Riot is now Element - <AUTHOR> https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/ <comment><USER2> No!!! Of all the names in the world why this. "Hey bro, let's chat on Element" ,not quite a ring to it.

The hardest problem in computer science strikes again!

Matrix,Riot and Libolm are epic projects, I wish them all the success but man, even Riot was a hard sell as a brand. I would seriously be dissapointed if it loses popularity over this. I don't think the project maintainers understand that their core users/fans are waiting for a product they can sell to friends,family and coworkers.

People who don't know tech rely on branding/brand reputation and word of mouth reputation to decide if they are intetested in even trying out a product to begin with.

Which of these is unlike the others?

1) Signal

2) Telegram

3) Element

4) Whatsapp

Hint: The theme is messaging and communication.

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Whatsapp can be an extremely confusing name for non-native English speakers. I'm from Spain and I think 90% of the time I see it written in Spain, it's written wrong (wassap, whasapp, wuatsapp, whatsap, watsap, wuassap, wuassapp, whatsup, watsup, etc.). Sometimes a phonetically "transliterated" version is used instead, like "guasap", which I find more tolerable because at least then it becomes a genuine Spanish word, rather than a botched attempt at writing an English word.

Also, many people don't get the meaning/pun in the name at all (which probably is one of the reasons for writing it wrong). Even to me, with a good English level, it wasn't immediate because "what's up" is a very idiomatic greeting and not one that non-natives (or at least, Spanish people) tend to use in a natural way. It took some time to click in my mind.

That said, Whatsapp absolutely dominates chat apps in Spain... so I guess these issues are not that important after all. Or at least, not if you are at the right place at the right time.

<comment><USER3> Wow, native English speaker and I didn't even get the pun until this comment. I thought it was a stupid play on "What app should we message each other on?" and thus kind of a silly name. But folks use it regardless.

<comment><USER4> Also a native English speaker, also had no idea it was supposed to be a pun until right now. I just thought it was another silly name from an Asian company.

<comment><USER5> Complete tangent, but, by any chance, when you read things, do you not 'hear' a voice in your head reading them?

Curious, because I'm pretty sure the first time I ran across Whatsapp it was in text, but I tend to 'hear' the things I read/write in my head, as though a voice read them to me. And because of that the pun stuck out. It might just be I'm more inclined to look for puns (playing games with them all the time with friends and family), but wondering if that might be part of it: if you just see the name and it's just a word, not something sounded out in your head, you of course would not notice the play on words.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that's it, I hear words in my head, but didn't get the pun until I watched a Jimmy Fallon bit where he made fun of the name.

<comment><USER7> Following on this train, as an fluent English speaker, millennial, Asian American that grew up in Texas public school all my life, and a lover of memes and puns...I also didn't realize WhatsApp was a pun...woah.

<comment><USER6> Well that proves it, it's not a great name :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Press release pro tip: sidle in what the company or app does very early in. Verging on all of the releases I read on HN don't do this but are for companies I've not heard of. So you leave knowing almost nothing about the company

<comment><USER9> That's a good point. I've noticed larger enterprises doing this with their pr's, which has always struck me as bit silly when it is a house hold name (Oracle, Canonical, VMWare etc) but ofc not everyone would know them. But for smaller vendors this becomes even more important.

<comment><USER8> Yes indeed its pretty universal for PLCs to do it.

Some examples to demonstrate

[1] ...LexisNexis® CounselLink®, a leading cloud-based enterprise legal management solution for corporate law departments, today announced the release...

[2] ...RecVue, Inc., the fastest growing next generation order-to-cash automation platform, today announced...

etc

[1] [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lexisnexis- counsell...](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lexisnexis-counsellink- releases-2020-enterprise-legal-management-trends-report-301092606.html) [2] [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/recvue-achieves- soc...](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/recvue-achieves-soc-1-and- soc-2-compliance-for-strong-internal-controls-over-financial-reporting-and- security-301093514.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you dislike the new name, branding, or user experience, instead of arguing over why or why not it is a good decision, I'd encourage you to get yourself involved and be that change.

Before the rebrand, or even any talk user experience and design from Element (Riot), I didn't want to wait and started working on a privacy centric matrix client that focused on branding and user experience. I managed to get E2EE working by myself within a month using the Matrix provided encryption library.

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

[https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon](https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon)

For the record, I don't think Element is a bad name. Regardless of the name itself, this is a massive leap forward for their branding. The user experience seems to have been cleaned up dramatically in the new versions of their iOS and Android apps.

<comment><USER11> I just tried this on Android from F-Droid. I couldn't get past the login page, unfortunately. Bitwarden popped up to auto fill the form, but it didn't work. I tried typing my credentials manually, but it was rough because of the weird quirks with the text boxes. Why does the carat jump to the last character after every keypress? It made it nearly impossible for me to correct a typo. My password is pretty long, which royally confused the password input field. After a certain number of characters, it just stopped displaying anything. It also does not respect my system preference of not displaying the most recently typed character unmasked. Finally, after all that, I clicked login and the button just changed to a spinner forever.

I realize this is alpha quality software, but to claim to be focused on user experience and have such horrible UI issues does not give me any confidence, sadly.

<comment><USER10> I've addressed these problems you listed in version 0.0.19 but getting updates to the F-Droid store is a very slow process. The next F-Droid release will have auto updates enabled with the F-Droid team, so those and future issues should be fixed relatively quick from that platform.

Regardless, thanks for trying it out.

Edit: feel free to post issues like this directly to the project in github if you decide to try it out again

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's been long overdue and will hopefully help Matrix make inroads into more conservative organizations; I believe the tech is really promising. It's a definite liability, trying to introduce people to Matrix, when the de-facto default client's name evokes all kinds of unhelpful associations – it doesn't sound like work at all and it does sound like gamers, toys, apparently even like a far-left political organisation. Element should be fine for everyone.

<comment><USER13> looking at you, git

<comment><USER14> funny thing about git is as a non-Brit, I thought for the longest time it was a made up word.

<comment><USER15> I thought so too (not a native English speaker, had never seen that word before) until I read a quote from Linus saying that he likes to name his projects after himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't like the new name, is too generic. I think an original alternative would have been better, like Trello, Slack, ...

<comment><USER17> I think those names are taken.

(Really though, Slack is as generic of a word as Element! It just had a strong connotation now)

<comment><USER18> People often get confused, they think the word is strong (Nike,Google,...) while the word nearly never is. As you've said it's the other way around, what the company evokes in us with their product over time is brought back to the name.

<comment><USER19> That does not mean that a generic name is fine.

It means that a unique, made-up word is fine because it will gain meaning. It may sound strange now because it is new and unknown but that does not matter because that will change. 'Google' went to a strange, made-up word, to being an everyday noun and verb.

In that respect a made-up word is the best option because you start with a blank slate and you can create its meaning.

Whereas a generic word already has meaning, several competing ones, even, and you have to struggle against that to build your brand, so it's an inferior choice.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I also tell people whom I consult to use a short, easy to remember fantasy word. I like a mix, like Mailchimp which evokes images in customers.

Though as Apple, Nike, Windows, Slack, Segment have shown, the generic approach can work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Previous thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611863) and blog post about why [https://element.io/blog/the-world-is- changing/](https://element.io/blog/the-world-is-changing/) and the blog post about the new name [https://element.io/blog/welcome-to- element/](https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Main reason is that they couldn't trademark the "Riot" name due to "Riot Games" company.

Edit: They have mentioned this in the blog. Please read that before downvoting.

<comment><USER22> Could they trademark Element though? I mean it is a very general term.

<comment><USER23> We tried to trademark Element and another generic abbreviation as a combined name and even that was not possible. The german trademark bureau just sent us printed wikipedia articles of both words as "proof" that it's not possible.

<comment><USER24> I'm cracking up right now imagining that this was the _only_ thing you received in reply.

<comment><USER23> haha of course not, but that was essentially their argument for the denial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> After various HN threads about this company, and taking a tour on the element.io website, I'm still not sure what this is about to be honest.

I understand it's a chat app, but

\- The pricing is really confusing (seems like the app is free, but having an account is paying ?). \- Is this a professional thing, like slack, or more of a whatsapp-like thing ? Trying to do both ? The whole differentation point seems to be based on the Matrix thing, but it's not really clear why is that important ? (I don't typically care about the backend of the app I use).

I mean, the front page says : "All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations. Keeps conversations in your control, safe from data-mining and ads. Talk to everyone through the open global Matrix network, protected by proper end-to-end encryption."

So, the starter is what everyone says. "Safe from data mining and ads" is good, it makes me curious about what is the pricing then, and I wouldn't mind paying a cheap price for a correct messaging app. And then there's this Matrix bit, and I don't even know if it's good or bad. So I went to the pricing page (which doesn't exist, but there are "plans") and here, well the app is free, and I can get my account hosted either somewhere free, or either on the Element Matrix servers, where it should be safe from eavesdropping ? But with proper end to end encryption, it should be safe everywhere ? Or is the app by default not end to end encrypted, but hosting it somewhere makes it so ? It sounds really weird to be honest.

So really, good for you for renaming, but I don't think it's what will make me change (even though since whatsapp is facebook owned, I'm ready to migrate myself and my whole family on something else once the ads are there).

<comment><USER26> Matrix is the protocol, Element is a client to access Matrix which it does so via a matrix homeserver (which then federates across the rest of the Matrix).

