.

So Microsoft's OS was clearly great by far more people's definition of the word than Apple's, and it reaped the rewards.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Windows was great in that it allowed multiple hardware vendors to compete on hardware..."

Well, that is the "commotitized the complements" part.

The other part of your argument is that it is/was good enough for most users.

But let me put the question this way: If had it been 3x more expensive than the Mac, would have it been successful?

If not, then there's a clear distinction between a great product and a great price.

Remember the 3 Ps (Price, Product, Promotion)? Product and price are different things, specially in the software market, where the price doesn't necessarily reflect the cost.

So if people would not buy a 3x more expensive Windows, great product it not the motive by which it was successful.

I think the most accurate explanation in this case is not that Windows was a great product, but as another commenter said, that it offered a better value proposition for the money invested - and Microsoft had not the better product value, but the better price proposition, so they won that equation:

MacOS had a product value of 10, and a price of 5, so the value proposition was 2.

Windows had a product value of 5, but a price of 1, so the value proposition was 5, for each dollar invested.

<comment><USER3> To the average user, if MacOS was a 10, then Windows was an 8. I won't argue that they were playing catchup, but it wasn't that far behind after 3.1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How many monopolies were lost without government intervention? I wouldn't call Apple's OS a monopoly, and even if it were, it wasn't for 10 years since Windows overtook it in 1990.

I'm trying to think of genuine monopolies that faded away without intervention and am coming up blank.

<comment><USER4> Good question. I suppose you'd want to dig around dead technologies... perhaps someone had a monopoly in the wooden wagon spoke business or something like that, that simply ceased to matter as an industry.

<comment><USER5> western union?

<comment><USER4> Still the only way that millions of poor people working in rich countries have to send money home. If I recall correctly, at least.

<comment><USER6> I'm outsourcing to South America and I've been using PayPal.

There were a few other options, as I recall. A service called Payoneer, some others.

It used to be W.U. exclusively, but that's changed in the last ten years.

<comment><USER4> > I'm outsourcing to South America and I've been using PayPal.

Sure, but that's not the group of people I was talking about, who generally go into a physical office, cash in hand, and want to send it somewhere else where someone can go pick up cash. WU isn't a complete monopoly in terms of sending money, obviously, but they still have a big chunk of the market. Actual facts would help the conversation, though:-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> By bad dice luck usually, or by aunt Jane placing a hotel on Park Lane.

</comment><comment><USER8> Stronger substitutes would appear to be a significant factor. For example, the erosion of IE's dominance following the introduction of Firefox and others (although the barrier of IE being pre-loaded onto the majority of personal computers means this dominance will continue for some time). In this case not necessarily new tech, but better tech.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think stronger substitutes (Job's better products) are the correct answer - and as you observed, FF has only scratched IE dominance, not eliminated it.

Better product certainlly have some relevancy, because improving IE (IE7/8) will make it good enough that most people will not need to change, but we will never really know how low IE6's marketshare could go if Microsoft had not improved it - maybe it would still be good enough for most users.

At least, Windows was good enough for most users, even with better alternatives along the history - Next, BeOS, OS/2...

<comment><USER9> And also, don't forget that Firefox has also been around for a long time now... and it still has only barely scratched that surface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Production 2\. Distribution 3\. Consumption

I think monopoly arises when (2) is vendor locked.

</comment><comment><USER11> stagnation and complacency.

<comment><AUTHOR> Stagnation isn't a good argument if you take Coca-Cola into account.

I don't know if Coca-Cola is a monopoly because Pepsi is a close substitute, but they are a leader in market-share in most continents, and if stagnation is what causes the loss of market-share, they would have been gone long ago.

<comment><USER3> They're certainly neither a monopoly nor stagnant. They've pumped out innovative new products over the years (Diet Coke for instance) and continue to do so. They've been an innovator in marketing in their industry.

Even the New Coke fiasco was only a failure to understand what nobody really understood at the time, which is that people don't purchase a soft-drink based on taste. It seems obvious to us now, but who would have guessed it back then?

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant their main product - Coke, which has stagnated as a product for as long as I have lived upon this earth, and yet it is the leader in market share.

But you are right that they have not stagnated on Coke's marketing, although those Santa Claus commercials have been pretty repetitive.

<comment><USER3> Well, it's not stagnant. The formula is (other than the change to HFCS perhaps) but the marketing, which is the true product, is not. What New Coke taught is that people aren't buying a drink for the flavor, they're buying the physical representation of good marketing and the positive emotions that come along with it. They've never stagnated in that aspect.

<comment><USER12> They've also innovated in logistics. You can get Coke in places where there's no running water.

They way I see it, Coke's goal is: 1) to make you want a Coke whenever you're thirsty (that's the marketing), and 2) to make it very easy for you to get that Coke (that's the supply chain/logistics part)

<comment><USER9> To go with the notion that a drink isn't purchased on its taste: Take note that Coke does taste different in certain countries, not the least of which because they often substitute sugars, particularly in Diet Coke. Also note that they even change the name of Diet Coke in many countries; a common one being Coke Light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Monopolies create power and with power comes corruption

and debacle...</comment>


Traffic Jams in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://bit-player.org/2015/traffic-jams-in-javascript

<comment><USER2> So interesting preview but i heard first time about that paradox that seems so logical.</comment>


Are we heading for Darmok? - <AUTHOR> http://hliyan.github.io/2015/07/20/Are-we-heading-for-Darmok

<comment><USER2> Meanwhile in actual fact, analogies and metaphor and similies have been around in human language since, basically, 'forever.' Good enough for Shakespeare, good enough for Jesus, good enough for Aristotle, good enough for us.</comment>