Oh-my-zsh gets big performance updates - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh

<comment><USER2> Since the story link is just to the project github page, here's a blog post from the person who did the performance optimization talking a little more about what he did:

[http://blog.patshead.com/2011/04/improve-your-oh-my-zsh- star...](http://blog.patshead.com/2011/04/improve-your-oh-my-zsh-startup-time- maybe.html)

Here's the exact pull request for that commit, with quite a bit of discussion about why it's faster and why it was done the "wrong" way before:

<https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/pull/269>

Hope that helps anyone else who was curious about exactly what was changed!

</comment><comment><USER3> What does ZSH offer me that I don't already have with Bash? And really, what's the most convincing part? Not just "cool" stuff?

<comment><USER4> I'll admit upfront that bash may well be able to do the following, but what sold me on ZSH is that by installing ZSH and then oh-my-zsh, I had a shell that was doing things that no shell has ever done for me before:

* Fuzzy completion of paths: I now find myself typing things like: scr/mus_ser<tab> and having that expand to script/musicbrainz_server.pl. It feels very natural!

* Interactive tab completion: I now usually queue music with: nyxmms2 add /media/music/<tab><tab><tab> and I can now select an artist using my arrow keys from all the tab completions. This of course works anywhere that you can use completion (ie, filename completion).

* Corrective typing: If I make a mistake typing something, ZSH notices and asks me if I want to correct this: "mv moneyz.csv ~/backups" might say "Did you mean moneys.csv" (assuming moneyz.csv doesn't exist).

* Completion seems to work in so many more places. For example, I can use tab completion with scp and ssh and it completes paths on the remote machine. This is seriously useful.

Like I said, you might very well be able to do all this with bash and other shells. But I don't have to worry about setting it up, because it's all just done for me now.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Switch to zsh today in honor of the royal wedding! ;-)

<comment><USER5> Care to point me to a good "Why you should use zsh, instead of bash" guide / page?

<comment><USER6> I would recommend just taking a leap of faith and trying it out for a few days (with oh-my-zsh, of course). If you're used to bash, you'll probably find zsh very comfortable to use.

It's super easy to install if you're on a Mac and have homebrew installed (just do `brew install zsh`), and oh-my-zsh has an uninstall command that will switch you back to bash if you don't like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just decided to install zsh and use this. My favorite thing so far is how the titles of my screens changes automatically based on the directory I'm in or the server I'm ssh'd into.

<comment><USER8> That should be happening in Bash too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It really is way faster now. I had uninstalled it a few weeks back because command+T would take around a second to be all ready, but now I reinstalled it and I love it.

</comment><comment><USER10> too bad there's no oh-my-zsh selfupdate

<comment><USER6> There is a secret undocumented update command:

      cd ~/.oh-my-zsh; git pull origin master

<comment><USER10> d'oh, could have thought of it. thanks</comment></comment></comment>


How a Fake Island Landed on Google Earth - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/fake-island-landed-google-earth-134221769.html <comment><USER2> This seems to be a harmless case of erroneous old information slipping in because it was not stricken from all maps many years ago. However, it is not unusual for many maps to all contain the same mistake. Cartographers have been known to include small mistakes in their maps to catch people who copy their work. In the past, even if another cartographer found information on a map to be inaccurate, they would not always correct it completely, for similar reasons to why the value of the charge of an electron in Millikan oil drop experiment took years to correct.

<comment><USER3> Google did something similar to prove that Bing was just copying SERPs if I remember correctly.

<comment><USER4> That's right - they seeded nonsense queries with very specific results. Working assumption is that Bing was integrating clickstream data (either from ISPs or from the MSN Toolbar) into their results.

<http://www.wired.com/business/2011/02/bing-copies-google/></comment></comment></comment>


Chernobyl's Radioactive 'Wildlife Preserve' Spawns Growing Wolf Population - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/62964-chernobyl-wolves-spreading.html <comment><USER2> I suppose if I lived closer, I'd be alarmed by the prospect of radioactive wolves roaming the countryside. From a safe distance, this is the coolest thing I've read this week.

</comment><comment><USER3> I misread this as "Glowing Wolf Population", and was unreasonably excited for a second.