So Element is free to use, but there are a range of servers to choose from. The matrix.org server is free to use, though as the largest single instance on the public federation is run on a best effort basis.

Alternatives are to either host your own server, or have someone else do that for you. The payment plans that you are looking at reference Element Matrix Services (EMS) which is a SaaS offering allowing you to spin up your own server to be used by whoever you choose to give access to (friends/colleagues etc). The advantages being that you get grater control of your data and improved performance.

Using email as an analogy

Matrix = Email matrix.org / Matrix Hosted Services/ some other server = Fastmail/Gmail/Hotmail etc Element = Thunderbird

<comment><USER27> Yes but does EMS allow white labeling clients also ?

<comment><USER28> The clients are mostly Apache 2 licensed, and at least Riot Web has config options to swap out some of the branding at deploy time: [https://github.com/vector-im/riot- web/blob/develop/docs/conf...](https://github.com/vector-im/riot- web/blob/develop/docs/config.md)

It's not a marketed use case though, so I'm sure you could find places the app will still refer to itself as Riot (or now Element).

Alternatively the protocol is open so many third party clients exist: [https://matrix.org/clients/](https://matrix.org/clients/) . Feature support in third party clients is pretty unevenly distributed though, E2EE in particular is supported in Riot and Seaglass, experimental in weechat-matrix and nheko, and absent in basically every other client.

<comment><USER27> Got it..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I gotta say; I haven't paid attention to Matrix for years, but I downloaded the Riot client again last week and HOLY COW. Everything is _so_ smooth, beautiful, performant, and feature-filled.

They have Slack/Discord-like communities, awesome easy E2E verification, and almost every feature I want out of Discord, including video/voice chat powered by WebRTC out of the box.

Really incredible work the Matrix team has done on this. I was a decentralization reseracher for years, and I'd never imagined things would get this polished from a UI perspective. I think Matrix is the best current bet for decentralization services (Urbit following up in a close second), and will plan on digging in to hosting my own server at some point.

If you haven't used Riot / Element in a while, I highly recommend you give it a try. Smooth as butter.

[edit: the bikeshedding here is infuriating. "Element chat" is a perfectly fine Google query. users being entitled primadonnas (sorry, I know that's hostile, but I think it's warranted) and expecting every software release to have Google/Facebook tier marketing effort behind them is the #1 problem in the adoption of decentralized platforms, and should be eradicated from civil discourse about internet infrastructure. just my two cents.]

</comment><comment><USER30> > We're obviously aware that Element is (once again) both a dictionary word > and a mathematical term.

and a ~30 year old, mainstream skateboard brand owned by the billion dollar, international Quiksilver company.

<comment><USER31> Also a chemistry term!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Great name I'd say! If I would consider converting people like my parents to a new app, I'm sure Element has a bigger chance than Riot because of the connotations with the name of the latter.

</comment><comment><USER33> Even as someone who has kind of been following along with Matrix development and this renaming thing, this post is really confusing.

If you go through a major rebrand, you've probably spent something like 1000 hours thinking about names and what they mean.

Your users haven't.

Get someone else to write the explanation of the rebrand. You can't do it yourself when you're too involved.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't care about SEO, but as an infrequent user I always liked that Riot was a snappy, two syllable, memorable name (I never forgot it). Synapse and Matrix are also easy for me to remember, I must add. I suspect I may forget Element-- too close to a word I use every day (HTML elements, chemical elements, etc.) We'll see. Either way I expect I can get there by looking up "matrix client," of course.

EDIT: one -> two

<comment><USER35> Riot is two syllables.

<comment><USER34> Oh, sorry. I'm not a native english speaker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> One problem with "Element" is its potential for confusion with other, similarly-named tech products, such as:

\- Adobe Photoshop Elements

\- Adobe Premiere Elements

\- Elementor, one of the more popular WordPress plugins

\- Element UI, a Vue 2.0 based component library

\- Elements XS, GIS-centric asset management software

There's even an IT company named Element Technologies: [https://www.ele- ment.com/](https://www.ele-ment.com/) (no affiliation).

<comment><USER37> There's also a prominent apparel/skateboarding company named Element which has been around for decades and is the top search result for "element" for me.

[https://www.elementbrand.com/](https://www.elementbrand.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> On the thread 3 months ago for _Launch HN: Riot (YC W20) - Phishing training for your team_

> Hi Ben - cool product! Speaking as the lead for Riot.im, I would recommend > picking another name asap, if nothing else because Riot Games has an awful > lot of lawyers (as we know first hand, unfortunately).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677841](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677841)

Then, 22 days ago, _We've decided to rename riot_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611863)

<comment><USER39> I know a couple other products/services named Element already... not that you have to worry about lawyering but it's pretty generic and doesn't sound like a messenger, sadly. Oh well, they are doing great work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't like the name because it is so generic and for me the word invokes no association with communication whatsoever.

<comment><USER41> I just think Element14. I agree with you, it is so generic as to be meaningless. Signal makes sense. iMessage & Facetime do what they say. Whatsapp at least sounds like a fun app even if the name is meaningless.

<comment><USER42> I think of Element the skateboarding company

<comment> mitch-snipline Same here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> While a name change was a sensible move, I had very high hopes for them to choose a saner non-technical one with a more user-friendly focus, but this name sounds very generic and is more cryptic that "Signal".

They now have to do some serious SEO to be the first result on a Google search of "Element".

<comment><USER26> Sorry you don't like the name, hopefully it will grow on you.

On SEO, quoting from the post itself "We're obviously aware that Element is (once again) both a dictionary word and a mathematical term - but in practice, looking at search results for Element right now, the top hits are for dictionary sites(!) and the field is wide open. Conversely, in a virgin browser on VPN, Riot is the 4th hit on Google for Riot; second only to a certain games company. In other words, we've shown that we can successfully adopt dictionary words - and if you do find yourself lost searching in a maze of mathematics, just throw in the word 'chat' to get back on track."

So yes there is a big SEO job ahead of us, we don't take anything for granted, but see a viable path to getting a good ranking.

<comment><USER44> Maybe your Google-Bubble is just broken? For me searching for Element brings up mostly companies and products which are using this name. Just a low number of results are dictionaries and knowledge-sites. Good luck competing with all of them.

<comment><USER45> Your first sentence makes no sense, given in the comment right above you (which is quoting the article) it points out that it was with a cookie-less browser and a VPN. You're _far_ more likely to be the one who's bubbled in differently than your average person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I still dont understand why Slack is popular when there is a free open source solution matrix/riot/element that works just as well.

<comment><USER47> Slack and Matrix solve different problems. Slack is "a company wants it's employees and select outside parties to communicate with themselves." Matrix is "we want everyone to communicate with each other." A broader solution is almost always less efficient for a specific constrained sub-problem.

For example, a Slack instance can be configured to log every conversation (including DMs) for audit purposes by company admins. Matrix enforces e2e encryption for peer-to-peer conversations and I believe disabling room encryption requires code changes.

<comment><USER48> You can disable e2e on your server if you wish so. The option already exists in Synapse and it is part of Element Matrix Services customers.

For those who are legally required to be on record, there are other ways to keep track of the conversations for audit purposes without compromising the e2e encryption. For example, every room could have an audit bot invited by default, visible by the users, and which would record everything being said. Then you can setup the access to the logs from the audit bot to only be unencrypted in certain conditions, e.g. if the 2 halves of a key giving access to the account are put together. It's secure, clear for the users and legally compliant.

[disclaimer: I'm from the Element team]

<comment><USER47> Your comment reinforces my initial point: "A broader solution is almost always less efficient for a specific constrained sub-problem."

It all sounds very complicated compared to paying a bit of money and toggling a setting. For example, googling for "elements/riot/matrix audit bot" results in no pertinent results from what I can tell. Being possible is not the same thing as being easy to use.

edit: Also companies don't care about being clear to users except as legally required or beneficial to the company. Employees not being constantly aware that they're being watched all the time is a positive and not a negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I like what people are doing with Riot/Element/Matrix but it's still a bit janky. Half the chats I join are filled with messages about missing session keys.

</comment><comment><USER50> So many of these comments just feel like bikeshedding.

By most arguments here basecamp is an awful name for a company and hey is a terrible name for an email application - it doesn't seem to be holding them back though.

For those not familiar with bikeshedding please see: [http://bikeshed.com/](http://bikeshed.com/)

<comment><USER51> I mean, the article is literally a press release about a name change. Of course the comments are going to be a discussion about the name change rather than anything more substantial about the product or business or underlying tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I speak English, but I can't follow what this means:

> In fact we have simplified all our naming: Element is also the name for New > Vector (the company behind Riot) while Modular, our flagship Matrix hosting > service, has become Element Matrix Services.

Is New Vector now names Element, too? Or is this some sort of nickname? A doing business as name?

<comment><USER52> Riot -> Element

New Vector -> Element

Modular -> Element Matrix Services

(Although we haven't legally changed New Vector's name yet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Do these people care about search results? With a name like that, most people will have a difficult time searching for element related stuff.

<comment><USER54> Well, quoting them:

> We're obviously aware that Element is (once again) both a dictionary word > and a mathematical term - but in practice, looking at search results for > Element right now, the top hits are for dictionary sites(!) and the field is > wide open.

