Quest to settle riddle over Einstein's theory may soon be over - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-02-quest-riddle-einstein-theory.html <comment><USER2> Imagine if scientists discovered we were existing in a simulated universe, and that sumulation had an error in it's floating point library.

<comment><USER3> It wouldn't be an error, it would just be an artifact of that Universe.

<comment><USER4> I think that's pretty much what Intel said at first, way back when, but they had to replace all those CPUs anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The preprint is here:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.07670](https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.07670)

</comment><comment><USER6> What are other implications of the speed of gravity being unequal to the speed of light?

<comment><USER5> I'll try to answer that via a couple of concrete examples of theories that deliberately set the speed of gravity and light at different values for good reasons.

The short answer is that General Relativity (GR) predicts that the speed of light is equal to the speed of gravitational waves. In order to have a difference between the speed, one needs a different theory from GR.

Moreover, the equality of the speed is well-tested at solar system scales; there is good evidence that at least within a few billion light years from here the speeds are the same; and there is good evidence that for at least the age of the solar system (several billion years) the speeds have been the same. A physically realistic theory has to match these lines of evidence.

Around General Relativity we've built the Standard Cosmology, and in that we construct a preferred frame of reference -- the comoving frame, or the cosmological frame -- in which we calculate the evolution of the size of the universe under the influence of attractive and repulsive matter. The comoving frame is the one containing all observers who see the universe as spatially flat, homogeneous, isotropic, and have a view pastwards to a hotter denser universe.

Our understanding of the universe decreases when the universe is very hot and dense, and our view that far pastwards with current equipment is obscured. How the early universe "behind the veil" of the oldest visible surface becomes that particular surface raises some tricky questions about the behaviour of the matter and spacetime in the very early universe.

Additionally we do not now have a microscopic description of all the attractive matter in the standard cosmology, and recent evidence suggesting an acceleration of the metric expansion raises questions about whether our microscopic description of repulisve matter is correct. Moreover, our macroscopic dsecsriptions of these still need some "help" in the early universe in order to produce homogeneity, isotropy and spatial flatness given the visible attractive matter and also the invisible bits of the Standard Model of particle physics, in the form of another form of repulsive matter.

From time to time it becomes fashionable or interesting to explore modifications to General Relativity that would eliminate the need for one or both types of repulsive matter. This is a trendy moment.

In General Relativity there is a universal coupling to the metric tensor. Gravitational waves are values propagating in this tensor field, and it is common to talk about them as propagating at the "tensor speed of sound".

One popular approach to modifying GR is to introduce a square scalar component that multiplies with the metric tensor to produce the gravitational action. Such theories are called scalar-tensor theories of gravity.

In scalar-tensor gravity you can make the tensor speed of sound unequal to the speed of light in a variety of ways.

One approach is to make the scalar value location-dependent, with its evolution modifying the gravitational attraction between clumps of matter. In this sort of approach, one relates the scalar and tensor values to each other in such a way that one would still talk about just the "tensor speed of sound", with the scalar driving changes in that value (typically making the tensor sound speed slower in the past).

The phys.org describes a paper that deals with a subset of this type approach, which I'll get to further below.

Another approach is to have two metrics that do not couple universally. For instance, one could retain the metric tensor from General Relativity which couples to massive matter (like electrons and neutrinos) and add a metric scalar-tensor which couples to massless matter (like light and gluons). This lets the tensor speed of gravitational waves produced by light (and other massless particles) be slower than light.

Here's a concrete example of this approach:

Afshordi & Magueijo [ [https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03312](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03312) \- I'll call this A&M] are exploring a (scalar-tensor) bimetric theory where, in the hot, dense, early universe the two metrics are unequal; massive matter couples to one metric, and (after electroweak symmetry breaking) while massless matter (mainly meaning light, since gluons stay confined in hadrons) couples to the other. The effect is that the sources of the former metric can move very slowly compared to light and the metric that it sources; it is just as valid to say that light moves much faster than, for example, the lightest massive particles. The result is that in the early universe, light can carry momentum- energy from one region of the early universe to another more efficiently than it can in the present day universe. Additionally, light zips ahead of its own gravity (or equivalently sheds cerenkov-like (tensor) gravitational radiation) and so even at the highest energies and energy-densities, light can homogenize the temperature of the early universe at extremely long length scales without disrupting structure formation and in particular without significantly changing the structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background.

After this temperature-evening process solves the horizon problem there is a phase change that causes the massless-matter metric to "freeze" into a configuration that is exactly identical to the massive-matter metric.

This leads to a present-day universe that reproduces all the observational and experimental successes of General Relativity and an early universe that the authors claim solves the horizon problem without cosmic inflation.

(They refer to other work on similar bimetric models that suggest that one or more other problems that cosmic inflation was introduced to solve -- homogeneity, isotropy and flatness -- might also be solved by their model).

Now onto the single scalar-tensor metric approach:

The Lombriser & Lima paper [ [https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.07670](https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.07670) \-- I'll call this L&L ] that's the subject of the phys.org article deals with a subset of Horndeski gravity theories. Horndeski theory are a general family of scalar-tensor theories that become General Relativity when the scalar freezes. It is very general and the scalar can relate among other things to a f(R) gravity -- a function on the Ricci scalar R -- or a f(\hat{G}) gravity -- a "variable G" theory, where G is Newton's constant. L&L focus on Horndeski theories that seek to eliminate the need for a cosmological constant term (or similar dark energy source term in the cosmological frame).

(Aside: A&M somewhat distinguish themselves from Horndeski gravities starting at the top of their p. 2. They do not use the vocabulary of Horndeski theory or expand on their argument, and additionally the A&M paper itself is focused on cosmic inflation rather than dark energy. So the applicability of the L&L argument is not especially clear.)

L&L argue that generically in a Horndeski theory that is able to reproduce the metric expansion of space, the evolving scalar induces a damping of (tensor) gravitational waves different from that of General Relativity; in particular, in order to get rid of dark energy you have to slow down tensor waves in the earlier universe, and speed them up in the later universe. This lets galaxy clusters separate from each other faster in the later universe than they do in the earlier universe. But this approach also produces observables in electromagnetically bright events that also produce detectable gravitational waves (e.g. inspiralling neutron stars that explode into a GRB or type II supernova and possibly shedding gravitational waves from fallback accretion onto the remnant(s)). Moreover, such events for a wide range of theories are within the threshold of forthcoming gravitational wave observatories.

Additionally in these theories, as light would zip along faster than the tensor speed of sound, they would shed Cerenkov-like (tensor) gravitational waves, which may have [a] their own observables but [b] reduce the speed of light relative to the speed of gravity when the path the light takes through spacetime is long. The authors argue that studies of objects with known spectra at different high redshifts should directly test this aspect of dark- energy-free Horndeski gravities.

Finally, the L&L paper doesn't look too deeply at the semiclassical picture, asking about whether other massless particles -- gluons, namely -- racing ahead of gravity should produce observables. Neither does A&M's paper. And both papers stay far away from questions of quantum gravity.

<comment><USER7> Wow, thank you for this excellent heap of info!

I noticed you reference the Cosmic Microwave Background in a nuanced way, "How the early universe "behind the veil" of the oldest visible surface becomes that particular surface" before mentioning the name itself. You never quite define the CMB or highlight its significance, which may be a bit confusing for readers. Otherwise, awesome stuff!

<comment><USER5> Well, we might measure other BB relics like the cosmic neutrino background or stochastic gravitational waves, someday. :-)

> You never quite define the CMB or highlight its significance

I'm not sure how significant it is (as a veil).

If you take an initial values approach, you can put the IV surface pretty much anywhere in spacetime and let known physical laws do their thing. The problem is that we have no way of knowing (with current telescope technology) if we are choosing reasonable initial values on a surface much earlier the surface of last scattering, except if it mechanically produces something a lot like our view of the universe at the correct time. That's about as anthropic as it gets.

Likewise, for purely theoretical reasons we end up on shaky ground when marching into the very distant past from initial values on a reasonable spacelike hypersurface set nearer the present day (what happens to matter in strong gravity? are all physical laws really time-reversible? and similar open questions), and unfortunately with present telescope technology we can't see past the surface of last scattering to where this shakiness would manifest distinguishing observables.

Having things other than photons to look at will help (and so will better views of the CMB), and is likely to alter when exactly one would put "the veil".