The reality is still exciting. That, Radiotrophic fungi[1], and other phenomena also form a sort of a silver lining to the tragedy that brought all of that into existence.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a charity payment API? - <AUTHOR> Is there some way to donate money through an API? <comment><USER2> I thought PayPal had a donate button you could use for charities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, they do. But they do not provide an way to make payments using an API. You have to click and fill it up.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you look for in an internship? - <AUTHOR> I am anticipating a number of internship offers from a variety of companies for software developer roles.
1. What are some important (positive) things to look for?
2. What are some things (negative) to watch out for?
3. Long internship or short term (get to come back to school and graduate a year sooner vs take an extra year overall to graduate but with more experience)?
4. Big company or small startup? All in Canada if that makes a difference.
5. Going back to (4) graduate sooner... take extra year to graduate and maybe fit in another internship next summer? Or is it more valuable career-wise to graduate right after this internship? <comment><USER2> Someone smart taking you under his/her wing.</comment>


Show HN: I made a simple Python/Flask clone of IMDb - <AUTHOR> http://ga-movie-info.herokuapp.com <comment><USER2> As far as I can tell, this is no better than IMDB except for its superior feel of design. Even regarding design most people like to go with minimalist these days.

I understand that this is development version, what kind of search are you using as I could'nt match "grave of fireflies" but got a hit with "grave of the fireflies".

Here are some things that could consider to differentiate from IMDB. Most often the reason I go to IMDB would be for their rating, but the rating system is based on averages with probably some varying weights for the respondents(critics). But what I care more about is not what people have rated, but I would want to know what is the average rating my friends have given or even a certain group of like minded people have marked, this could be a more appropriate way for understanding ratings. This way I would'nt have to go about cursing IMDB every time I watch a movie.

</comment><comment><USER3> I never have too much to say beyond "cool" for these sorts of things. So a few comments to help improve the site is the best I can do.

A little too much motion going on in the background with just enough jitter to give me a headache. It might be better if it could be made buttery smooth or perhaps slower scrolling to try and reduce the jitter? I _like_ the effect you were going for though! It's the smoothness of the animation that causes the problem for me.

"Did you mean?" would be very helpful for searches. I typed "Pupl Fiction" on accident. Movies with more complicated names or tricky-to-spell words might be difficult to search.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I settled on the current speed after showing it to my friends, but it seems like your computer is rendering it in a different framerate leading to the jitter. Do you know of a way I can increase the CSS animation framerate without changing the speed? Otherwise I'll just reduce the speed to reduce jitter.

I have autocomplete on my to-do list for features but decided to _just ship it_ before the scope of the project got out of hand. Thanks for the suggestion.

<comment><USER3> I'm at work so can't help further - but "transform: translateX()" should be used instead of positioning relatively to the left/right for movement. It will make it a _lot_ more smooth. Unfortunately it moves your "strips" over the static background image and breaks the effect. Adding a repeat-x; to them didn't'fix that problem.

I'm sure it's fixable but I can't think of how offhand, and as mentioned... at work. But that should be a good starting point for you. :)

Always good to _just ship it_! I half-figured it was on a to-do list given the nature of the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea, I'll look into it. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why is there no IRC interface for HN? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> #startups on freenode (unofficial)</comment>


More Thoughts on "Enterprise Software's Youth Drain" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.charleshudson.net/?p=378

<comment><USER2> Young people are doing a lot of stuff that could one day be considered "enterprise" software; it's just that the suits that buy these things don't trust them yet.

PG mentions this in his essay on colleges (<http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html>):

"There used to be a saying in the corporate world: 'No one ever got fired for buying IBM.' You no longer hear this about IBM specifically, but the idea is very much alive; there is a whole category of 'enterprise' software companies that exist to take advantage of it. People buying technology for large organizations don't care if they pay a fortune for mediocre software. It's not their money. They just want to buy from a supplier who seems safe--a company with an established name, confident salesmen, impressive offices, and software that conforms to all the current fashions. Not necessarily a company that will deliver so much as one that, if they do let you down, will still seem to have been a prudent choice. So companies have evolved to fill that niche."

Companies used to buy mainframes, because they saw simpler machines as toy computers. Even today, big companies might write a web app in Java when they could write it much more easily in Python, because they see Python et al. as toy languages. Similarly, there are a lot of apps out there, and there will soon be many more, that the market will one day force companies to stop labeling as toys.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why so many "Enterprise vs. Web 2.0" discussions? As if you had to pick one of the other.

The real gravy will be where the 2 meet and the ground will be fertile for the 7 million small business that the enterprise behemoths haven't been able to crack. (Salesforce.com, anyone?)

