Is the Bay Area pushing people to the breaking point? - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/24/is-bay-area-pushing-people-to-the-breaking-point/ <comment><USER2> Rightly or wrongly we live in a world where corporations lobby for all kinds of things. But the response from Bay Area companies to this growing problem over the past decade seems to be invisible if it exists.

Do the big Bay Area companies not see this as a threat? Why aren't they busy lobbying local and state government on the issue? You hear about Google vs Mountain View, and small things like that. But there's no big sustained campaign to raise awareness of the problem, it's causes, and it's solutions. Heck put up some billboards at least.

<comment><USER3> 5 out of the 6 top reasons are housing related. [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/california- home-p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/california-home-prices- climate.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have an average tech job _and_ you are single/partnered (w/ dual income) with no kids, you are probably relatively fine as far as affordability goes.

If you have kids or living on a single income for 2 people, then it gets harder because presumably you'll want to find a more permanent living situation than renting a bedroom in a larger home with roommates or a small studio/1 bedroom.

My guess is that the existential crisis/breaking point happens for those in transition periods in their lives, the most notable those in their 20s/30s who have recently gotten married and thinking of having their first kid. At that point, if you haven't been fortunate enough to make enough to afford at least a small 2 bedroom in a good school area for $1.5m-$2m + school + daycare it isn't going to very sustainable to keep living here. Plus, many people want help from their parents to help raise their kids while they continue working, and unless you're in a situation where your parents are already living here that would be difficult to accommodate as well.

<comment> maze-le >> If you have kids or living on a single income for 2 people

Does anyone still live with that kind of family-model? '2 people + kids / 2 incomes' is pretty much standard where I live, no one can afford otherwise -- not even the higher-earning income bracket.

<comment><USER4> Some, but right almost certainly a lot less than in previously generations...

If one partner made enough to support the whole family _and_ you had kids, then I imagine there are some families who would want a full-time parent caring for their kids vs relying on daycare/parents/nanny.

<comment><USER5> If you aren't making at least $40k a year (with a low-stress job), you will mostly just be treading water covering the cost of daycare, and might as well stay home with the child. Unless you have other reasons to keep working besides cash flow.

<comment> maze-le >> If you aren't making at least $40k a year (with a low-stress job), you will mostly just be treading water covering the cost of daycare

Ahh, I see... That's actually a rational argument in favour of it. I sometimes tend to take conditions on this side of the Atlantic for granted -- like 90 € / month [+reduction for lower-income parents] for daycare / Kindergarten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just accepted a job in santa rosa for a third of what I would have been making in san fracisco.

I did so, for many reasons, some of which:

* At 44, I experience a hell of a lot of ageism now

* I am burnt out on my previous role - and I had litterly zero passion for the only thing I had pretty much done my entire career

* After spending more than 6 months interviewing with tons of companies, I could literally feel my skills atrophy. My professional vocabulary was starting to fail. I was forgetting really basic things that were previously innate

* Housing sucks in the bay area

* mass transit is an evil joke which punishes anyone who wants to take it

* I am pretty much done with the bay area, and even moving outside it - and not wanting to do what I have done for 20 years will require effectively building up a new path for myself.

Now, I am working in cannabis tech. And I like it way better than ops tech for what I did before, regardless of the pay.

</comment><comment><USER7> Living in the bay area was good as long as you were single with no stuff, no attachments, no desire to run home to your spouse/kids. It's very easy to live with roommates who you don't care about.

As soon as those come in, the 1.5 hour commute + parking + prices starts biting. There are entire areas of bay area that are so weirdly connected (because of geography and no public transit) that makes some jobs brutal. Eg: Living in east bay but working in mountain view-san jose-cupertino. Or living in San Jose and working in mid-center SF

<comment><USER8> Are there any park-n-rides in the areas that are a long commute from city centers? Basically, where you can have cheap housing (because it is far away), then drive to a large parking structure to pick up a bus, light rail, or commuter train (or all three)? Also, is it common enough that if you are using public transportation, where you can VPN in via cellular, and start your day early (and have that "count" as part of you work day), so that 2 hour total commute means only 6 hours at the office? Or do most employers frown on that?

This is a really nice option where I'm at (Chicago area), where you can drive to one of the closer suburbs to the city, park, and hop on the L to get to the city center.

<comment><USER7> > Are there any park-n-rides in the areas that are a long commute from city > centers?

There are two train lines, Caltrain and Bart. Both have park and ride in stations outside city limits. For people working in the city, they would park in the nearest suburban train station and take the train.

The problem is on the other side in the city. A lot of offices are not close to any train station. Especially if you're coming from the south bay (using caltrain). Caltrain in the city is in a weird corner. You'll need to take a bus/uber after the train which is slower than walking sometimes.

> Also, is it common enough that if you are using public transportation, where > you can VPN in via cellular, and start your day early (and have that "count" > as part of you work day)

Yes. But the connectivity sucks enough to not be able to vpn often.

> Or do most employers frown on that?

That's between you and the employer. Typically, you'll see many people stay back longer (free dinners and all that) and that does put some peer pressure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It really comes down to lack of usable land area. When 7 million people are competing for a fixed number of parcels jammed into narrow strips between the ocean, an enormous bay, and development-unfriendly mountains, you end up with skyrocketing land prices and terrible commutes due to traffic choke points.

<comment><USER2> > competing for a fixed number of parcels

Hmm, what if we changed zoning to allow more people to live on those fixed number of parcels.

<comment><USER8> Then you run into issues with things like sewer / water / trash disposal, and also funneling those people into and out of those parcels. And you need to take away some of those parcels for increased shopping capacity, parks / recreation (with families, it is good to be able to access baseball / soccer / other sports fields, regular parks, etc).

So yes, you can tear down large parts of the bay area, and replace them with Manhattan, but at that point why not just move to Manhattan which is already built on that model?

Of course, I'm partial to the model that works where I'm at, Chicago area. You have the city and everything it brings to it, yet there is bountiful land surrounding it for having more spread out housing and other development. With good transportation all around, and a tone of both large and small businesses built up all around the city, up to 50 miles from the city core (so many people don't have to commute that far for work).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The root cause seems to be the same as with most of humanity's problems: overpopulation.

<comment><USER4> You either do not live in the Bay Area or you are wildly misinformed. The Bay Area's housing crisis is caused by a mix of bad zoning laws and rampant NIMBYism that has blocked enough housing construction to keep up with population growth. It has nothing to do with overpopulation.

<comment><USER10> > The Bay Area's housing crisis is caused by a mix of bad zoning laws and > rampant NIMBYism that has blocked enough housing construction to keep up > with population growth.

There shouldn't be any population growth to keep up with. The problem is too many people on too little space. Not sure why people seem to want to live in cities that resemble ant-hills if it's shown that it makes them miserable and depressed.

<comment> maze-le The number of people I know in suburban settings and inner city settings are fairly equally miserable and depressed though. I kinda don't buy that suburbia makes a happy-life theme...

<comment><USER10> I'm not talking about suburbs, if you're able to walk to a neighbours house within a day, it's too crowded.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Observed "a perfect backdoor" In The NSA/RSA Code (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://rump2007.cr.yp.to/15-shumow.pdf <comment><USER2> And knowing that, they still chose to implement it in Windows?</comment>


Microsoft helped the NSA bypass encryption, new Snowden leak reveals - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/microsoft-nsa-snowden-leak-971/ <comment><USER3> Puts this in an entirely different light, doesn't it:

Even when ostensibly not functioning, the Xbox One can run in a low-powered state, ready to be snapped on at a moment's notice. That's something Microsoft was showing off last week as an asset. The only on-switch Microsoft showed for waking the machine from its low-power state was a voice command... "Xbox On." The Xbox One could only hear that if the Kinect was already, always listening. The idea that the Kinect might always be listening got people reaching for their tin foil or vowing to not let an Xbox One into their home.

Microsoft is now seeking to calm concerns that the new Kinect might spy. "We are designing the new Kinect with simple, easy methods to customize privacy settings, provide clear notifications and meaningful privacy choices for how data will be used, stored and shared," the Microsoft rep told me.

"We know our customers want and expect strong privacy protections to be built into our products, devices and services, and for companies to be responsible stewards of their data. Microsoft has more than ten years of experience making privacy a top priority. Kinect for Xbox 360 was designed and built with strong privacy protections in place and the new Kinect will continue this commitment. We'll share more details later."

[http://kotaku.com/xbox-ones-kinect-can-turn-off-microsoft- sa...](http://kotaku.com/xbox-ones-kinect-can-turn-off-microsoft-says- noting-510100564)

Not sure I'd want the Xbox One in my house after this fiasco.

<comment><USER4> Since the Xbox camera is connected to the console via a cable, you can verify whether data going over the wire. If the Xbox is off, you shouldn't see traffic. It's a /bunch/ different from traffic in a data center, which is essentially untraceable and can be cloned at many points.

Frankly I'd be more concerned about the microphones contained in ubiquitous and nearly unexaminable devices such as cell phones, and to a lesser degree laptops. (I imagine that many laptop mics are USB devices, so their traffic should be visible to drivers, the drawback being that once the traffic is on the mainboard, where it goes is less traceable).

<comment><USER5> In addition to what was stated by RexRollman it can easily store video/audio to be sent only at the next start of the xbox. "Downloading update" or "Syncing savegames" and no-one is going to notice the encrypted few megabytes of MP3 compressed audio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel so stupid and so ashamed of myself for all the time I have thought of everything Richard Stallman had to say about privacy and security concern as a "neck-beard, tin-foil hat, nutjob".