I tend to doubt the cosmological significance of things that almost certainly can be made to move or vanish when we puny humans invent and launch new observatories.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Urgent - Ask HN: Should I follow my sense? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I am going to launch a new web service in 10 days.. and I am very excited about it. I have a vision and sense that it will make a big success..
Its not a new idea in general, but I will represent it with a new features that will make it much easier.. along with a social part, and smart system..
What made me excited for this idea, is that I was able to reach 100k visitors per month, just in 4 months duration only, and from a small core of the main idea..
So.. should I go on without fear in this idea? And does that 100k visitors/month reach makes sense or it does not mean any thing?
Waiting for your help indeed and thanks in advance,
Ahmed. <comment><USER2> There are two questions that have to be made now.

First of it, Do you really need to make this decision now?

Second, Does your new web service has any revenue stream? See, if you launched a web service, that need to be monetized later ( as tumblr, posterous, facebook), 100k visitors will not pay your dinner. But if it is a freemium model, maybe you can think of quit your current job.

My two cents for you: Wait a bit more, if its something that has potencial, start looking for investors, and after this you go full time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see a potential for it.. I am talking about 100k visitors as a start.. is it a good sign to make it in full?

I will rely on Amazon AWS to reduce costs... and I can fund it for the next 1 year.. so I can cover it as well.. and I have a hope that it will reach 2Millions by the first year..

I am just afraid and worried.. but I want to do it quickly, because I had ideas very similar to friendfeed, and other online startups, but I was surprised that these ideas grown quickly and I was still thinking about it.. although I thought about it before it appeared.

<comment><USER2> How much do you earn having 100k visitors? 1 cent, 0,1 cent per user, or you are actually losing money? Even with AWS, you have to try to monetize those users, and profit.

Well, don't be afraid of that. It's not because someone had 'your' idea, that you have to be in a hurry. I think you shouldn't be so afraid that somebody would take your product away.

Even more, I think if you are afraid of telling others about your idea, you have less chance of making success. I'm excited to know what your product is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why not launch the new product in beta and attract signups from your current visitors? The most important product verification in my mind is having active users.

If you generate a lot of interest it's a great way to test your new product before you make the jump...

</comment><comment><USER4> What does "go on" mean in this case? Quit current job, invest money, .... ?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes I mean focus on this project, so I will work part time only, and go ahead for 1 year working on it, and enhancing it.</comment></comment>


New - Amazon S3 Server Side Encryption for Data at Rest - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/10/new-amazon-s3-server-side-encryption.html <comment><USER2> So they're allowing us to store our data in encrypted form, but they keep the encryption key, and will decrypt requests for the data?

How exactly will this protect my data?

<comment><USER3> Well it's another link in the security chain.

You would be negligent not to implement this if you're storing sensitive data on AWS. No?

<comment><USER4> As I understand it the encryption adds both latency and more points of failure to S3 (keys stored on separate servers). How is adding both of that negligent?

From a security point of view the encryption adds no value at all: Either I trust Amazon to not look at my data, or I don't trust them. If I don't trust them with my data, surely I also can't trust them with my encryption keys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The reason why this is a big deal is that it appears to satisfy PCI DSS requirements for key management (though I'm curious about their key rotation strategy). E-commerce hosts just got a lot more interested in S3.

</comment><comment><USER6> From the business perspective I believe that we are talking about a whole new market, not just a feature.

I compare this business initiative with the past "e-mail managed service" market, where companies moved their own e-mail infrastructure to third parties (postini, messagelabs, mxlogic), something unthinkable (from a security or control point of view). Now security is moving to a managed service, seems strange but it can follow a similar route (new companies in this space + acquisitions by leaders).

Adding Identity Cryptography [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID- based_cryptography>] to the game it will attract a lot of corporations.

</comment><comment><USER7> A big advantage to this is for applications that require HIPAA compliance. One of the rules for HIPAA is to encrypt data at rest. There may be better ways to encrypt your information, but this will tick a box for compliance purposes (the advantage of this shouldn't be underestimated).

It basically allows HIPAA abiding applications to use S3 for data storage without the complexity of dealing with the encryption themselves, or using a 3rd party provider that offers this by proxy.

The only remaining step is to trial and error your way through using it due to the "light" documentation.

<comment><USER8> I don't see how this can work at all if Amazon has access to your keys but doesn't sign a Business Associate Agreement under HIPAA. They've refused to do this for us.

It might be viable to encrypt yourself and keep the keys, because then you're not giving them PHI---just goblety gook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could someone duplicate this server side encryption by inputting a key to hold in RAM that handles encryption? Or possibly a second server that accepts encrypted data and sends back decrypted data?

Which means that every time a system needs to reboot, losing key in RAM, someone needs to put in the key.

My naive view means someone with a tank can't run off with unencrypted data.

<comment><USER4> Google cold boot attack. Someone with a tank, a screwdriver and a can of coolant spray can.

<comment> mike-cardwell These are virtual machines right? You can easily read the contents of a virtual machines RAM from the host machine whilst it's running if you want the encryption key.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure why they'd virtualize pure storage nodes. There'd be no benefit.

<comment> mike-cardwell I neither stated, nor implied, that Amazon are doing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Configuring duplicity/rsync to use encryption, for example with database backups, was simple. There are a few guides around and in the end you retain control of your own encryption.

</comment><comment><USER12> This can provide protection for example against a scenario where some of the hard disks used in S3 happen to end up in wrong place - for a reason or another. One should keep in mind that all data that is once put to the cloud can stay there forever - even if you try to delete it.

</comment><comment><USER13> It'd be nice if they added first class support for accept-encoding after all these years.

<comment><USER14> or for custom headers, so that I could, for example, serve all my fonts from S3.

<comment><USER15> You can, but maybe not from the web interface. I use s3cmd to upload files, and it sets the content-type just fine.

<comment><USER16> Sure, you can set custom headers as long as they are prefaced with x-amz- meta...Other than that, you're limited to just a handful of headers. This is a big deal for fonts because the Access-Control-Allow-Origin must be set appropriately to be able to use custom fonts from a different origin (i.e. host&port) and S3 will pretty much always be on a different origin than the rest of your website.

You can read more on the AWS forum post about the issue: <https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=34281>

Edit: For those interested the complete list of allowed headers is here: [http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/index....](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/index.html?RESTObjectPUT.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is slightly off topic, but does anyone else find the AWS dashboard impenetrable? You have to hunt for each of the services you need to add, configuration is very well hidden and I can never find my S3 keys. I had to bookmark the link from the email because otherwise I kept going around in circles. I haven't used EC2 yet just because I'm intimidated by the complexity of that management interface...

Is it just me?

<comment><USER18> No you're definitely not the only one. My company uses EC2 for our production environment and I loathe the management interface with a passion. Amazon should definitely hire a UI expert to give that damn thing a face lift.

<comment><USER19> It's a mix really, some of it works beautifully, some of it leaves me thinking "I like this but... why haven't they tweaked _x_ " and some really is just horrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> New version of S3 Browser Freeware supports Amazon S3 Server Side Encryption: <http://s3browser.com/amazon-s3-server-side-encryption.php>

</comment><comment><USER21> So now we can just point to Amazon when FBI asks for the keys, allowing us to blame Amazon when users raise their pitchfork? I like that.

<comment><USER2> Unless, of course, you are the victim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is excellent for backups to reduce server load on the client side (no more need to encrypt locally).

I assume there is no extra charge for this from Amazon? (ah I see the footnote, no charge for SSE)

I guess this also means you can upload very large objects without having the hassle of local pre-encryption too - this assumes you have a secure https link to aws though.

Of course this also means aws has your keys stored somewhere which is less secure.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hmm - if there's no additional charge, why not do this by default?

<comment><USER24> Always a risk of data corruption, key management issues, etc. when encrypting at rest.</comment></comment>


Easiest Path to Riches on the Web? An Initial Coin Offering - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/business/dealbook/coin-digital-currency.html <comment><USER2> I would like to make an appeal to the YC community: please reach out and help guide those involved in this rapidly advancing phenomenon.

There is a huge amount of instantly-deployable capital in Ethereum and Bitcoin, held by individuals now seeking ways to put it to work. Many technologists will naturally make use of this energy, but so will BS artists and people under the influence of hubris.

I am making this appeal because it is irresponsible to stand by and watch so much financial energy be directed at projects without appropriate constraint. Many firms funded by ICOs (or soon to be) have qualified leaders and developers and are developing great ideas, but IMO many are also raising too much money for their own good.

What may be needed to guide these rockets to their full potential are maturity, mentorship, and the careful application of jurisprudence and principles of accounting.

<comment> MachinShinn- >Many firms funded by ICOs (or soon to be) have qualified leaders and developers and are developing great ideas, but IMO many are also raising too much money for their own good.