So once the social networking phenomenon settles down and enterprise software levels off, the real demand will be for people who understand both business processes and modern technologies. Regardless of age.</comment>


CRM nightmare - trialled 7 systems before building our own on top of LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fivehundredplus.com/post/34161150490/launching-five-hundred-plus

<comment><USER2> hey this sounds pretty cool. i hadn't been paying attention to CRM software before but now i need to. this sounds like it could be worth exploring ..

but i wish they had a tour online, a demo, something to see what i would be getting myself into. all i see is a blog post and then a login screen. tour/workflow/screenshots etc should be font and center.

<comment><AUTHOR> The log-in screen is sparse - that's true. We're getting a (possibly slightly biased) 30% conversion rate from it, so it does push people to give it a spin. Same idea as the Twitter landing page. What you get as soon as you log in is a wizard which takes you through the first steps to maximise the probability of engagement.

37Signals wrote a very interesting post on results from their A/B tests on the landing page for Highrise (result, the shorter the better) [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab- tes...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-testing- part-3-final)

<comment><USER2> i'm not sure the same logic applies, to be honest. setting up CRM is a lot more intensive than setting up a twitter account, for example. i think you neglect to take that into account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point - but the whole idea is to create a light-weight CRM system without the tabs (and indeed without deals, pipeline etc). We keep it lightweight enough to be wizard-friendly which means that it's usable without investing too much time in setup. And we still use a traditional CRM for rev. forecasting etc.

<comment><USER2> see, a brief tour or highlight would have helped make that point a lot faster. i have no doubt that you guys have a system worth checking out, but i have to evaluate a lot of solutions quickly.

you haven't yet earned a special place for me to invest a login and/or more than a few minutes of evaluation. you earn that by convincing me you hold value. a tour or an overview would help sell that promise. a login screen does not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Am I entitled to financial info before exercising stock options? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN!<p>I recently left my job at a startup (DE C-corp) in the Bay Area. I have some vested stock options that I am considering exercising. Am I entitled to see any financial information about the company before exercising my options? Additionally, after exercising these options (and holding my equity) what ongoing company information should I be granted access to? <comment><USER2> If the company qualifies for Rule 701, they may be required to give you the Rule 701 disclosure. That document may contain financial information, but not necessarily.</comment>


How Debt Can Destroy a Budding Relationship - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/your-money/04money.html <comment><USER2> I don't think debt by itself can destroy a relationship. Lack of proper communication can. I had under $50k debt from my undergrad (international student, double the cost of tuition) and my wife had none. My masters was being paid by my employer while she would be taking about $80k in loans to pay for her medical masters. We were upfront to each other about our obligations and plans of repayment.

I've paid off almost all of my debt and she will take care of hers once she graduates. Even if we both had 100k+ in debt, it wouldn't make a huge difference to our standard of living. We'd simply be paying off debt instead of adding to our savings.

<comment><USER3> What if you find yourself essentially wedding your way into a mountain of debt? By legally binding yourself to that person, don't you become jointly responsible (and culpable) for their finances, including past debts?

<comment><USER4> No. this is discussed in TFA.

<comment><USER3> At least from what I read, TFA only discussed how the debts relate to divorce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you carry $170,000 of debt without even realizing how much the total amount is, that says something about you, something that may in fact make some people less willing to marry you.

 _Having_ hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is fine. It's a curse of the middle class, at one point or another--a mortgage if not student loans. You're supposed to realize what you're doing when you borrow that kind of money, though. Running up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt without fully recognizing what you're doing seems irresponsible. You're mentally evading your responsibilities to others.

I can't even comprehend the mindset involved in that. How can you spend years paying for anything (even a car!) without even once trying to keep track of where you stand in terms of paying it off?

<comment><USER6> I wonder if it's due in part to an acclimation to residential rent and car leases. I consider myself very financially disciplined, and would never lose sight of the outstanding principal and interest rate of a loan, but I have no idea how much I've paid the landlords of my current rental apartment over the past few years. Like the woman in the article, I don't really fancy thinking about it.

<comment><USER5> That's past expenditure, though. It's not helpful to think about past expenditures too much, because as sunk costs they fundamentally don't matter anymore. It's not useful to cry over spilt milk. OTOH, it's positively uplifting to contemplate the state of having saved thousands of dollars, or having paid down your debts by thousands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> $170k for a bachelor's in _photography_?!?

<comment><USER8> This is why I argue against liberal arts degrees. There are so, SO few people who will ever be able to bring the sort of value required by a degree in the liberal arts _based_ on the skills such a degree would provide that it is completely economically irresponsible, especially now that _just_ having a Bachelor's degree says about as much as having a High School diploma did about 30 years ago.