He was right all along, it was us who didn't care enough to understand what he was saying and its importance.

<comment><USER7> No need to feel bad, I used to get a lot of snarking for being a Stallman fan.

It is a basic principle of security to assume that any power an adversary has, will be used against one's interests. People misunderstand this; I have seen it called a fallacy. But it's not a claim that it's always true, rather that it's what one must assume in order to have the best practicable assurance of security /privacy.

I also used to get arguments like "MS/GOogle/$_BIG_TECH_CO wouldn't use their power against customers, it would be bad for business" or "...it would be illegal" or similar. The correct answer is that prudence dictates assuming the worst. Well, maybe I was too cynical, but it's hard to keep up with how bad things really are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This whole thing makes me very suspicious of Apple's and Microsoft's whole disk encryption technologies. I can't help but wonder if back doors have been inserted into the products.

<comment><USER9> Not impossible, but some smart people have been looking, at least for Apple's FileVault 2:

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/an_analysis_of...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/an_analysis_of.html)

Paper here:

[http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/374.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/374.pdf)

Currently, there seem to be three vectors:

1) Weak passwords

2) If you opt-in to store a recovery key with Apple

3) If attacker has physical access to machine, and machine is powered on (direct memory access via Thunderbolt or Firewire) (Edit: seems like this is not the case, see below)

But no backdoor has been found (yet!)

<comment><USER10> > 3) If attacker has physical access to machine, and machine is powered on > (direct memory access via Thunderbolt or Firewire)

I'm curious if this could be addressed with software protections somehow? Something that triggers memory wipes and automatic shutdowns?

<comment><USER11> FileVault 2 is supposed to be secure against this* when the machine is powered on and locked or sleeping.

* Source [http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/18720/how-secure...](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/18720/how-secure-is-filevault-2-while-the-computer-is-in-sleep-mode)

<comment><USER10> Interesting. Apparently LUKS/dmcrypt on Linux is also protected from DMA attacks (firewire/thunderbolt devices).

> If you enable LUKS root, DMA attack mitigation is also > enabled(boot.initrd.luks.mitigateDMAAttacks ). It consists of blacklisting > firewire drivers.

Edit: still at risk of the "Evil Maid Attack" [http://www.aspecrypt.com/evil_maid_attack.html](http://www.aspecrypt.com/evil_maid_attack.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sorry this is news folks? Really? See this from 2011/12

from [http://www.infolaw.co.uk/newsletter/2012/01/microsoft- office...](http://www.infolaw.co.uk/newsletter/2012/01/microsoft- office-365-for-lawyers/)

However, the Patriot Act, introduced to protect US national security, can require that any US company (wherever data is held) must disclose data on demand to the US Government without the knowledge of the owner of the data, which is contrary to the UK Data Protection Act. Microsoft has been up-front in acknowledging that they cannot give that guarantee and this applies to data held in all their hosted solutions. As a result, in December 2011, BAE ditched plans to adopt Office365 because Microsoft could not guarantee the company's data would not leave Europe, in spite of operating a data centre in Dublin.

</comment><comment><USER13> The sad thing about all of this is that Microsoft were pretty much forced into this position (so we're told) by the authorities.

In the process these leaks have just destroyed pretty much any credibility Microsoft's online services had, which form large parts of their strategy (according to the recent Ballmer memo).

It also makes you wonder about the OS and other software they produce, which isn't a good place for MS to be in.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure why you're picking on Microsoft. The credibility of pretty much every large US-based tech services company is probably destroyed. The fact that we only saw the big service providers (MS, Google, etc...) on those slides doesn't mean that the other companies are free from the hands of the NSA.

Do you think that the NSA has no access to Dropbox?

<comment><USER15> Enterprise relies on companies such as RedHat and Oracle to some extent in lieu of conducting code analysis and to certain types of security testing.

It would be rather surprising if they were not at least approached by Federal agencies such as NSA and FBI.

To put it another way, because Microsoft has a closed source model, the intelligence agencies took the approach described in the article. From that, it may be a mistake to conclude that the strategy pursued with Microsoft was the only strategy pursued. It just happens to be one that would pass across the desk of an analyst, rather than someone on the operations side.

Viewed as an intelligence operation, it would be grossly unprofessional of such agencies not to have placed moles within the open source community, or for those moles to be seen as highly skilled contributors on open source projects. The three letter agencies have decades of experience infiltrating both commercial organizations and those motivated by something other than money.

I suspect it is easier to turn an open source hacker than a diplomat - <USER2> just ideologically but because the open source community lacks a state funded organized counter-intelligence apperatus.

<comment><USER16> If there were backdoors in the distributed Redhat code, how many people would even be able to know this? And that's if the code were blatantly obvious if you were allowed to see what was actually compiled. If the compiler itself is compromised then it would be possible that no one at Redhat would know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Then I start thinking about when Microsoft were being dragged through the competition and monopolies commission in the US, was this the US Government showing Microsoft what would happen if they didn't cooperate.

<comment><USER18> A half-serious conspiracy theory: The feds "encouraged" Microsoft to acquire Skype so as to obtain decrypted access to the communications.

<comment><USER19> It happened before MS acquired them.

[http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/project-chess- hel...](http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/project-chess-helped-nsa- snoop-your-skype-communications)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe I'm missing the source, but where's the source? These people keep writing stories about what's being revealed and "according to secret documents" this and that is shown. So where are these leaked documents?

If these media outlets are holding on to them to dribble and drab them out to make a buck, there's a huge problem with that. Everything should be out on a torrent or wikileaks for all to see.

</comment><comment><USER21> Well that puts their whole "We don't exploit your data like Google do" into perspective.

<comment><USER22> Does it? This isn't Microsoft exploiting data for their own benefit, not comparable. (Not that I like MS sharing the data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What do they mean by bypass encryption? If I use outlook.com (or gmail.com or whatever) over https, then it's encrypted over the wire, but it's obviously decrypted on their servers. It's the only way that search could work. I assume if you are PGP encrypting your messages or something equivalent, it's still unbreakable.

</comment><comment><USER24> going to try for devil's advocate angle.

could there be a case where the parties in a conversation are legitimate suspects? in such a case, why does it matter if it's Microsoft or some other private company that the NSA hires to break encryption?

it seems that the article is presenting the Microsoft / NSA relationship, and later states _"If you look at what happened when Bush, Cheney and General Hayden – who was head of the NSA at the time – deliberately violated the law to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant "_ which hints at a vague conclusion that Microsoft is helping to spy on citizens without a warrant.

possibly i missed something, so is the point that Microsoft (or any private company) should not do any work for NSA, or that it should not do it without a warrant, or that we can't trust it with anything because it did some work for the NSA? Or is that the details are still not disclosed so it's pure speculation?

<comment><USER23> Of course. If you are a legitimate suspect, any local police department can get a warrant to go inside your house and put your underpants in plastic bags and take them away. For that matter, they can cuff you and put you in jail. The question is what is the NSA doing without a warrant or rubber-stamped, secret, blanket warrants.

<comment><USER24> correct. i'm just having a hard time with the point (or lack there of) in this post.. as far as i can tell it's something like: NSA = PRISM, therefore any company doing work for NSA = evil.

<comment><USER23> The NSA is skating on very thin constitutional ice, but honestly they haven't really done anything that even qualifies as evil. The KGB did this kind of spying, but they did for the express purpose of sending dissenters to gulag. I haven't seen so much as a credible accusation that the NSA are doing anything other than their duly authorized mission.

<comment><USER25> This is the same as the British Stamp Act from the American Revolutionary War. If the Stamp Act was an argument for revolution because it was evil, this is too.

<comment><USER23> The difference is that the colonists had no recourse. "No taxation without representation" and all that. Without sending delegates to parliament, they had no channels to complain through, so rebellion was the only option. We could end the NSA completely by voting for candidates who support that.

<comment><USER25> I can't vote in the US as a resident in Sweden, so I'm in the exact same positions as the first colonists in America.

I guess my only option now is to rebel.

But sure for those living in the US they can do that. And they did that with Obama. However that just increased the surveillance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "It's hard to square Microsoft's secret collaboration with the NSA with its high-profile efforts to compete on privacy with Google."

I think it squares quite nicely. Set your standards low enough...

</comment><comment><USER27> I find it interesting that no USA-based news source is covering this.

<comment><USER28> Among US-based news sources covering this: The New York Times, NBC News, New York Daily News, CBS News, NPR, Chicago Tribune, ABC.

<comment><USER27> Huh.

My apologies, for some reason the only sites google showed on this issue were .co.uk.

<comment><USER29> Google personalizes results quite extensively these days, largely based on your location. Google believes based on that, and probably your previous searching and browsing habits, that those .co.uk sites are more relevant to your interests. After all, this is the company that has patented and is developing the idea of "Parameterless Searches", where they assume what you want to know before you even ask... (more info [http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/07/google-parameterless- sear...](http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/07/google-parameterless-searches/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescreen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescreen)

</comment><comment><USER31> Yet another reason to stick to open source.

<comment><USER32> Ok, I have full open-source stack and run a cloud service on it. I also give NSA full access to my servers. How does open-source helps there?

<comment><USER33> Why does the NSA have full access to your servers? Even if they manually wiretap your server it would require manual intervention, and is thus a good protection against blanket surveillance.