<comment><USER55> I tried searching for Element in the Google Play store. It suggests an app dedicated to Asian gay men. The website directs to Riot.im.

From the article: > RiotX (our ground-up rewrite of Riot Android) has exited beta, and replaces Riot Android as Element

RiotX I can find/see, but it shows as a beta. It's not called Element.

I guess it's a slow rollout?

I used Riot ages ago, it was the suggested solution to have IRC on mobile. It wasn't that reliable plus it was crazy slow (search . They now suggest Rocket chat, it isn't slow but it doesn't do IRC. So now the community is divided across loads of platforms. There's also some web based things, e.g. Discourse, some still use mailing lists, etc. Plus things like Gitlab. It used to be much easier to follow things ("lurk").

<comment><USER26> The new app is with Google, we're just waiting on them and it will be live asap.

Folks on iOS can pick it up here [https://apps.apple.com/app/vector/id1083446067](https://apps.apple.com/app/vector/id1083446067)

<comment><USER56> Will it be an update that replaces the current RiotX on my phone, or will I have to download it as a separate app?

<comment><USER26> It will replace the current Riot Android App. So if you are an early adopter of RiotX you will need to download the main app.

<comment><USER24> edit: commented before reading TFA, it'll probably be a new app.

Same for F-droid? I suppose I'll need to be testing the migration process again..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I was never really aware of these products before, and I'm very interested! So I browsed over to the main site, found the pricing page and got this.

 _" We 're busy building our pricing table & purchasing experience on mobile, for now please visit this page on your desktop."_

Um, what? I mean, I'm honestly more interested in self hosting, but this really seems like a good way to miss out on a lot of sales.

Won't something simple suffice as a placeholder, until the larger 'experience' is finished? How many people have seen this when they aren't near a desktop, only to never return?

</comment><comment><USER58> Awesome! And now that RiotX is out of beta, please divert those resources to Element iOS because it _desperately_ needs some UX love.

</comment><comment><USER59> The post references their new website [0] and talks about RiotX, their new website [1] however links to Riot.im [2], not RiotX [3], what to get?

Also, I have to set a password, but also a recovery password which should not be the same... Yet, I store them together in my KeepassXC db. Why would that be? Oh, now I run into a message key, the third to store in the same db entry :)

[0] [https://element.io/](https://element.io/)

[1] [https://element.io/get-started](https://element.io/get-started)

[2] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.app)

[3] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.riot...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.riotx)

<comment><USER26> We are still in the review queue for Android. iOS folks can pick it up the Element release here [https://apps.apple.com/app/vector/id1083446067](https://apps.apple.com/app/vector/id1083446067)

<comment><USER59> Ah, ok, I just entered the preview, I guess then I also get the latest greatest?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Love the name. Simple, and is going to be pretty hard for society to attach negative connotations to it.

Elements are the flexible foundation of everything and in turn Element can be a flexible foundation for communication.

At the end of the day it boils down to getting control of a namespace and then owning it over time.

Slack and Apple have clearly shown this works just fine.

</comment><comment><USER61> What I don't understand: 'Riot is now Element', yet when you click on 'Get Element' on the website and select the android app > 'Riot.im' by 'Vector Creations Limited' package name 'im.vector.app' IMHO if you rebrand it, everything should be in place.

</comment><comment><USER62> Another post on the homepage now: "Element wins deal to supply half a million licences for German education system". I was going to point out that it's a pretty generic name being used by other groups, but when I read that linked article I see it's the same Element :-D

</comment><comment><USER63> Just for fun: here's the City Barge pub in London mentioned in the blog post's UI screenshot. :)

[https://www.timeout.com/london/bars-and-pubs/city- barge](https://www.timeout.com/london/bars-and-pubs/city-barge)

</comment><comment><USER64> PSA for all Riot/Element Android users: RiotX came out of beta too soon. Voice and video calls don't seem to be implemented in non-DM encrypted rooms. So if you created an e2e room and invited someone there, you can no longer call them.

</comment><comment><USER65> It will be impossible to find on Google. Also, I'm wondering if it a good choice for such a project to use the hipster '.io' domain regarding the risk in a near future with this domain name.

<comment><USER66> Feel like I'm missing something important here. What's happening with .io?

<comment> the-dude Questionable governance : [https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names- for-produc...](https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for- production-traffic-b6aa17eeac20)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Anybody who is questioning the need for the a name change in the first place should read up on the story of Piwik, Piwik Pro, and Matomo. Hostile forks are real, and they are fantastic messes.

<comment><USER68> Mumble has the same problem with Mumble com but the official one is Mumble.info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Bravo i have to say. Riot was a really good name for a project in the post NSA/Snowden time, but since we already forgot that, Element is much more Acceptable for the big wash ;)

</comment><comment><USER70> OK serious question perhaps someone connected to matrix / element will see this.

The name change from riot coincided with the murder of George Floyd and following surge unrest under the banner of Black Lives Matter. What's the teams position this, are they trying to distance themselves from the protests, if so why? If not, why?

</comment><comment><USER71> Can't connect to Element after logging in. Even old Riot.im stopped working properly. A pretty bumpy switch I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER72> Dunno elsewhere but in France pretty solid fist results on both Google and DDG referring to element hardware from matrix audio (founded 2009). Look like once a legal team enjoyed the fun of legal dispute they always ask for more...

[https://www.matrix-digi.com](https://www.matrix-digi.com)

</comment><comment><USER73> It looks like Riot.im accounts got forcible password change - at least I cannot login with my saved riot.im password to element.io

There is nothing of note there in my case, but resetting/changing password supposedly means loosing conversation history. Not good!

</comment><comment><USER74> Nice, look forward to the web/desktop version! I think the name is fine, people will routinely use the new name in a few months time. Better to change the name now than 10 million users later.

The new site looks great, but the pricing page is a bit confusing.

Godspeed!

</comment><comment><USER75> Now I wish Mattermost would become a Matrix client!

</comment><comment><USER76> Not to be confused with element.ai

</comment><comment><USER77> any plans to fix riot.imX beta on older android versions (5.X)? my friend can't even send messages (they are all just red) since some 0.9X version (not sure which exactly)

</comment><comment><USER78> Didn't they just rename it from something else?

</comment><comment><USER79> Riot, Slack, Discord, ... those names sound bad

</comment><comment><USER80> So the game developer is now the Linux distro.

<comment><USER81> The distro I believe you're thinking of is "elementaryOS".

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Discord is next.

<comment><USER83> I think they'd have to change more than their name. The entire nomenclature of their app is gaming focused. That would also expose them to great risk of losing their core user base, at a time when another company Guilded has just launched a strictly gaming-focused chat app.

<comment><USER84> They've started to make changes, like changing their TLD from .gg to .com, and they removed the game store. They had a popup after a recent update describing the changes and why their doing it (to appeal to more than just gamers). I think that other than those bits of branding, it can be pretty gamer agnostic, though I haven't used it in a workplace to actually catch the inconsistencies.

<comment><USER83> > they removed the game store

seems like that might be because no one was playing? [https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/13/20864278/discord-nitro- ga...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/13/20864278/discord-nitro-games- subscription-bundle-discontinued)

It certainly can be gamer-agnostic, but if they lose the gamer base, it could be significant for their success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Is this not Riot Games?

</comment><comment><USER86> Sometimes it feels like riot is being sabotaged from the inside.

<comment><USER87> Maybe they could have renamed it Agent Provocateur. Still a better name than Element.

</comment></comment><comment> sherri-me I like it

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Blog post: [https://element.io/blog/welcome-to- element/](https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/)

I couldn't find it when I initially posted this.

While I understand the change, it was definitely awkward timing given that I was championing a transition to Matrix. I've been encouraging my coworkers to download the client, and next thing I know the website has completely changed and they've removed the link to download the desktop client.

<comment><USER52> We're just doing the desktop builds of Element now - you can grab the last release at [https://riot.im/download/desktop](https://riot.im/download/desktop), but the download link should be fixed shortly.

HN: It'd be cool to fix the submission to link to the [https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/](https://element.io/blog/welcome- to-element/) rather just element.io for more context :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Maybe they should have called it "Protest".

</comment><comment><USER89> Speaking of names, I'm upset that the username I go by is taken. I'm echelon @ { gmail, HN, Twitter, Github, Gitlab, Square Cash, etc }, but found Riot / Matrix just a few months too late to get my username.

I'm not satisfied with the "just stand up your own server" response as an alternative.

I know it's cutting off my nose, but I've avoided using it because of this. I'm OCD about stupid usernames.

I wish unused usernames got garbage collected.

I really like how Discord handles usernames.

<comment><USER90> Well your username is made of a single common name existing in the dictionary, this situation was very predictable.</comment></comment>


What does it mean to build a Developer Tool? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bearer.sh/what-weve-learned-by-building-a-developer-tool/ <comment><USER2> I'm Cédric, Co-founder and CTO @ Bearer. I'm super happy to share a bit of our experience. Hope that will help others!</comment>


Hyundai Apologizes for Commercial Showing Attempted Suicide - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/100675188

<comment><USER2> The video is still available on YouTube[1]

[1]: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0c65ypUxKg>

<comment><USER3> When did CO2 become water? The ad states 100% water emissions, yet their site has listed that the car produces 139 g/km of CO2.