<comment><USER7> So one of the projects paying the rent this summer was working for a client which markets college degrees. They asked me to crunch some government data and figure out what degrees are worth on a per-major basis. While I'm mostly done and paid (yay), the project isn't live yet, or I'd show it off.

I think they'll be OK with me saying this much: the data do not agree with your conclusion, for any sensible value of "liberal arts."

Now photography, that is another story. My research methodology totally missed it as a major choice, because the obvious occupation (photographer) _doesn't require a degree_. Looking at the BLS source data though, egads, $170k to become a photographer is a bad call economically. The median annual salary (note: for photographers at all stages of their career) is $19k. The overwhelming majority are part time only. If you give generous assumptions as to future income growth, the NPV of being a photographer is $410k.

That compares disfavorably with _every_ degree I actually have in the data set. (Including, most relevantly to her situation, the associate's degree you need to become an X-ray technician, which you can get for less than $5,000. Spend another $10,000 on camera lenses, bam, you're an X-ray technician doing something she loves _as a hobby_.)

<comment><USER9> She's in San Francisco. If she can get regular work at weddings she'll be able to pull down $2000-3000 per gig, and probably more over time. I talked to people who wanted $5-6k -- when I stopped laughing they told me that there are people who will pay it. Weddings are an absurd profit machine.

<comment><USER10> The pricing for a weddings-only photographer is largely based on the number of bookings they will do in a year and their demand. All else being equal, the $6k one is likely in more demand than the $3k one. That demand is almost entirely based on word-of-mouth referrals, which take time to build, so it ends up like any brand -- it's worth more when more known.

The deliverables are drastically different between different photographers as well. The wholesale cost difference between our upper-end album and the lower- end one is about 600%.

I don't remember the article to reference it here, but the current cost of weddings was started largely by the introduction of gift registries. It snowballed from there.

<comment><USER9> It's obviously demand-based, but when I went through this a few years ago, the least experienced people we talked to were asking in the $2k range (this is in SF). Book 30 of those a year and you're grossing $60k. You have to work weekends and there are consultations and other stuff, but it still strikes me as a lucrative job if you can pull it off.

The wedding photographers have some clever ways to sell you more stuff too. Most of them want to retain the rights to the photos that you pay them to take, so they can sell prints to your guests or license them as stock art and stuff. I actually got into a shouting match with one photographer over that -- I insisted on treating the photos as works for hire under US copyright law. One guy had "his and her iPods" that he would load up with wedding pics at the end of the reception. The cost? $1000. Yeah, no thanks.

<comment><USER10> $60k would be great if that were all income, but the majority of it isn't. After everything is accounted for (product cost, equipment depreciation, studio space, updated samples, advertising, etc), the profit amounts to 20-30% of it We spend about $1500/mo here just on studio rent and utilities.

I won't go into your second paragraph, though, because that mostly boils down to a difference of opinion.

<comment><USER11> It seems counterintuitive to simply list cost of rent and utilities when discussing photographers as if no other business suffers the same. It'd be more interesting to list expenses specific to the industry.

<comment><USER12> Yes, obvious standards costs of business, but the post above does the calculation: 2k x 30 = 60k salary. If you're arguing with someone who doesn't have the basics down, that's the place to start.

<comment><USER9> I did say "gross $60k", and I meant something more like "revenue" than "salary".

Obviously there are expenses that come out of the basic fees, but when I was doing this, the people I talked to at the lower end of the cost spectrum seemed to operate without some of the expenses that came up (ie, home studio, little/no advertising).

The point I was trying to make was, wedding photography is competitive but potentially lucrative if you can establish yourself, particularly in markets like SF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if engineers are more susceptible to this situation, often because our occupation doesn't require us to frontload with student debt and it's easy for your salary to escalate within a couple years. In other words, it's very easy to be a programmer in your mid-20s with absolutely no debt. Dating someone whose debt situation is very different than yours seems likely.

<comment><USER14> Unless you're dating a doctor or a lawyer, I can't think of another profession that requires you to borrow anymore than for an engineering degree (i.e. a four year college education).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article asks the question of when individuals entering a relationship should bring up debts. Being a bit more optimistic, and hopefully more relevant to the world of startups, I'd like to ask the opposite question: If you're entering a relationship, when is the right time to mention that you're rich?

<comment><USER5> After you're sure she likes you for reasons other than you're rich?

