Let's Encrypt Has Issued a Billion Certificates - <AUTHOR> https://letsencrypt.org/2020/02/27/one-billion-certs.html <comment><USER2> >In June of 2017 we were serving approximately 46M websites, and we did so with 11 full time staff and an annual budget of $2.61M. Today we serve nearly 192M websites with 13 full time staff and an annual budget of approximately $3.35M.

That's awesome. Congrats

<comment><USER3> Those two extra staff are expensive, but worth it.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, I don't know anything about running a business. But if there's one thing I learned in engineering, it's the great if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

(I know you're joking)But even if they're costly, if they keep the service running and bring in funds, why would anyone risk damaging their business and start cutting costs ?

<comment><USER5> In grad school, my MBA-level technology course had a case on Zara and their POS software.

The case problem was that the software was running on MS-DOS, had a janky text-based interface, but managed to work well for Zara's fast-fashion inventory.

The 'right' solution for the case was to not change anything at all.

<comment><USER6> Just curious how one would know if it was the 'right' solution without having tried other solutions?

I find it hard to believe that any business would not benefit from moving from an ancient computer system to one with error validations and better tooling so that their boots on the ground can make less mistakes. Forget the cost of transitioning since at scale that's a whole executive job function, but purely from a day-to-day I don't understand how what you said can be true.

<comment><USER5> That's why it was taught as a business case, because it forces you to look at the requirements for switching and evaluate the cost/benefit of the action.

Even passenger jets still use floppy disks. AFAIK Zara did update their POS system later though, to be more compatible with payment device hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's Encrypt has caused a revolution in the world of public XMPP servers. Now they are pretty much all properly encrypted for both client to server and server to server. The list of servers shows a sea of Let's Encrypt:

* [https://list.jabber.at/](https://list.jabber.at/)

I suspect that there are a lot of other non-web applications out there that have hugely benefited as well...

<comment><USER8> If so many services use Let's Encrypt, do you think there's a risk they become a target for sneaky surveillance activities?

<comment><USER9> There's not much to spy on. It's not like LetsEncrypt _generate_ your private keys and give them to you. They sign a request that you send them (and they don't get to ever see your actual private key). So an evil CA won't be able to crack your encrypted website.

An evil CA can of course generate fake certificates for any hostname they like, but those people already exist. Have you taken a look at just how many different root CAs are out there, and are trusted by your OS/browser? It includes hundreds of companies and governments. Then there are even more (countless?) 'second level CAs' (I forget the proper term, sorry!) who can also generate and sign a trusted certificate for any hostname, because, while they aren't a root CA, their authority has been signed in turn by a top-level CA. The web of trust is very large and has many points of failure.

<comment><USER10> >An evil CA can of course generate fake certificates for any hostname they like, but those people already exist

[citation needed]

If that were true, I'd expect browser/OS makers to promptly revoke trusted CA status for them.

<comment><USER11> Only if they abused it. If it's a government CA, and they use it only to trap pedophiles and ISIL, I don't see them doing anything.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure browsers will de-trust CAs that intentionally sign forged certificates regardless of what they're used for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for making it all so painless. It's so good I forget it's even there. Easily the best piece of infrastructure tech I've ever used.

Also, to folks who wish to "pay" for the certs, you can do so at [https://letsencrypt.org/donate/](https://letsencrypt.org/donate/). A yearly recurring donation for the avg price of an SSL cert is what I do.

<comment><USER14> we still can't certify on an alternative port, DNS is not always an option and so there's people stuck with having to shut down servers while certbot does it's thing

<comment><USER15> what practical situation do you encounter that DNS isn't an option?

why are you shutting down servers to rotate certificates? a reload should be totally possible!

<comment><USER16> I think it refers to stopping the main service so that certbot can bind port 80 during the verification process.

<comment><USER17> The person you're responding to is asking about verification through dns, which is an option that avoids the need for http verification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Let's Encrypt isn't just making the web more secure; it's enabling a new generation of startups to exist and thrive.

My company relies heavily on Let's Encrypt to offer SSL for all kinds of use cases including wildcard domains. We wouldn't be here without them and we're proud to be an official sponsor.

If your company can afford it, do consider a corporate sponsorship: [https://letsencrypt.org/become-a-sponsor/](https://letsencrypt.org/become-a- sponsor/)

</comment><comment><USER19> One of the best things to happen to the internet. We started working on our product a year before Let's Encrypt and in the early days onboarding new customers was a nightmare. This is because our product required a domain to work and we spent lot of time hand-holding customers to purchase a certificate and set it up. After Let's Encrypt, this has never been a problem.

<comment><USER19> Wanted to add that after the dns-01 challenge went live, it has become even more awesome. Many customers saw opening up port 80 as a security concern for their firewall.

<comment><USER20> DNS challenges are great for internal services too, where you want server-to- server communication to be encrypted but the servers aren't accessible over the public internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Since LE has certificiate transparency, can we determine which cert was the billionth? I registered two certs with them today, here's hoping it was me ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's surprisingly hard to tell which certificate was the billionth issued. You'd have to decide on a source of truth, and CT is probably not a good one for this purpose. Submissions to CT are not necessarily made and processed in issuance order. The goal is to get all certs into CT as quickly as possible, but ordering isn't particularly important (maybe one submission from our CA starts a second before another but the network request is delayed until after the second one).

At the heart of things, our certificate signing infrastructure includes multiple HSMs, each one with multiple signing cores. This means that we're signing certificates in parallel all the time.

The signed certificates are inserted into our internal database in a serialized order, but due to how we optimize our database it's not easy for us to just ask "what is the billionth one." That kind of query is usually not a very useful one for us to make.

<comment><USER21> So, what you're saying is that my certificate was definitely the billionth.

<comment><USER22> No, he's saying that he cannot deny that your certificate was the billionth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> And the ICANN fees we pay covered none of this (when funding this sort of thing would be an obvious benefit vs what ICANN does spend money on).

<comment><USER24> we have the fun ceremony videos though

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wouldn't it have been something if every domain purchase went towards infrastructure and projects like this one. Even an email provider that provides free mail (and you can pay extra to get more email storage) service for your domain. I wonder if gmail would of ever grown the way it did.

<comment><USER26> It's worth reading the paper: [https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/letsencrypt- ccs19.pdf](https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/letsencrypt-ccs19.pdf)

I don't think this is just about having money and funding, it's a very careful and tactical approach.

Agree it would be nice if we find and capitalize on opportunities like this, but (to me) it would be hard to run an email provider with the operational goals they list:

\- Minimal logic

\- Minimal data

\- Full automation

\- Functional isolation

\- Operational isolation

\- Continuous availability

<comment><USER25> Can't that be achieved with POP3 email? It downloads emails to your system and then deletes them on the server.

<comment><USER27> Most people don't want to have a desktop at home be the single source of truth for their email anymore, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I shudder to think about what will happen if they go down for whatever reason. Or get compromised, or the renewal gets bugged etc.

It is all cool and great, but is it sustainable long term, who guarantees that everything will work in 10 years? Monocultures are not desirable.

A ray of hope - you can get a two-year certificate for 10 bucks - so right there, another major benefit of Let's Encrypt, they makes for better competition. (ok I know Apple will stop honoring these starting in the Fall, but I still got two years since the expiration will be for new certificates)

<comment><USER29> This should be a state provided service. Or provided by the UN. Essential stuff like this or root DNS should be a planetary responsibility.

<comment><USER30> In a lot of countries, giving the government the ability to issue SSL certificates would be a catastrophe in terms of surveillance and censorship.

<comment><USER29> Didn't think of that.

It doesn't have to be just the state or the UN though. It's not about removing all the other actors on the market.

But if I make a website on Python programming in french, I'm quite ok using the french gov as a CA provider.

I mean, I trust mozilla because it's mozilla. But I wouldn't trust most companies.

<comment> vertex-four The problem is, there's no way to enforce this. If you are a CA, there is nothing technically stopping you from issuing a certificate for google.com. There's no infrastructure for the ability to say "this CA is valid only for sites that agree with the risks involved in using it".

<comment><USER31> Actually, I believe there are. IIRC it's possible for a CA's root cert to be limited to only a certain TLD. There's an extension called "Name Constraints" that limits a Root SSL Cert, and I believe it is honored by chrome.

[https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/31376/can-i- res...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/31376/can-i-restrict-a- certification-authority-to-signing-certain-domains-only)

<comment><USER32> It's an optional extension, so a client may ignore it without failing the connection. It needs a lot more adoption. I could, for example, instead of getting a wildcard cert, get LE to sign a CA valid for my domain. That way I can issue certs for my domain myself and put load off of LE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Congrats and Thanks Let's Encrypt crew! Using your services for awhile now.

</comment><comment><USER34> What made Let's encrypt go through the roof is a whole bunch of providers effortlessly make your site https compatible.

Like netlify (hosting a static site with build is super easy). Same with Cloudflare and a bunch of others.

As a user it's all abstracted at simply the push of a button.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why does the number in the TOTAL row and TOTAL column contain 1.7 billion? [https://crt.sh/?caid=16418](https://crt.sh/?caid=16418)

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably because it includes pre-certificates. I have to run so I don't have time to explain, but basically at a certain point we started submitting each certificate twice, the first one being a "pre-cert." You can probably Google for more info.

<comment><USER35> Thanks for answering my question as well as others in this thread! Let's Encrypt is awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> And that's where they realise they stored the serial number on an int32!

<comment><USER37> int32 is enough to store one cert per ipv4 address....

<comment><USER38> So a two month supply, since serial numbers don't get reused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Not to take away from this achievement, but no one else bothered about this massive centralisation of critical security infrastructure?