<comment><USER34> "Why does the NSA have full access to your servers?"

Because they ordered him to give it, and he elected not to go to jail.

<comment><USER35> He means "how". Open-source protects against software backdoors (though obviously not against key-sharing et alii)

<comment><USER36> What? Open source in a cloud service stack means that if the NSA thugs show up and order you to insert intercepts into your software on pain of being "disappeared", it's far EASIER to change the source and recompile than it is with proprietary software.

rimantas is referring to _using_ open source in a cloud service, not authoring and distributing it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Imaginary Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/baudisch/projects/imaginary_phone.html <comment><USER2> Every phone I've used (except the first) has been modal - you have to look at the screen to see what it's done. Is it asleep? Is it in screen-saver? Has an alarm gone off?

The first phone I ad I could drive without looking. every other phone I first have to see what it thinks is happening, before I have a conversation.

And it reacts differently according to stuff I can't always know, such as whether a message has arrived, or similar.

Phone interfaces would need substantial changes for this to work, changes I'd like to see. I _hate_ the modality.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree. I think this project is taking the whole user interface paradigm to wrong way. It's confining the usability to the limitations of an existing design, which is not a good approach for anything.</comment></comment>


Twitter Launches on Windows 10 Mobile - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/03/16/announcing-twitter-for-windows-10-on-mobile/ <comment><USER2> Okay so that's how I decided to stick with my Windows phone forever.</comment>


Interactive map of nearly 20,000 locations written about by Mark Twain - <AUTHOR> http://andrewxhill.com/maps/writers/twain/index.html

<comment><USER2> It's got a lot of false matches.</comment>


Why removing the TCP pseudo-header doesn't help mobility - <AUTHOR> http://pouzinsociety.org/node/47 <comment><USER2> "TCP+IP should have been split differently"

After reading I agree with some of the divisions that occur, but think that if more layer splitting happens it will be laterally (with defined interfaces in a 'meta' protocol layer).

        * IP shouldn't fragment
        * Connections should only exist in higher layers

Connections probably should be divided in to different logical parts, but interact as closely related components of a validated and reliable "pipe". Supporting mobile endpoints (in my mind) clearly means dropping the implicit authentication of an interface address and instead using a stronger cryptographic one. That's also why the connection layer needs to remain unified, even if the components within it are distinct: attacks on the connection are equivalent to packets that failed checksum.

<comment><USER3> Due to lack of personal knowledge is not quite clear to me what the problem is with mobile devices. It seems to be the fact that they very often change IP address.

am I right ? Is there any resource you would recommend to make my mind up ?

<comment><USER2> That's part of the problem. When the Internet was created computers had finally progressed to being /always on/ and /always connected/; it was possible to relay data (slowly) among these mainframes/big iron machines and have useful and expedient exchange with experts working at other institutions.

That carried forward until the dialup era. At that time the majority of users shifted to being /clients/ that intermittently connected to servers to check their inboxes and sometimes to remote services to request static public content. However they were still in a binary state of online or offline, and when they lost the connection loosing connection was a hard change.

Mobile devices loose connection for other reasons. Mostly the fact that they are wireless. They have limited power, speak across a noisy and highly contended media, and also move around. They are able to poll (somewhat infrequently) but are not always connected. They are in the uncanny valley as hosts; not disconnected enough to warrant a big change of state but also not connected enough to rely on two way communication.

They also happen to be extremely prolific. If not making up a majority of devices that happen to use some services, they are clearly an extremely large market segment. While I find it impossible to create in depth content on them, some do rely upon them as their only computer.

A protocol that is suitable for mobile connections would also alleviate some annoying failure modes caused by ISP maintenance and DHCP lease expiration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "In addition, TCP supports "fan-in, This allows multiple connections to the same well-known port at the same time. ... This creates a security problem, because the server must rely on the source IP address, and source port-id (values that it did not create) to distinguish this connection. This is the source of many spoofing attacks."

I really don't see how "source port" is relevant in this section, the issues are all about source IP + the lack of source verification. Using node IDs without the lack of source verification results in the same issue, source port or not.

Most of the other points I agree with but they are written with an agenda, well summed up in: "The reader should be getting a sense of how what may have seemed like a good idea at the time is proving to be a cascading series of patches that increase complexity and generally introduce new problems."

As a network guy I'll say it's much easier to look back at the last 40 years with the view of how all systems are ethernet + IP + TCP/UDP today and say "well obviously this is dumb". The same would probably be said for RINA in 40 years if it took off (haven't read through how it works so I can't judge it). The point is you can't skip the middle 40 years in how it should have been done and provide a high level "just do <x> technology direction instead" as evidence why it was done wrong. You have to go back and describe the full alternative and how it would make sense each step of the way (or at least how the full alternative could be implemented today). If the idea is "we think we could do better" then the article should have been written in the form of discovery of what's broken today.

Could there be a few good improvements to how networking is done now that we are a bit further along in both knowledge and technology? Sure, plenty, but I've yet to see one that covers both all use cases, is actually possible to implement in hardware, and can be decentralized.

<comment><USER5> I'm dealing with some of the 30+ year old broken stuff today, and I don't think TCP / IP is that bad.

That there are some holes in the spec isn't really so bad when they didn't become readily apparent for 20+ years; many things are fixable with changes on just one end of the connection too (if you skip some 'required' sends, you can avoid ack storms, etc).

IP Fragmentation is pretty awful. I wouldn't say it never worked, because I see some legitimate traffic using it. But with decades of hindsight, it was never a better solution than breaking up data into right sized packets, and it would probably have been better for routers to truncate packets and forward rather than fragment or drop.

IP could use the 16-bit ID field as a 16-bit original length, if you need to truncate a packet, change the total length, leave the original length alone; adjust the ip and tcp/udp checksums (sorry other protocols / maybe IP should have checksummed the whole packet or owned the data checksum), and send it on its way.

For TCP, the acking packets could use the mss option to indicate the new effective MTU (under the current spec, MSS is only valid on SYNs, but let's pretend), providing an _in band_ way to notify the sender, since clearly the out of band methods haven't worked out so well.

For UDP, the peers can figure it out themselves. If individual datagrams must be larger than the path MTU, you have to frame it yourself, but you have more options than what IP provides.

OTOH, I bet nobody expected janky path MTUs to be so prevalent.

<comment><USER6> >"I'm dealing with some of the 30+ year old broken stuff today..."

I am curious which behaviors you are referring to. Can you elaborate?

>"IP Fragmentation is pretty awful. I wouldn't say it never worked, because I see some legitimate traffic using it."

I am curious what types of traffic you you have that's doing IP fragmentation regularly?

<comment><USER5> I'm trying to get data on clients with path MTU problems, with an eye toward fixing it through statistics; assuming I can only intervene on the server side, because the clients are on Android, so path mtu blackhole detection is there, but disabled (thanks Google), and you can't set any useful socket options from Java anyway.

I work for a messaging service , but won't tell you which one.

I first saw IP fragments when some nice people were doing charge reflection ddos against our www servers, but the reflector hosts were sending fragmented UDP responses, and also filtering the first fragment out (probably because the first fragment has the port number, and chargen is clearly bad, but their firewall didn't think to drop or reassemble fragments). Since fragment reassembly was a big performance problem, I thought maybe we could just disable it, but actually we see a trickle of fragments on legitimate connections. I didn't track it further than we can't turn it off, but we can set the reassembly buffer to be incredibly small, which was enough to weather the storm (and knowing we could turn it off in case of high fragmentation rate was nice too).

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the response. Interesting, do you mean Android has PMTU detection disabled in that Google is filtering "fragmentation needed but DF bit set" ICMP replies? That would be very surprising for Google I would think. Or are you referring to something else?

<comment><USER5> Android either doesn't enable PMTU detection, or it's only enabled in recent versions, or it's configured such that it's not effective. I've seen pcaps with iOS devices doing it though.

I don't think Google would intentionally filter out the ICMP fragmentation needed packets, but there are lots of problems actually getting them, between routers that drop packets without sending them, firewalls that drop all ICMP, and NAT devices that don't know how to direct them to the underlying client.

Edit: sorry I really mean PMTU probing. If you got a connection, but no acks when you send a large packet, after a significant timeout, it's worth trying to send smaller packets, even if you didn't get an icmp that says you should.

<comment><USER6> Ah OK, interesting that this behavior exists in iOS as well. Thanks for the clarification. Cheers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lion Air crash: Investigators say plane was 'not airworthy' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46121127 <comment><USER3> For a time, I instructed airline pilots in simulators. The aircraft I taught had a similar mechanism with a "cutout switch" like this Boeing. Often, even when they knew it was coming, the pilots would fail to immediately shut down the system when given a related emergency situation, similar to this one. After learning more about this crash, I immediately thought of the tens of times I've seen this happen in the simulator. Sometimes, I'd pause it and ask the pilots if they've realized their error, other times, I'd simply let them crash (poor instructing on my part). In a previous post, this opinion was called racism/profiling, however, I maintain that extreme incompetence exists in many SE Asian airlines. The particular airline for which I instructed (in the US) had many low-ability pilots, and the reaction of these Lion Air pilots matches theirs exactly. We need to increase automation and, little by little, continue to remove the pilot from the equation until we have pilotless/single- pilot commercial aircraft. Humans simply aren't meant to "become the machine", which is essentially what we're asking airline pilots to do.