<comment><USER15> That makes sense to me, but many people advertise their income on online dating profiles, so it doesn't seem to be a universal opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Before opening the article I was expecting an article about US-China relations.

</comment><comment><USER17> Most marriages are economically based, explicitly or implicitly. It's in the evolution instinct of married people to have the best environment to bring up kids, which means financial stability. Having huge debt would make you less attractive since you will make the union's financial situation worse. The other side being significantly well-off often mitigates the problem, so just look for rich people to marry if one is deep in the hole.

</comment><comment><USER18> Okay, simple: how the f*ck do you run up $150k+ in debt and NOT KNOW THE BALANCE? Continually amazed with people.

Makes a good point about the potential pointlessness (and lack of financial feasibility) of higher education. Makes me question getting an MBA.

<comment><USER19> Answer? simple. $150K/4 = $37.5K/year, an average tuition of a liberal arts collect. I went to Lake Forest College, 1hr north of Chicago, and this was their tuition 5 years ago. Did I pay the full-price? No. I got a half-off scholarship for getting a SAT score above 1,200. Simple. I only paid ~ 16K/year (room & board included) for 4 years. But there were people paying the full price. I hope they make good money to pay all that debts.

4 years went by really fast, and before you know it, you're in great debt. I don't think that people are totally irresponsible. Here in the US you were taught to at a very young age to "follow your dream" and the rest would come. For a 18 year old girl or guy, being so young and naive but having no clues about finance and the real cost of money (your life!), of course she/he would make a decision of following their dream. However, undergrad debts are understandable. If you make a wrong decision and can't get a job with a high enough salary to pay back the debt, at least it's early in your life so you can recover. But if you're 25 and want to further defer the real hard life by getting a master degree of something you want (but probably don't need to), and along the way get in tons of debt, then you're financially irresponsible.

Higher education should not be this big of a financial burden for students, but it's pretty profitable and the US education system is still the best in the world, so there's a huge premium to go study here. From my own experience, foreign students make really good and conscious choice about where to go and how to get a scholarship. A lot of my international student friends got full scholarship to top schools, but this may not be the case for every one. But they and their parents really come prepared to pay every dime for a good education that can help hem make the most out of their professional life after graduation. I was too an international student.

My point of view in life is: time is money, debt is negative money, thus you're subtracting time from you life to pay for debts. And that's the real cost of debt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It doesn't matter what's going on outside the relationship, if you're not communicating, it's not working. It really is as simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER21> US medical schools are now going around $70k/year including the costs of living. sigh/lol.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is it applicable at national level? America's debt is 53% of its GDP.

</comment><comment><USER23> To me, this is foreign. If you love somebody, and I mean _truly love_, it doesnt matter how much money you owe, or what judgments are against you.

Those who I have been with (counting 2 now) I would have moved the world for. I only left the first one because I didn't think she even cared I was there (and her actions didnt show it).

If their marriage was a convenient way to get tax benefits and other marriage related tax burden reductions, so be it. Enter as a business arrangement, which is what he seemed to have done without understanding liabilities.

<comment><USER24> Love is a very important part of a relationship, but it's not the whole story. Many times we end up relationships with people who make our hearts flutter, but who ultimately are bad for us. Marrying someone who is so deep in the red is a really big deal. Some people are comfortable assuming a great deal of debt - I'm not, and I could never be with someone who had that much hanging over their head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> On a related note, one of my projects is an effort to help ensure that more people can acquire the benefits of a college degree but without having to incur a large amount of cash debt or time debt. I'm sure I'll have more details to announce here if/when it's further along.

<comment><USER26> Why did you get downvoted to 0 with this comment? This place is getting ridiculous with the down voting now.</comment></comment>


The Complexity of Rubik's Cube - <AUTHOR> http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2017/07/the-complexity-of-rubiks-cube.html <comment><USER3> For me, the original fidget spinner. I solve them and scramble them as I think about programming problems at work when I'm deciding on best solutions. Each Rubik's cube solve for me averages 40 seconds... give or take 10s - <USER2> thinking about other things. It it very peaceful.</comment>


Love in the Time of Cryptography - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/love-in-the-time-of-cryptography-dd3a74193ffb <comment><USER2> > "Every time I look at an old mail, I feel weird, like I prefer the memory I > have of a thing than the accurate recording," he told me.

I do have to say when I and my ex broke it off, reading that first conversation logged in my Facebook chat between the two of us was a total bitch to swallow. Everything was there. Every single word. Nothing's faded into distant memory. There we were 2 years ago happy that we've met each other. Here we are now - complete strangers to each other. It is definitely a weird feeling.