<comment> globular-toast I've always been concerned about the centralised model of SSL. But interestingly whenever I mention that the model is broken and web of trust is the best thing we have I get downvoted and shouted at here on HN.

<comment><USER40> I get the same.

Single point of failure and you don't even get insurance if something does go tits up. Unlike you would with a normal paid SSL certificate .

If ICANN can't be trusted what makes me want to trust LetsEncrypt.

I don't trust it, I won't use it. I don't like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Now with domain prices being threatened to skyrocket, let's create/adopt a free alternative to ICANN with alternate roots supported by all modern browsers like OpenNIC

Yeah I know there are billions of legacy devices that will never work on it but gotta start somewhere or adopt a current alternative asap so a decade from now it's common.

</comment><comment><USER42> Stats[1] indicate about 1.5-1.7 [2] websites exist.

This would mean letsencrypt certificates make up more 2/3 of the internet!

[1] [https://www.websitehostingrating.com/internet-statistics- fac...](https://www.websitehostingrating.com/internet-statistics-facts/)

[2] [https://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of- websites/](https://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/)

Edit: Sounds like these include renewals from the thread, but it's still over 10pct of the internet!

<comment><USER43> It sounds like a billion certificates includes renewals, so not anywhere close to 2/3rds.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is correct. We currently serve about 195 million websites, where website is defined as a unique Fully Qualified Domain Name.

<comment><USER44> Not only that, but you also made a profit of zero billion dollars!!! ;) Thanks for such a valuable public service.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKHSAE1gIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKHSAE1gIs)

<comment><USER45> I'd gladly pay a dollar a year to use the service (not a dollar a year per certificate).

<comment><USER46> They do accept donations!

[https://letsencrypt.org/donate/](https://letsencrypt.org/donate/)

Disclaimer : not affiliated but if you want to support a non-profit that's the best way to do it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> How many were issued to phishing/malvertising/malicious sites?

</comment><comment><USER48> If you're interested in running your own CA (eg. for .lan, and not having to deal with dozens of self signed certs) and want the benefits for ACME, smallstep (step-ca) makes this really easy.

Unfortunately lots of user interfaces don't support setting a custom ACME directory (the clients mostly do, but both pfsense and proxmox require fiddling to add your custom CA working via the web UI), but it's getting better.

</comment><comment><USER49> I converted my website from http to https last weekend.

Many thanks to LetsEncrypt with CertBot for making it pretty much painless.

</comment><comment><USER50> And of course the first few pages (or 20%) of the comments are about Wikimedia budgets lol.

</comment><comment><USER51> Thanks for saving us so much money and making the web more secure!

</comment><comment><USER52> What was the billionth one issued? It's a long shot, but my website had its certificate renewed today, and it would be cool to find out if I had the billionth one.

</comment><comment><USER53> Thank you for your service

</comment><comment><USER54> Keep doing what you are doing.. ;)

</comment><comment><USER55> Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER56> Would be interesting to know how many of those billion+ are flat out bad/malicious.

</comment><comment><USER14> well yeah they expire like milk

</comment><comment><USER57> ...and only 90% of those certs went to [https://login.yourbanknamehere.com.secure- password.asp.net.t...](https://login.yourbanknamehere.com.secure- password.asp.net.totally.legit.phishing-site.download.example)</comment>


NSA secretly monitoring user activity directly from major tech companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/06/06/nsa-prism

<comment><USER2> The "directly" bit is being questioned:

The Washington Post backtracks on claim tech companies 'participate knowingly' in PRISM data collection [http://thenextweb.com/us/2013/06/07/wapost- backtracks-on-cla...](http://thenextweb.com/us/2013/06/07/wapost-backtracks- on-claim-tech-companies-participate-knowingly-in-prism-data-collection&#x2F);

<comment> brown9-2 This is semantics. The original slides, and the WaPo writeup, made it sound as if the NSA has "direct access", which to those of us who work in this area understand to mean "they can login to the servers and do whatever they want". But it is clear that what is really meant is that the government can access all of the personal data that these companies have, provided the "proper" clearance and assertions by the NSA analyst.

TheNextWeb's speculation that the change in wording means that the data is gathered "indirectly" doesn't make a lot of sense:

 _For one thing, it adds to the growing claim that the agency instead accessed the information indirectly. In such a case, the most likely method would be via ISPs or mobile operators, but that remains unconfirmed._

Given that the WaPo wording specifically mentions "company-controlled locations":

 _In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing "collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations," rather than directly to company servers._

What this more than likely means is that the NSA uses special-access "portals" provided by these companies to do their searching in. Meaning that the NSA accesses a special, locked down website provided and built by Google/Apple/Facebook etc to do their searching in, a site that runs within Google/Apple/Facebook's datacenters/infrastructe, a system that has access to all of the backend data.

"Direct access" means something different to those of us that work with software systems like this all day long than it does to a journalist. We understand that to mean a login and shell access on a server, while the journalists seem to be misunderstanding "direct" versus "indirect" to refer to where the data is obtained from.

edit: think about it this way: would the government want access to the raw bytes stored on Google's servers, which would require them to understand how to decode Google File System data and be kept 100% up to date on how all of Google's backend systems work? Or would they prefer if Google provided them with a private search engine to access data, which Google has to keep up to date to work with all of the other Google systems?

<comment><USER2> The NYT also disputes earlier claims:

 _While the newspapers portrayed the classified documents as indicating that the N.S.A. obtained direct access to the companies' servers, several of the companies — including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple — denied that the government could do so. Instead, the companies have negotiated with the government technical means to provide specific data in response to court orders, according to people briefed on the arrangements._

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/us/nsa-verizon- calls.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/us/nsa-verizon- calls.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&hp)

<comment> brown9-2 The only thing that is being disputed is the meaning of the term "direct access". To a technical person, and to a technology company like Google, that would mean shell access and ability to run arbitrary commands on Google's server. That is the only thing that these companies have denied in their statements. It was a somewhat misleading description in the original slides and original reporting, but it does not really change the scope of what we are talking about.

<comment><USER2> Isn't access to actual servers (shell or otherwise) the real issue here? complying with subpoenas and warrants isn't much of an issue at all.

<comment> brown9-2 I think it depends on who you ask.

I think the fact that the NSA could routinely search Facebook/Google/Apple for whatever data they have about a particular person (after being reasonably confident that that person is "foreign"), without needing to get a new and specific subpoena each time, is news to most people.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hardest programming challenge - <AUTHOR>

What was your most hardest programming challenge? Something you thought it is impossible but finally did it. <comment><USER2> I managed to solve the travelling sales man problem in `P` time but lost the commit.

 _Before I get trolled that was a joke_

</comment><comment><USER3> The next programming challenge.

</comment><comment><USER4> predict the stock market price</comment>


Ask HN: What is JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> Someone on the street asks you the simple question "What is Javascript?". You don't know anything about this person.<p>How do you personally answer this question? <comment> T-A "It's a programming language." If they don't know what that means, they will probably ask the obvious next question.

</comment><comment><USER2> "It's a programming language."

</comment><comment><USER3> "You know all that dynamic stuff that happens inside a web page? Frames opening, windows closing, forms populating? JavaScript does that."

</comment><comment><USER4> The programming language that runs on the most devices.

</comment><comment><USER5> A miserable pile of callbacks.</comment>


Baby T rex goes on sale on eBay, sparking paleontologists' outcry - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/16/baby-t-rex-for-sale-ebay-paleontology-outcry <comment><USER2> Is my opinion that this should not belong to anybody but to everybody unpopular?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree this should belong to everybody, but fossil hunting is an expensive venture. Here is a quote from Alan Detrich, thw owner of the T rex.

[1] "Millionaires aren't rich enough to buy these dinosaurs. I don't have a problem with selling to billionaires, because they've got enough money to protect this fossil and take really good care of it … At some point, all these things end up in museums."

>At some point these things end up in museums.

I guess you can call it a win-win.

[1] - [[https://www2.ljworld.com/news/ku/2019/apr/10/ku-museum- pulls...](https://www2.ljworld.com/news/ku/2019/apr/10/ku-museum-pulls- display-of-baby-t-rex-fossil-abruptly-listed-on-ebay-for-2-9-million/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure whoever buys it will let researchers examine it, but maybe that's too optimistic.

</comment><comment><USER4> My feelings :

"It belongs in a museum!" \- Indiana Jones</comment>


Viral App Yo Has Already Been Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3032197/viral-app-yo-has-already-been-hacked

<comment><USER2> What i find funny about "yo" is that I hadn't heard of it until yesterday, and after I heard about it, I heard it was shit.</comment>


Helping America's startups grow - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/helping-americas-startups-grow.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> I can't imagine how the economist came up with the calculation that every $1 spent will generate $2 in revenue. This is an outrageous claim. How long does that relationship last? Out to the millions of dollars spent? Why doesn't ConEd invest some dollars here?

Advertising, and especially online advertising, only makes sense for some industries (not utilities for example) and only for certain types of businesses within those industries.

I hope this venture is out to really help entrepreneurs and not just looking to steal the very valuable and very small amount of capital that these young companies have.

Caveat emptor.</comment>


BrowserCouch is an in-browser MapReduce  implementation - <AUTHOR> http://hg.toolness.com/browser-couch/raw-file/blog-post/index.html

<comment><USER2> Very cool idea. I'm still trying to figure out what good this would be though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Original blog post about it (with comments) here: <http://www.toolness.com/wp/?p=580>.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think Vladimir Vukićević is right - SQL definitely is not the best persistence platform for the client side.</comment>


Reddit Media - <AUTHOR> https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/sHSL7x0GyabNcbWvg-p8csV5BFkMg446nA_z1XvkVZw.png <comment><USER2> People often think this sort of expiry is due to some shocking technical deficit - but it's actually more often due to things like organisational change (people not handing over responsibilities correctly) or important information (e.g. on parts of the CDN infrastructure) not making across a migration to a new internal wiki.