<comment><USER4> If the aircraft were being piloted manually, this crash wouldn't have happened. The increasing imposition of automation and removing the pilot from the equation was the cause of this crash. Your recommendation is to take this further, rapidly?

<comment><USER5> Is pilot error more or less of a cause of fatal aircraft incidents than automation gone awry? What does the data say?

<comment><USER6> The FAA thinks that cockpit automation leads to complacency. It's a question on the commercial pilot written test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Preliminary report: [https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2018/1...](https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2018/10/2018-035-PK-LQP-Preliminary-Report.pdf)

As far as I can tell, one of the angle of attack sensors failed on the previous flight, the aircraft started to continuously trim nose down, the pilots trimmed it back up again a few times before switching off the automatic trim motors, declaring PAN-PAN, and continuing the flight. They reported the fault, the engineers "fixed" the wrong thing, and on the fatal flight it started playing up again. Except this time, the pilots didn't switch off the automatic trim motors, but just kept re-trimming nose up to counter the continuous automatic trim nose down. Eventually they got overwhelmed and crashed.

It's a tragic accident, and blame can be spread all round. It's good that the previous flight were able to work it out, and terrible that the fault wasn't properly fixed, and the subsequent flight didn't work it out. Also, that the aircraft wasn't resistant to this particular fault.

<comment><USER8> Sad.

One pilot was able to figure out the problem, find the solution and land safely. The next pilot did not and hundreds died.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I was in Indonesia, about 8 years ago, Lion Air had the ominous badly translated slogan "We make people fly". They had a bad track record at that time, too.

Edit: Apparently they still do, [https://mobile.lionair.co.id/](https://mobile.lionair.co.id/)

<comment><USER10> That doesn't sound badly translated, does it? Lots of corporate slogans are that kind of vague phrase. They mean 'fly' as in 'soar', 'achieve', that kind of thing, as well as literally meaning they will fly you to your destination. Could have come from an English company, to my ears, and doesn't sound ominous. I think you're reading too much into it.

<comment><USER11> One very negative moment for this slogan was the moment one of their pilots was very audibly high on drugs on the PA before a flight.

<comment><USER10> Is 'flying' code for being on drugs? Most people don't know about drug culture and wouldn't make these kind of connections. I think it's just an generic marketing phrase.

<comment><USER11> 'Fly' (the English word) is an euphemism in Indonesian for being high. It's just unfortunate that they picked that phrase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like the way the news media tries to point at just one party to blame for any incident, and argues about which party should be to blame, when, like any incident, it was probably caused by tens of coinciding factors, and 'blame' really ought to be apportioned to all parties involved.

<comment><USER13> From the article:

> The findings by the National Transport Safety Committee (KNKT) suggest that > Lion Air put the plane back into service despite it having had problems on > earlier flights.

Seems this implies there are at least two parties involved: airline and aircraft manufacturer.

<comment><USER14> Let's also not forget the pilot. They are supposed to read the manual so they can respond to a badly behaving auto pilot / guidance system. There is always a pilot override. I guess you can bundle that in to airline blame though (lack of training or bad org structure). But really, this is a new plane and Boeing probably don't have adequate software testing in place for the newly written / ported software.

<comment><USER15> No, you need certification to be able to fly eact plane type, which equal to 6 months retraining. For this incident Boeing "forgot" to tell companies do not do what you usually do, as it doing what you do actually worsen the situation. Boeing released emergency notice after that incident, and data from black box showed that the pilot is doing precisely what they are used to do.

Plane it self is legal to fly at that time.

<comment><USER16> But isn't moving "STAB TRIM" to CUT OUT a memory item even in the 737 NG in the case of a trim runaway?

<comment><USER7> Yes. The newfangled plane had a new way for trim runaway to occur, but the action to take in the event of trim runaway shouldn't be (AFAICT) any different. They managed it on the previous flight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the most heavily regulated industries on the planet, and all this automation still caused a devastating crash.

How are we supposed to trust autonomous cars when the smartest engineers on the planet can't automate the condition of not diving a plane into the ground.

<comment><USER18> Exactly this. People are blaming the pilot, Lion Air, SE Asia, but ultimately a Boeing aircraft decided that it was very important to pitch down and dive into the sea. How many backup sensors and alternate systems have to fail/pass before this course of action is taken? Does the angle of attack sensor not check what a backup sensor is saying, and then what the altimeter is saying, airspeed sensor, and on and on. If a single sensor failing can make this happen then the sensor shouldn't exist.

<comment><USER17> Yes, it's truly a case of inadequate engineering IMO. If an automated system designed to prevent crashes (stalls, as I understand it) merely changes the failure mode into something harder to detect and correct manually, it's a poorly designed system.

A sibling comment mentioned that the sensors fail constantly. Seems that it might be possible to operate such a system with a significant number of critical inputs in a degraded state which could lead to unknown effects IMO.

In many ways, automated driving is much more complex than successfully piloting an aircraft in regulated airspace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >"In our opinion, the plane was no longer airworthy and it should not have continued," he said. The committee's report itself, though, does not spell out that conclusion.

Well that's kind of a useless conclusion without the report having anything to back it up. It's really easy to pat yourself on the back and say "yup, wasn't air/road/sea-worthy" in hindsight after there's been an accident.

>Pilots tried to correct this by pointing the nose higher, until the system pushed it down again. This happened more than 20 times. It is unclear why the pilots did not employ procedures to disable the automated system.

This is the million dollar question. Why didn't the pilots turn off the system and fly in "legacy mode" like they would if they were flying the prior revision of the 737.

<comment><USER20> >This is the million dollar question. Why didn't the pilots turn off the system and fly in "legacy mode" like they would if they were flying the prior revision of the 737.

As a pilot, if my plane is doing something which I don't expect it to - <USER2> first thought isn't to disable auto-trim, but to consider why it's doing that. A previous crew did have the issue, and did report the problem. As a pilot, I trust that it has been fixed, so no, it wouldn't be the first thing on my mind.

<comment><USER21> From what I understand from reading PPrune forums, pulling the circuit breaker for trim irregularities is the de facto standard operating procedure on the 737, and has been for over a decade+.

Hopefully they find the CVR and that gives us more insight into what the crew was thinking. It is odd that the pilots struggled with trim controls for ~11 minutes and didn't think to disable it.

The media has focused on the new MCAS system on the 737-Max, but I think that is somewhat irrelevant, considering that the procedures for addressing trim irregularities non-Max models are the same: pull the trim circuit breaker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The full quote just said there's less ambiguity with the title:

"Nurcahyo Utomo, aviation head at the National Transport Safety Committee, said it was "too early to conclude" whether the anti-stall system had contributed to the crash. He added that the plane experienced similar problems during its previous flight from Denpasar in Bali to Jakarta. "In our opinion, the plane was no longer airworthy and it should not have continued," he said. The committee's report itself, though, does not spell out that conclusion."</comment>


Tesla Model S outsells German luxury flagships in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://europe.autonews.com/article/20180220/ANE/180219831/tesla-model-s-outsells-german-luxury-flagships-in-europe <comment><USER2> Guess what? More Teslas are being sold than Ferrari's as well. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison, every German brand that sells cars in this segment outsells Tesla 5:1 or more.

Sales for 2017:

Tesla Model S: < 20K BMW 5 series: 109K MB E-class: 125K

Note that the EU tax situation for vehicles is very complicated and can cause the price to change so much that a Tesla model S can be much cheaper, about equal or more expensive to a BMW 5 series or E class depending on the country you are looking at.

<comment><USER3> I have no idea why the Model S sales numbers are being compared to cars like the 7 series by laypeople too.

Even from a layman's perspective... have these people driven a 7 series? They're more quiet highway cruising than the Model S I test drove... until you feel like making them noisy, then you can floor it and hear a V12 roar to life... if that's your thing.

The Model S is more like a 5 series E Class in quality, strange that it gets slotted with cars solely on price

<comment><USER4> First of all, I completely agree that the E class is more on par with the Model S, and the S class is significantly more luxurious.

With that said, I do think it's interesting that the Model S has S class pricing and is outselling the S class despite being decidedly much less luxurious.

I'd say many people spending upwards of $85k-$100k+ on a car don't just want luxury -- they want social status. And right now a brand new upgraded Model S is more attention-grabbing than a Mercedes S class.

<comment><USER5> Really, Price is the only thing you can compare.

If you want complete luxury: S-Class, A7/A8, or 7-Series are going to be _decidedly_ better in every way, at a similar price bracket. To be honest, Tesla doesn't even compete in this category.

If you want the status symbol: Maybe Tesla is the best. You'd also probably be cross-shopping a Panamera or maybe an XJ.

If you want performance: The best will be an E63S, RS5 (kind of a different category), or M5. A P100D is stupidly fast off the line, but most enthusiasts don't put it in the same class as high-end german performance cars due to driving dynamics and the price. It gets an honorable mention.

If you want tech: Tesla, Audi, or the Cadillac CT6. Tesla wins on automated driving, but Cadillac isn't far behind at all. Audi has some of that, but their interior tech is easily on-par with Tesla when you option it out.

If you want all of them: You'll need to go upmarket. The RS7 would qualify, especially the refreshed 2019 model, but really you'll have to enter "optioned out Porsche" territory ($150k+) and even then you'll make sacrifices in the tech department.