<comment><USER3> It gets weirder as the weight of the past accumulates. There are some bad experiences I have only recorded in analog form. Throwing out that "evidence" was extremely liberating.

There are others that exist online, forever. A constant record of horrible experiences, never to be dulled by the fog that's cast over distant memories. As a result, I've pretty much left the online services where these memories are preserved.

These days, I write letters. Actual paper. With an enveloped sealed with wax, using a signet ring, because I'm a romantic ;) Pictures I love are printed and hung. It feels more... well, if not human, certainly humane.

(I'm still active online. Obviously. Just more judiciously. The more personal it is, the less likely it is online)

<comment><USER4> Digital memories are so nice in many ways (backups so a fire doesn't destroy them, with care they'll more or less never degrade, they take up little space, and so on) but they're also burdensome—they seem to multiply endlessly since storage is dirt cheap and takes little space, so that it becomes difficult to sift through to find what you want, favorites that you look at again and again (as in the case of photos) rarely arise because there are just _so many_ , ensuring it's all backed up, finding a way to make it organized, and doing those things without handing all your data to private spy agencies all take time and ongoing effort.

It's difficult even to find time to edit the record so it's manageable—and _can_ you, anyway? _Can_ you delete 95% of the photos of your kids, or that loved one you lost, or whoever? Even if you know the idea of looking through them for pleasure or nostalgia brings on anxiety because there are _so many_ , and you never got around to tagging everyone in them or adding those notes you wanted to, and oh no you've forgotten most of what you were going to write, and so on? Looking at them becomes or reminds one of work and you'd actually enjoy them _more_ if there were far fewer of them, but can you delete them?

What about your email archive from 20 years ago? You know there are emails you'd love to read again in there, but now you need to find a program to read the file, and go through deleting the 99% you don't care about at all, and there's _still_ a lot, so now you're going through one-by-one to decide whether "hey, wanna meet for lunch?" from a now-dead loved one is worth keeping.

And you've got several "misc/laptop_backup/documents/old_files_from_zip_disks"-type directories to go through one of these days when you find the time (will you, ever?). All this for a bunch of junk that will plummet in value to _anyone_ as soon as you die and have nearly zero value to anyone in the world (except maybe as raw data for some damned machine learning program) at most 150 years from now. And when you die you'll burden your friends and relatives with the same data management mess you've mostly-failed to deal with—on top of their own.

<comment><USER5> Yes, this is a problem, and can be significantly generalized. In the information age, one cannot define oneself without deciding what channels/sites/content/streams/data one is _not_ going to try to manage or keep up with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little bit about the author, Quinn Norton, for those who are unfamiliar:

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

She mentions in the article that "I came to the attention of a media storm after being struck by a tragedy. My life imploded, and between grieving and dealing with media controversy, my days became a sickening tragicomedy I couldn't turn off."

Could it have been this?

> Norton dated Aaron Swartz for three years. Articles in The Atlantic and in > New York Magazine indicate that she was pressured by prosecutors to offer > information or testimony that could be used against Swartz, but that she > denied having information that supported prosecutors' claims of criminal > intentions on Swartz's part. Prosecutors nevertheless attempted to use a > public blog post on Swartz's blog that Norton mentioned, which may or may > not have been co-authored by Swartz, as proof of a criminal intent.

<comment><USER7> As someone who's followed Norton's work for several years- yes, that seems like the most likely cause. She appears in the documentary about Aaron Swartz, "The Internet's Own Boy," and by her own account greatly struggled with that whole tragedy.

It's a damn shame, in the least part because she is a superb writer. Her eulogy for Occupy Wall Street is a sprawling, stunning work of journalism.

[https://www.wired.com/2012/12/a-eulogy-for- occupy/](https://www.wired.com/2012/12/a-eulogy-for-occupy/)

<comment><USER8> Note: in less kind light: this is the same Quinn Norton who burned Aaron Swartz when she voluntarily went to an "interview" with the US attorney, without counsel, against Aaron's pleas, and told them about his manifesto, which they hadn't previously known of. And that interview is where his life started going downhill fast.

<comment><USER9> And you know, I'd be willing to bet she's beaten herself up over that enough without people on the internet trying to make sure no one ever forgets it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In which a reporter falls in love with a fellow nerd she meets at a European hackerspace, maintains a long-distance relationship by messaging using showily bad file encryption, decides to move to Europe to cohabitate, and, lacking Facebook profiles to verify the relationship, relies on the testimony of friends and other anecdotal evidence sources, like hundreds of millions of other couples whose lives are imperfectly recorded by social networks.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, eat your heart out.