My app [1] actually has users who use Let's Encrypt - which has totally reliable email reminders before expiry - but still like the idea of having a long list of backup contacts and a company that will follow up on them to prevent an expiry in production.

[1] [https://www.httpsmonitor.com](https://www.httpsmonitor.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems to be fixed:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/bugs/comments/52q4mv/thumbsredditme...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bugs/comments/52q4mv/thumbsredditmediacom_ssl_cert_expired/) (flair: "fixed!")</comment>


Could you beat my 13k game I made in js? - <AUTHOR> http://js13kgames.com/entries/vier-wizard-wars

<comment><USER2> I already did, really awesome!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you man! =)</comment></comment>


The Slow Death of American Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-slow-death-of-american-entrepreneurship/

<comment><USER2> More taxes and regulations is a definite way to kill small businesses in the us. Its sad that the democrats are the ones trying to get these regulations and laws passed.</comment>


Tension over Hubble Constant Continues - <AUTHOR> https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/tension-continues-hubble-constant/ <comment><USER2> Great video on the topic: [https://youtu.be/R30ratQanWw](https://youtu.be/R30ratQanWw)

In addition to standard candles and CMB, another method of measuring the Hubble constant is mentioned, using gravitational waves.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for sharing that. Was a really good watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can we stop calling it the Hubble Constant? The Hubble _Parameter_ is a much better term. It's not meant to be constant in time, only in space. It is continually decreasing over time, even in a Universe in accelerated expansion (unless the expansion is exponentially accelerating which is not the case).

</comment><comment><USER5> If the universe is increasingly expanding... Am I? Are my protons getting farther apart or are the sub atomic particles in me getting larger? Or are you all and other celestial bodies just moving away from me? :P

<comment><USER6> If the Hubble constant is increasing, as the article points out is consistent with existing evidence, then yes, all distances are getting "larger." In fact, the observable universe would be getting smaller and smaller. At some point it would become so small that the electrons in your atoms couldn't see either each other or the nucleus of the atom; then, the nucleons couldn't see each other; and finally, even the subatomic particles making up the protons and neutrons couldn't see each other.

Since they wouldn't interact with each other, everything just falls apart at some point. Look up the Big Rip, one possible fate of the universe.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Creating an image of a Macbook, to install a dev environment - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know how to create an image of a Mac?
Our development environment is a pain in the neck to install, and I would like to create an image of a Mac to get new developers up and running. I've had to do these installs a few times, and I have another one coming up that I'd like to avoid.
I've found a couple links on the internet about this, but nothing that talks about it from a developer point of view. Does anyone have a link or advice? <comment><USER2> [http://www.macenterprise.org/macworld-2008-slides/imaging- tr...](http://www.macenterprise.org/macworld-2008-slides/imaging-track)

Found here: [http://www.macenterprise.org/system/app/pages/search?q=imagi...](http://www.macenterprise.org/system/app/pages/search?q=imaging)</comment>


Google exit from China a predictable gift: Baidu chief - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101116/tc_afp/uschinainternetcensorgooglebaidu

<comment><USER2> It's just sad for competition. Competition for the least censored results (ha) and competition for ad dollars, search quality.

This said, I think an important difference that doesn't come out when a lot of coverage goes down about China / Google / Baidu is the way in which Google gets used in China. It's more complex than just "some people use Google, some use Baidu." For example, who uses which, and why? An interesting question...!

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't Americans know that Baidu is run by the Chinese government and its collaborators? Of course Google was going to lose that fixed race.</comment>


OverSight monitors a mac's mic and cam, alerting the user either is activated - <AUTHOR> https://objective-see.com/products/oversight.html <comment><USER2> I've been using Micro Snitch for ages...</comment>


New study suggests global warming decreases storm activity and extreme weather - <AUTHOR> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/25/new-study-suggests-global-warming-decreases-storm-activity-and-extreme-weather/

<comment><USER2> What is this crap? This is a denialist website that published patently false information that misinterprets what climate scientists are actually saying.</comment>


The Desktop Linux Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3933341/The-Desktop-Linux-Paradox.htm <comment><USER2> TL;DR - Ubuntu doesn't work exactly right on his particular laptop, but Windows does. Also, Macs work correctly on their hardware, but he doesn't actually use Macs.

This guy is completely wrong, and not just because he keeps using "desktop" where he really means "laptop."

The fact that Mac OS X runs well on hardware built by Apple, and the fact that Windows runs "well" on machines built specifically for Windows (which his laptop certainly is), doesn't make Linux a hopeless cause. Ubuntu on homebrew desktops is amazing, and I'm never going back.</comment>


I'm a Startup Founder Running for the California State Legislature - <AUTHOR> I'm Ted Dziuba.
Some of you might remember me from the Uncov tech blog, ages ago. I also co-founded Milo.com, which sold to eBay in 2010.
I've left the tech industry, and now I'm running for California State Senate, District 1 (Lake Tahoe area), in a special election coming up on March 26th. I'm a pro-business Republican, which probably won't get me much love with HN, but politics is all about compromise.
I want to make sure that startups, and anyone else running a small business in California, has air support in the State Legislature. There are some very anti-business taxes coming down the pipe in California, like split-roll property taxes, which will make triple-net leases, in the Bay Area especially, astronomically more expensive.
My two biggest competitors are sitting Assemblymen. One has never worked a day of his life outside of the government, and the other made a living collecting federal subsidies.
I'm asking for your help, HN. Running for office takes money. So far, I've put in over $100,000 of my own money, and I am working on raising more. Every dollar counts.
Check out my campaign, what I stand for, and think about what it would mean to have a startup founder as a state legislator. If you can afford it, please consider contributing to my campaign.
https://www.theodoredziuba.com/ <comment><USER2> Have you considered a different domain name? Your existing domain name could be parsed as The Odor, Ed Ziuba.</comment>


TJX Hacker Was Awash in Cash; His Penniless Coder Faces Prison - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/watt <comment><USER2> Is the only source for this guy being Unix Terrorist and Jim Jones Kevin Mitnick? Couldn't they have said "according to Kevin Mitnick" rather than stating it as fact?

That's one reason I appreciate newspaper journalism even today. The standards they use to convey the level of credibility in the presentation of facts is something a lot of blogs, and even Wired, could learn from.

<comment><USER3> The author may have many sources for that identification; she says he "was known in hacker circles" by those names, which suggests there are many people who could (and possibly did) confirm the nyms to her.

<comment><USER4> I don't infer the same from the quote. It just as easily could have been her single source, Mitnick, that are the 'hacker circles'. The wording alone does not suggest multiple sources.

<comment><USER3> I read it differently; but since there's no suggestion Watt disputes this, or that Mitnick is unreliable on this, I don't understand the greatgrandparent post implication this is somehow indicative of shoddy journalism.

It's background info confirmed by at least one and probably multiple sources, and journalists specifically _don't_ want to or need to footnote their stories with multiple named sources like a research paper or legal brief.

<comment><USER2> The author does say neither sides' lawyers acknowledge it. That indicates to me there's some reason to dispue it. If Watt doesn't dispute it, why isn't he quoted as saying so?

If it's not shoddy journalism, then it's shoddy writing.

<comment><USER3> Sounds to me like Watt and his lawyers have neither confirmed nor denied it -- it hasn't come up in the case, and there'e no reason to go on record either way. Quite possibly, she asked Watt's team, and they said something like "I have no information on that" or "I can't comment on things not part of this case".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You wonder what he thought his angle would be. He seems to have knowingly shouldered as much risk as his partner without any of the payoffs. My guess is he _was_ compensated somehow but has thus far managed to shield that knowledge.

<comment><USER6> This plus the fact that he was working at Morgan Stanley seems to indicate that either he's managed to cleverly hide the loot, or he was doing it because of the challenge. If the latter, then it wouldn't have been any challenge to rip off Morgan Stanley, since he was already inside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that this person was doing some of this while working at Morgan Stanley. It seems that there would be much richer pickings at a Wall Street bank than at TJX.

Also, Watt is now "prohibited from using a computer". Is that possible? How do the feds define "computer"?

<comment><USER8> Of course it's possible! Haven't you ever seen Hackers? The same thing happened to the guy in the movie. _duck_

It's most likely a condition of his bail. After he serves his sentence it will likely be a condition of his probation. I don't think this is uncommon for large scale computer crimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Penniless? He worked at Morgan Stanley. And then quit for an even higher paying job.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Watt was ignorant of the use to which his best friend would put the custom packet sniffer..."

Yea, right.

"Honestly officer, I was just keeping the engine warm while my friends were trick or treating in the 7-11."

<comment><USER11> And O. J. Simpson didn't murder anyone. Let's be serious here, anything is possible in the court. Maybe his friends only planned to play with that sniffer and not steal any money.</comment></comment>


Raising your kid as a vegan could soon be a crime in Italy - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/raising-your-kid-as-a-vegan-could-soon-be-a-crime-in-italy/ <comment><USER2> Couldn't the same argument be made for obese kids and diets without enough nessesary vitamins etc?