There are a few generalities you can make, though: First, BMW isn't as competitive as they used to be. MB and Audi have recently started outpacing them in most categories. Second, Tesla definitely isn't competitive at its price bracket without tax incentives, unless all you care about is how other people perceive you, which can't really be quantified like the other categories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Model S (my Model S anyway) is expensive not because it's in the same conspicuous luxury segment as the high end of the Benz or Porsche line, but because it has expensive batteries, and because Tesla is using me, at my expense and with my consent, to gain market experience.

It's a product for early adopters. S class Benz products are not that.

My presence as a customer in this imagined luxury car price point segment is temporary. When it comes time to replace this Model S, I'm counting on several mass-market EV brands competing with each other.

If things keep going the the way they are now, Tesla will have a loyalty advantage in my next purchase choice. But that loyalty advantage probably won't be worth more than a few kilobucks.

The Model S is definitely not a plutocratmobile. I really like it. I'm a total fanboy. But there's road noise, and the front seat doors aren't plutocrat- grade comfortable, and the radio, and , and , and. The market analysts putting it in the plutocrat segment based only on price are making a mistake.

(Yeah, I know, first world problems. But I'm a proud early adopter. I also had a first-generation Honda Insight hybrid.)

<comment><USER7> I think Tesla will eventually have to decide on a direction for the S, to drift higher or lower in its competitive target, in line with inevitable changes to tax credits.

It'll be interesting to see if they try to move down to compete with the BMW 5 category over time. Or whether they attempt to push quality higher, raise prices and fully compete with the next tier up.

The Model 3 is very clearly going to stay focused on competing with the BMW 3 (and equivalent from Mercedes et al.) over time.

Perhaps Musk will push a new sedan into the mix eventually to more properly align with how the BMW 3, 5, 7 series is set up.

<comment><USER8> I think you're right, and I bet Tesla will try to compete with the 5 series/E class and not the 7/S. Model S won't have to come down in price very much to fit in with 5/E. Maybe it will lack fit and finish, but it will have much better acceleration and cargo room (and the Tesla brand, and the domestic badge). The Model S will remain pretty competitive in the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fact that Model S has "S" in it doesn't put it in the same class as Mercedes S, it's more in the class of Mercedes E class / BMW 5er, so this article doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER10> Who do you think is the authority on this?

The German KBA (Kraftfahrtbundesamt, similar to the DOT in the USA) classifies the Model S as Oberklasse, the same class like BMW 7 series and Mercedes S class.

Coming from a BMW 7 series and now driving a Model S myself, I sure have the feeling that the Model S carries a prestige comparable or higher to that of the 7er.

<comment><USER11> The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt says it takes into account a number of Abgrenzungskriterien including size, weight, performance, seating capacity, # of doors; however it has no standard formula for assigning Models to a Fahrzeugsegment. The only criteria used that truly differentiates the segments is price. If you take a look at the vehicles included in the Oberklasse segment you quickly see a pattern, they're all really expensive.

If you asked a 5 year old to play "which one of these is not like they other" they'd quickly zero in on the Tesla models very quickly because they don't look like luxury vehicles. That's not to say that the Tesla models aren't very nice cars, they're just not opulent. The Tesla models cost as much as they do because of the technology under the covers. The other cars in the Oberklasse segment aren't technologically expensive, they're pretty bog standard high performance vehicles slathered in expensive and exotic materials and refinements.

<comment><USER12> Hmm, really? What is it about a Tesla that doesn't look as premium. On the outside I think they look comparably luxurious to a Mercedes a class of BMW 7. The inside amenities is where they fall short in my opinion.

<comment><USER13> Maybe nobody will believe me, but the first time I saw a Tesla Model S in person was a few months ago, when it stopped in front of me at a traffic light.

I couldn't read the word "Tesla" and only saw an unfamiliar car with a logo I hadn't seen before.

My thoughts were "what strange Chinese crap trying to look like a big car is this?". Really.

I know, sounds stupid. I was able to read "Tesla" shortly thereafter and certainly felt stupid, not recognizing the car or the logo after reading so much about Tesla.

My opinion has slightly changed, in the meantime, I don't see them anymore and think of "cheap" and "wannabe", but I suspect that my initial feeling was the true one and I'm now subconsciously factoring in that I know it is a Tesla.

Still, they badly need an experienced "conventional" designer if they see themselves as one of the luxury Mercedes or BMW cars. But I suspect they don't see themselves like that and actively try to force a new design language into the market and create a new niche.

<comment><USER11> This thread has got me thinking about what luxury looks like and I think brand prestige plays a lot in our perceptions. When we think Bentley, Audi, BMW or Mercedes we think high end luxury because of their history and lineage. Those brands also use very unique design language. BMW has it's characteristic 4 globe headlamps, Audi with it's minimalist aesthetic, etc. We've associated those designs with luxury.

When you first see the Hyundai Genesis line of cars you think it's some sort of high end fine European luxury vehicle because they copied the design language of luxury brands. However when you realize they're Hyundais you immediately think "oh garbage".

When Toyota first starting making the Lexus line they look like glossy versions of their Toyota counterparts and it took many years for them to develop a distinctive design aesthetic. Honda had similar issues with the Acura line in the US and I would argue they still do because the Acura line doesn't exist in other markets so those vehicles are branded as Honda. The Honda Odyssey has always looked more like an Acura to me.

Tesla to their credit didn't try to cash in the prestige of another brand by copying their design language. Tesla's design language is a blank slate in our mind so when we see it we don't know what to expect. We try to associate it with what we know, in this case you thought Chinese crap.

<comment><USER14> I dont' think true luxury is meant to "look". There's the iconic Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, Porsche designs that most people recognize, but plenty of luxury cars look quite average. It's only when you're inside that you realize why they're luxury. I loved the VW Phaeton for this - yes, I know, not the highest end luxury, but it looks like a Passat on the outside and feels like an S class on the inside imo.

<comment><USER15> The Toyota Century is another example of this kind of luxury car. It's tailor- made for conservative Japanese businessmen who have a lot of money and enjoy riding in comfort but have no desire to show off.

Here's a good article on the Century and the kind of luxury it represents:

[http://autoweek.com/article/tokyo-motor-show/no-modern- luxur...](http://autoweek.com/article/tokyo-motor-show/no-modern-luxury-sedan- can-touch-toyota-century)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know from a long career in the custom car field that this is an amazing milestone for a new US based automotive manufacturer.

The "DeLorean" was far behind this when they folded and that attempt got further than any before since the 1930s, and they weren't really a US manufacturer.

The "Tucker" didn't come anywhere near the Telsa, and that's probably right behind the DeLorean on the timeline.

And even more important is how they are doing it. They're not just building a new car, they're using an entirely different kind of powertrain and drivetrain. This too has been tried before, but again no startup has ever made it this far or advanced the tech used so dramatically.

I don't build custom cars anymore but I know what it takes from concept to production and I'm not just impressed with what they've done, I am astonished with how much they've done.

At this point, no matter what happens to Tesla, they have changed the industry forever.

<comment><USER17> I honestly never thought we would see a from the ground up car manufacturer coalesce into existence without divine intervention. I remember hearing that the barrier of entry to the automobile market is measured in billions per vehicle platform. For a long time I assumed that the only way we'd see another car maker is if a Chinese or Indian manufacturer entered the US Automobile market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Raw data. It doesn't match the number listed in the article exactly but the same trend.

[http://carsalesbase.com/european-car-sales- data/tesla/tesla-...](http://carsalesbase.com/european-car-sales- data/tesla/tesla-model-s/) 2017: 16.026, 2016: 11.564: 2015: 15.169

[http://carsalesbase.com/european-car-sales-data/Mercedes- Ben...](http://carsalesbase.com/european-car-sales-data/Mercedes- Benz/Mercedes-Benz-S-Class/) 2017: 14.757, 2016: 14.967, 2015: 16.583

[http://carsalesbase.com/european-car-sales-data/mercedes- ben...](http://carsalesbase.com/european-car-sales-data/mercedes- benz/mercedes-benz-e-class/) 2017: 127.638, 2016: 99.494, 2015: 84.771

</comment><comment><USER19> This is fake news. Comparing Tesla sales to the X6 doesn't make any sense since that's a very niche product that BMW sells. I understand it's the most similar BMW from a design standpoint, but it's probably their lowest volume model. The most comparable would be the 5 series.

</comment><comment><USER20> IMHO Tesla is selling well only because they are first to market, and because of the various EV incentive programs.

One will be able to assess Tesla's real market performance when the major manufacturers start selling EVs with comparable mileage capabilities.

I would much rather wait to buy an Audi EV SUV or a Mercedes EV SUV in 2019 or 2020, than buy a Tesla Model X right now. By waiting just a year or two, one deals with local dealerships, you have the usual availability of spares and parts for maintenance and body work, plus the already well-known quality and workmanship of an Audi, Mercedes, etc.

Tesla is not a bad choice, but when one is able to choose between a Tesla and Mercedes/Audi/BMW/Ford/Toyota/etc with comparable stats, I think most people will stick with the more familiar brand that they can buy from their local dealership.

<comment><USER21> At this point, I disagree that it's because of the incentives. In fact, at the Model S price point, it probably had nothing to do with incentives, which are (if you're 'lucky', 10% at $100k pricepoint).

First to market, yes. And first to make it 'cool'. I have a hard time thinking BMW bolting batteries into a car will take away from the novelty factor of the Model S. It's not just about propulsion, it's everything -- the styling, the electronics, the early adopter thing, street cred, etc.

It's "do you want to buy one of half a dozen old school cars, or this new COOL thing?"