No, there aren't. Real money has never been cheaper than it is now. Never in human history. USD, Euros, JPY, etc. Super cheaper. Low single digits to borrow. Anyone doing an 'ICO' is trying to cash out at your expense, big time.

<comment><USER3> Welcome to the everything bubble. For those of us keeping a list, here it is:

\- Government spending/borrowing bubble

\- Education Loans bubble

\- Housing bubble (at least in CA, but also worldwide to some degree)

\- Bit coin, Ethereum, Coin bubble

\- Stock market looks a bit frothy too - all the leading technical indicators show things won't be too rosy for the next 10 years.

Did I miss any?

<comment><USER4> Gold? How's gold doing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So this is like buying food vouchers that I can redeem at a store that hasn't yet been built, if indeed it has been given planning permission and even if it does eventually get built, I have no idea how the service and product will taste. And I can't then report any irregularities.

Ponzi? No. Unregulated gambling? Of course.

Sign me up!

<comment><USER6> It's worse than that. In some cases, the coins literally serve no purpose. To use your metaphor, it's like buying StoreBucks for a store that hasn't been built yet, with no promise that you'll be able to redeem your StoreBucks for anything at all.

For example, a project called Status ([http://status.im/](http://status.im/)) recently held an ICO in which people were tripping over themselves to buy Status's coins. It actually backed up the Ethereum network for several hours with pending transactions and they raised over $100 million USD worth of Ethereum (at the time). See if you can find on their website a description of what the coins are actually used for. I can't!

<comment><USER7> The explanation of the token's use is right here:

[https://status.im/whitepaper.pdf](https://status.im/whitepaper.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a fetish for watching complicated court cases play through. What you realize is a judge in a courtroom has a lot of power. They can take your money, freedom or even kids. However, if I had few hundred thousand in Ethereum encrypted placed into a few random anonymous git hub repros, well, the government can't take it. It is truly yours. No one can take it. That must be horrifying proposition for (some) governments - the inability to control people.

<comment><USER9> And if you go hide a few million bucks in cash in the middle of a desert, they can't take it either.

The hard part has always been getting it out and not getting caught.

Nothing is truly yours.

<comment><USER10> That could work, but cryptocurrencies are more convenient. You could transfer your coins anywhere in the world much easier. For example, you could donate your coins Wikileaks undetected, but it's much harder to do that with cash buried in the desert. It's also possible that the government may declare some bills invalid (what happened in India with larger bills). Also, government could inflate away your wealth by printing more currency.

<comment><USER11>
        It's also possible that the government may declare some bills invalid (what happened in India with larger bills). Also, government could inflate away your wealth by printing more currency.

At end of the day governments control both the network via (ISPs & Networking equipment) and processors (Try producing an 8080 in your backyard.).

You make mistake of assuming that countries won't put up a global firewall that makes bitcoin/ether network impossible to operate. If China can filter traffic at internet scale, crippling Bitcoin network even if say EU/US/China are on board is trivial.

Currencies are backed by the only thing that matters, its will/trust of the people. And no amount of crypto changes that. Unless of course you have some magical way of baking silicon on your own into processors and other chips used in computers and networking equipment in your backyard.

<comment><USER7> Governments are not a conscious entity that is separate from society. They are institutions run by a collection parties with numerous competing and aligning interests, and with extensive stakes in society at large. They're not going to do something as massively destructive to society at large as ban encryption and prohibit all microprocessors lacking a back door.

<comment><USER11> HN/BitcoinTalk/etc, suffer from extreme (pro-crypto) filter bubble. The average man/woman on the street ("society") could care less about Bitcoin/Ether. Just look at the whole Net Neutrality debate.

Bitcoin/Ether barely register in terms of the total economic activity (75 Billion $). With significant fraction unusable. They will either be tamed or destroyed.

In fact another way of looking at cryptocurrencies is as a revolt against the Visa/MasterCard duo-poly & regulations that has made digital transactions too difficult. The moment digital transactions become cheaper/more-efficient, the allure of crypto-currencies will disappear.

<comment><USER7> It's not Bitcoin/Ether that the average person on the street cares about. It's the collateral damage that will be done if broad categories of technology are banned or have their security completely compromised. That's the only way to stop a purely informational technology.

As for the allure of cryptocurrency, only time will tell. I predict they will continue to grow in prominence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am amazed that in 2017, there is still people qualifying Bitcoin or Ethereum of ponzi schemes. Crypto currencies have a lot of problems (technical, economical, philosophical, ICO are insanes) but saying they are ponzi schemes is plain wrong. And it just takes 5 minutes of reading on Ponzi Schemes signs and basic knowledges of how those currencies work to understand why.

<comment><USER10> They are as much a Ponzi scheme as gold (which has almost no practical use) and ugly paintings that cost millions [http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most- expensive/10-ugly-piec...](http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most- expensive/10-ugly-pieces-of-art-you-wont-believe-sold-for-millions/)

If expensive ugly paintings are not a Ponzi scheme, then cryptocurrencies are not a Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER13> Ether is more like oil - it is a fuel source used to power smart contracts, token sales, and autonomous organizations.

<comment><USER14> This analogy is not accurate.

<comment><USER15> "gas" is actually a common term used in the Ethereum community. [1] [2]

[1] [https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-is- meant...](https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-is-meant-by-the- term-gas)

[2] [https://www.ethereum.org/token](https://www.ethereum.org/token)

<comment><USER16> Yes but ETH and gas are not the same thing. You use ETH to buy your gas. The gas is burned up in use. ETH is paid to the miners, who can use it to pay their expenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ICO are the best thing that ever happened. This is no different then kickstarter.com started. People where saying the same things. People put up lot of BS project and they got funded, in time these kind of project will fail on there own. This is just the start, no government or bank would have supported such system. For once, the small guy can participate in this market. I would have loved to invest in amazon, facebook, etc when they where private. You had to have the connection and access .. here the little guy in columbia or Africa has the same access to such a deal

<comment><USER14> > I would have loved to invest in amazon, facebook, etc when they where > private.

I'm sure if you wen't to them then and said here is money plz give share they would have considered it. Everybody want's to have gotten into the big giants when they were small - but there are many small cap/penny stock companies you can invest in now ... yet people don't. There are even non listed share trading options. And the reason is because hindsight is 20/20 ... it takes experienced and diligent investors to make good investments that beat the market - it's exceptionally rare.

ICOs are not like getting into Amazon/Facebook/etc early. It's like penny stocks or worse. Could it pay out big ? Sure ... why not. So can the lottery. But there is no enforcement on any of these things in the real world, no shareholder rights and no protections.

> People put up lot of BS project and they got funded, in time these kind of > project will fail on there own.

People keep funding these BS projects and loosing their money though. Let's not pretend nobody is loosing, and I'm actually pretty sure with kick-starter garbage most of the time nobody is winning.

> For once, the small guy can participate in this market.

I'm not sure what market you think you were excluded from, but I doubt this was the case.

> You had to have the connection and access .. here the little guy in columbia > or Africa has the same access to such a deal

... this is just wrong.

<comment><USER18> \- try investing in a high flying startup as a non-accredited investor.

<comment><USER17> Thank you, that is what i am talking about. I don't mind trying my chance by investing a few K in a good idea, that can get me astronomical return.

<comment><USER14> There are options for investing in Reg D companies - and I would like you to give some actual examples of where you would have done this for Reg D companies if you could - and how you tried to invest in Reg D companies and how you were turned down.

The main reason why your line of thinking is flawed is - most cases if you know the people to a point where you trust them to invest in them - you will be covered under Reg D affilated investor - and in other cases you probbably would not invest anyway.

Further, so far I have yet to see a practical example where crypto actually acts as shares - with the same protections (but via smart contracts or whatever). So while maybe one day, so far it has not delivered on this promise.

Your basically happy that at the moment crypto allows you to do exceptionally stupid things with your "money".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These crypto coin bubbles can't pop soon enough.

<comment><USER20> The problem is they will pop, and then come back. They are like a resilient strain of disease. Each time people lose faith in them they develop new ideas and arguments for why they are the future. They aren't the future, they are deeply flawed ponzi-schemes, this is obvious. But we better find out what the future is before they start converting the gullible masses to a currency that is less secure in many ways that is swept under the rug. People are getting hurt by being swept up in cryptocurrency mania; and its not going to end anytime soon. There is talk of China developing new digital currencies(or adopting bitcoin) for stronger population control. There are innovative things happening here, its not all bad, but some of it is clearly evil.

<comment><USER7> >They aren't the future, they are deeply flawed ponzi-schemes, this is obvious.

By definition, they are not ponzi schemes. None of your claims are obvious, and implying otherwise is disingenuous.