<comment><USER4> I'm assuming the ad is for their production hydrogen fuel cell version, which I don't see listed on their site: [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/150202-first- production-h...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/150202-first-production- hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-hit-the-market-from-hyundai)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for finding that out; The ad is deceiving of course, as only 1000 fuel cell versions will be made till 2015 most people will buy the gas version. ( and will be completely capable of completing the thing mentioned in the video //evil mode off )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually like this ad. The link in the article's gone 451, here's a mirror:

<http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=948_1366967562> (trigger warning?)

What _does_ offend me is the attempt to stifle public discussion of the ad by censoring it from YouTube using trademark law. (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpopOOLLLFE>)

The car in the ad is the ix35 FCEV, hydrogen fuel-cell powered, which predictably means it's (i) not for sale and (ii) costs six figures.

 _With prices per vehicle in the "upper $100,000s per car," the ix35—which emits only water vapor as its exhaust—is too expensive for general consumers right now, he says. The company hopes to bring the price of hydrogen cell cars down to about $50,000 by the time they're ready to sell to consumers._

[http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/02/26/hyundai- becom...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/02/26/hyundai-becomes- first-company-to-mass-produce-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars)

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't it damn obvious that you shouldn't associate your brand with subjects that carry negative emotional load, with suicide being a prime example? Anchoring and all that.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> Considering how many people are involved in making an ad, it would be interesting to know the backstory and how it wasn't until it aired did they realize it wasn't a good idea.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hyundai tried to be cute with this ad and in hindsight, it sounds like a brilliant idea but the problem is that it is a realistic scenario which has happened to many people. I remember in Hurricane Sandy, a boy died in his father's car due to CO poisoning. This kind of commercial was always going to be controversial.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't find the joke particularly offensive or funny.

</comment><comment><USER9> i actually like the ad.</comment>


How Facebook Can Monetize Birthdays - <AUTHOR> http://www.jbryanscott.com/2008/07/13/how-facebook-can-monetize-birthdays/

<comment><USER2> Nice idea! Workable, cool [and all other words of praise :) ]

why didn't guys at Facebook think abou this?

IMHO, the clicks-to-gifts won't be 5%. That maybe true for USA, UK, Canada and countries like that. Maybe 1-2% (or even lesser) for other countries in Asia- Pacific region. And maybe the same for european countries like France, Germany, etc.

Basically, I just mean that it all depends on the mindset of the people of those countries about ecommerce in general. So people in regions like Asia- Pacific will get only "Happy Birthday" wall post. :)</comment>


Parking Bombs: Destroying Downtowns for Cars - <AUTHOR> http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2010/02/parking-bombs.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+overheadwire+%28The+Overhead+Wire%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> I agree with the article's overall thesis, but the example used -- Hartford, CT -- wasn't convincing. Having lived in Hartford and knowing quite a bit about the history there, I think the proliferation of parking was just another symptom rather than the cause of the urban decline.

The downtown core had already fallen into decline when the Interstate got punched through and when most of those parking lots got created; the Interstate (I-84) was a very conscious form of "urban renewal."

The elephant in the room is the phenomenon usually called "white flight" -- there was a sort of positive feedback loop created by the introduction of the automobile after WWII, where people who could afford cars discovered that they could live outside the cities where there was more room, and as they did so the urban core areas become less desirable places for people with means to live. This fed on itself, until the urban core areas became economic and racial ghettos, and the surburbanites started demanding big freeways so they could get in and out to work more easily. Those freeways were constructed by bulldozing the ghettos, sometimes with ill-concealed racism.

That pattern was a big part of what occurred in Hartford, which until very recently was a place that people from the surrounding areas _just didn't go_ except to work, buy drugs, or catch the occasional Whalers game (and not enough of the latter). That is starting to change, or so I've heard, but slowly.

But it's not like the parking lots _caused_ the decline; the parking lots were only created after things had already started to go downhill. They represented a sort of coup de grace to cities, since they oftentimes involved bulldozing beautiful buildings the likes of which will probably never be rebuilt, but they were a predictable effect after the people with money and influence departed for the suburbs.

<comment><USER3> Parking is also one of the lowest-overhead ways to generate income from a property. Low cost to get started, and very little in the way of operating expenses and maintenance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its all nice and good to point out the problem that parking causes in terms of the development or destruction of any downtown, however unless the lack of parking is compensated for by having an excellent public transit system (like Portland) simply removing parking or not starting to address the issue is a recipe for disaster.

Take Los Angeles for example, there are way too many parking structures and lots all over downtown. Unfortunately there isn't really a way to get into downtown unless you are withing 5 miles of it. And you don't really want to live in that area. Even the SF Bay area for that matter, yes there is BART and Muni, but unless you live in the city (for the most part) BART is quite useless if your area of interest is more than a mile outside the sliver that BART services (ignoring all the other problems BART has), and Muni is a joke during rush hour, not to mention the combination of BART + Muni + anything else that you use gets to be pretty pricey.

Unless the issues of public transit are addressed properly, nothing will fix the parking problem or the congestion problem or the gas usage problem or the pollution problem to mention a few.

<comment><USER5> > unless the lack of parking is compensated for by having an excellent public > transit system.

That is the key. If public transit system was destroyed or never developed a city would have to either build parking facilities or build a public transit system. It all comes down to these questions:

       - "How do we expect people to get downtown?"
       - "How do we expect people to get around downtown?"

The approach a city takes will mostly answer these questions.

If nobody lives downtown and they have to commute from distant suburbs, it could make sense in the short term to start building parking spaces. The city is eventually transformed into an "office city". Everything closes down at 5. It is hard to even move around the city, so office workers would just go to lunch some place nearby their office, then quickly get in their cars and escape to the suburbs. That is not a city that I would like to live near or go to. But that is what a lot of American cities have become.

If many people live downtown or near downtown area, then it makes sense to invest in a public transit system. This also helps people move around the city. It opens an opportunity for evening, and weekend businesses, for entertainment and tourism.

This is also a chicken and egg problem. A city could decide to encourage building residential areas downtown to attract different segments of populations there. But that is a long term solution. It takes many years to revitalize a downtown neighborhood, especially if it is a high crime area, has a lot of abandoned buildings, and most of all, a bad reputation.

<comment><USER6> > _"That is not a city that I would like to live near or go to."_

Then for your own sake don't come to Seattle. You just described this city's downtown to the letter.

<comment><USER7> Sure, that describes downtown, but we have Capitol Hill and Fremont etc to make up for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, what cities do now is make parking the first n stories of a building, and then build the rest of the structure on top of that as normal. Over the last 5 years, I have watched many of the parking lots in my neighborhood become parking lots with condos on top (and retail stores below the parking).

This seems to be the best of all worlds -- the parking doesn't take anything away, it just makes the buildings 5 stories taller. Why anyone would drive their car in a major city, though, is beyond me.

Now if only the roads could be moved underground and replaced with parks (and a bicycle path); that would be really nice.

<comment><USER9> Some major cities still lack adequate public transportation, like Seattle and Los Angeles. I live in the latter, about 10 miles from downtown due to cost (about $600-$700 cheaper on rent) and I have to drive in because public transportation would include taking light rail to subway to bus and tack on an extra hour to my commute and cost literally hundreds a month. Far cheaper and faster to drive, even with the abysmal LA traffic.

<comment><USER8> I've been to Seattle and didn't see any problem with the public transportation. Those buses with trolley poles are cool!

(The reality is that not every city has the population and demand to have a Tokyo-like subway system. Sometimes, buses are enough.)

<comment><USER10> I lived in Seattle for 6 years, 2 of which were completely car free. It's possible, but you're swimming upstream. I'm now in NYC, and it is far easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ideally, cities should be structured so that automobiles are used on special occasions, not for day-to-day transportation. I have the good fortune of living in Cambridge, MA where I can be car-free.

<comment><USER12> It's tricky to do, though, and I think in the US, only NYC has really come close. Even in Cambridge and Boston, most people still drive, partly because the transit takes a really long time from many parts of the city. And in San Francisco, an absolutely tiny city geographically (about 6 miles across), it's not much faster to take Muni than to _walk at a brisk pace_ (Muni averages 8 mph).

<comment><USER11> Yes, it is tricky to do. The way I pulled it off is that when I moved to Boston, I ditched my car. That way, the places I started going to were all T-accessible. If you already live in Boston you probably have places you go that aren't served well by the T. It ended up working out fabulously for me, and I wish other Americans eventually have the car-free opportunity that I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The lots seem to me a symptom rather than a cause. Parking lots are a low- intensity land use, and as a given downtown revives, the lots go down under the new buildings or (at an intermediate stage) onto the first few floors.

</comment><comment><USER14> Did anyone else notice that employment % actually went _up_ quite a bit after the parking lot boom? And the loss in population is consistent with less living space.

      Before: 114,400 / 162,180 =  ~71%
      After: 106,900 / 121,580 = ~88%

Based on that alone, I'd say Hartford is almost a better example of the opposite. Almost 30% unemployment is hugely damaging to a city, though it does open it up for factories to come in. I didn't read through to any of the linked articles for alternate explanations, though.

<comment><USER15> That seems to be ignoring commuters. Suburbanites often commute into the city, raising employment numbers while reducing the number of employed locals.