<comment><USER3> This is what the proposal say, it doesn't singles out vegan diets

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It was a public health issue there. Became an issue of, support Vegans or support Kids. No-brainer.</comment>


High-Tech Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.eeweb.com/rtz/high-tech-hardware

<comment><AUTHOR> A good oscilloscope is the workhorse tool of a EE, the only problem is they actually can cost more than your house. Just the oscilloscope probe itself can easily cost more than a MacBook Pro. An active probe will typically run $1/MHz, so a 4GHz probe will cost you $4k.</comment>


Google Dataflow: A Unified Model for Batch and Streaming Data Processing [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UfZN59Nsk8 <comment><USER2> It's strange that the service looks quite promising but I don't know any company that uses this service. Isn't it mature enough (it's actually kinda strange argument for a managed service though) or is it hard to use? I skimmed the documentation but the pricing model seemed unclear compared to AWS's managed services.

<comment><USER3> We use it here at Streak for streaming log processing. We have it setup such that our backend and client side logs are streamed to our "dataflow job" where we do some pretty simple processing/transformations and then it gets outputted to BigQuery. Sounds simple but there is a lot of complexity its hiding when you're streaming at a large enough scale. We know because we built our infrastructure for this at first and it sucked.

As for pricing, its just consumes your regular google compute engine instances, so its all based on how big your jobs are and how long they run for.</comment></comment>


Comcast Activates First Users With IPv6 Native Dual Stack Over DOCSIS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.comcast.com/2011/01/comcast-activates-first-users-with-ipv6-native-dual-stack-over-docsis.html <comment><USER2> Okay, if we're really starting to do this, then I guess I have to figure out how to upgrade all my code to deal with IPV6. I use the BSD sockets interface for most things.

I assume we'll be living in a mixed IPV4/IPV6 world for awhile. Who's got a tutorial for making a connection to a host using IPV6 if available, but falling back to IPV4 if it isn't?

<comment><USER3> See getaddrinfo(3) man page, that should be almost all you want. Making code mixed v4/v6 that way actually seems easier than v4-only solution with gethostbyname(3) and building struct sockaddr manually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great :-) I hope more Internet Service Providers follow suit! I'm actually glad for once that I have comcast.

</comment><comment><USER5> Odd I've had IPv6 on Comcast in the Northern NM area for at least the last three months.

<comment><USER6> You were probably on the 6RD IPv6 trials: <http://www.comcast6.net/faq.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 18 quintillion . . . why?

<comment><USER8> Well we ran out of 4 billion, and much of the world isn't really online yet. Then factor in having a laptop, a smartphone, gaming console, HPTC, etc. There's more servers and infrastructure too. It's not that much overkill either, only 4x more bits.

<comment><USER9> The article states that 18 quintillion is being allocated to _each customer_ , which does seem a bit excessive.

<comment><USER10> (recycling an post I just made on the same topic on /.)

In short:

1\. an ISP would be allocated a /32. This sure sounds like a lot (2^96 addresses!) but it only is the same burden as a _single address_ in IPv4! Even if there were millions of ISPs, this would be no burden on the address space at all. We'd lose the ability to route before we'd exhaust the addresses.

2\. Then an ISP can assign a /64 to customers. Again, this sounds like a bit much, but its a tiny fraction of their space. Even if the ISP had a billion customers like this they would be completely fine.

3\. This leaves a huge amount of space available for the customer to segment however they please.

4\. In the simplest case you'd use a single network with 48-bits taken up by the ethernet MAC address (removing the need to do any address assignment!) Alternatively you could segment the space a bit more and run a transnational corporation's network inside the /64. Up to you!

2^128 is a really REALLY big number. No reason not to spread out a little bit.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, and 2^32 computers should be enough for anybody. ;)

<comment><USER12> I know you're joking, but I think the point is that the numbers are so large that we really don't have the tech right now to exhaust the space. I remember hearing in the past that 2^128 is close to or more than the number of molecules (or was it atoms?) in the known universe. We're not at the point where we can assign an address to every atom and make use of it... yet at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is anyone else surprised that Comcast has actually gotten off their ass and decided to start going ahead with this? I guess my expectation was that Verizon would be headlining IPv6 and not Comcast.

</comment><comment><USER14> Comcast also caps usage to 250GB per month.

[http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?Guid=3ca542...](http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQViewer.aspx?Guid=3ca5420c-75b0-439c-b8bd-16d89157c333&fss=250)

<comment><USER15> FWIW, it's a softcap. I have several friends who have gone well over (we're talking 1TB+) and haven't received the dreaded phone call.

<comment><USER16> FWIW, we hit 256gb, and we got a call, threatening if we passed it again in 6 months we would be banned from Comcast for 12 months. (Someone in the house accidentally left a torrent sending for 3 weeks)

<comment><USER17> Perhaps whether they call you after the limit depends on _why_ you went over the limit. It should be easy to determine if the reason you went over is a torrent (even if they can't figure out what torrent), video streaming, or something else.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Alternate Universe of Soviet Arcade Games - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-alternate-universe-of-soviet-arcade-games <comment><USER2> The author may not realize (I only know this because my mother worked for the Soviet arcade ministry of sorts in the 80s) is that there was a whole illicit angle to the arcade business.

They were all cash-based - which created huge opportunities for embezzlement for guys working there. The government had no way of knowing how many coins were actually deposited (ie the technicians could fiddle with counters or whatever) - so they could skim huge (and shared the loot all the way to the top). The vig was apparently massive.

Every now and then somebody would leave their wife, she'd write a report to the special police that dealt with economic crime and the whole structure would end up in jail.

Fun times.

<comment><USER3> Funny how things are similar. I was in the USAF with a fellow who had served in Vietnam. While there, he had a side job of repairing the slot machines that were in the Officers and NCO clubs. Like the Soviet arcades, this was also a cash business, and the machines were also rigged. His share of the vig supplemented his military salary fairly well, he said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I definitely remember playing these as a kid in the 90s, especially Magistral, and some sort of ship-torpedo game.

This, however, shows that the author didn't do their research:

> _Strangest of all, however, is the lineup of radish pickers: after failed > attempts by a mouse, a cat, a dog, a daughter, and a grandma, the vegetable > can only be pulled up once the grandpa jumps in and the entire family works > together to pull it out collectively._

That's not strange - that game is just based on a popular fairy tale where, well, you can guess exactly what happens in the fairy tale. It's not a long story.

<comment><USER5> > that game is just based on a popular fairy tale where, well, you can guess > exactly what happens in the fairy tale.

I'm from Romania and we have the same fairy tale involving said vegetable (in our case is a giant radish). It would be interesting to draw some maps of "fairy tales influence" (for a lack of a better word), i.e. in this case the map for the "giant radish fairy tale" would cover both Russia and Romania, the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale would cover most of Western Europe etc.

<comment><USER6> That fairy tale has reached as far as Slovenia.

And if memory serves, it is alluded to in an episode of Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy, albeit through a foreign character with an accent.

Wikipedia says it's a Slavic fairy tale that _has_ been presented in English- speaking countries. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gigantic_Turnip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gigantic_Turnip)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a fun article, but:

"Though it has never been substantiated by historians, the anecdote goes that on a trip to the United States, Khrushchev was so smitten with the arcade games he saw that, upon his return, he invited all the game makers to come to Russia and showcase their best games. "

Khrushchev was kicked out of power in 1964, and died in 1971.

<comment><USER8> It lines up though. He visited the US in 1959 and a little while after returning, the Soviets started working on their own arcade games. I guess there's no proof that he really did order Soviet games to be made but it's plausible.

<comment><USER9> Are you aware of the state of arcade games in the US in 1959.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it was called "pinball".

<comment><USER11> Depends where you were. Pinball was illegal from the 1940s onwards in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Salt Lake City among others. It was only legalized in the 1970s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Had a little nostalgia moment there with "Vozduwnij Boi" and the soda water dispenser. Those were 2 kopeks for a soda I think and 5 kopecs for kvas, which was so delicious.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. I've bought bottled stuff here (NYC), occasionally, and even some stuff at restaurants - but it all tastes weird and bad, and vaguely Coca-Cola-ish.

Went back last summer for my grandpa's birthday, and bought like five liters from an old woman who was selling it out of a big tank. Tasted almost exactly like I remember it, and I probably drank about two liters in one day.

<comment><USER13> Quality of kvas improved a lot, so it may explain why it tasted _almost_ exactly like you remember it: it is not diluted anymore but produced by exactly same technology, so it a bit too concentrated, because soviet norms were adjusted for about 20% of additional water added at distribution. I.e. it especially made concentrated to dilute it later and steal money without need to fake documents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There was a similar article in Vice earlier this year, and it has more pictures for those interested:

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/soviet-arcade- museum](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/soviet-arcade-museum)

<comment><USER15> [https://youtu.be/Gzwt56TPwkM](https://youtu.be/Gzwt56TPwkM)

That is a link to a video with some game play, there are many others available as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's a pretty BS article written under, what appears to be, some sort of assumption of how life in Soviet Union was all driven by communist ideology. Hardly any games had "Marxist agenda", lots of them had high scores, and you bet that the adrenaline rush was right there. They weren't designed to train loyal citizens anymore than Mortal Combat was designed to train hand combat. They were just games... heavy and crude, but they were designed for fun first and foremost.

</comment><comment><USER17> A better site where you can actually play a few -- www.15kop.ru/en/

<comment><USER18> Dying games simulated using a dying technology, Flash that is. No nostalgia for me tonight :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I actually visited this museum on a trip to Moscow recently. It was super fun - ended up being one of the highlights. The Gorodki game they talk about seemed like it could be turned into a popular iOS app :).

</comment><comment><USER20> I was there a while ago and also made some pictures in case someone is interested: [https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/826-Moscow-and-the-Museum- of...](https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/826-Moscow-and-the-Museum-of-Soviet- Arcade-Machines.html) [https://pictures.hboeck.de/asia2013/moscow- arcade](https://pictures.hboeck.de/asia2013/moscow-arcade)

</comment><comment><USER21> So is the museum in St. Petersburg or Moscow?