>But we better find out what the future is before they start converting the gullible masses to a currency that is less secure in many ways that is swept under the rug.

Ah yes the "gullible masses", and the wise men and women who know better.

How about we respect other people as adults who have a right to buy whatever they want with their own money and stop trying to treat them like sheep that need to be protected from their own gullibility. Your presumptions of knowing what's best for them, to the point where you'd like them to be denied the option of buying them, are extremely condescending.

<comment><USER21> >By definition, they are not ponzi schemes. None of your claims are obvious, and implying otherwise is disingenuous.

So, it doesn't meet the technical definition of a very specific type of financial fraud, therefore everything is hunky dory?

<comment><USER22> No, it's just that the folks railing against it sound like sour grapes. If you want to pick a convincing analogy, do so. Calling it a Ponzi scheme doesn't fit and makes it sound like you're more interested in being contrarian than making a substantive point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Last month, a small team of computer engineers in Lithuania raised $14 million in 45 minutes by selling a coin, known as Mysterium, that is intended to give access to an encrypted online data service that is still being built.

There has to be more background to this? Why would they ever bother building the service if they have the 14M in cash?

<comment><USER24> Because unless they've sold their ethereum, they don't have $14mil or equivalent CHF, they've got ehthereum worth that much.

It's imaginary money, still, or I'm sure they would cash out.

<comment><USER25> Ethereum is exchangable for USD (or EUR, which is the currency in Lithuania). Calling it imaginary money isn't helpful here. I'm sure they have cashed out at least some of that.

As for why they would take investors' money (not really investors according to the SEC) and actually build their product? Maybe they value keeping their promises, or their dream is to build this product and the $14mm is just a means to that end.

<comment><USER24> > Calling it imaginary money isn't helpful here.

"Imaginary" in the sense that it's unrealized in the currency in which it's described, exchangeable only if there are enough people willing to pay the market rate at the moment. "Unrealized" may be better than "imaginary", that's a fair criticism. So it wasn't $14m USD, it was ETH whose market value at the time of calculating was potentially $14m.

To pay employees or themselves I'd also bet they cashed out a slice. I'd love to see a tracker for % of ETH raised at ICO and subsequently sold off. I wouldn't be surprised if the recent flash crash[1] was an ICO selloff.

[1] [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-21/ethereum-flash- cras...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-21/ethereum-flash-crashes- after-status-ico-clogs-network)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 200 years ago in the U.S. regional banks printed their own currency. The constitution does not create a common US currency, although we have been operating as if it does.

Will a non-nation state be able to generate enough credibility to run their own currency that lasts a lifetime?

I don't know be I think it's interesting to watch.

And if they do, it may force central banks into a corner by limiting their ability to print money (i.e., lowering the value of your currency by printing money will cause people to move their money to the alternative currency, leaving you with inflation).

<comment><USER27> Has there ever been any successful privately issued non-backed non-crypto currency?

<comment><USER28> On a local level there have been a good few, particularly local time-based currencies. I can't point to one that ever had national level adoption, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So these ICOs are currently legal? In that case, is it legal to have an ICO for shares in an existing private company?

I am imagining the following scenario:

Someone has some vested shares in a startup. They send proof of their shares to some administrators of this hypothetical service. The shares are then listed on the website. Someone browses the website and decides that they like the company, and they want to invest $10k. They make a request on the site, and then transfer $10k worth of Bitcoins to a specific address. The Bitcoins are then transferred to the person with the shares.

When the company has an acquisition or an IPO, the person then buys $X worth of bitcoins, and sends them to an address, where they are distributed among the investors.

This would be highly illegal, no? Something that would have to operate on the darknet? So then why are people getting away with ICOs?

P.S. As you might be able to tell from my username, I've been trying to figure out a way to sell some of my shares in a private company. (They're a unicorn in Silicon Valley.) You could call it an options contract. Or you could call it a loan, that would be repaid if/when the company has an exit. I've tried using a secondary market service, but the company blocked the sale.

P.P.S. This is completely unrelated to any of the above, but feel free to send me $20k worth of Bitcoins or Ethereum. I could even send you a link to my LinkedIn profile. But of course, this would just be $20k with no strings attached. But who knows, you might receive some bitcoins in the future.

<comment> wc- It is important to clarify that buying one of these tokens does not result in you owning a 'share' or a percentage of the company that issued them. Some lawyers are using this lack of ownership as a critical part of their argument that tokens are not a security and therefore ICO's are legal.

It's complicated and a very gray area right now. In response to this gray- ness, ICO's are now requiring investors to declare that they are not from the USA and some are geoblocking USA residents.

Obviously this means nothing, if a US citizen wants to buy they still will, but it is an interesting case of Cover Your Ass From the SEC taken by the ICO companies.

<comment><USER30> So it's illegal to do an ICO and offer something of actual potential value, namely shares?

Seems like a serious unintended consequence of regulation.

<comment><USER31> Basically, its illegal to market exotic investment opportunities to unaccredited investors (for good reason IMO). Same reason only accredited investors can invest in things like CDOs and weather derivatives.

<comment><USER30> Could you do an ICO or BTC share sale to only accredited investors with an online form asking for details a statement to that effect?

I recall from angel funding that the criteria is that you must ask, and that you must have "no reasonable reason to doubt" that a person is an accredited investor. The language is nice and vague, as per SEC regulatory standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> With regards to cryptocurrencies, which the standard HN anti-crypto groupthink is bashing in full swing, let me just point out that most bashings I've seen on here are US-consumer-centric and don't consider the needs of countries with oppressive governments that aim to control the wealth and labor of their citizens. In these countries, cyrptocurrencies allow the movement of wealth to your family overseas, allow the store of wealth in the face of 30% inflation (Venezuela, Zimbabwe, etc.), and allow privacy and economic freedom. If your central bank wants to lower interest rates so that yields are even more negative, you can take yourself out of that system in which you have no vote or control. If you oppressive ruler wants to track every transaction and stop funding to political opponents, you can take yourself out of that system and do so if you wish.

Yes, it's not easy and not for everyone, but people in these countries go through enormous risk and effort to accomplish economic freedom.

</comment><comment><USER33> If there's anyone qualified to write about the crypto bubble, it's surely a guy called Popper.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wait until amazon offers its own coin...that is when the mainstream will happen and if these much less know are able to pull this valuation the legitimacy and hype will many x when amazon does it. They have already tested the waters with [https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1001166401](https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1001166401)

<comment><USER35> What do you expect to happen? What advantage could a different coin give them over the one they already have? (Or Amazon gift cards, for that matter.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > made it easier than ever for entrepreneurs to raise large sums of money > without dealing with the hassles of regulators, investor protections or > accountants.

Umm no easier than raising funds for any other venture, in fact probably more difficult and I would think a lot of that money is coming from people who were already made rich by other coin like bitcoin. Easy come, easy go, but enjoy the gravy train while you are riding it.

<comment><USER37> >in fact probably more difficult and I would think a lot of that money is coming from people who were already made rich by other coin like bitcoin.

That's why it is easier. You have a bunch of gamblers who have gotten lucky on one bet thinking they are now master investors. They have seen a few ICOs pop so they are willing to take a punt on any that come through pretty much even if it makes no sense.

<comment><USER38> I claim it can be +EV even when it's a punt. Suppose you make 3x on your first bet, as I did - and it's a long story why i settled for such a poor return ;) - you can then "invest" 2/3 of your winnings, and even if it all goes to nothing then you've still broken even.

But in the current climate a 0% return seems, at least for now, unlikely....

(In the interests of even-handedness: Preston J Byrne, quoted in the article, is worth listening to, especially if you are by nature inclined to be a true believer when it comes to this kind of thing. Relevant thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14573875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14573875))

<comment><USER37> Winning your first bet doesn't make the others +EV even if you cash out your initial investment. That's not how EV works.

<comment><USER38> Yes, you're right, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> these things are strike me as greater-fool schemes. everyone hops on thinking they are probably ahead of the curve, and most of them are suckers. what a funny game- the skill is knowing how many other people will go for it.

<comment><USER40> I think there are at least some people (e.g., money launderers) who will use a cryptocurrency even in the face of losing money, therefore it's not entirely a pyramid scheme.

<comment><USER41> Wow. So people should treat it not as a pyramid scheme, but as a legitimate asset, because it can be used for money laundering! That is truly hilarious!

<comment><USER40> Well, if money laundering it legitimate to you...

<comment><USER42> Money laundering, in my opinion, is not only legitimate, but _neccessary_ , given that e.g. European banking transactions end up via SWIFT or implants at the NSA headwuarters.