For instance (from wikipedia):

Manhattan is the economic engine of New York City, with its 2.3 million workers drawn from the entire New York metropolitan area accounting for almost two-thirds of all jobs in New York City.[139] Manhattan's daytime population swells to 2.87 million, with commuters adding a net 1.34 million people to the population. This commuter influx of 1.46 million workers coming into Manhattan was the largest of any other county or city in the country, and was more than triple the 480,000 commuters who headed into second-ranked Washington, D.C.[140][141]

Based on your method, Manhatten has ~200% employment rate. (Yes I noticed the numbers there seem to conflict slightly, but it gets the point across.)

<comment><USER14> Good point, hadn't considered that.

That said, wouldn't that generate a LOT of income tax for the city?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One way streets seem to have a similar effect. Even in an otherwise thriving downtown core, one way streets often have a dead, sterile quality to them, except for, and likely because of, the cars that rip through.

</comment><comment><USER17> The before and after aerial view of Hartford reminded me of Glasgow - which is a rare example of a European city that has had a freeway/motorway driven almost right through the center.

</comment><comment><USER18> A much structured and detailed argument against parking lots is done by Jane Jacobs in her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." She shows data, not just a hand-picked (bad) example.

<comment><USER19> An excellent book, and one that I've sadly yet to get all the way through.

The High Cost of Free Parking by Shoup goes into exhaustive detail on the effects of parking, specifically how the idea that parking should always be provided free of charge distorts the market for automobiles and city development. It's long and pretty dry, but the first few chapters at least are very enlightening.</comment></comment>


Agnostic AOP/IoC Typescript tiny lib with Method/Class/Exception Interceptors - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/k1r0s/kaop-ts/ <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I submitted again, can't edit this one..</comment>


Dave Rubin Interviews Peter Thiel (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h10kXgTdhNU <comment><USER2> I really enjoyed Dave and his interviews back than. Even gave money to help his new show and wore a Rubin Report shirt around so if people asked I could point them his way. With time though I feel the his show has turned from a long form interview with people across different spectrums, to more center- right with guests who help channel a certain point of view.

<comment><USER3> I'm in the same boat. I discovered his channel about this time. Liked some of the in depth interviews. But then it quickly went weirdly political.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Larry King has such little regard for Dave Rubin, he took a private call while being live streamed:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/daverubin/comments/ez6rxi/larry_kin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/daverubin/comments/ez6rxi/larry_king_thinks_so_little_of_rubes_show_that_he/)

<comment><USER5> That says more about Larry King than Dave Rubin.

<comment><USER4> No it doesn't

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know where Peter Thiel's virus bunker is so we can concrete up the entrances?

<comment><USER7> I believe it's in New Zealand. Saw an article on Reddit the other day

<comment><USER6> Sweet. Border's been shut down, but contacts within the Ovis aries antifacist underground have already informed me that measures have been put in place. Before it's safe for him to come out he will be entombed in a giant mound of sheep shit, which they assure me is electromagnetically impermeable and should stop him calling for help.</comment></comment></comment>


Living computer created with DNA and genetically altered bacteria - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkgene.com/researchers-bring-new-meaning-to-the-term-computer-bug/ <comment><USER2> Yes, but what's the clock rate. Give me gigahertz man!

<comment><USER3> A cell of E. coli divides in about 20 minutes, but DNA replication happens a lot faster.

The metaphor says: the DNA polymerase enzyme travels at the speed of a truck over the DNA highway.

See this link for some wild speculation of 'Teraflops' (they obviously don't count analysis time):

<http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v4/n1/full/embor719.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Back in 2001 or so, a researcher called Leonard Adleman published a solution to the traveling salesman problem computed with strings of DNA and a PCR machine (a sort of DNA sequence copy multiplier).

Very slow beginnings. I am a biologist myself and curious to find out how far can we go.</comment>


Journey to #3 Product of the Day on Product Hunt - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/post/c4c983e5e1 <comment><USER2> Can you submit only the website itself? Not a link to indihackers, which points to producthunt which then points to the product? I think the title is also misleading as the indiehackers post doesn't describe a journey other than "such a complicated process was not easy"</comment>


FBI Says Foreign States Hacked into U.S. Covid-19 Research Centers - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencetechniz.com/2020/04/fbi-says-foreign-states-hacked-into-us.html <comment><USER2> Quite frankly, all covid-19 research should be made public especially if they received government funding.

<comment><USER3> I think the concern here is HIPPA where any PHI were leak

<comment><USER4> The most concerning thing in my mind is not privacy or keeping the "IP", it is active interference with the research in the form of ransomware.

This would mean an attempt to stop or delay development of treatments and vaccines. That's evil.

<comment><USER5> Only concerning if you think any foreign state would be stupid enough to do that (I don't think there is).

<comment><USER6> You're very optimistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's starting to feel like it would be news if it didn't happen

<comment><USER8> Right. Once a state has established a secretive organization to do nefarious things that org will keep doing, until it is disbanded and surprisingly often even after. They'll keep doing without too much thought about whether it makes sense on a political level, because those decisions are explicitly not their responsibility. In a closely related field it's not the army's job to decide whom to attack, it their job to be ready. The same applies to secretive orgs, they are just more difficult to control. Without decisive political effort to stop them when collaboration is preferred, intelligence people will keep gathering intelligence, propaganda people will keep invening lies, thought police will keep cracking down on communications (see the silencing of Dr Li Wenliang that was quickly rolled back once the topic escalated to people with decisionmaking in their job description) and offensive hackers will keep poking at servers. That's just how it is. It's not good at all, it's terrible, but it doesn't suddenly get worse than usual when it hits Covid-19 research. Surely the NSA wouldn't erase intercepted communications upon realizing that is about Covid-19, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what it would take for all or most of the nations of the world to get together an unplug another nation from the internet.

<comment><USER10> Would a coalition of nations be capable of enforcing that? Seems like text- only, high latency internet could be easily smuggled via satellite or terrestrial radio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's time to create a _Great Firewall for the rest of the World_

And while I agree that information related to covid-19 should be freely accessible, in this case we cannot assume that information was merely _read_ and not _modified_ due to whatever nefarious reasons the intruders may have.

<comment><USER12> Please, no. Hackers have no problem getting through the Great Firewall of China, it's to keep the average person away from certain information.

Use security in depth, and zero trust networks, not just perimeter defense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this a legitimate news site... or is it one of those "Bill Gates spread coronavirus to kill people, the evidence is he said we should reduce population _growth rate_ and we interpreted it as him saying he wants to reduce the population" sites?

The fact that segments are repeated makes me think it's not a reputable site (in case they manage to fix it, screenshot as of the moment: [https://i.imgur.com/M2Glm84.png](https://i.imgur.com/M2Glm84.png)). Also the poster's username on here is very similar to the site name...

<comment><USER14> Here's the news from Reuters

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- cyber-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cyber- idUSKBN21Y3GL)

<comment><USER15> And there it sounds much less specific: "the bureau had recently seen state- backed hackers poking around."

<comment><USER16> It's a bit more specific than that.

'FBI Deputy Assistant Director Tonya Ugoretz told participants in an online panel discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute that the bureau had recently seen state-backed hackers poking around a series of healthcare and research institutions.

'"We certainly have seen reconnaissance activity, and some intrusions, into some of those institutions, especially those that have publicly identified themselves as working on COVID-related research," she said.'

from the referenced report at: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health- coronavirus-cyber/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- cyber/fbi-official-says-foreign-hackers-have-targeted-covid-19-research- idUSKBN21Y3GL)

<comment><USER15> It's far from what sciencetechniz.com article claims, and I've quoted the actual words of the person, as quoted in the article, not the interpretations.

<comment><USER16> But the context for your original reply and also my own reply were to the Reuters article. Also, everything in the opening sentence gloss is literally word for word supported by the very next line, which is a direct quote of the Reuters article which itself is a direct quote from the speaker from the FBI at the conference.

Not to be pedantic, but I honestly don't know what you are getting at.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPad & iPhone tactile object recognition system bodes well for board games - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/ipad-iphone-tactile-object-recognition-system-bodes-well-for-board-games-20100827/

<comment><USER2> Pro: I like the interaction between multi-touch used for multiple players; this could be very interesting. Geek is full on. I wonder how it differentiates between the pieces on the iPad.

Con: One night of playing risk or monopoly on a touch surface with kids or drunken geeks, and it will be ruined.</comment>


Satellite images analyzed by neural networks to determine solar power potential - <AUTHOR> https://www.vision-systems.com/non-factory/article/14038633/deeproof-solar-power-potential-neural-network-system-automates-assessments <comment><USER2> I presume this is a copy of Project Sunroof but open source. [https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/faq/](https://www.google.com/get/sunroof/faq/)</comment>


GM's Former President Calls for the End of Car Ownership - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-11/gm-s-former-president-ammann-calls-for-the-end-of-car-ownership <comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of reducing traffic and doing stuff that's good for the environment, but ..."Hey, everybody! Let's stop doing stuff that I used to tell you was a good idea and make money off of and do this new thing that I think is a good idea so I can make money off of it. Also, you should stop owning things because those don't provide me with a constant revenue stream, and for the good of the planet you should pay me all of the time. Public transportation is bad, mmmkay?"

<comment><USER3> I don't think there's anything wrong with making money. Consider the average personal car is only in use 5% of the time. People are paying an enormous amount to own, house, and maintain a car that they are barely using.