<comment><USER11> Criticizing someone else's choice of crypto is I guess par for the course on HN. But I think her story is still noteworthy.

It's unusual to be someone who specializes in writing about digital activists who need encryption.

It's unusual to be a nerd (your identity is online) and also be constantly hiding your tracks (your identity is constantly erased, by your own action).

It's unusual to be an emigrant in this age, where they expect you to surrender your voluntary self-surveillance at the border.

The thing is, what happens to nerds on the margins eventually happens to everybody.

Personally – there's some of her story that already applies to me. And, even if all of this is trivial in terms of technology, there aren't a lot of people who can bring such evocative writing to the topic.

<comment><USER10> It's _very_ unusual to be someone who specializes in writing about encryption for digital activists. More unusual than you might know.

The rest of it: sure, this is all true. But that's my gripe: this story has little to do with any of that. Ultimately, the only role surveillance played in this story was something for a new couple to bond over. Sure, better that than _The Sound And The Fury_ , which I swear to Christ a teenaged girlfriend made me read, but so what? What's special about OpenSSL here that wouldn't be special about Club Penguin or Overwatch or some other lower-status technological detail?

<comment><USER12> I enjoyed your initial quip immensely. This one a bit less (I liked _The Sound And The Fury_, although not nearly as much as _The Mansion_).

I think the OpenSSL line was only intended to emphasize that the communication wasn't easy - thereby making it more meaningful. I often wonder what internet messages would be like if sending them was has the same time/effort overhead as sending physical letters (having to address them properly, walking to a postoffice, etc.). Surveillance isn't really important here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I actual enjoyed this article and, more broadly, the subject of the governance of love. How much intrusion into our private (truly private) lives is enough? Are relationships, to a point, meant to be held in the public eye or can they be private? Granted, I'm a bit paranoid and pretty private. I've had a Facebook account in the past, but only used it to poke fun at people, but didn't care for the inevitable drama that followed (turns out, when you have a laugh at someone's outlandish political views face to face, you'll be fine but online, with those same friends, they view that interaction completely different). Obviously, by this small sampling of my personal self, I don't think highly of a governmental intrusion into personal relationships, but I'm pragmatic enough to understand their documentation and categorization. So I ask you this, HN. How much governmental intrusion into our private lives in enough? Also, how much intrusion into our personal lives do you think a semi- connected group of peers (our Facebook "friends") should get?

<comment><USER14> Personally, I don't fear being snooped on or to have my comms eavesdropped. What I really fear is the interpretation perpetrated by whatever machine or whoever live-being. The view that more information produces better decisions is at odds with the world around us. What has always made a difference is our `incomprehensible` capacity to grasp someone with our emotional intelligence. Until there will not exist digital computers equipped with (digital) mirror neurons, until people will not think to empathy as something prioritized to a bunch of data, I'm not going to accept the judgment of none.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash There's an excellent episode of Star Trek Voyager where the Borg crewmate Seven of Nine installs a component into her brain that lets her sift through Voyager's immense dataset, and results in her secretly telling the first officer that she believes that the captain is a part of a grand and dark conspiracy.

Then she runs the dataset again, and goes to the captain to say the exact same thing about the first officer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting and well written but I can only disagree with the author. A few months ago, I read the love letters my grand grandfather wrote to my grand grandmother when he was at war. I seriously doubt anyone will be able to read the emails I write in 70 years. Besides most of intellectuals of the past centuries were prolific in sending letters to their relatives and we know a lot from them through these letters. I don't expect the same to happen with contemporary writers. Maybe our grand children will be able to get a few pictures from us, that were printed and stored safely...

<comment><USER16> What makes you think digital content won't be preserved in quantity/quality comparable to printed/handwritten content of earlier times?

Perhaps private messages and emails are less likely to be preserved after the account-holder is deceased, but pretty much everything you do publicly on Facebook is preserved and accessible to others after your death in a memorialized account. It's not hard to believe that our descendants will be able to casually search through our daily musings and pictures of our dinners and whatnot, either on Facebook if it still exists, or an archived version of it captured before the site is taken down/replaced.

I also wouldn't rule out more private writings finding their way along in some form or another. People are often sentimental and keep things that belonged to their loved ones. I recall reading a story not long ago of a man who kept his father's video game save files, with the suggestion that he may try passing them on to his children.