In addition many governments try to move citizens to "electronic payment" (ranging from online banking to NFC credit cards). The reason is once again tracking, and as could be seen during the financial crisis it's easy to just confiscate money when it's just numbers in a mainframe vs actual piles of cash in my home safe.

<comment><USER43> Blockchain currency definitely isn't the solution if the problem is tracking or avoiding confiscation. 1) the blockchain is a permanent immutable log. Once you do tie and identity to an address _every transaction ever is immediately available_. 2) the key that is the currency resides as just numbers in a computer. Maybe you have yours on a hardware wallet in a fireproof safe. Most don't. Especially those launderers who are shuffling coin around.

<comment><USER44> There are other cryptocurrencies that (try to) solve problem 1), e.g. Monero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Anyone have a resource on the technical aspect of this? Seems like these businesses create their own cryptocurrency? Or build it on top of Ether?

<comment><USER46> You can easily do it in an hour or two by copying and pasting some code off the ethereum site.

They encourage it. I like to think of ethereum as a ponzi scheme which spawns ponzi schemes (some of which themselves are intending to be a new platform for generating currencies...)

[https://www.ethereum.org/token](https://www.ethereum.org/token)

<comment><USER47> Not every questionable, bad or even fraudulent financial construct is a Ponzi scheme. Unless a coin has a clear promise of payout that the people organizing it would have to satisfy, it can't be a Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER21> I suspect they're not using Ponzi scheme literally, more as a shorthand for the kind of scheme that promises plenty, but doesn't actually do anything.

See e.g: [http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/25/books/nothing-but-zzzz- bes...](http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/25/books/nothing-but-zzzz-best.html)

<comment><USER44> Luckily we already have a word for that kind of scheme, "scam".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Someone should start WebVanCoin.

<comment><USER48> It's funny you should mention Webvan. In 1999 grocery delivery was a hot market, then in 2002 it was completely and obviously stupid, now in 2017 it's hot again. Cryptocurrency is a bubble now, but will the world change such that it actually makes sense in 20 years?

<comment> MachinShinn- Its still obviously stupid. The difference this time is there is a new niche that places like Whole Foods serve. They're not in the 'food' business so much as the 'whole food / wellness' business.

These people will pay a premium that warrants delivery.

<comment><USER37> I've been having groceries delivered from the internet pretty much continuously for the past 15 years or so across 3 countries and a half dozen services. What is stupid about grocery delivery?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's been a running joke for a while that the easiest way to be a blockchain consultant is to charge $50k to say "you don't need blockchain for that". Not it seems the 2017 version is to charge 1M to say "you don't need a special token for that".

ICOs are not the micro-investing many would like to see and the use of a special tokens distinct from ETH is rather contrived.

That said, if people are willing to throw money at it, so be it. But the amounts are quite frankly insane.

</comment><comment><USER50> Can someone in the know shed some light on why does every project need its own currency?! Why isn't a standard coin like BTC or eth good enough?

<comment><USER51> Why does every company need its own stock certificates?

It's a token representing ownership.

<comment><USER37> ICOs almost universally don't represent ownership.

<comment><USER14> but what about smart contracts !? (/s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Does anyone think these cryptocoins will hold value during, in, and through the next recession?

<comment><USER53> If you go to [https://coinmarketcap.com/](https://coinmarketcap.com/) you will see they have info on over 600 individual crypto currencies. 99% of them are going to be worthless long term. Best case scenario a handful of them survive. I'd be extremely skeptical of any coin that distributes coins via an ICO or "pre-sale" instead of via competitive mining like Bitcoin.

<comment><USER54> Mining is a waste of energy. An ICO makes sense if they 1) have a product that benefits from a blockchain, 2) have a great team and a demo of their product.

<comment><USER55> Mining doesn't waste energy, it's the cost the network pays for security, and it usefully indexes the value of the token rewarded to miners for securing the network to their cost of electricity, grounding the token value in some hard- to-manipulate real-world value.

<comment><USER54> It wastes energy compared to POS (Proof of Stake).

<comment><USER53> Is there a working implementation of POS yet?

<comment><USER54> It will likely happen this year with Tezos. Ethereum will eventually use POS as well.

<comment><USER53> So, no.

<comment><USER54> Depends if you count the test nets I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> OK, when NYT writes about something, the hype is officially over. Selling time!

</comment><comment><USER57> We'll look at this a couple of years from now and will laugh at the yet another example how greed makes people ignore history!

</comment><comment><USER58> Would it make sense for companies like Amazon or Alibaba to print their own currencies when they are in the business of selling everything under the sun?

Would they be saving on transaction costs?

I believe most of the money that is ending up in Bitcoin exchanges is laundered in the first place. Also, there is a whole lot more that is getting laundered everyday than Bitcoin being mined. That would mean Bitcoin will keep going up in value. Gold should correspondingly fall.

<comment><USER53> "I believe most of the money that is ending up in Bitcoin exchanges is laundered in the first place."

Do you have any evidence for that because I'd say that is almost certainly blatantly false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Except that soon, the proliferation of cryptocurrencies will reduce the value of such ICOs.

<comment><USER21> Agreed; I'm yet to see any serious discussion of how fragmentation to various coins isn't going to cause headaches.

It's like if we were to print different banknotes for different services; suddenly we have blue Advertising Dollars, red Server Time dollars, yellow Financial Transaction dollars, and none can be used for anything else.

To me this looks like an arbitrary level of complication, the only true winner from which is whoever runs the exchanges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> How can one profit off of this?

<comment><USER61> 1) Get a bunch of Eth. 2) Invest in the right ICO. Not the wrong one, where the value drops to zero.

<comment><USER60> I've bought some Ethereum. Why should I buy more though? Do you have a theory of future value for it?

<comment><USER24> Sell it when it goes up, but make sure you decide to sell before everyone else decides to sell.

<comment><USER60> Hahah nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm sorry but this is so absurd. They are doing the equivalent of printing their own monopoly money in the garage and then selling it for real currency... dollars.

<comment><USER63> Blockchain is perhaps the most economically important invention of the last 500 years. Right now the whole space is worth less than $100B, and it's going to be worth tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars.

Obviously valuations have far outpaced the present usefulness of these technologies, but because the pie is so enormous it would be irrational not to overpay. Right now prices are too out-of-whack with reality so it's inevitable that there will be a correction, but it's entirely understandable why this is happening.

It's sad though that most people on HN have now apparently become the older generation representing the entrenched interests, rather than being the disruptors.

<comment><USER64> > Blockchain is perhaps the most economically important invention of the last > 500 years

Holy cow are you serious? The most economically important in the last 500 years?

So the steamship, the airplane, the automobile, the railroad, the telephone, the printing press, nuclear power, vaccinations, electricity, radio, radar, the semiconductor, television, the cell phone, penicillin, the Gregorian calendar, pasteurization, the refrigerator, the microscope, the telescope, electric lighting, the transistor, the Internet, the microprocessor, and pretty much everything that makes modern life possible is somehow less important than the block chain?

Even is you limit this to just banking, you have widespread checking, credit cards, credit reporting, interbank transfers, wire transfers, mortgage lending, and more. And the blockchain is more important than all of those?

I get it. *coins are cool, but it has a LONG way to go to even be in the in the same league as the greatest inventions of the last 500 years. Let's reasses this in 50 years or so and see where we are before declaring blockchains more important than penicillin. :)

<comment><USER65> > In early 2017, the Harvard Business Review suggested that blockchain is a > foundational technology and thus "has the potential to create new > foundations for our economic and social systems." It further observed that > while foundational innovations can have enormous impact, "It will take > decades for blockchain to seep into our economic and social infrastructure."

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

<comment><USER64> Let me see if I can explain this better.

500 years ago was 1517. This is just a bit into the Age of Discovery. We hadn't even managed to sail all the way around the world yet (that wouldn't come until 1522). The Enlightenment was still a couple centuries away. Feudalism was still a thing, plagues still routinely struck. Absolute monarchs reigned over lands. Most people still lived on subsistence agriculture and would starve is there was a bad harvest. People routinely died of things that we don't even think about because of modern medicine.

Now, compare that to the world we live in now, where satellites and cables beam information around the world in milliseconds and childhood deaths from diseases are much rarer now. I could be in China in less than a day if I wanted to. And I'm not likely to starve this winter and I never had smallpox as a child.

Blockchains MAY someday be important. But it is the height of tech arrogance, not to mention a gross lack of awareness of history, to put a yet largely unproven technology that most of the human population has not even heard of on the same level as vaccinations. A LOT has happened in 500 years, and it is WAY too early to be making those kinds of pronouncements.