If they could instead just pay for the 5% of when they are using it and have it go off and be used by other people the rest of the time, it would probably ending being less expensive overall. There would also be fewer cars around.

Yeah, maybe the GM president once told people to own cars. Maybe that was the right thing at the time. Now circumstances have changed and something else makes more sense. Updating your views to account for new information is not a bad thing.

<comment><USER4> It would be less expensive but that isn't why we own cars. It would also be less expensive to buy cheap fuel efficient cars.

We buy these cars because we are buying flexibility and time. Even public transportation can take lots of extra time if you aren't in the center of dense service. With my car, I don't have to wait for an Uber, I don't have to plan, I can just go whenever and wherever I want. It also doesn't get exponentially more expensive if I want to go somewhere 1+ hours away. Obviously if you never leave a three block radius, a car would be pretty silly. I'm just trying to say car ownership isn't generally about cost.

<comment><USER3> Jeez, it seems every time in these threads there's someone who comes in like "Hey I live 40 miles from the nearest paved road, I need my own car!!!"

Nobody is saying it's going to be illegal to own your own personal car or anything. Sure, if you want to live in the middle of nowhere then you'll probably need your own transportation. For a lot of people it's not going to be as necessary to bother owning your own car when you can call one whenever you need it and it will be there in 5 minutes.

If you can get 90% of the flexibility and time for 10% of the cost that is going to make sense for a lot of people. Not owning a car at all is a much larger difference in savings than owning one that gets 30mpg rather than 20mpg.

<comment><USER5> I think you're missing the point. For the last 70 years American politics has promoted a set of policies that have made cities hard or impossible to navigate without cars. You don't have to be "40 miles from the nearest paved road" to experience this.

Now a lot of the same people that promoted and lobbied for these ideas are trying to sell a "quick fix" in the form of car sharing and other recurring revenue models.

 _There is no quick fix._ The US needs a lot of public infrastructure investment before not owning a car is viable for the majority of people. Uber is _not_ affordable compared to buying a $500 used car from Craigslist if you commute every day and does not solve the problem of navigating big box store "shopping centres" as a pedestrian.

<comment><USER3> We don't know yet what the cost of something like Uber is going to be if the car can drive itself.

I don't know what city you live in, but where I live the city is pretty difficult to navigate _with_ a car. This is because of all the _other_ cars clogging up the road.

And besides, the entire point here is that you _still_ have access to a car. You are not facing the problem of navigating a car based infrastructure without a car. The entire idea is that there are cars available on-demand!

I guess we could do nothing and hope that at some point governments figure out to build public transportation in a reasonable time frame for a reasonable amount of money, but I'm not going to hold my breath for that. There is zero reason we can't simultaneously work on more efficiently using the infrastructure we already have.

<comment><USER5> > I guess we could do nothing and hope that at some point governments figure > out to build public transportation in a reasonable time frame for a > reasonable amount of money...

Non-US governments already have. This isn't incompetence, it's intentional policy.

> This is because of all the other cars clogging up the road.

Ride sharing has only made this problem worse[1]. Is there any evidence that _even more ride sharing_ will improve the situation? The basic problem is that everyone needs to get into or out of a few central locations at around the same time (typically 9am/5pm). Solving this requires moving people more efficiently (as in more people/m^2 of roadway) than cars, even ride sharing cars, would allow.

[1] [https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/report-ride-sharing- inc...](https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/report-ride-sharing-increases- not-reduces-traffic/528659/)

<comment><USER3> Nobody is saying not to invest in public transportation. I'm for that 100%. I sincerely hope the US develops the political will to do it.

But even if everyone agrees to do it tomorrow, we're talking decades to completely rebuild infrastructure of major cities.

I don't know why this is framed as an either/or choice. Build better public transportation, sure. How about we also use cars more efficiently. Why are you against that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The 'electric' part of the article here is fluff. Electric cars already exist and will take over the market within a similar time frame to any proposed self-driving car takeover (it's primarily a matter of manufacturing capacity, which affects this company too, and waiting for older cars to die out at this point).

Aside from that, there are three main ways I can think of that a self-driving car could reduce pollution.

a) More people fit in the same car and an intelligent mechanism can pair riders. This exists today in the form of things like Uber Pool. Without a driver you might get one additional passenger in a car.

That's the main mechanism. In the best case it can reduce energy use per passenger by around 20-25% - in a realistic case it would be more like 10% or less.

b) Cars can drive closer together and with more intelligent traffic lights. I think this is incredibly overblown - pedestrians exist and cars are already pretty close together in cities.

I doubt this will make much difference especially given that electric cars use ~zero energy at idle.

c) Over a long time-frame, cities are redesigned such that parking spaces don't exist and so things are closer together.

This is both a multi-decade (possibly even a century) change, and likely to just result in people commuting further - the 1 hour sweet spot isn't going anywhere, all people won't stack in cities unless they're forced, if we're being charitable, say, 50% of people actually prefer that lifestyle.

It also works for taxis.

Basically, the whole thing is nonsense.

What I see as being more likely if self-driving takes off is crackpots sitting at desks in the back of their van, or chilling on a sofa watching movies, and doing multi-hour commutes, offsetting the savings.

I've not even mentioned here the fact that a significant amount of people just like to own their own car and have the funds to do so. Particularly if you're in a rural area, the idea of some SV startup self driving to your ranch is absurd, you're almost certain to either be priced out or just directly geofenced out.

<comment><USER7> > a) More people fit in the same car and an intelligent mechanism can pair > riders. This exists today in the form of things like Uber Pool. Without a > driver you might get one additional passenger in a car. That's the main > mechanism. In the best case it can reduce energy use per passenger by around > 20-25% - in a realistic case it would be more like 10% or less.

And it would reduce the number of cars on the road, the number of mechanics shops needed to service those cars, the number of insurance companies, most of the infrastructure around licensing, etc. Lots of knock-on effects that would also impact emissions, and a fleet of self-driving cars permit a lot more vertical integration, which reduces TCO.

A fleet of self-driving cars will simply be more cost effective _and_ reduce emissions. Car ownership becoming a luxury is probably inevitable. It will become a collector's hobby, like old sports cars are today.

<comment><USER8> > A fleet of self-driving cars will simply be more cost effective and reduce > emissions.

How? I drive from point A to point B in my car. I'm there for a while, then drive from point B back to point A. Meanwhile, someone else drives from point C to point D, is there for a while, then drives back to point C. Total trip legs: A->B, B->A, C->D, D->C.

Now a self-driving car takes over. It drives me from A to B, goes to C, drives the other person to D, gets me at B, takes me back to A, goes back to D, picks up the other person, and takes them back to C. Total trip legs: A->B, B->C, C->D, D->B, B->A, A->D, D->C.

There is no world in which the second set of trips emits less than the first, given equivalent vehicles. It's simply not possible.

(Note that this is different from the have-everything-delivered scenario. The old way was you drive from A to the store at S, then drive back home to A. Someone else drives from B to S, then back to B. Delivery drives from S to A to B to S, which can be more efficient.)

<comment><USER7> > There is no world in which the second set of trips emits less than the > first, given equivalent vehicles. It's simply not possible.

Firstly, you completely neglect to consider ride _sharing_ , where multiple people are heading in roughly the same direction and so a portion of the trip reduces from 2 legs to 1, ie. the simplest case from your examples would be A->C->B->D(wait)->B->C->A. The more people that use the service, the more likely this is to happen, and the more emissions are reduced. It's the exact same aggregation argument supporting the use of transit.

Secondly, you're only focusing on specific local effects rather than systemic effects. The number of cars on the road would be dramatically lower [1], so we're manufacturing, maintaining, licensing and insuring fewer cars, all of which counts towards reducing emissions.

Then the marginal reduction in convenience means some people would _change their behaviour_ , ie. travel less and/or plan their travel better so they get more done in a single trip.

Frankly, it seems clear that there is no world in which people owning their cars would be superior or even equivalent to a fleet of self-driving cars when it comes to environmental impact, traffic or efficiency.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783531)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Historically the trend of things we don't/won't own: land, house, data, right to have kinds, your body.

Why? One argument that is cooking right now: "you don't know how to properly manage these things to support sustainable progress of humanity (and because you are broke)"

<comment><USER10> Increasing rent seeking was always a sign of decaying system.

You cant have inverted wealth pyramid growing indefinitely, It will eventually crash, especially when instead of creating wealth you erode the bottom.

<comment><USER9> The technological revolution is going to make the top appear to be gods while the bottom, well, the bottom will prey :\

<comment><USER10> I have similar outlook at the future, we already have poor voting on people that have clearly no interest helping the poor.

I used to be really excited about tech prolonging life, but now i think it will be artificially made prohibitively expensive so the rich cast can hold on to their power even more.

Currently the power was lost when next generation was bad at managing their parent's empires... well I think we are quickly approaching techno dystopia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious - how many cars does this guy personally own? How did he get to that interview? Take the bus?

<comment><USER12> The article explains that this is somewhat motivated for his self-driving electric car start-up.

<comment><USER11> Yes of course. As a spokesperson for this company, he'd be remiss if he didn't press the company line energetically.

But its trivial to see the irony here. This salesman is too shallow to actually walk the walk, and is gonna get laughed at a lot for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Right on. Car sharing and gig economy ride services make sense to me.