How many Prius owners have seen a Honda hybrid of some sort and been surprised that Honda makes a hybrid?

<comment><USER22> > How many Prius owners have seen a Honda hybrid of some sort and been > surprised that Honda makes a hybrid?

Honda had the first mass-produced US-market hybrid, and was the first to make it cool.

OTOH, the first-gen Prius was more broadly useful than the super-small first- gen Insight that preceded it to the US market.

Not sure how this is supposed to map to Tesla, are you trying to say Tesla is like Toyota or Honda in this comparison?

<comment><USER21> The Tesla is like the Toyota. It's the car everyone knows is an electric. Hybrids from non-Toyota makers had to play a lot of catchup (and, frankly, even non-Prius Toyota Hybrids) to have the same appeal that the Prius did.

In the same way, I don't see electric cars from BMW or Audi or Mercedes competing with Tesla on day 1. It's just JUST the powertrain that's drawing people to the Tesla. Some of the pro-Tesla draws are down to vanity or image, and others are more tangible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here is an old [2016] article about why the Tesla S might not be a "Full-Size Luxury Sedan", which lists arguments I personally find convincing:

[https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/tesla-people-hate-me- but...](https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/tesla-people-hate-me-but-the- tesla-model-s-still-isnt-a-full-size-luxury-sedan-258246)

TL;DR, it is roughly same size and offers same leg room as BMW series 5 and Mercedes Class E, besides, given that virtually no BMW or Mercedes is sold in a base equipment version and that the government subsidizing for fully electric cars must be taken into account they are also in an approximately similar price range.

</comment><comment><USER24> The big brands are in a bit of a dip, converting from a huge fraction being big diesels, back into petrol and more hybrid/electrics. It will be a few years before the likes of VW/Audo/Merc/BMW/Volvo etc have all hybrid and/or electric. The dieselgate combined with the rise of Tesla caught everyone off guard. Also, there are some big subsidies that obviously go mostly to Tesla, and not to the luxry car makers (much). When subsidies disappear (or apply to germans too because they make EV's) then the sales figures can be better compared.

</comment><comment><USER25> Good news. But I'm not happy about this:

[https://blog.redlock.io/cryptojacking- tesla](https://blog.redlock.io/cryptojacking-tesla)

Remember, we don't even have 1/1000 of the cars on the road as self-driving vehicles, and yet these carmakers' systems are already getting hacked. What we can expect when/if Tesla and other carmakers have 50 million self-driving vehicles each on the road?

<comment><USER26> "The RedLock CSI team immediately reported the incident to Tesla and the issue was quickly rectified."

That's the most you can ask for beyond basic competence. There will always be security bugs in software to some extent, the fact that Tesla responded quickly gives me more confidence in them.

But I agree with your overall point, at some point some hacker is going to kill people with a hacked car (probably not a Tesla), and it's going to take lots of dead bodies and legislation for congress to pass appropriate standards for security. Hopefully we'll reach a point where computer security in cars is regulated the same as seat belts and air bags.

<comment><USER27> Once the state actors have hacked the AI drivers/cameras they will be able to track and kill just about anyone anywhere with them.

<comment><USER28> News flash: state actors can already track and kill anyone they want

<comment><USER25> State actors can't yet kill anyone in any other country from the comfort of their chairs.

This is the same argument people make when they say "drone strikes are the same as air strikes". Not they are not. We're seeing orders of magnitude more drone strikes than air strikes, and that's _because they are different_ (such as much cheaper and easier to do than ever before).

<comment><USER28> > State actors can't yet kill anyone in any other country from the comfort of > their chairs.

This is what the CIA/Mossad/FSB/... does

Sure, cars will make it cheaper and more convenient, and will open up the "market" to smaller states, but it's not a new capability.

<comment><USER29> Sometimes they do, but sometimes they get caught like in this instance. Doing it by car would probably be preferable.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I suppose premium in Europe is luxury in the USA. Isn't a 7 series BMW about $140k USD?

<comment><USER31> Yeah, nobody buys a 7 series to drive themselves. The 5 series is BMW's driver flagship, IMO.

<comment><USER32> Never seen a 7-series that wasn't driven by the owner.

<comment><USER33> My local council had one chauffeur-driven for the Mayor and associates until the need for a more 'austere' public image saw it being replaced by a Skoda Octavia ( Jetta / Golf platform ).

I think the Mayor of Belfast still rides in the back of a 7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Tesla to the rest of the auto manufacturers: I have not yet begun to fight! (in my best John Paul Jones voice)

</comment><comment><USER35> The fact that nobody has mentioned the word torque shows the lack of Tesla owners on these comments. Driving a Tesla can make you forgive all the other shortcomings.

</comment><comment><USER36> I hear that in 5 years everyone will be using tablets and there will be no more laptops or desktops either...

oh wait, it's not 2013 anymore.. never mind.

</comment><comment><USER37> Original source: [http://europe.autonews.com/article/20180220/ANE/180219831/te...](http://europe.autonews.com/article/20180220/ANE/180219831/tesla- model-s-outsells-german-luxury-flagships-in-europe)

From the Hacker News Guidelines [1]: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER38> Thanks, we've updated the link from [https://electrek.co/2018/02/20/tesla- dominates-luxury-segmen...](https://electrek.co/2018/02/20/tesla-dominates- luxury-segment-europe-gas-powered-german-cars/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Subsidized luxury cars....

<comment><USER40> Subsidized electric cars.

Level of luxury doesn't matter at all in this case. The car is electric, and therefore, is subsidized.</comment></comment>


The ZenCash 2-Day Time Investment Plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.zencash.com/the-zencash-2-day-time-investment-plan/

<comment><USER2> I was also just reading an article about how 37 Signals prevents its employees from working more than 4 days per week during the summer (here in SF that should be during May/June and Sept/Oct because who wants to spend an extra day not working in the foggy cold? I digress).

How many people already have a volunteer opportunity that they can plug into? Seems not so easy to do, but perhaps that's the point.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love this idea of encouraging people to both take a little time for themselves and for others! It may seem like a sacrifice to lose 2 work days a month, but you may find that those 2 days allow you to be more focused and productive during the rest of the month.

</comment><comment><USER4> Neat!</comment>


Ask YC: What do you want to know about mobile usage? (An Open Source Survey) - <AUTHOR>

Just received a request from a large (purposely unnamed) client for a POV on mobile strategy.
For the project I'm going to conduct a wide-cast survey, largely for anecdotal support. My question to YC/HN is: what do you want to know about mobile phone users? What questions would you like answered, what subjects would you like quotes regarding, etc...
I'll be writing up and hosting the survey online in a few days, and submitting it online a bit later. It'll run for a week or so.
The answers will be posted online, and I'll even host the data in a raw format (names removed) for anyone to use. If successful, I'll host a few more YC/HN polls on various (and suggested subjects). <comment><USER2> What comes to mind directly is the rough ratio of users' use of their stock browser vs third-party internet apps they downloaded.

Also, if they ever used a mobile app and if so, if they purchased it or got it via a free download.</comment>


Assassin's Creed: Unity is re-igniting an historic debate - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/11/let-them-play-assassins-creed/382818/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> I smell a paid placed article. Assassin's Creed has been getting killed in the press for its numerous bugs, graphical glitches and its slowness and lag even on the beefiest of PC machines. Then all of a sudden this article but the game's "rich history" pops up?

P.S. The Atlantic has no articles written about the numerous bugs from the game, even though it made it into several websites that usually don't cover video games. P.S. #2, The Atlantic is the website that produced that awful Scientology Paid Content Article[0]

0: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik- wemple/wp/2013/01/1...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik- wemple/wp/2013/01/15/the-atlantics-scientology-problem-start-to-finish/)

<comment><USER3> So Ubisoft is also paying off the French politicians complaining about this? There are numerous links in the article.

(If they are, that's pretty impressive work by the Ubisoft PR department.)

The simpler explanation that someone at the Atlantic pays attention to French politics, saw these complaints, and spun it into an article for their American audience.

<comment><USER4> They must have used all the money they saved by not doing any QA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The former leftist French presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, called > it "propaganda against the people, the people who are [portrayed as] > barbarians, bloodthirsty savages," while the "cretin" that is Marie- > Antoinette and the "treacherous" Louis XVI are portrayed as noble victims. > "The denigration of the great Revolution is a dirty job to instill more > self-loathing and déclinisme in the French," he told Le Figaro (link in > French).

Melenchon, for those who do not know him, is an utter moron in French politics. Now we know he is also ignorant about History, because there's ample evidence that the age of Terror was barbaric and without mercy against anyone who may have shown any kind of sympathy for the nobility or the king, no matter their status. And with bloodthirsty guys like St Just, "Sympathy" could be defined as not being a fanatic for the revolutionary cause. And let's not forget the genocide in Vendee against masses of civilians still in favor of the King. The problem is that the Revolution did not stop at killing the King and its supporters, it basically turned into a massive genocide where everyone could become the next target. Hell, even Danton and Desmoulins were convicted to betray the Revolution ideals.

On a side note, Melenchon is known soviet Russia supporter and he probably has the same reading of the Gulags.

<comment><USER6> > The problem is that the Revolution did not stop at killing the King and its > supporters, it basically turned into a massive genocide where everyone could > become the next target

So, just like almost every other revolution in history, eh? (The American Rebellion and the English Civil War are arguably two exceptions, both enabled by extremely special circumstances.)