(As a side note, two of the most underrated inventions of, let's say the last 100 years or so: the pallet and the ISO container. Both of these are so crucial to the modern economy that they blend into the background.)

<comment><USER63> > it is the height of tech arrogance, not to mention a gross lack of awareness > of history, to put a yet largely unproven technology that most of the human > population has not even heard of on the same level as vaccinations

I said 'economically important'. The couple years they add to our life expectancy is great, but vaccines weren't really associated with an enormous transfer of wealth on the same level as, say, the railroads or the age of sail. (And wouldn't have even if Salk had patented the polio vaccine.)

<comment><USER66> > Weren't really associated with an enormous transfer of wealth on the same > level as, say, the railroads or the age of sail.

How do you predict wealth will transfer differently under blockchains than with usual state backed currencies. Not the literal (you don't need a bank), but societal?

If block chains were to completely replace US currency, but society used them exactly the same, then they wouldn't be a transformative tech. They'd need to change society economically to do that. How do you see it doing that?

<comment><USER63> I'll blog about this in the next few months, I'm going to wait until the hype dies down first though because I don't want to encourage other folks to make bad life decisions, and also so I can buy what I want to hold until the next cycle.

What I would say though is that blockchain has nothing to do with currency, that's just a red herring out there to trick people into not seeing its transformative potential. It's about reaching consensus and being able to make decisions at a society-wide level. I blogged about the implications of this is a little in 2006, before any of this was even invented: [http://www.alexkrupp.com/fourwebs.html](http://www.alexkrupp.com/fourwebs.html)

<comment><USER3> > It's about reaching consensus and being able to make decisions at a society- > wide level.

If this was really true, I could see how important that would be. Having better ways to govern ourselves, and putting 35% of GDP to better use than it currently is being used, would have tremendous impact. But, the Government and the majority will never in a million years allow this to happen and thus none of this "consensus" will ever matter (because it occurs outside the scope of our operating government). The real key to achieving what your alluding too is a massive political innovation which I don't see how bitcoin can bring about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> surrey-fringe You all get so angry when someone mentions a blockchain. It's strange.

</comment><comment><USER67> These guys took the money and ran. Absolute radio silence since the ico. Not to mention nobody is going to run an exit node since being paid to do so would mean you would be on the hook for illegal traffic, unlike TOR. It's a nice idea but completely impractical, even with a dev team that didn't disappear after raising money.</comment>


Glyphosate residue in manure decreases strawberry and meadow fescue growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200918104255.htm <comment><USER2> Killer Compost</comment>


Picnik CEO on Getting Bought by Google (and How Google Works) - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2010/03/01/picnik-ceo-on-getting-bought-by-google-and-how-it-will-affect-startups-and-consumers/

<comment><USER2> There's nothing in the article about "How Google Works". Nothing insightful either. "We are going to be a great fit", "we are excited to work together", etc etc

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this especially:

X: How long are the golden handcuffs on you? (Sposato has told us before about his desire not to work for The Man.)

JS: I wouldn't put it that way. I, and everyone on the team, are very interested in giving Google a really, really great deal. The kinds of exciting things that Picnik and Google both bring to the table are going to be pretty darn amazing. I can't think of a better synergy here....</comment></comment>


Tesla's Futuristic Door Handles Blamed for Death in Fiery Wreck - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-futuristic-door-handles-blamed-003450557.html <comment><USER2> This is not ideal (model 3 handles seem like they can be manually operated from outside). But also not a big deal - if a normal handled car was locked, it also doesn't open from the outside. And a policeman doesn't have a way to break a window? Or often cars in wrecks have their doors jam shut from the impact too, that's why firemen carry jaws-of-life tools too.

<comment><USER3> I agree, something here doesn't make sense. I can think of multiple objects a typical patrol officer would have that could break the windshield.

I do think there should be built in fire suppression on high capacity lithium ion battery packs though; jet airliners have had the same technology for quite some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tesla's stock price is up $45.00 today. They always release fake news intended to keep the price of bitcoin and tesla contained after they trend upwards.</comment>


How  to make sure your startup goes belly-up - <AUTHOR> http://fullstart.com/knowledge/6-5-ways-make-sure-startup-goes-belly/

<comment><USER2> Points 1 and 2 seem entirely self promotional.

Since when is _not_ outsourcing your development a recipe for disaster? Conventional Silicon Vally business wisdom leans in the exact opposite direction: keeping core business functions in-house.

</comment><comment><USER3> _> Forgo legal experts and feel free to infringe upon other company's copyrights. Dare them to come after a low-flying start-up!_

That strategy actually worked out pretty well for YouTube...

<comment><USER4> YouTube was an outlier. They were acquired because of their unique position at the time.</comment></comment>


Apple Pay Tries to Solve a Problem That Really Isn't a Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/upshot/apple-pay-tries-to-solve-a-problem-that-really-isnt-a-problem.html

<comment><USER2> I would actually prefer no physical wallet if it were possible. The idea that your driver license, credit cards, debit (figuring out how to make this work with ATMs too, and any other physical card all digital and works is in fact the holy grail.

If like Passbook, I could store my cards and select which one digitally and easily transact everywhere the way Stabucks does it or how the Apple Pay demo during the keynote does it, that would be amazing. I would prefer just having to carry my phone and nothing else (replace my keys while we're at it).

The problem is no matter how awesome this is, it won't happen unless this universal system is in place everywhere. Currently not every store or merchant accepts such a way to pay or identify yourself (in the case of IDs or even other type of cards). And much like how there are still places that are cash only, the adoption for this is likely going to take a long time, if ever, to truly remove the feeling that I can finally not carry a wallet at all.

It is a problem (in the first world sense)in my opinion contrary to the article, just one that lacks a universal solution due to it not being widely adopted yet.</comment>


Productive Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/productive-programming.html <comment><USER2> _"When approaching debugging, I first find out where the problem is, i.e. the exact line of code or config file or whatever that is causing the problem. That_ should not take long _, and before you ask anyone else about it you should know exactly where the problem lies."_

For crashes: Get backtraces! Knowing the line and the state of the callstack makes many common errors trivial to fix. Some languages (Java, Python) are helpful and generate them automatically. Others (C, C++) require a debugger. I've seen lots of programmers ignore gdb or Visual Studio and spend minutes with printf() looking for the exact line of a crash. Code crashes all the time. Dealing with it methodically and effectively will add minutes - or even hours - to your day.

<comment><USER3> The article was decent, but the debugging section offers no insight at all. Shotgun debugging is a strawman, only the incompetent rely on that. Of _course_ you should identify the exact line causing the problem, and of _course_ it should be fast on average, but sometimes it is exceedingly difficult. Bugs come in three flavors:

Trivial bugs where available evidence points directly to a cause. The scope of these increases with experience, but most bugs that come up in day to day coding are of this variety.

Deep bugs are reproducible, but require bisecting the problem to figure out the cause. Performing optimal bisections requires skill, experience, and raw brain capacity. This is where a good, but let's say, not virtuoso developer can distinguish himself from his less-than-average colleagues in a major way.

Heisenbugs are the most difficult because you can't reproduce them, either because it's a concurrency problem or some limitation of the environment the bug occurs in. To solve these bugs, a functional language and pure mathematics may be the best way to get reasonable assurances that a bug is gone, but also radical creativity in code instrumentation or expensive test scenarios with dedicated hardware may be necessary.

So, yes, being a productive programmer requires a level of skill where most bugs are trivial. But nevertheless, the second two flavors exist no matter how smart you are, and being productive over the long term means being able to tackle those systematically, even if it takes days or weeks to solve, and if all else fails, figuring out a workaround.

<comment><USER4> Debugging offers a most excellent opportunity to practice science - Observe, Hypothesize, Test, Repeat. And just like regular science, bugs span the entire range of trivial to the head-explodingly-elusive.

Observation is in particular quite a hard practice. On several occasions I've realized that the evidence was staring at me in the face from day one, but my eyes were too clouded to see it. Sometimes, it helps if you know the system inside-out, but at other times that itself happens to be a blinding disadvantage.

<comment><USER5> > Observe, Hypothesize, Test, Repeat.

Forget all that stuff. Just improve your code until it will tell you problem and it exact cause, you will save a lot on "Repeat" step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Productivity is a topic too complicated to put into a few sentences but there is one tip I'd like to contribute: paper and pen are underrated.

There were awful lot of tasks I tried to achieve via pure coding and rewriting / rewiring blocks here and there. All they actually needed was some analysis on paper.

<comment><USER7> For me a white board is a lot better. No idea why. But something about standing up in my office at the white board gets the juices flowing more than a pen and paper.