I no longer own a car. I gave my last car to my granddaughter last spring. I do "cheat" a bit because I can use my wife's car, but I find it liberating to not have a car. Living in a small town in the mountains of Central Arizona (Sedona), I can walk to our beautiful library in 25 minutes, to our local food bank where I volunteer one day a week in 15 minutes, and to our local movie theater and a grocery store in 10 minutes.

Except for writing I am now retired, so I can afford "wasting time" by walking.

My generation has done a horrible job living in an environmentally sustainable way. I want to take a 110 day around the world cruise, and roughly not buying a new car might offset the environmental damage of taking that cruise. Anyway, that is how I see it.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Meanwhile, Cruise will miss its original goal to launch a self-driven ride- > sharing service by the end of this year, something the venture now plans to > introduce at an unspecified date.

They don't even know when they're going to launch after missing their public deadline (and certainly several internal deadlines). This is just more self- driving hype in a space where companies need to constantly raise money. Cruise has already raised billions outside of GM and will need to continue to do so since they have no revenue.

EDIT: In case it was unclear, GM's Former President is now the CEO of Cruise.

</comment><comment><USER15> I guess what he has in mind is to follow the example of the software industry and use "car as a service" as a market disruption that will allow him to jack up prices.

<comment><USER16> This is what I thought the article was going to be about. The John Deere / Meraki licensing model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fuck off and let me buy what I want.

<comment><USER18> You don't live in a bubble. What you do affects other people. I don't even mean your next door neighbour.

Large scale carbon emitters like the u.s. can have a global effect. It global temps continue to rise it will have major negative effects on smaller countries. It has already started with my home country.

You don't pay a tax that goes towards mitigating that... unfortunately. I am not saying taking away cars but we should be more responsible where it comes to owning or making the decision of owning one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the ability of Americans to drive privately-owned cars in terrible states of repair will prevent this future.

I've known folks who limp along old cars for years, dealing with potentially dangerous issues with the transmission or suspension. And don't get me started on people who don't keep tires with sufficient tread.

But all these terrible cars are cheap to continue driving in a just-barely- works state. Folks are able to get to their jobs working daycare or fast food in a beat-up 15 year-old car because many places in the US don't require safety inspections, or if they do, only when the car is transferred to a new owner.

If individual car ownership ends, and all the cars are instead owned by large drive-share corporations, that's obviously going to be heavily regulated, cars will all be maintained on a best-practice schedule, etc. Similar to how rental car companies or Uber/Lyft today only use newer, reasonably-maintained vehicles.

If that becomes the reality for all cars in America, we might see a market sort of like Japan. They have a rigorous periodic safety inspection called Shaken, so cars in Japan mostly tend to be newer. Once cars get older and require more work, they're often seen as fairly worthless in Japan and exported to poorer countries with more lax vehicle requirements.

I personally like the Japanese system - it seems to make sense that cars on the road should meet a rigorous level of roadworthiness. But that's so different from the current reality in the US that I'm not sure society would go along with the higher costs that would come with these well-maintained shared vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER20> > the chief executive officer of a self-driving car startup...

No bias there!

I'm sure someday it will be a thing but the infrastructure is not there. Or not here in my neck of the woods yet. We only have two maybe three EV charging stations in my entire province. Not that autonomous vehicles are all EV but I'm sure that's the direction they industry is heading and wants.

But to realistic, on this -13C day with icy roads I am not looking forward to an autonomous vehicles. I can't see an autonomous vehicle driving me on slippery narrow winding country roads. Half the time maps don't have the roads correctly mapped here, the road lines are covered in snow, no paved shoulder, roads are infrequently plowed and salted.

</comment><comment><USER21> If car-sharing is cheaper & more convenient than car ownership, that means the demand is higher for it than private usage, which means that there will be more cars on the road rather than less. A significant majority of the environmental damage a car causes is in it's operation rather than it's creation & disposal, so realize that car sharing and autonomous cars are bad for the environment, not good. As long as the norm is still 1 person per car.

Autonomous raises the prospect of cars driving around with no people in them, doing even more environmental damage and causing even more traffic jams.

</comment><comment><USER22> This solves many of GMs problems.

They don't have an easy means to rid themselves of an excessive number of dealerships. However a sharing system can effectively do that; fwiw I have little if any issues with the dealership model and i drive a TM3!

it also insulates them from having to make appealing vehicles, they have already proven they cannot do so in the sedan market and have effectively abandoned it.

snark aside, they are already experienced in selling to rental fleets and have put together packages for cars that suit that market very well while not appealing to regular buyers

</comment><comment><USER23> Could he really say anything else given his current position? Car manufacturers and VCs have pumped enormous cash into this space for over a decade and have what amounts to vaporware to show for it. Assisted highway cruise and crash avoidance are very good features, but we are perpetually "a few years away" from the promise of significant autonomy.

<comment><USER24> To be fair, that was the state of speech recognition, too, until it wasn't. We'll get full self-driving eventually, but it may take 5-15 years. It's hard but not intractable, like supersonic passenger air service.

I'm not patient either.

<comment><USER25> "until it wasn't" => After the AI winter, we had to wait for the phone revolution which enabled data collection at scale, and google et al's big ad dollars in order to fund speech recognition.

Moreover, speech recognition isn't a product you can't launch in a faulty state. You can sell a bad product, make a profit, and iterate without any consequence.

It's not the same with self driving cars, which won't be profitable till you get rid of the driver entirely. And you can't launch a ok product and iterate. It has to be almost perfect when it comes to safety.

Barring geofencing or legislative changes, you have to get it in a perfect state before you roll it out.

When the VC money dies down, and when such big companies are no longer optimistic at having a viable self driving car, the research is going to slow down drastically, till a new wave of funding comes along from some other boom to resuscitate the research.

<comment><USER26> > _It 's not the same with self driving cars, which won't be profitable till > you get rid of the driver entirely. And you can't launch a ok product and > iterate. It has to be almost perfect when it comes to safety._

No, it merely has to be as good as humans, though it should be mildly better. The massive economic and feature advantages it will bring to the table mean that regular people will paper over problems real quick, just as with, well, current cars. In fact if anything I wonder if a higher rate of fatalities and accidents would actually be psychologically _better_ than "almost perfect", because in the modern environment things that are super rare and low risk tend to get inordinate media attention and political response vs things that happen with a certain frequency and thus people become habituated to. I mean, again cars themselves are the big example of that. In America alone, estimates are around 40,000 died last year, which itself was actually around a 1% drop from the previous few years. Which means hundreds of fewer deaths. But that didn't register remotely like a handful of high profile super unlikely dramatic deaths would.

But the bonuses are the main things vs any negatives, because humans are good at motivated reasoning to deal with risk when it's something they want. And a reliable included always available personal chauffeur that means things like car access for kids without disruption of parents' schedules, continued car access for the elderly (note, one of the most powerful and reliable voting segments of the electorate), elimination of issues due to drinking/tiredness/phone usage, just plain letting people do other productive things or flat out sleep on trips, etc etc etc., is a powerful set of incentives to quickly move past someone else's "bad luck".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Dude. This is just never going to happen, maybe ever. Car ownership is baked into a core part of our identity, culture, and social norms. It's like saying we'll start renting toothbrushes instead of owning one.

</comment><comment><USER28> It all depends on what the lawyers say. What happens when a self-driving car gets into an accident and possibly seriously injures someone? Who's responsible? The manufacturer of the vehicle or the owner? If it's the owner then yes, I'd prefer someone else own the car since I have no control over it. If it's the manufacturer then I'd prefer to own the car.

</comment><comment><USER29> No thanks. I like that my vehicle is ready to go when I get outside. When my son had a seizure we were on the road within 5 minutes and on our way to the hospital. I don't want my ability to get a ride to be based on the availability and proximity of an Uber-like service vehicle.

<comment><USER30> Did you choose the location of your house based on its proximity to the hospital?</comment></comment>


Processing Billion-Node Graphs on an Array of Commodity SSDs - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/5/19/paper-flashgraph-processing-billion-node-graphs-on-an-array.html

<comment><USER2> I cannot recommend FlashGraph strongly enough. FlashGraph was one of the first graph computation engines to enable near trivial analysis of the Web Data Commons Hyperlink Graph - 3.5 billion web pages and 128 billion links.

For smaller graphs, analysis using FlashGraph is hilariously quick.

If you're interested in how this is achieved, refer to [1]. From memory, Da Zheng said he created FlashGraph primarily as he wanted to prove how efficient the storage system was. Full details on the FlashGraph (though FlashGraph runs far faster now!) in the paper at [2].

Note: I'm a data scientist at Common Crawl, the dataset that the Web Data Commons Hyperlink Graph is based upon and the main developer of Flash Graph, Da Zheng, wrote a guest post for us on this very topic[3], so I'm rightfully biased as to thinking this is an amazing project!

[1]: [http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~zhengda/sc13.pdf](http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~zhengda/sc13.pdf)

[2]: [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/fast15/fast15...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/fast15/fast15-paper- zheng.pdf)

[3]: [http://blog.commoncrawl.org/2015/02/analyzing-a-web-graph- wi...](http://blog.commoncrawl.org/2015/02/analyzing-a-web-graph- with-129-billion-edges-using-flashgraph/)

</comment><comment><USER3> An interesting comparison point: a single core on a late-2014 MacBook Pro can achieve runtimes for the same graph that are within a factor of 4 for WCC (461 seconds for FlashGraph versus 1700 seconds for the laptop).