<comment><USER22> Both. Judging from their site there is another one in Kazan.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: CodePundit.com – We are building a better stackoverflow. Are we? - <AUTHOR>

We are looking for feedback, advice and beta testers.
About the project:
The main idea of CodePundit is to have a place for programmers to get quality answers to any of their questions almost immediately.
For experts (who must be approved) answering questions is a way to make some money and be recognized by companies/startups who will use CodePundit. If possible, we also want to encourage experts to try the 'teaching approach' rather than 'blindly answering' questions.
We see this project as something which combines a Q&A site with an eLance type of place. You will have access to the best developers out there, on demand, and you don't need to worry about selecting the best candidate.
Since there is a payment involved, we expect no spamming and people will be asking questions when they really need it. On the other hand, since they pay, they can expect a quick and quality answer. If your question is not urgent and you are okay to have it answered in the next day or two, you can always submit it for free or for a very little payment.
http://www.CodePundit.com <comment><USER2> For some reasons SO already provides magic answers 24/7 even for very obscure problems, often providing both the answer and some teaching thrown in, and all of that for free.

Can you give an example for a question that wasn't, or wouldn't be answered properly on SO?

(There's a little typo at the bottom in "Affordable".)

<comment><AUTHOR> Many of my questions were not answered on SO, while I was in a hurry during a development process. I also usually get an answer not immediately or my answer is marked not always correctly as "duplicate" etc.

CodePundit is not designed to compete with sites where you submit a question and don't worry much when the answer will come. CodePundit would be used when you need an answer within 1 hour and be sure it is answered by an expert.

<comment><USER2> One thing that might work is a "These friendly experts are on standby to fix your shit" \- approach. Programming is scary and at any given time thousands of programmers are stuck at something. You know, someone to hold your hand and go through that logfile together with you, could be nice :-)

Good luck!</comment></comment></comment>


A New DB for 80% of Facebook, YouTube-scale Sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.roadtofailure.com/2009/08/07/a-new-db-for-80-of-facebook-youtube-scale-sites/

<comment><USER2> This is just blog spam!

"I update this blog a few times a month. Don't worry -- I'm worth waiting for."

User gsteph22 has only submitted two articles, both from this crappy blog.

<comment><USER3> I think it's generally considered okay to submit your own blog here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone tried Cassandra? I thought that was what Facebook was using for this type of thing?

<comment><USER5> Yes. Actually we [cassandra] are seeing a fair number of people switching to Cassandra from hbase because of speed and reliability (no single points of failure).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting -- we've seen a lot of the opposite, especially from the .20 release. I guess it all depends on what you need to do with it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> MongoDB seems to be heading that way, slowly but surely.

<comment><USER7> I am using couchdb (with couchdb-lounge) to store distribute a large dataset for a computationally intensive scientific application. So far so good.

MongoDB is heading that way, but its support for partitioning, which couchdb- lounge is performing adequately already, is in alpha.

<comment><USER6> I just looked at couchdb-lounge because I'm very interested in partitioning and hadn't heard about it.

The wiki unfortunately left the important questions unanswered. Does lounge handle the rebalancing when new shards are added/removed? Do I have to take the cluster offline to add new nodes? What are the failure modes (e.g. a node failing and coming back)? How is a replacement node bootstrapped?

Since none of that is mentioned I have my doubts that lounge is handling it adequately. But I'd be glad to hear otherwise!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Berkeley DB?

</comment><comment><USER9> Drizzle?

</comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know where the "Live Nude Girls" are on his site? The link seems to be broken.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a Secret!</comment></comment>


Why is winsupersite.com banned on HN? - <AUTHOR>

Why is Winsupersite banned? I submitted two articles and they were instantly dead. Is it because it provides Microsoft-centric coverage? Slanted Daring Fireball articles result in flamewars but it is still welcome on HN. <comment><USER2> I think it means too many links to that site have been flagged to death in the past.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't really see anything flag worthy on that site.

<comment><USER2> I don't know of any other way for a site to get banned other than PG banning it manually.

It might be helpful if we could find out what, if any, links to winsupersite were flagged to death (i.e. not autokilled).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dude, this is HN, full of Macbook toting Apple fans and 'M$' haters. No one wants Microsoft news coverage here, unless when it's one of Gruber's deprecating takes on important Microsoft news. Those get a LOT more votes than the links to the actual announcements themselves.

<comment><USER4> Posters who say "M$" often get a dressing down, so I think this characterisation is partly in your head.

Can't say I care about lack of Paul Thurrott content, though. He is/was the anti-Gruber right down to lacking the panache. I think the last time I followed a link to his site, I was greeted with a big ugly popover ad.</comment></comment>


Bootstrapper's Bookshelf - <AUTHOR> https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/bookshelf/ <comment><USER2> All book links are Amazon affiliate links (tag=tbf092-20).

<comment><AUTHOR> Which is made explicit in the disclosure on top of the page (and all other pages containing such links).

What do you think about the list itself?</comment></comment>


BBC, Sky Have Hidden Their Interviews with UN Expert on the Torture of Assange - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/bbc-sky-news-have-hidden-their-interviews-with-un-expert-on-the-torture-of-assange-4cb155aaf313 <comment><USER2> Interviewees should try and take a leaf out of Rutger Bregman's book and make sure they have a decent record of the interview themselves, ready to release should it be spiked.

[https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1098283273120350211?lan...](https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1098283273120350211?lang=en)</comment>


Show HN: Cnnected – (Paid) Projects for Designers and Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnnected.com

<comment><AUTHOR> A little experiment.

I wanted to create a new way of connecting developers & designers with paid projects. Sites like Elance make freelancers compete with $5h workers. Only a handful of clients don't get trapped in selecting the cheapest proposal. High quality freelancers are not able to raise their hands higher to increase their chances of getting picked...

With Cnnected, I wanted to take a different approach. Giving freelancers control of who and how many get introduced to potential clients. And clients get to judge potential leads by seeing who had the highest bid and willingness to take the project as well as their portfolio and quality of other work they've already done.

Looking forward hearing feedback/ideas from the community so we can help more professional freelancers get the projects they deserve.</comment>


For 40 Years, Crashing Trains Was One of America's Favorite Pastimes - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/staged-train-wrecks <comment><USER2> People died and were maimed so Crush was fired, but then the company realized people enjoyed it and could still profit off these spectacles so they hired Crush back.

One engineer warned that they locamotives would explode and they shunned him as a debbie downer naysayer.

Doesn't seem that far off from today where profits trump safety and any reason that stands in the way is ignored.

<comment><USER3> > Doesn't seem that far off from today where profits trump safety and any > reason that stands in the way is ignored.

Really? :)

While accidents do happen, the rate of accidents is going down. Injuries in general: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-number-of-deaths- by...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-number-of-deaths-by- cause?stackMode=relative)

Fire: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-deaths-by- age](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-deaths-by-age)

Drowning: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/drowning-deaths-by-age- gr...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/drowning-deaths-by-age-group)

And even motor vehicle deaths, could plausibly have topped: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/road-deaths-by- type](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/road-deaths-by-type)

(this is world wide, in the developed world these peek many decades ago)

<comment><USER4> We live in the safest time ever, yet some people don't realize or refuse to believe it. I blame media bubbles.

<comment><USER5> No, we don't. We live in a local minimum based on what we're actually well equipped to define and measure, and what people in positions of power are willing to treat as actionable information.

Politics is swinging to the extremes, violence is changing it's clothes, taking on other less familiar forms. Trust in the system is at a low.

Economic inequality is rife; infrastructure and the environment is approaching levels of instability previously unheard of.

These aren't media bubbles. These are failures to maintain or achieve higher order awareness. All of these things are feeding into each other in myriad ways; they can't be reasoned in individual contexts for solutions. That's the thinking that got us where we are. They need to be reasoned about as a whole.

Problems cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that created them in the first place.

<comment> kube-system If you are suggesting that we aren't able to say we're at all time lows due to a lack of good long term historical information, then you also can't draw the opposite conclusion that we _aren't_ at at an all time low. We simply don't know. But I'd bet it's highly unlikely that a lack of measurement and/or recording led to better results.

I do agree that trust is probably at pretty low levels — exactly because communication is more accessible than any time in history and therefore people have more opportunity to question authority.

But a lack in trust doesn't translate directly to violence. I think that people are becoming very complacent with distrust. The daily media barrage of reasons to distrust so many things has reached the point where it doesn't cause outrage anymore. It has convinced some people that distrust is normal.

<comment><USER6> every issue salawat mentioned wasn't something that would result in violence and deaths _today_ so its not refuted by citing current statistic.

They're warnings for the future, because while its true that we're currently living in a pretty safe environment and are overall pretty well off, our children won't have that luxury.

Once these issues actually start getting reflected in global statics, its going to be way too late to actually realistically pull this proverbial ship around.

And he didn't even mention half of the things on the horizon with the potential to seriously harm society such as global warming and the evermore increasing amount of automation destroying the livelihood of a lot of people. (automation isn't _bad_ , its just going to cause a lot of problems and unrest very soon)

<comment><USER7> Prediction is hard, especially about the future!

What's clear is the data about the recent past, and the trends are very good, both for accidental and deliberate death (among other things) on a time-scale of decades to centuries.

There are indeed some reversals (in the last few years: some kinds of crime, pedestrian deaths, opioids) which the optimists hope will be short-lived.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am here to tell you, however, that the spectacle promised by a local county fair of a "combine demo derby" (as in, a demo derby with old combines) did NOT live up to the hype. Crashes there were, but at a lumbering 5MPH (TOPS) they were not "spectacular," especially when some of the combines had to help others get going again with helpful pushes. Let's say my ten-year-old son and I were "underwhelmed." :)

<comment><USER9> I've never seen one, but I wonder if a motorhome/bus derby might be wild...