<comment><USER6> I think there's some explanation in biomechanics and different courses of blood flow, but even more than that, whiteboard allows you to share your findings and troubles with the colleagues which is probably why you needed whiteboard in the first place :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the most productive programming techniques that I have used (it's saved my ass) is to make sure that most of my code is unit tested. In the short-term you will feel like you're moving much slower. In the long term, it'll pay dividends.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, BDD/TDD will also stop the necessity for "running the code all the time" like Gabriel espouses... what is better is to test the code all the time. Hit those green marks. Manual run-throughs of code paths is boring, to say the least.

This I guess is less applicable to the web dev/machine learning domains that Gabriel operates in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "I also found sleeping on it often magically produces a solution in the morning."

I think this is a great reason to take a nap in the middle of the day if your environment is conducive to it. It works for me as long as the code is the top thing on my mind when I fall asleep.

<comment><USER11> This has happened to me on the past two consecutive days (and nights). A problem that I couldn't figure out at 11pm, one that I spent at least 30 minutes pouring through Google Groups, searching through APIs, trial and error, etc...After sleeping on it the solution revealed itself to me in the morning in less than five minutes. Truly phenomenal and hugely rewarding.

<comment><USER12> My scariest one was dreaming a solution. I woke up about 3am absolutely clear what I'd done wrong, scribbled a note and went back to sleep.

Next morning I looked at the note and it was exactly right.

<comment><USER13> I've done this and actually find it a bit disturbing.

It's great when I can't solve a problem in the evening, get a good nights sleep, and then I am able to quickly solve the problem in the morning. Sometimes though I actually have dreams about sitting at my desk writing the code that I couldn't come up with during the day. On the one hand it's great to wake up in the morning with the solution to my coding problem. But on the other hand, I'm not sure it's healthy to have my dreams filled with the same thing that I do all day while awake. Whenever that happens I definitely make some extra time for my hobbies that don't involve computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wouldn't say this is an article on productivity so much as an approach to learning. I find a lot of auto-didact programmers learned this way. The compiler is a great TA after-all.

If there was one thing I could add it would be _take notes_. If you can explain to someone else the "whys" and "hows" of your solution to a problem, you've got it down pat. Sometimes we get something to work by googling a quick solution, but we forget to try and understand that solution. This doesn't serve us well. Taking notes helps me to submlimate what I learn on the job into hard-referenceable tomes of knowledge.

<comment><USER15> In addition, start a blog for the pieces you can make public. Blogs have so many other benefits that you should be doing one anyway (especially if you are also involved in startups).

That said, writing about programming on your public blog is scary because you (usually) know that whatever topic you write on there are people who know more about that topic. You just have to get over that and learn to embrace the benefits of the conversations that ensue. Or write to a private audience.

<comment><USER16> If you just one day decide to start a blog. Chances are it will be mostly private audience for quite a while. Of course that is dis-regarding the spammers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article mentioned the dangers of clever code and asked for a particular quote he couldn't remember. I couldn't help but be reminded of this one:

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -Brian Kernighan

</comment><comment><USER18> It well depends of the problem domain, sometimes productive programming is about best algorithms, for example if you develop a software playing chess you can't left it for later improvements.

I can add some of my experience (since I was 8 years old?), it works in my personal framework:

\- Hybrid languages/technologies: for some solutions I need to use jython to develop in python + java libraries that you don't found in other languages (i.e: htmlunit).

\- I have always an interactive console opened to test stuff while using an editor.Sometimes the language doesn't have a good interactive interpreter, my preference is using python (if using .net, then ironpython, if using java, the jython, etc).

\- Since I do a lot of research for customers, research and proof of concept are first in the list to reduce the real risk in the project.

\- When I need optimizacion/speed C/C++ is the language, but try to glue with python, ruby, COM, etc (SWIG is your friend).

\- Sometimes debugging is the best option, sometimes focusing in the code and try to find the bugs in my head.

\- Then I agree with Gabriel.

</comment><comment><USER19> A bad habit I can get into is thinking about a feature in terms of all it's parts and getting mentally stuck on starting trying to put the whole thing together from the start. When as the advice in the article gives it is much better to focus on getting the critical path of a feature working. The mental block of thinking about the whole can easily lead to procrastination for me, something I am trying to avoid.

</comment><comment><USER20> I appreciate the call to find the exact line of code that is causing the problem. I've done a fair number of code reviews where there was a bug, and it was "fixed", but no one knew _why_. The developer had simply kept changing things until the problem seemed to go away. That would mark the bug as closed, but it always seemed to show up again some months later in a new guise. These days I'm a terrible nuisance as I always want to know why the bug was happening. In my experience it's not enough to "fix" the bug you really do need to understand why it was happening in the first place, which is something that not all programmers do.

</comment><comment><USER21> > I initially try to accomplish X in the simplest way possible by breaking it > down into trivial steps. I know there is a famous programming quote that > pertains to this process, but I can't find it right now

Maybe this is it?

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity. -- The Tao of Programming

<comment><USER15> No, this comment on the blog is the closest so far to what I was talking about:

rjbond3rd: "I'm mangling the quote but what I've heard is: 'Tackle a difficult problem by redefining it as a series of solved problems.'"

<comment><USER22> _One of the most useful mental habits I know I learned from Michael Rabin: that the best way to solve a problem is often to redefine it._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The quote for #2

 _What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?_ [http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.htm...](http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I can't think of a specific quote about breaking down programs into small steps, but you could be thinking of something from <http://paulgraham.com/progbot.html>

<comment><USER25> I don't know if this counts as a quote, but the term of art is "divide and conquer"

<comment><USER15> No, neither of those are it. I saw it on HN within the last two weeks, but I couldn't find it in a reasonable amount of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> BIG disclaimer: I have NO formal training.

1\. Tools. I generally shy away from tools. I just don't like using _anything_ that makes me more productive when I'm programming. I prefer to type out every line of code, occasionally cutting and pasting from the same program or something similar from the past, but not very often. I _want_ the writing of code to be painstakingly slow and deliberate. Why? Because productivity is not the objective. Becoming "one" with my project is. I may not start as fast as others, but that doesn't matter. It's not how fast you start, it's how soon you deliver a quality product. Like memorizing a speech, cranking out the code by hand makes it "firmware" in my brain. It's not unusual for me to crank out 300 lines of code and then be able to reenter them on another machine from memory. So when it comes time to debug, refactor, enhance, or rework, those cycles go _very_ quickly; that code is already in my brain's RAM and it got there the hard way.

2\. Simple Algorithms. Yes! I love this example:

      * EnterOrders 08/31/10 edw519
      *
      return();

I now have a working programming - Woo hoo! You say you want more features? No problem. Let's start enhancing it.

3\. Debugging. I don't. I've seen 25 different debuggers and I hate them all. Print() is my friend, especially beyond the right hand margin. Better yet, write code that doesn't need to be debugged (See #1 & #2 above.) (Of course, this is much harder with _someone else's_ code.)

4\. References. Don't need no stinkin' manual. I have become extremely adept at about 4% of what's available to me, but that 4% accomplishes 98% of what I want to do. (OK, I'll refer to a manual when I need something from the other 96%, but that doesn't happen too often.)

Nice post, Gabriel. Got my juices flowing. We could talk about all kinds of other things too, like variable naming, how to iterate and branch, and never typing the same line of code twice, but this was a nice starting subset.

<comment><USER27> I'm amazed and a bit saddened whenever I hear sentiments like this. These days more than ever.

The thing is, every single bit of code you write depends on something else that you DIDN'T write. Everything. No exceptions.

And the thing about stuff you didn't write is that you end up making assumptions about it - often without even realising. Sometimes the assumption is simply that the code works. Sometimes, some of your assumptions will be wrong.

Debuggers help you check your assumptions. They're a very useful tool for this - more so than many people who say "I prefer printf" realise.

I apologise if you're not in that category, but did you know that many debuggers have a way to print a message (without stopping) whenever the program hits a certain line? Just like printf, only it doesn't have to be built in to your code ahead of time.

There are times when a debugger isn't the right tool for the job, but it's always better to make an informed choice.

<comment><USER28> > I'm amazed and a bit saddened whenever I hear sentiments like this. These > days more than ever.

The big advantage of printf as a debug technique is that it doesn't work unless you understand what you're doing. If you plan to debug using printf, you must write code that is easy to understand.

Great debuggers let you try to fix code that you don't understand. Worse yet, they make it reasonable to write such code.

Since the person reading the code is never as smart as the person who wrote the code, encouraging simple to understand code is extremely important.