[http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/02/...](http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/02/04/COST2.html) (previously on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9001618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9001618))

There are also results for PageRank on that graph, which make the difference more pronounced. FlashGraph runs PageRank in 2041 seconds (I'm assuming for 30 iterations, per Section 4 of the paper), whereas the laptop takes 46000 seconds for 20 iterations.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely spot on - between FlashGraph and Frank McSherry's COST work, the two have really pushed the envelope on efficient large scale graph analysis.

Frank McSherry wrote a "call to arms" for the broader graph community at [1]. The main point of interest is that academia generally compared their work with existing distributed graph processing systems, celebrating when any achievements were made, yet not aware of the significant overheads brought on by the distributed approach. Both Frank's work (run on a single laptop) and FlashGraph (run on a single powerful machine) run far faster than the distributed approach and have very few disadvantages.

Note: I'm a data scientist at Common Crawl and Frank's graph computation discussion article was a guest post at our blog.

[1]: [http://blog.commoncrawl.org/2015/04/evaluating-graph- computa...](http://blog.commoncrawl.org/2015/04/evaluating-graph-computation- systems-performance-and-scale/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish there was a deeper technical explanation on how they made such a difference with a layer of file system. Would this also improve relational db perf?

<comment><USER5> Searching for "set-associative file system" brings up their publications

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24402052](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24402052)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881961/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881961/)

[https://github.com/icoming/FlashGraph](https://github.com/icoming/FlashGraph)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> i can't help but wonder if this has been tested vs. just letting the os virtualise memory for you... i'm assuming yes.</comment>


How to run the new Chrome OS environment without a Chromebook - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/howto-run-the-new-chrome-os-environment-without-a-chromebook.ars <comment><USER2> FWIW, the build process is actually quite simple. The final step accepts the path to a USB stick and automatically makes a runnable image that you can boot into directly. (You can also run a step to start your image in qemu, if you don't want to run it on real hardware.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been running it as a Parallels VM for months now. It's available via the Parallels Convenience Store for free.</comment>


Where do startup companies find employees? - <AUTHOR>

We're looking for the best strategies for finding people for our startup.  What have you found was the most effective? <comment><USER2> Are you in school or recently graduated? Try talking to your school buddies. Chances are they're at a stage where they don't like the idea of working for a big company anyway.

If you're currently working at another company, you can approach co-workers who are your friends. But be very careful with this... This could be used as evidence that you are violating an IP or non-compete agreement.

If neither of those works, might want to check out computer science career fairs at a few of the good universities. Some of the guys graduating could be quality hackers willing to take risk.

The traditional means recruiters use to get Sr people (like LinkedIn) might turn up people who cost too much (and generally suck), but could still be worth a shot.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the most successful startups the first employees are usually people the founders knew in school.

In fact, that's probably the main reason startup hubs tend to form around universities.

<comment><USER4> Co-worker friends might be as popular as school friends. Bbig tech organization spawn new companies when some of the employees break off to do their own thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm struggling with the same thing. A post i wrote recently (<http://www.pumperknickel.com/?p=300>) covers a couple of suggestions.

To date I've had most success with craigslist ads. Cheap at $75. But you need to be very clear (not like your typical job ad) in your posting to make sure you really get what you need.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> The startup I was in looked primarily towards referrals from the investors and the existing employees. We also submitted a gig to the 37 Signals board, and I think there were some good candidates there. Most of those people seem to be on top of their game and favor the simplicity and ease that 37 Signals preaches (which I consider to be a very good thing).

</comment><comment><USER7> Are you an early-stage, pre-VC startup? If so then the only people crazy enough to join you are the people who trust you. Friends might end up working with you and friends will vouch for you.

</comment><comment><USER8> Try posting your job opportunity in places like this one. I'm sure there are people interested in startups that read yc news but that are not working on a startup right now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Though it takes a fair amount of time, I've found that a blog is a good place to recruit (as it provides potential recruits some insight into the company).</comment>


Apple, YouTube end relationship - <AUTHOR> http://bostonglobe.com/business/2012/08/06/apple-drop-google-youtube-from-latest-version-ios/MzvsYudEeoCavle2knWxmO/story.html

<comment><USER2> "License has expired .. youtube app will not come pre-installed .. ". Does this mean we will have no youtube (iOS has no flash support, remember) or that we need to explicitly download an app?

<comment><USER3> It means there's no dedicated app. It doesn't mean that future iOS hardware won't be able to play YT vids.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Aquarium – endlessly generated psychedelic WebGL experience - <AUTHOR> https://aquarium.ru/en <comment><AUTHOR> 24 years after the release of the first version of the site, the founders of Russian rock music, "Aquarium" got a new psychedelic site with endless worlds variants: just scroll to the end to see a new one.

trailer: [https://vimeo.com/418412430](https://vimeo.com/418412430)

tons of dev images and videos: [https://artlebedev.com/aquarium/site2/process](https://artlebedev.com/aquarium/site2/process)

official announcement: [https://artlebedev.com/aquarium/site2](https://artlebedev.com/aquarium/site2)</comment>


New GitHub phishing attack due to missing DMARC - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/glenmaddern/status/1278252319646367744 <comment><USER2> When I received a DMCA takedown request it didn't come from a "github.com" mail address but from "email@example.com". At first I thought I was being phissed but after some digging I found out it was actually an address they use.

By doing this your basically training your users to just accept mail from any address that vaguely resembles GitHub. So I can't say I'm really surprised about this. They don't seem to have given a lot of thought about issues like these.

<comment><USER3> Always fun when my company sends out phishing tests and I have to figure out if it's real, then turns out we have a ton of legit domains mail can come from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Microsoft should shutdown these domains. I see that this domain was setup recently 21-Jun-2020. A similar domain with CN TLD is there.

[https://who.is/whois/****gltnub.com*****](https://who.is/whois/****gltnub.com*****)

This could have been setup to do target a large private project and steal the source code.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is more a discussion topic, really interested if someone can explain to me how this email looks legitimate (beyond the information in the replies already)

</comment><comment><USER5> My guess on this is that SendGrid isn't strict enough about the `FROM` header when the message is being written. It's tough to say though without seeing the full set of headers.

Note the mail is sent from @sendgrid.net. DKIM even lists it as `with domain sendgrid.net`. Also note the `via sendgrid.net`. I'm not positive how that works on GMail, but I'm guessing that means the Return-Path (aka envelope from) is @sendgrid.net while the `FROM` in the mail header is set to @support.github.com.

That explains why SPF and DKIM pass, but DMARC fails. Both SPF and DKIM are aligned to sendgrid.net, but the FROM address the receiver sees is aligned to github.com (relaxed by default uses the organizational domain). AFAIK, that's exactly the scenario DMARC was made to catch.

The problem is that (I think) sending mail like that is sort of acceptable, and a strict DMARC policy breaks it. My guess for that type of mail is you need to trust the via party (ex: via sendgrid.net) to trust that email. Is that right? How many people know that? I had to refresh my memory on how DMARC works to figure out what was going on.

I've never used SendGrid, but I think they support sending from custom domains [1]. IIRC correctly they even let you delegate a subdomain to them which makes the setup simple since they handle all the NS. For example, point sendgrid.github.com DNS to them and all of the SPF / DKIM / DMARC alignment gets dealt with automatically.

For a high value domain like github.com they should probably be using a stricter DMARC policy. It's tough because you can impact deliverability, but all the transactional / cloud providers use similar strategies to improve deliverability and users don't have a chance understanding even a tiny portion of it. Ex: (IIRC) MS365 will DKIM sign and ARC seal messages using their `onmicrosoft.com` domain if you don't configure DKIM for a tenant. It's been a while since I thought I saw that somewhere and I only noticed in in passing once when diagnosing a different issue for someone, so don't take it as fact.

TLDR; SendGrid probably needs to be stricter when writing the FROM address. GitHub probably needs to send from a custom domain so they can be stricter about DMARC.

1) [https://sendgrid.com/docs/ui/account-and-settings/how-to- set...](https://sendgrid.com/docs/ui/account-and-settings/how-to-set-up- domain-authentication/)</comment>


Explore France's Loire Valley in the Footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/explore-frances-loire-valley-in-footsteps-of-leonardo-da-vinci-180971039/ <comment><USER2> I've been to the town twice (Amboise) while visiting the Loire Valley - it's pretty nice and quaint as you'd imagine medieval towns in the French wine country. Walkable, picturesque, good food and wine.

However, the Leonardo da Vinci related stuff is surprisingly gaudy. And for some reason the main da Vinci exhibit is sponsored by IBM yet still expensive for admission.

Overall, if you're in the area it's worth checking out. But nothing to go out of your way for.

<comment><USER3> I'd visit Loire for the Cremant alone!

<comment><USER2> Now that's a great reason to visit ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" Once fully wound, the animal shuffles forward for up to ten paces, twirls its tail, rotates its head and displays its fangs: a spectacle fit for a king."_

Leonardo prefigured the Aibo 500 years ago!

</comment><comment><USER5> I wanted to read this article especially as I've been to Chateau de Chambord, but this website is the epitome of adverts ruining the browsing experience!

<comment><USER6> I opened the article in Chrome on Android and it was indeed an awful experience but I then switched to the HN browser tab and enjoyed the ad free browsing</comment></comment>