<comment><USER10> You can see these on Top Gear. They are spectacularly wonderful and I hope I get to experience one in real life some day.

To wit they've done everything. Bus derby, RV derby, trailer derby ... it always ends in wonderful amounts of destruction and spectacular crashes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if clean up was part of the costs. I imagine there's quite a few parts that are difficult to move without heavy machinery. Or did they just leave the wreck and tracks as is? If so are there any of those crash sites still visible?

<comment><USER12> They got the locomotives and tracks to the crash site somehow, so presumably they know a thing or two about moving heavy stuff around.

<comment><USER11> Well, moving a working locomotive is relatively easy compared to a non-working one ;-)

<comment><USER13> A working train without tracks is non-working machinery. They only laid down a mile of tracks for the show

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The cultural change in reducing the frequency of this pastime, is that trains today are considered much less cool than they once were, so contemporary America crashes other things into things for fun instead. The current fashion is large navy vessels, apparently.

<comment><USER15> Our favorite things to crash are the global economy and the sustainability of the environment

<comment><USER14> They've been crashing into one another for longer than America has existed, to be fair. Though someone did mention, it may have been Germany, that America was last seen laughing hysterically whilst hacking away at the remaining brake lines, so there's that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> See also the more serious British Rail / BNFL "flask" crash test: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY446h4pZdc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY446h4pZdc)

<comment><USER17> How much power would you estimate that train was producing?

If I remember correctly can't diesel-electric locomotives put out one or two megawatts!

<comment><USER18> Looks like an old Deltic - so about 2.4MW max:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_55](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_55)

NB The Deltic engines were pretty interesting:

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

<comment><USER19> No, as the voiceover says, it was a much less powerful Class 46 (46009).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_46](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_46)

<comment><USER18> My mistake - in the office so didn't have the audio on!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm reminded of my nephew who, at four years old, would set up lengths of track on which to crash his toy cars together in what he called "challenges".

Strange to think that a railroad executive would turn out to be an overgrown four-year-old crashing real trains together for the fun of it. Especially considering the lives put at risk.

<comment><USER15> When I was a kid my favorite toy was the Crash Test Dummies. They had a whole set of cars, people, motorcycles and other vehicles that would fly apart when thrown against a wall and could be put back together. :)

<comment><USER21> Back in the early 1960s some such toy as sold. But I recall them as spring- driven--you'd wind them, let them run against a wall and fly apart, then put them back together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> J.G. Ballard died and went to heaven:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(Ballard_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_\(Ballard_novel\))

<comment><USER23> The crash itself isn't as important there, as being _in_ the crash — the feel of the crushing steel, on your burning flesh

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Who's to say that this wouldn't also attract crowds today.

<comment><USER25> I think the advent of movie theaters killed it. With today's special effects you can see trains or boats or spaceships crashing into each other in close up for a reasonable price. It's not "real" of course, but probably fills the need.

<comment><USER26> It grows a need in me to see the real thing - because I know the special FX crashing is invented, and I'd like to know how it would look (and sound, and smell, and feel) in reality.

<comment><USER27> I remember watching the twin towers collapse on 9/11, and the part of me that wasn't thinking "Oh God!" was thinking "Wow, that looks just like a special effect".

<comment><USER26> When I first stumbled upon reports from 9/11 when channel surfing (I think it was before the second plane hit), I thought I'm seeing some weird thriller movie, and continued switching channels. Only later that day I learned it was all real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This was lowest common denominator entertainment.

Today's YouTuber stars make a fine living out of smashing stuff up. They know it is lowest common denominator stuff that will find a ready audience.

However, these stunts come to an end, after a while the audience needs something new and not yet another thing smashed up.

The thing with the trains is that they were only good for scrap. Being wrecked made little difference to the resale value, bent bits of tin are still of the same weight as finely engineered bits of tin.

The current trend of wasting stuff for likes rarely involves stuff that is going to be recycled. How many iphone X's does it take to stop a bullet content results in a lot of waste of new stuff with not a lot recycled. This is in contrast to this train wrecking stunt-meme of a century ago.

Although people were killed in the train wrecking stunts people did not go there with that a as premise. Motor racing was about the deadly crashes for most of the last century, if you were a Formula 1 driver then it was a 1 in 3 chance you might not last the season. Spectators went for the chance to see a spectacular crash being part of the entertainment.

Public hangings also used to be popular entertainment. So, all considered, pretty good show.

</comment><comment><USER29> I say time is ripe to bring back this ye olde form of 'tainment to the masses.

Oh, we can have frankfurter rolls and sarsaparilla floats at the fair grounds!

<comment><USER30> I know you're joking but that legitimately sounds like a lot of fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one who routinely watches crash test videos as entertainment?

<comment><USER32> I'd watch those if I knew where to look. Can you link a few?

<comment><USER31> [https://www.euroncap.com/](https://www.euroncap.com/) is the main source, but YouTube searches also occasionally yield some interesting non-European videos (small overlap and other kind of tests that are not routinely conducted by EuroNCAP).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Interesting story, though I can't say the practice is celebratory. I think there's too much waste in the world, starting from such events where things are like...getting crushed for fun, ending tot he food restaurants throw out. Yet it's an interesting phenomena about the train crashes

<comment><USER34> I just recently realized that, after moving next to a big park where those big events happens, even the ones self claimed environmental friendly. The next day is so so much garbage of all sorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Images of Gomez Addams come to mind....

</comment><comment><USER36> Completely random, but I'm always so impressed by how well-dressed everyone (including the poor) was 100+ years ago. While there are benefits to having less formality in public life I also feel that something important has been lost.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, but that was their only set of clothes. They look nice because it's what they go to church in as well.

Look through old wills and it's shocking to see what people list. Each shirt individually gifted, because they only had 3. Each pair of socks. Their toaster. This wasn't even 100 years ago. We don't realize just how much more buying power we have today. It's a completely different world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Crash testing is important. Making the public aware of what happens in the crash is also important. This is the opportunity to observe many of unknown unknowns, that wouldn't manifest in non-destructive testing.

For cars, crash tests are routine, which is good. For planes, unfortunately, there are less common. Now, we need destructive testing for e.g. nuclear reactors (in the controlled and safe environment, of course). We used to do that, but stopped for political reasons.

</comment><comment><USER39> Amazing how 100 years ago they could lay 1 mile of rail to just to crash old trains. Today it costs millions of dollars to build a mile of track and we still run cars that are 50+ years old.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is fascinating. Nowadays people throng to the theaters for the latest Michael Bay special effects extravaganza. It seems like the same impulse, to see a big crash or explosion.

</comment><comment><USER41> Where can I find these images from Baylor?

I tried their repository, [http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu](http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu)

</comment><comment><USER42> Given the popularity of kids crashing their toy trains in YouTube videos, this propensity hasn't abated in people's minds yet.

</comment><comment><USER43> I believe the Scott Joplin piece The Great Crush Collision March was written to commemorate one mentioned in the article.

</comment><comment><USER44> So sad to think of those beautiful locomotives destroyed in a spectacle.

</comment><comment><USER45> Mine was too... HO Scale though

</comment><comment><USER2> > By 4 p.m., more than 40,000 people had arrived

For anybody else that was curious, in 1896 $2*40k = $2.4M in 2019

[http://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1896?amount=80000](http://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1896?amount=80000)

<comment><USER46> that doesn't sound like an awful lot for two locomotives and logistics...?

<comment><USER3> Probably the locomotives had to be scrapped regardless.

But putting down the rail sounds expensive, could it be that this was cheaper back then?

<comment><USER47> Putting down rail would have been cheap. Since it was one time use they could take a lot of shortcuts - who cares if the next frost will twist the rails when you will be done before the next frost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Updating this for the modern era, I suggest the Airbus 380. Crash a fully fueled pair going full speed at about 800 feet up, with the crowd back 2000 feet.

<comment><USER49> It's been done with a single 727, though for research purposes rather than entertainment.

[https://youtu.be/FlX8KsSXg4s?t=2760](https://youtu.be/FlX8KsSXg4s?t=2760)

<comment><USER50> Those sound effects were added in post, right?

<comment><USER51> I think they got the crash sound from the onboard camera equipment, and the engine sounds from outside cameras. Then mixed it together with tense music for dramatic effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Not seldom can you measure how unequal a society is by the bizarreness of the leisure time of the upper classes.

<comment><USER53> It was 50 cents to attend and many tens of thousands of people did so. Definitely not limited to the upper classes.</comment></comment>


Writing Robust Bash Shell Scripts - <AUTHOR> http://www.davidpashley.com/articles/writing-robust-shell-scripts.html <comment><USER2> I can't read the article now, but in my opinion the fact that it's so difficult to write robust shell scripts above a very basic level of complexity (e.g. do this, then do that, then do that, then quit) really means you should be scripting in perl/python/ruby/etc instead.

Yes, the overhead for anything quick and dirty is higher, but if you're writing libraries, you only have to write them once.

The only real benefit to writing something complex entirely in a shell script is if you can't control the environment it will run in, and you need it to run everywhere, and you can't make users install an interpreter, which are increasingly rare requirements, and even then you have to write it in `sh` anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> These are generally good tips. I swear by

        set -e # same as set -o errexit

and I like using list constructs (&& ||) in lieu of simple `if` test blocks but it's really important to remember that list constructs aren't exactly the same. This always catches me out:

        if [ -e "missingfile" ]
        then
            echo "you'll never see this"
        fi

(above runs fine with set -e)

        [ -e "missingfile" ] && echo "you'll never see this"

(while that one correctly fails and thus `set -e` fails the script)

I generally stick an `|| true` on the end of those list constructs.

fwiw.