<comment><USER29> A big disadvantage of printf() in C (or similar non-memory-managed languages) is that printing values can disturb the "noise" on the stack that you were trying to find. That is, if you had a bug due to an uninitialized local variable or buffer overrun, the printf() call could "stabilize" things and cause a bug to _stop_ manifesting.

Better to use a debugger, _if_ you can. Not that I haven't ever sprinkled print's into the middle of a big mass of somebody else's code or framework just to get the initial lay of the land :-)

<comment><USER30> uh, the -g compiler flag to enable debugging will create much more disturbance than a few printf ever could, debuggers are mostly useless for tracking down race conditions as they change the timing completely. OTOH, I'd use a low overhead logging package instead of printfs.

<comment><USER29> Good one: yes, race conditions are not going to manifest while manually slowly stepping. You of course need to plan / read carefully for code which will be vulnerable to such.

Regarding "-g", at the job a few years ago where we were using C for some in- house jobs, we skipped using "-O" for the most part and simply deployed with "-g" left on. Better safe than sorry for single-use software.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reverse-Engineering iOS Apps: Hacking on Lyft - <AUTHOR> https://realm.io/news/conrad-kramer-reverse-engineering-ios-apps-lyft/ <comment><USER2> Terminal addicts will enjoy the ncurses-based mitmproxy as an alternative to Charles.

<comment><USER3> Or maybe cheapskates, since technically you're supposed to buy Charles after a 30-day trial (which didn't attempt to enforce itself in my experience.) I like Fiddler2 on Windows, and I almost had it working well on Wine/Linux, but had some issues with SSL. I should try mitmproxy for the SSL and Fiddler for the UI, but lately I haven't needed a proxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I keep hearing rumors that Apple and Google are going to require that app developers start pinning SSL certs as a security measure to help prevent the MITM cert setup demonstrated here.

<comment><USER5> For if that happens, or just for general convenience: [https://github.com/iSECPartners/ios-ssl-kill- switch](https://github.com/iSECPartners/ios-ssl-kill-switch)

<comment><USER4> Interesting! So in that case pinning would only help against upstream attacks in actual traffic - but would still allow for reverse engineering?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, as long as you have control of the device.

That hack only works if you have root, which means you have to be jailbroken, and Apple is always trying to stop that. I keep a jailbroken device around specifically for disabling all SSL for debugging and dumping app binaries/assets.

I wish they'd just let me buy the thing rooted like Google does.

<comment><USER6> As long as you have control of the device, you can force it to do what you want by patching the code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is actually a pretty cool talk. We're kind of lulled into thinking our Apps are super secure, he seems to take them apart fairly easy, SSH seems simple to ignore.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great video, worth watching even on mobile IMO.

</comment><comment><USER9> Are there cyript like alternative for Android?

<comment><USER10> Check out Frida (iOS and Android) [http://www.frida.re/](http://www.frida.re/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Video is not working... Video is hosted with 'wistia' and the ID is 52endf5e4h, can someone stitch together a working URL? I'm on mobile

<comment><USER12> [https://embed- ssl.wistia.com/deliveries/6504b8003517d6b2fabd...](https://embed- ssl.wistia.com/deliveries/6504b8003517d6b2fabdee02312ebf33703e0bd9/file.mp4)</comment></comment>


French postal workers helping lonely older people (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/23/care-package-french-postal-workers-helping-lonely-older-people <comment><USER2> _He denied that the French post office was cashing in on friendly gestures that postal workers had been doing for years for free. "Postal workers always spontaneously and informally connected with clients and looked out for them, and that will continue. But what we're doing is adding new services and bringing greater value."_

In my opinion, La Poste (the France's publicly owned postal service) found a terrible way to break the social link with their customers. The actual situation is postal workers in France are complaining to work in terrible conditions because of a new work organization, monetize what make La Poste a more human and quality service won't improve anything.

<comment><USER3> At best, this is a well-intentioned but poorly thought out initiative.

I have lived in rural France on and off for the last 20 years. The post person changes with the weather, and we have to remind them where the house is every few months. They drive ridiculously long routes, covering hundreds of kilometres on rural roads every day, and it isn't uncommon to have them show up at 9pm with their girl or boyfriend in tow, as they're still on their route and it's the only way they get to see each other.

How they think that these already prodigiously overworked people will have the time for social visits is beyond me. How they think any kind of community bond can be built by a worker who's going to burn out and leave in a few months is beyond me.

It's like they've entirely failed to consider their reality before their PR department steamrolled this through.

There's a much better way of building community and getting old people out - night markets. They started as a touristy thing, but now many communes are doing their own small scale ones, and providing a bus service for people without transport. The one in our hamlet has been heaving, and seeing people who I only ever see alone at home sharing a meal with their neighbours is a real pleasure. It also generates an income for the commune, and supports local businesses. Win-win-win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previous discussion : In France, Elder Care Comes with the Mail - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208356)

</comment><comment><USER5> > It's lovely to see the postman as I don't usually see anyone else all week

Forgive my urban-dweller naïveté, but how does it work exactly to not see anyone but the postman once a week?

Doesn't this person need to get food, say, at the grocery store — or does someone deliver that too? Or is she getting a month's worth of canned goods delivered at a time? This is France, forgive the stereotype, but doesn't she want fresh bread or other fresh food? Or is she making that at home, from flour delivered once a month and eggs from her own chickens?

I'd be very curious to learn more about what this lifestyle looks like!

<comment><USER6> > This is France, forgive the stereotype, but doesn't she want fresh bread or > other fresh food

Well, not everyone in France eats fresh bread everyday. The population is not as homogenous as you may think. Many French still buy fresh bread daily but not all of them. Some people stock piles of frozen food for weeks. Other people eat junk food daily...

I imagine that this person who only see the postman is unable to run errands on her own anymore. Most likely, she gets her food from her family or a social worker. For instance, my grandmother who is 90 years old don't leave her house in the winter (as the streets may be icy and dangerous for her, in the summer she still walk and buy what she needs). She sees various persons though, social workers, nurses, doctors, hair dresser, cleaning lady... (most of this paid by the government as she has a very low income, about 1200 euros a month).

<comment><USER5> Thanks, this is helpful. Maybe she's one of those people who stockpiles frozen food because she can't really leave the house on her own.

Frankly, the night markets in the original piece sound much nicer than a weekly 20 min chat with the postman...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My friend is a pharmacist in Toronto Canada and she says that very often, elderly people with no family or support system would come to her and talk at length or ask her to explain what their mail was that they received. Sometimes it would be elderly people who don't speak English (she works close to Chinatown) so she would get one of her pharmacists who speaks Chinese to help out the person. It's a very sad situation to be in.

<comment><USER8> Toronto being the sprawling megalopolis it is, I can see why. Having lived in Vancouver all my life I was pretty shocked the people here in Toronto wouldn't even make eye contact as they passed by on the streets.

I can't imagine being elderly. This is a cold city if you don't have an immediate social group to join in on.

<comment><USER9> Just google the loneliness epidemic, nothing to do with toronto being cold or unfriendly. I can tell you there's plenty of lonely old people in Vancouver.

<comment><USER10> Yeah there's a lot of lonely people everywhere... and not just the elderly. I'm sure they problem gets worse as lonely folks get older.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They said no other postal service in the world was doing this, but isn't Japan? [https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Postal-workers-to- deliver-s...](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Postal-workers-to-deliver- senior-services-under-Japan-tie-up) (Not quite the same I realise)</comment>


Six coders can do anything and there is nothing six coders can't do. - <AUTHOR> http://6coders.com/ <comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1240887>

And it's not even directing to the article which is here: [http://6coders.com/whats-in-a-name-six-coders-can-do- anythin...](http://6coders.com/whats-in-a-name-six-coders-can-do-anything-an)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, my bad. I clicked on it from Google reader and submitted via bookmarklet and wasn't paying close enough attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?

</comment><comment><USER4> If they can do anything, and they are working for money, why are they making finite salaries? If they can do anything, you would imagine "making more money than a product salesman" would be on top of the to do list.</comment>


Git… enough - <AUTHOR> http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/enough-git/ <comment><USER2> You can't delete a branch in hg

</comment><comment><USER3> Please put 2011 in the title.</comment>


The Apple iPhone 6 Plus 'BendGate' Is Already Out of Control - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2014/09/24/apple-iphone-6-plus-bendgate/?utm_campaign=Feed

<comment><USER2> The big issue that Apple faces is that when they market their product as perfection... even the slightest issue becomes a potentially big catastrophe. They are a victim of their own success in convincing people to have unrealistic expectations.

This is even before you consider engineering issues like making the unibody too thin to withstand normal stresses that smartphones face every day.</comment>