The curious thing is that that anyone bothers with revolutionary change any more. "I know! Let's have a revolution! That's hardly ever worked before so it's bound to work this time!"

Admittedly, revolutions do happen in part because of the breakdown of tyrannical regimes, but incrementalism, even in the face of tyranny, is historically far more likely to produce better outcomes. It is what freed most of Eastern Europe from the Soviets, for example.

Unfortunately incrementalism takes patience, and humans are far too willing to pursue quick fixes that don't work over long games that do. It's a very curious thing.

<comment><USER7> > So, just like almost every other revolution in history, eh? (The American > Rebellion and the English Civil War are arguably two exceptions, both > enabled by extremely special circumstances.)

There's actually _lots_ of examples from regional separatist movements that had strong buy-in from the local elites, like the American Revolution (to use its popular local name, though it really wasn't really a revolution.)

> Admittedly, revolutions do happen in part because of the breakdown of > tyrannical regimes, but incrementalism, even in the face of tyranny, is > historically far more likely to produce better outcomes.

Tyrannies violently purge even incrementalists, and revolutionaries (because they start out with stronger boundaries and an expectation that they'll be hunted whereas incrementalists are more open expecting to be able to work within the system) are, on average, more prepared to deal with that kind of effort.

> It is what freed most of Eastern Europe from the Soviets, for example.

It may be what freed most of Eastern Europe from Soviet-style local tyrannies, but what freed them from the USSR was the economic collapse of the USSR after a protracted spending war with the most developed economies in the world (no small part of which involved the more developed countries backing revolutionary groups in places that were within the Soviet sphere of influence, so in a very real sense revolutionaries were quite instrumental.)</comment></comment></comment>


The end of photo bombing? - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big-abc-news/combat-photobombers-everywhere-173623034.html

<comment><USER2> Auto-playing noisy ad warning!

Here's a quieter link: <http://www.scalado.com/display/en/Remove></comment>


BlackFly is latest attempt at flying car - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44805697 <comment><USER2> Not sure what you see, when landing. Seems like not being able to see forward when landing can invite collisions.</comment>


Ask HN: How to adjust returning to the office after remote working a few years? - <AUTHOR> With the exception of recent on-site interviews, I haven't set foot in an office for work in about 5 years. Around mid-2013 I got my first full-time remote job and then have been able to secure other jobs and gigs that also let me work remote.
This has been fine for a while, but with my shift in job and career priorities I realize I have to go back to working at an office sooner or later. How do you adjust to that after having not been talking in person with your co-workers for so long?
When I work remotely I mostly chat online, via Slack or Hangouts. I engage in phone conversations maybe twice a month at the most. (that's usually with most people too, I'm not a big phone talker)
Outside of work related stuff, I do not go out with friends much, as for me it's usually a monthly affair. I also just talk to my siblings and parents about once a week too. <comment><USER2> I'm currently 50 / 50\. Here's what I've had to do to get work done in office :

* Headphones when I need to focus. Even a random noise app is good enough.

* Be patient with those who interrupt unless you have a deadline. They don't know that you're still adjusting.

* Go for coffee / walks with your co-workers. Get to know them and they'll get to know you (and your preferences of working through slack/hangouts)

* Plan for a slight drop in productivity and slight increase in communication

</comment><comment><USER3> A good pair of headphones can help a bit. If you're not used to working with headphones, it might be worth trying that out in advance.

What has changed that means you think you need to go back to an office?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't used headphones at work to tune out my surroundings but I'm gonna consider it now, thanks.

Most remote programming jobs tend to be centered around web development or mobile apps. I'm not interested in mobile, and web, which is what I've done in the past, is losing my interest as well.

I'd like to pursue jobs that have more traditional engineering backgrounds, in other domains like embedded programming, so it's more likely I'll have to work on-site again.</comment></comment>


Map Reduce implemented over HTTP - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/httpmr/

<comment><USER2> I'm glad to see this is not a SOAP opera and has no XML b.s. of any kind in it. In fact you can see one YAML file in the sources.

Jeff Atwood knew something probably... <http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001114.html>

<comment><USER3> You're crediting Atwood with saying XML should go away? He is like 10 years late on making that suggestion.

<comment><USER2> I'm crediting him for suggesting YAML. To be honest, I heard the name before but never thought it's so nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been playing with GridGain lately. It's Java, but their API is really sweet. You basically implement a simple interface that defines the map/reduce operations and then your code will be copied to the cluster nodes through a peer-to-peer classloader.

In a recent test I validated a million image urls in less than a minute. In a small EC2 cluster running GridGain.

It's certainly worth looking into if you are interested in that kind of stuff.

<http://www.gridgain.org>

</comment><comment><USER5> It's a shame there are no comments to this yet. If you're relatively new to programming (say, a college student), this is a really cool chunk of code to copy into notepad and figure out.

It really shows you how a tiny amount of code can do some pretty cool stuff.

<comment><USER3> M/R is the interesting part. Making it work over HTTP is just a few lines of Perl.

<comment><USER6> And even M/R is just a framework for easily parallelizing "embarrassingly parallel" problems and incrementally aggregating the results (instead of in one step). A cool idea for sure, but not ground breaking -- these ideas are as old as parallel computing itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a groundbreaking idea, but definitely takes the pain out of creating your own framework :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Built for Google App Engine? I think it will kill your request if handling it takes more than 8 seconds. Not useful yet.

<comment><USER8> Then just make a lot of small requests that take less then 8 seconds. Maybe Google will allow background jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't CouchDB already do this in some way?</comment>


Rubber Duck UX Debugging - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/design-ux/b67842ec3e7f

<comment><USER2> Is it worth the work making the "fake" version though? By the amount of work that went into this pixel perfect prototype and the amount of "rework" it would be needed to implement it, shouldn't it be easier to prototype as app with a programmer from the get go? Or at least make a less detailed prototype (the usual)?

BTW, I'm not bashing, really good article.

<comment><USER3> Hi, OP here. Thanks!

This method is actually pretty quick but it is very throw away. It doesn't replace more dynamic prototypes you might make at other stages. This is designed more for making something real that you might have only previously played out in your head.

I usually do this right along side Photoshop (copy paste).</comment></comment>


The Other Startup Advice - <AUTHOR> http://dashes.com/anil/2010/11/the-other-startup-advice.html <comment><USER2> Excellent questions to ask yourself and your team, including "what does success look like?" And excellent perspective on funding too:

"There's such an overwhelming tech industry bias towards this archetypical narrative of "first you get angel funding, then a VC round, then a bigger VC round, then you're set!" And the vast majority of the time, that's horseshit — you're not set at that point, you've just got a lot of stakeholders. "

</comment><comment><USER3> I question the advice of going into credit card debt. You do _not_ want to ruin your personal credit because your startup happens to tank.

<comment><USER4> Unless you have traction. You basically have to choose between downside risk (ruining your personal credit) and upside risk (being excessively diluted).</comment></comment>


Joystick Labs ends funding for new video game startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/10/22/2430856/joystick-labs-ends-funding-for.html

<comment><USER2> Do you know of a list of companies that participated in Joystick Labs?

<comment><USER3> (Mostly) Dead Companies: Gale Force Logic, Inc. Inari, Inc. Lab Rats Studio, Inc.

Active Companies: Mighty Rabbit Studios, Inc. Nix Hydra Wefiends Buckle Up Games</comment></comment>


All forms of signing email are generally solving the wrong problem - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/SignedEmailWrongProblem <comment><USER2> DKIM is not solving the wrong problem, DKIM is solving an underlying problem.

The suggestions to use reputation, accounts etc are still fine and good, but step 0 is to check whether that guy on the other side is who he says he is - and that's where DKIM comes in.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but it doesn't check whether that guy on the other side is who he says he is, it only checks whether that _domain_ on the other side is what it appears to be (registered via ICANN-approved registrar to "that guy"). DKIM relies on DNS. It checks on domains, not people. You have no reliable assurance from DKIM of who is actually controlling that domain. It might not be "that guy" but someone else. DNS is not without its vulnerablities (including social engineering). Any security mechanism based on DNS is only as "secure" as DNS, which isn't very.

<comment><USER4> I mean you're technically not wrong, but how do you confirm ownership of an identity?

At some point you have to "trust a system". Block Chain, Social Security ID, Drivers License, Passport, even DNS are all susceptible to some form of attack vector.

I could do a DNA test to verify you, provided I did one before.

> is only as "secure" as DNS, which isn't very

I'd argue DNS itself is quite secure. It has lots of issues, but it's so widely used those issues are known and mitigated for. DNS as a system receives an insane amount of attacks. There's just too much money involved for people not to pay attention for attackers and defenders.

I will agree that _your_ DNS isn't secure. It's analogous to saying your Gmail isn't secure, but Gmail itself is just fine.

<comment><USER5> Well, Estonia has id-card, which in addition to ordinary id card functionality also provides PKI.

If I remember correctly, they rolled out PKI ~2005ish. It has done wonders for them. [https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/id- card/](https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/id-card/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card)

<comment><USER6> Which the EU is debating making an equivalent European wide version mandatory, and requiring websites/private companies adopt and use it (via SAML; instead of username/passwords or things like OAuth/OpenID Connect). In this vision, any online interaction that would require an identity would minimally be required to accept your European identity, and may be prohibited (via GDPR or DSA) from offering other forms of sign-in.

Read the Roadmap at [https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have- your-sa...](https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your- say/initiatives/12528-European-Digital-Identity-EUid-) and comment on the Public Consultation if you have feelings about that.