</comment><comment><USER4> Text only cache, courtesy Google - [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-aFhMx4...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-aFhMx4TME8J:www.davidpashley.com/articles/writing- robust-shell-scripts.html&hl=en&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER5> He suggests using

        if [ "$filename" = "foo" ];

Why not

        if [[ $filename == "foo" ]];

?

EDIT: aware of the fact that [[ ]] is a bash extension, but the actual title of the post is "Writing Robust Bash Shell Scripts", implying that it should be using the best stuff for BASH.

<comment><USER6>
        $ cat foo.sh
        #!/bin/bash
        echo $BASH_VERSION
        unset filename
        if [[ $filename == "foo" ]];
        $ ./foo.sh
        4.1.2(1)-release
        ./foo.sh: line 5: syntax error: unexpected end of file

If $filename evaluates to an empty string, then the last line of code becomes

        if [[ == "foo" ]];

Similarly, if $filename evaluates to _a b c_ , then the last line of code becomes

        if [[ a b c == "foo" ]];

The bash interpreter has problems with both of these.

<comment><USER7> No, that is just wrong. In double-brackets, bash will handle expansion and testing of unset variables and variables with spaces just fine, because word splitting and pathname expansion are not performed in double braces -- they are shell syntax, as opposed to single brackets, which are commands. Your syntax error happened because you don't have a fi matching that if.

As a counterexample:

      (echo $BASH_VERSION;
      foo=foo; [[ $foo = foo ]] && echo $foo;
      foo="1 2 3"; [[ $foo = "1 2 3" ]] && echo $foo;
      foo=''; echo ${foo?"No foo for you"};
      unset foo; echo ${foo?"No foo for you"})
      4.2.10(1)-release
      foo
      1 2 3

      bash: foo: No foo for you

That last one is one of the few ways you can tell whether a variable is unset or merely set to an empty string.

lrn2bash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8>
      set -u

Another great thing I could have read in the effin manual.

He could have added a little reminder about the ${VAR:-default} syntax. [[ <http://www.ooblick.com/text/sh/> search for Quasi-variable constructs ]]

Great read, thanks.

<comment><USER5> Or look at the manpage

           ${parameter:-word}
                  Use  Default  Values.  If parameter is unset or null, the expan-
                  sion of word is substituted.  Otherwise, the value of  parameter
                  is substituted.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, I was just sayin for the sake of the article, he brings up the subject of unitialized variables, without mentioning this other way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The locking section could also be dealt with by using mkdir for locking. mkdir is atomic. (Note that mkdir -p is _not_.)

<comment><USER10> This is not always true on NFS for various reasons too stupid to go into. There are precious few things so stupid that someone has not committed them to an NFS server somewhere, but the retry semantics in the protocol make it generally awkward and it's possible for two mkdirs to both succeed or both fail but in both cases for the directory to exist. See [http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg2...](http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg20456.html) and [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/185451/quick-and-dirty- wa...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/185451/quick-and-dirty-way-to- ensure-only-one-instance-of-a-shell-script-is-running-at/327991#327991) . The only things NFS guarantees is that symlink, rename, and open with the O_EXCL flag (and that only in v3), will be atomic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's strange how the quoting trick seems to work, even when double quotes appear in in a variable. For example:

        Ives ~ $ FN='"a b"'
        Ives ~ $ if [ "$FN" = '"a b"' ]; then echo "Does not matter"; fi
            Does not matter

Still works fine, so clearly something more than simple variable expansion is going on here. It seems like the end-of-literal-string matching is performed before variable expansion.

</comment><comment><USER12> The premise is flawed. Robustness requires a shell that works the same across platforms and across time, and that means /bin/sh.

Most of the people reading this article, IME, are not familiar with /bin/sh, or its differences from /{bin,usr/bin,usr/local/bin}/bash, much less know how or why it is important to write robust AND portable shell scripts.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why did you change the title of the post? The actual title according to the HTML is "Writing Robust Bash Shell Scripts" and your title is "Writing robust shell scripts"/

<comment><AUTHOR> The author changed it, as you can see the url still has the old title

edit: changed

<comment><USER5> Ah, stealth edit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did you pull this from my google+ post?</comment>


SpaceX sticks 11th rocket landing after launching first used Dragon capsule - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/3/15725720/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-landing-success-nasa-used-dragon <comment><USER2> Sometimes I think I'm smart because I can (mostly) get Webpack to work the way I want.

Then I watch a SpaceX livestream and realize, eh, not so much. ;)

<comment><USER3> To be fair, SpaceX's roadmap is:

1\. Land rocket.

2\. Reuse rocket.

3\. Colonize Mars.

4\. Get Webpack to work the way we want.

<comment><USER4> low hanging fruits.. Musk is defintely lazy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's already become routine, soon people will expect rockets to be reusable. If they keep up the launches every two weeks and begin even accelerating the pace of launches I do not see how any rocket company will be able to compete for business.

<comment><USER6> I was just thinking that hey, here we are where a SpaceX landing has only 46 points in 2 hours. It's really cool to see it become routine.

<comment><USER7> There is a tiny part of me that is starting to think Yay! Are we becoming a spacefaring civilization? We are tentatively close.

<comment><USER6> The real test is what happens after a ship explodes. Musk himself has said that you can't really improve the reliability that much. Cost is the only vector, and SpaceX is making spaceflight cheap.

It's still risky. If it's true that reliability hasn't changed at all, then it's even more likely that we're going to see a string of failures rather than a single isolated incident. That will be the true test: can we take that in stride, or will others get the last word?

<comment><USER8> I expect reuse to result in much better reliability in the long term. The engineers will have a much better picture of which components fail and in what way if they can look at flown examples.

So far, SpaceX's reliability is not great, but they keep going.

<comment><USER9> That Space Shuttle was reusable, and it still had catastrophic failures.

<comment><USER10> The Space Shuttle was incredibly unsafe design, and it evolved fairly little during it's life. Mixing unthrottable and unstoppable solid rockets with liquid rockets was never a good idea. The massive external fuel tank was vulnerable. The tile system was an achilles heel, and extending the wingspan to force air force payloads on the shuttle made reentry even more dangerous. Finally carrying a huge space plane every flight eliminated more than 80% of its payload capacity.

Falcon 9s and Dragons are an evolution of tried and true rocket engineering principles, even capsules are much safer at reentry than the shuttle. Delta showed that type can be launched with a high degree of safety. SpaceX has the advantage of getting returned equipment back from space to learn from and improve.

<comment><USER6> Completely agreed, but let's be honest: we're going to see SpaceX shuttles explode, and people will probably die. I hope not, but the things you're saying now are exactly the same kinds of things people were saying the last time space travel was fashionable. It's just incredibly risky to try to ride an explosion into space, no matter how you do it.

Going forward, it might be to our advantage to own it rather than hide it. Yeah, it's dangerous. So let's risk the danger! We courageously do our best and launch ourselves into orbit, and some of us die, but progress marches forward.

I'm not sure if that type of message would have a better or worse impact than shielding everyone from the idea that disaster will strike till it happens. It could go either way.

<comment><USER11> Well, yeah. But they'll surely beat that 1.5% failure rate of the sts. They're at a 3% total failure rate right now, but they'll have (I hope) a long run of success, maybe hundreds, before they put people on the falcon.

<comment><USER12> There's not going to be hundreds. The first crew flight is supposed to happen next year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The speed at which they develop, implement and successfully use this technology is mind-boggling. Congratulations to everyone involved with this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow. Does anyone know what sort of control they have during the final burn? Do they modulate it in closed loop to track the landing profile or is the control via some other actuators? It just blows your mind that you can get this sort of accuracy with these speeds/distance/time. I also wonder how they get real- time accurate positioning. GPS?

<comment><USER15> It's mostly GPS and inertial navigation. Probably integrated together with some kind of Kalman filter.

The very last few seconds add in data from a radar altimeter. Per the post- launch press conference, this time they added some special paint to the landing pad to give a better radar return. I imagine the steel deck of the ASDS already gives a pretty good radar return.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain why the "Stage 1 speed" at the top right on the technical broadcast stream jumps from 6,000 km/h to 24,000 km/h right after the separation?

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=PFoOqqSIYpw](https://youtube.com/watch?v=PFoOqqSIYpw) around 22:28 mark

In fact, the speed settles at 18,000 km/h after the landing.

<comment><USER17> that was a bug

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That headline makes no sense to me. What does "sticks" mean here?

<comment><USER19> It's a turn of phrase borrowed from judged sports with a jumping/dismount component, especially gymnastics. If a gymnast dismounts from a balance beam and lands without stumbling or bending the knees too much, one would say he has "stuck the landing". In the headline, OP is saying that, by virtue of the landing being near-flawless, SpaceX "stuck" the landing. This is used quite commonly in aviation/aerospace, but colloquially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If they can find customers for the recovered stages at 80% of normal price, it will be like printing money. Wow.

<comment><USER21> Whats interesting is that even if they command 100% of the launch market, The launch market is currently less than 6% of the roughly $200B USD global space industry. That is probably still not enough to fund a Mars colony fleet.

As it happens, most of the profits in space are in communication satellites, which is why SpaceX is attempting to launch its own LEO constellation.

Some have speculated that if SpaceX can't launch their satellite constellation then they will have bet the farm and lost. However, I think people underestimate what may happen to demand when the cost of access to space drops to dollars/kg from tens of thousands of dollars/kg.