<comment><USER17> But will Facebook exist in 70 years time? Or will it go the way of so many other services. I wonder if the AOL chats I had 20 years ago are somewhere? Or the forum posts on long defunct communities? Or the IRC chats.

Now, I want to be clear that many of these things _shouldn 't_ be saved. I don't believe that the Internet should be archived, but rather that with physical media the choice is simple: save it or throw it. With the Internet there is less choice and what exists is complex and sometimes out of your control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That is just so sweet :)

I have some long-term online friends. Mostly totally anonymous. But none romantic. I don't even for sure know gender for some of them. It doesn't really matter.

</comment><comment><USER19> When I look back in my gmail I'm always glad it kept record of times and snapshots of my life and conversations with those I love. I understand encryption to prevent an outsider seeing in, but I'm glad I didn't go to their extremes to leave no trace whatsoever. In this age of no printed photos, our digital traces are all we often have to remember our life. You forget so much, and when you go back, you remember so many things you had forgotten and see so many things you remembered wrong.

</comment><comment><USER20> Recommended Soundtrack for reading: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99h6iPRPN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P99h6iPRPN8) (Ludovico Einaudi - Elements)

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, strange to see this here. I created a photo series with a very similar title ("Love in the Age of Strong Cryptography"): [http://freezine.xyz/0/love- in-the-age-of-strong-cryptography...](http://freezine.xyz/0/love-in-the-age- of-strong-cryptography/index.html)

<comment><USER20> I don't trust computers enough to freely publish encrypted private communications. That being said, I avoid private communication through or near computers when possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> OTR: the secure messaging protocol for cypherpunk hipsters.

OTR is useful if you go to great lengths to exchange public keys, and as soon as the key changes you go through all of it again. (I don't really count shared secrets as a secure means of authenticating your key, since if you have the shared secret, the key can be substituted and thus is irrelevant)

That's probably fine if you're just chatting aimlessly and don't need to rely on secure communication regularly. But it's a pain in the ass if you wanted to rely on it for remote long-term secure communication. "Privacy" is about all it's useful for (assuming more attacks aren't found in the protocol).

(Side note: to defeat all this complicated encryption and expose identities, just become a member of the hacker community. They're quite gossipy)

<comment><USER10> First: OTR has been pretty resilient, cryptographically speaking. And from a code quality perspective, libotr gets a lot of shit, but I won a $1000 bet with Matthew Green that nobody would find a sev:hi flaw in it for an entire year, and despite stirring the shit on Twitter about the bet, nobody found anything.

I wouldn't use OTR today, but in 2011, when this story started, libotr wasn't a weird recommendation.

<comment><USER22> I remember testing the plugin when it was first released for gaim. I certainly thought it was weird, and a bit buggy.

Version 1 had plenty of holes. Later (including when it was used by the author) version 2 had more holes. So I don't really buy the idea that "stirring the shit on Twitter" for a grand would be enough to get serious research done - and then published - to expose this fledgling protocol's newest bugs.

It wasn't a weird recommendation _for a cypherpunk_ , of course, which is what i'm really saying. It's a hipster messaging protocol.

<comment><USER10> I don't think this is a reasonable way to sum up OTR, and I also suspect you're conflating the security of the libotr C plugin itself with the security of the protocol.

I don't think $1000 is a lot for a libotr bet, but from the caliber of people who submitted attempts to end the bet (almost all of which were libpurple problems), I'm satisfied that it got quite a bit of attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The era where all of our conversations and online interactions are recorded forever started in the mid 00's and ended in the last few years as apps defaulted to ephemerality, end to end encryption and no logging

That <decade is a short period in most of our lifetimes, and a blip in the context of government regulation

So how is love in the age of cryptography? Exactly the same as love was in the 1990s, and the 1980s, and the 70s, and the 60s ..

<comment><USER24> > The era where all of our conversations and online interactions are recorded > forever started in the mid 00's and ended in the last few years as apps > defaulted to ephemerality, end to end encryption and no logging

Which apps _defaulted_ to ephemeral storage (other than Snapchat)? And how do we know if the ephemerality is only in our view or applies to the underlying data stored (in other words, how do we know our data is truly deleted vs. being hidden from our view, used for devious purposes without us knowing)? Also, where are the social apps with no logging? All the popular social communication platforms seem to want to hoard every bit of data we can feed them and never want to delete those at their end.</comment></comment>