Explicitly part of the goal is either a pan-European ID card or requiring every Member State to adopt one. Currently, MS aren't required to. When the UK was in the EU, the idea of a digital ID that could be used by the government to track all of your activities online was... not popular. However, despite Brexit, the idea is being reintroduced, this time to "fight coronavirus". [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-54010432](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk- politics-54010432)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know about signing, but my email domain (my surname.net) is now 30 or so years old. It gets^w got a lot of spam...

A decade or so ago, I set up a catch-all account so <anything>@mydomain.net is redirected to an isp-account that I have as one of my email identities, In this case I used <account>@mac.com. It's basically just a front-line imap repository, stuff I want to keep will move off it.

Whenever I need to supply an email to an online site, I use <company name>@mydomain.net. The only time this hasn't worked is with Samsung, who won't let you sign up as 'samsung@...', generally it's ok though.

There is another rule on the mail server, send-to-trash. This accepts all email and just bins it. I can move <anything>@mydomain to this rule at the click of a button in a second or two on with a web-interface. I do this for:

\- unsolicited email sent to a random "name" at my address, this is actually fairly rare now that most of the obvious ones are gone \- when the mail content doesn't match the <company name> part, ie: where the address has been sold to an email-list. \- when I want to expire the email address. Sometimes this is temporary, and I have an address I want to keep, but it's current;y being spammed. Making the server send reject messages For a while usually helps. Usually.

Using this, I've managed to keep the same email domain since college some 30 years ago actually useable and useful. YMMV :)

<comment><USER8> I do this for about 10 years now too! It's very convenient to "expire" the email addresses that are sold off.

Another thing I do is to use a firstname.lastname@example.com email when an annoying site tries to force me to login. All emails to this spam email address is sent to trash with a filtering rule, and I manually open my trash to click the verification link.

With catch all emails, you need a string "... -all" SPF to make others reject bounce spam messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It's possible that email clients could learn some lessons from this, for > example by splitting your inbox into 'people and places you've interacted > with before' and 'new contacts from strange people'.

That's how I have Thunderbird set up. I have a rule that puts mail from anyone not in my contacts list into a folder called Unrecognized Sender.

</comment><comment><USER10> S/MIME is excellent.

I know its currently more suitable for an organization than individuals, but, I think with a bit of glue it would work fantastically at internet-scale.

<comment><USER11> What's your proposed solution to the PKI-is-hard if your not an org problem?

<comment><USER10> LetsEncrypt starts signing email certs. That part is easy.

<comment><USER12> ISRG (the charity behind Let's Encrypt) has been pretty clear in the past that they aren't interested in doing that. Do you have some particular reason beyond wishful thinking to believe that will change?

If you want to build a CA that issues S/MIME certs you can already do that. If you want to leverage ACME you can even do that (using [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-acme-email- smime...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-acme-email-smime/) for example).

Perhaps you can persuade S/MIME client implementations that your certificates are universally trustworthy, and then you've got the makings of a PKI for S/MIME. But I would not hold my breath.

<comment><USER10> Sure, so, setup your own email cert issuing ACME compliant CA. Still easy.

<comment><USER12> You're the one who wants this, so it's you that will need to set up a Certificate Authority and then get it trusted everywhere for S/MIME. I genuinely wish you good luck with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are two (well, lots more than two) different problems with email. DKMS solves spoofing. That isn't a more or less "wrong" problem than spam. The latter just needs a different solution (and Google etc. have become pretty good at it).

</comment><comment><USER14> The author obviously has no idea why email signing are there. And what he was proposing, a authorizing system, or white-list system has been there for quite a while but why it is not enabled by default? It creates more problems then the problems it resolves. Just imagine how it going to work if you need to send a legit email to someone for the first time. If you are going to need authorization to do it, How do you get that required authorization? By calling the recipient or send them a letter so that they can add you to the list? Then what the point to send email in the first place?

<comment><USER15> I believe that Hey does something like this:

1\. A stranger send you an email

2\. Hey asks you if you want to whitelist the sender or not

3\. If rejected, you won't be bothered anymore by any of their emails

4\. Otherwise you just get their email moving forward and can decide to reject them later if necessary

[https://hey.com/features/the-screener/](https://hey.com/features/the- screener/)

<comment><USER16> I don't understood how this is revolution. Doesn't hey just do what any email account can do with filters, but wrap it in a nice UI?

<comment><USER15> Obligatory link to Dropbox's Show HN comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

<comment><USER16> Yeah I don't think it's not useful, just not revolutionary. Gmail's spam filtering is already pretty good.

<comment><USER15> It's a whitelist of senders as far as I understand, not a spam filter. That results in spam being ignored but for other reasons that what a spam filter would do

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty unconvinced that (the lack of) revokable authorization is the problem with email. But for the sake of argument, lets say it was.

DKIM+whitelist solves that problem, so dkim would still be solving the right problem.

</comment><comment><USER17> Another problem with email is that it's your responsibility to keep your contacts list up-to-date when people change their email address. By comparison Facebook doesn't have that problem - for example organising a high school reunion is much more likely to succeed if you contact people via Facebook than via email. I really hope email (or its successor) can copy more of the benefits that currently draw users into those walled gardens.

<comment><USER18> Facebook's strategy to achieve this is to disallow people from having two different accounts. Things are different on e.g. Twitter where it's common to have two accounts for different usage (like email).

Do you suggest disallowing people from having two different email addresses?

<comment><USER17> No, I'm suggesting that once I've authorized someone to be able to contact me, switching to a new email address should not break that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been using SpamArrest for about ten years, and I'm very happy with it.

I always whitelist in advance any person or domain I expect to hear from. SpamArrest gives me a chance to hear from legitimate strangers. If a sender refuses to reply to the challenge email, then what (s)he had to say couldn't be that important.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here we go again.

I suggest that everyone in the comments with a pet idea read this: [https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt](https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt)

<comment><USER21> What new pet idea did the article suggest? I must have missed it

<comment><USER20> I meant the people here in the comments with ideas, not the article. Edited to clarify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> DKIM works well for what it does. Assuming that what the author describes as "revocable authorization" is a desirable feature (I don't really get why a user wouldn't just filter them with a block list or white list approach, but whatever) - how is this possible without a centralised provider?

If it's only possible with a centralised entity like Twitter, it's not going to scale to last centuries like email will.

<comment> em-bee because current filter tools are not specific enough or easy enough to use for that purpose. i basically only got the option to mark something as spam and let the algorithm figure out why.

i'd like to sort email by these categories:

signed emails with a known/whitelisted key.

signed emails with a known/blacklisted key

signed emails with an unknown key.

unsigned emails with a known/whitelisted email address

unsigned emails with a known/blacklisted email address

unsigned emails with an unknown address.

and finally emails with obviously fake addresses.

whitelisted keys go to my inbox. those will be spam free.

blacklisted keys are blocked/bounced/sent to spam.

new keys go into a new contacts folder with a spam rating based on content. then i walk through that folder and accept or block keys.

for unsigned emails the same is done based on the address.

whitelisted addresses get a spam rating in a second inbox.

blacklisted addresses get blocked and unknown addresses get checked manually.

unknown keys or addresses can further be separated into: received only one email from this address or multiple emails.

when i reply to an email the key or address gets whitelisted automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> All you have to do is to ignore email that is signed by entities you don't know and/or don't like. It is as simple as that. The mystery is why people accept anonymous email at all.

<comment><USER24> As an independent email server operator for almost a decade I can tell you the big three email providers _are_ boiling that frog.

<comment><USER3> If someone were going to register a domain to use for e-mail, what would you recommend? Does the name chosen or TLD make a difference or is IP address the sole determinant of "reputation"? I imagine the situation is like with search, the filtering algorithms used are kept secret, probably because they are biased toward protecting or improving the company's revenues.

<comment><USER25> Both the registered domain and shared/dedicated IP address are factors in determining email reputation. For example, see:

[https://www.mailgun.com/blog/domain-ip-reputation-gmail- care...](https://www.mailgun.com/blog/domain-ip-reputation-gmail-care-more- about/)

I've never heard about TLD being a factor, but who knows? It's possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Easy solution: enable a configurable monetary barrier. People who want notes from strangers can set it low, people who don't can set the price higher.

Hey, Basecamp, can you make that feature for me?

<comment><USER27> Interestingly, this is where the proof-of-work idea for Bitcoin likely came from (hashcash). Basically prove you've done X amount of CPU work in order to send me an e-mail.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, but I don't want you to waste electricity. Just send me the money instead of the utility company.</comment></comment></comment>


Plumbers, Guilds and Coffee - <AUTHOR> http://www.darkgreyindustries.com/wordpress/?p=122

<comment><USER2> Loved it. Great point.

I especially liked this: "Stop calling me that", I said. "I'm not your uncle, It's just an economical narrative technique I employed, so that everyone would make the assumption that I know you really well."

</comment><comment><USER3> In the Netherlands we have a "Guild" of front-end developers: <http://fronteers.nl> We set this up for recognition of the trade, and honestly, it's helped. Not everything is a ploy.

That being said, excellent narrative.</comment>


Shillers for killers: How the tobacco industry paid journalists, scientists… - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2015/07/07/shillers-killers/7b2659e7cb7b87bd50966846cfca404b1d011d2e/ <comment><USER2> Notables: The EFF, ACLU, and Glenn Greenwald all shilled for big tobacco.</comment>