<comment><USER22> I believe this sentiment is spot on. Musks myopic focus on Mars has always been puzzling to me. There are vast fortunes to be made in many areas, the easiest, most immediate in my view is orbital tourism to inflatable habitat destinations. Current falcon, not even heavy is sufficient, lift here.

Also, when dream chaser becomes operational, there will be a strong sense of REAL progress.

Edit to clarify, I'm referring to the drastic cost reduction reusability gives to reaching orbit, as the parent of this post says. I am saying there are a lot of other desirable, profitable ventures, other than settling Mars, that cheap access to space makes achievable.

<comment><USER8> He's not doing Mars for the money, he's doing it because he thinks it's important and nobody else is pushing it hard enough.

If he was in it for the money he never would have started a rocket company.

<comment><USER23> > Elon Musk: "Did you hear the joke about the guy who made a small fortune in > the space industry?" Obviously, "He started with a large one," is the > punchline. And so I tell people, well, I was trying to figure out the > fastest way to turn a large fortune into a small one. And they'd look at me, > like, "Is he serious?"

[https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_mind_behind_tesla_sp...](https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_mind_behind_tesla_spacex_solarcity/transcript?language=en)

<comment><USER24> That's presumably a variation on the airline joke of the same form. I've heard it about Richard Branson, but don't know if that is the original source.

The claim is that Richard Branson wa asked how to become a millionaire after he'd start Virgin Atlantic, and answered "you become a billionaire and start an airline".

<comment><USER8> The general form dates back to at least 1984:

[https://books.google.com/books?id=0pJVAAAAMAAJ&q=%22make+a+s...](https://books.google.com/books?id=0pJVAAAAMAAJ&q=%22make+a+small+fortune%22&dq=%22make+a+small+fortune%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUzZqG6qTUAhXHPCYKHR8CAI04UBDoAQhUMAk)

The way it's put there, it sounds like it had already been around a while. It's possible Branson was the first person to apply it to airlines. I see a lot of people attributing it to Robert Crandall, former CEO of American Airlines, but can't find anything actually quoting him on it. He did say, "A lot of people came into the airline business. Most of them promptly exited, minus their money," which is pretty similar in spirit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You can watch the recorded live stream landing at [https://youtu.be/PFoOqqSIYpw?t=37m19s](https://youtu.be/PFoOqqSIYpw?t=37m19s)

<comment><USER26> What happened with the cheering? It's like watching a comedy without the recorded laughter.

<comment><USER27> As the description notes, that is the technical stream. Here's the stream with commentary (and cheering :) )

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URh- oPqjlM8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URh-oPqjlM8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does it start firing the rockets on descent not so much to slow down but as a shield for reentry? I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe the rocket isn't high enough to burn up on re-entry? I'm not sure it's not exactly coated in heat-resistant ("cliche-black-colored") tiles.

To me maybe when you fire a plume of exhaust like that it forms a shield around the rocket... not sure.

<comment><USER29> I think that the 1st stage separates at ~6000kmh; that's nowhere near the speed of orbit - which is around 28000kmh. I think that explains the ability of the first stage to pass through the atmosphere without a heat shield - it's not the high up, more the speed, I think.

From (again, not definitive) knowledge, the rocket fires to slow down (boostback), a re-entry burn, then a landing burn. Indeed, there's info from the horse's mouth here:

[http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/06/24/why-and-how-landing- ro...](http://www.spacex.com/news/2015/06/24/why-and-how-landing-rockets)

<comment><USER28> horse's mouth haha

thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if SpaceX will throw a big party after their 100th booster Earth landing.</comment>


Hackaball: 15 lessons learned from the first 18 months in hardware manufacturing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-many/hackaball-hardware-lessons-a4d14c69670d <comment><USER2> This is a GREAT post. The single best piece of advice I could give to someone trying to mass produce hardware in China is to link up with a production agent, at least for your first run. The savings you will realize in time and sanity due to their understanding of the Chinese manufacturing process, culture and their network on the ground far outweigh the costs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We went by the recommendation of someone who had already worked with this particular production agent. By working with an experienced agent you essentially buy their trusted network, which takes away some of the worry around working with people whose work you can't monitor on a day to day basis.

<comment><USER2> Yes that and its essentially like hiring an off-site PM ensuring that all the ducks stay in a row. Second to that, using a really good set of set of communications tools for async chat and issue trackers really make it a lot less painful. They communicate very differently there and being able to keep everyone on the same page is priceless.</comment></comment></comment>


Addicted to Learning? Hardcore MOOC Students Race to Pass Courses - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/What-Professors-Can-Learn-From/139367/ Hundreds of people are spending 20 or 30 hours a week just taking free Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. They're not looking for credit, just a challenge of learning. This Chronicle of Higher Ed story looks at whether these MOOC addicts think they're learning as much as they would in a traditional college course. <comment><USER2> I dont know if it is just me,but i do not feel like i have really understood a subject after taking an online class.Only hitting the books on my own gives me that kind of confidence.</comment>


Chromebook Pre-Orders Now Available to All - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechromesource.com/chromebook-pre-orders-now-available-to-all/ <comment><USER2> At this price, why would I want this instead of iPad? (serious question)

Some possible answers: keyboard, open for hacking on, not locked into App Store, cloud storage for everything, throw-away and restore on new system immediately.

Anything else? Am I missing something?

If not, I don't see this being a hit.

 _Keyboard_ \- you can buy keyboard for iPad

 _Open for hacking on_ \- I'd want a real computer to do hacking on.

 _Not locked into App Store_ \- On iPad, you can use the web just as you will on Chromebook... except on Chromebook, you don't get all the apps that have already been built.

 _Cloud storage for everything_ & _throw-away and restore on new system immediately_ \- iCloud?

<comment><USER3> The short answer: it's not directed towards you. It became blatantly obviously during Google IO that they're going after very specific markets: Education and Business private sector. No IT overhead, constant pushes of the latest security updates, and free hardware upgrades for as long as the line of products still exists with a low monthly price per machine. For the small fraction of use-cases that still need proprietary software there's virtualization.

They're not going after the home sector here (they have Android phones and tablets handling that for them nicely). They're going for the throat with Microsoft's last dominance: schools and businesses. If they can start upsetting the decades-long lock-in that Microsoft has had in those giant areas, then Chromebooks have succeeded.

(And before you ask, no the iPad isn't a suitable product for those areas. A proprietary cloud solution where a business doesn't control their own data is never going to fly. Also, while mobile Safari has made excellent strides, it's still not even close to a traditional browser.)

<comment><USER4> _Also, while mobile Safari has made excellent strides, it's still not even close to a traditional browser._

That's not going to last very long.

<comment><USER3> Nitro on the iPad 2 is orders of magnitude behind V8 on a netbook with most every test that I've run. Like I said, it's gotten a lot better in their latest iterations, but it's still slow as molasses with complex web apps in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google: "Security built in Chromebooks run the first operating system designed from the ground up to defend against the ongoing threat of malware and viruses. They employ the principle of "defense in depth" to provide multiple layers of protection, including sandboxing, data encryption and verified boot."

Thank god Best Buy is selling Anti-Virus with these!

Sarcasm off ... why are these $429+?

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems overpriced by about $200. Competing with Netbooks that can do more and iPads that can do more and are more stylish...

</comment><comment><USER7> Weren't Google IO attendees supposed to be getting one of these on/before launch? I've heard nothing. Anyone else?

<comment><USER8> Google never said when the emails would go out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just ordered mine (opted for the silver Samsung with 3G), here's hoping they start shipping before the 15th!

</comment><comment><USER10> "Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S."

Not available to all.

</comment><comment><USER11> I already have mine.

<comment><USER12> I got mine a few days ago from Gilt.com

Things I like: Fast. Amazing battery life. Good trackpad. Chrome! Nice keyboard. Light weight.

Things I don't like: It stutters sometimes with flash objects. Display only opens at about 130 deg angle. I wish it went further back. The display hinge closes when it is open at 45 degs and chrombook is out held with screen facing down. No shortcut to jump to end or beginning of line when typing. Microphone is not very good - you sound like you are in a tunnel when talking. No way to change the keyboard repeat rate. No delete key.

Things I wish it had: Magnetic power connector.

I love this little thing. It's extremely fast and the battery lasts longer than my MacBook (which is going to my parents). It's a pleasure to surf the web on.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the arctic white from Gilt. I haven't got the Rickshaw case yet though, but I like it for the most part.

I'm playing with it to decided what I want to do with it. I'm probably going to end up mostly giving it to my parents for my little sister since I feel its a bit better than Ubuntu in some respects and I don't have to worry about malware or supporting it.

I've already enabled dev mode on it, which is kind of interesting. Also, there really needs to be support for archives and zip files and stuff. I downloaded a zip file of photos expecting to be able to unzip it at least and maybe upload to Picasa, but couldn't unzip it.

I do want to develop some chrome apps now though, it's nice to have a blank slate platform and play with something to see what it needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I very much like my CR-48, but it is not as much a necessity as a netbook is.</comment>


Socialtext Goes Freemium With Socialtext Free 50  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/socialtext-goes-freemium-with-socialtext-free-50/ <comment><USER2> I can't find any major drawback to their _free_ version: just "support non- available". It means that it's hosted on their server, but should be fully functional -- and a good way to test drive the process.

For those of us who might aspire to offer related services, it's also a nice way to experience SN's vision of collaborative software.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I convert external HDDs to APFS? - <AUTHOR> Let's say I have several external drives connected to an iMac. Should I convert those drives to APFS? <comment><USER2> I tend to be conservative about filesystems on external drives. What if you want to plug one in to a computer that does not support APFS?</comment>