'Dear NIMBYs' – An Open Letter from a Homeless Woman in LA - <AUTHOR> https://laist.com/2018/12/20/dear_nimbys_open_letter_from_an_la_woman_experiencing_homelessness.php <comment><USER2> It appears to me that once a society becomes large enough a majority of the problems left to solve are collection action problems, I think the housing crisis in West Coast cities in particular is an example of a collection action problem.

I keep up with the NIMBY/YIMBY divide both in my home: Portland, OR and in the Bay Area. And I've noticed a few trends: You can't build high in certain areas because it blocks the view for wealth homeowners, you can't build moderate density buildings because it "changes the character of the neighborhood", you can't extend rail into certain areas because rail bring minori-- eh, crime. And you can't build near existing rail because it should be up to each individual community to decide what gets built in their location.

Where are you supposed to build? Something has to give, and it looks like as always its poor folk who are suffering. Being pushed out further and further with a lack of adequate transportation support to get to urban job centers.

<comment><USER3> > _Where are you supposed to build?_

Austin. That's why the US has a federal structure, so that if one polity degenerates into a self-interested but somehow still self-destructive gridlock situation, everyone can just leave.

<comment><USER4> Poor people can't just leave. They lack the resources to get started in a new community.

<comment><USER5> This is why the Dust Bowl westward migration... didn't happen?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree with this but am always skeptical of the YIMBY side of things. At least as I understand it, YIMBYism is advocating for deregulated real estate development markets? So maybe my understanding of it is skewed, but I can't really see real estate developers making cheap housing a priority in an expensive neighborhood when they could profit from building more expensive housing. Especially now that housing can be bought as an investment and held but not used. I just think "market based solutions" aren't going to fix homelessness. Good ole fashioned public housing might though, real public housing, not projects owned by private corporations and subsidized by tax dollars.

This letter isn't really talking about YIMBYism so I'm probably just assuming any anti-NIMBY writing is pro-YIMBY which is probably inaccurate. I do see a lot of YIMBYism on HN so perhaps someone can set me straight on it.

<comment><USER7> You might want to look into how things have played out in Seattle, where there was a recent housing construction boom. The tl;dr is that prices have come down significantly.

<comment><USER8> _the actual amount renters paid dropped 1.4 percent in the past quarter, or $24 a month._

They have come down, but I wouldn't call 1-2% 'significantly' [1].

[1] [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid- build...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-building- boom-1-in-10-seattle-apartments-are-empty-and-rents-are-dropping/)

<comment><USER9> They also never went as high as San Francisco where construction was more restricted. How the amount of residential construction compares to the amount of office construction also matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think there is no real solution that people will like. In order for the price of a condo to fall to match the price of a condo in a rural area, there would need to be a huge amount of construction (I think more than most people realize) to increase supply sufficiently to satisfy demand. Doing this would drastically change the lifestyles of the people living there.

I am just speculating, but think of a city New York now, it is already known to have horrible traffic and overcrowded transit. It is also known to have some of the most expensive real estate in the world. In order to become "affordable" you could build tons of high density housing however how much would it cost to take a taxi or eat at a restaurant if you did this? I'm sure many well of people would leave because their quality of life would decrease due to these changes. So you would basically be trying to find a new equilibrium of real estate prices.

<comment><USER11> I learn the opposite from NYC: if the city is successful enough to draw a lot of real estate development, the result will be _even higher_ prices.

This more closely matches the actual trajectory of cities like NYC, Tokyo, London, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why does it have to be LA though? Is there any place in the US where her skills could translate to being able to pay for a housing/shelter?

I know real third world poverty and people that barely earn US hourly minimum wage in a day, and yet in the US, the richest country in the world, it's OK to live off of others and demand "rights"

</comment><comment><USER13> I think there needs to be more van life friendly facilities. I am perfectly happy to live in a van and go to work every day as a software developer. And I think there's a lot of people who also feel the same way. If there is a place that would let you park your van for four hundred bucks a month or something like that where you were safe and allowed to park. I think that would be a huge moneymaker.

<comment><AUTHOR> i think you presented an earnest and unconventional perspective and am dismayed at the lack of engagement here (even if i myself wouldn't want to live in a van).

<comment><USER13> Why thank you for the positive assessment! Yep agree van life isn't for everyone. But as inequality grows it will be a tolerable decision for many I think in the future.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best Linux Laptop for 2018? - <AUTHOR> What is the best laptop for Linux in 2018? <comment><USER2> I got the HP ProBook 450 G5 Notebook-PC on Ubuntu, it's decent, sd card reader and fingerprint reader not working for now (but i dont use it much). The graphics are trash for any form of gaming/video work, but it's not getting hot like my previous hp with an nvidia GPU. One really neat trick is that you can do a 3 screens setup very easily by connecting one screen on VGA and the other on HDMI, without any dongle.</comment>


Sct – set color temperature - <AUTHOR> http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/sct-set-color-temperature <comment><USER2> Note that the dependencies aren't because of setting the colour temperature, but to get your location information (see geoclue in the list). geoclue has several providers, but a common one for desktop machines is to connect to a network service that does geoip. Consequently most of the dependencies arrive due to that (eg proxies, crypto, glue code for object models to do all that, and some innocent bystanders).

The location information is used so that redshift can alter the colour temperature during the day (less needed) and dusk, evening and night (very needed).

<comment><USER3> Wait, what? Why does it need to know location? If you want to know what time it is, why not just call localtime()?

<comment><USER2> Because it uses sunset times to change your colour temperature around dusk. Localtime is not sufficient to work out dusk with any degree of accuracy.

Those of us using Redshift are not doing so for a one off colour temperature set, but because it is continually updated through the day and night.

You can tell it your location manually or have it done automatically.

Redshift is open source. It does not have binary blobs, patents, a business model and similar crud that f.lux does. Adjust your paranoia/expectations as needed.

<comment> semi-extrinsic This location-based setting sounds clever, but it's a crappy idea if you live further north than ~60°N. Or do you want your screen to go red at 3pm and stay that way until 10am the next day when it's winter? And then in summer it's red from 2am to 4am?

I use CF.lumen on Android and Redshift on Linux and I have to regularly shift the fake locations I give them in order to have them do what I want. At least with Redshift on Linux I can script it...

<comment><USER4> Self-plug for something I wrote some time ago - you can use redshift-scheduler ( [https://github.com/spantaleev/redshift- scheduler/](https://github.com/spantaleev/redshift-scheduler/) ) to set up a custom schedule (ultimately using redshift to set the screen temperature).

<comment> semi-extrinsic Ah, with an Arch package and everything! Will install, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can do it with a couple of lines of shell script too, using the xcalib utility:

[https://gist.github.com/hrj/e9ed0d73d2daaa98b2d2](https://gist.github.com/hrj/e9ed0d73d2daaa98b2d2)

Been using that for more than an year with great results.

I also have another version of it: [https://gist.github.com/hrj/6561271](https://gist.github.com/hrj/6561271)

(this version cuts the green and blue equally)

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool! Or, warm depending on parameter.

On Ubuntu includes are apparently broken, complaining about strings.h included from Xlibint.h ...

There's probably a yak to shave in that. However, if you're lazy and hit the same problem, you can compile a functional sct by lifting declarations of i and c outside their loops and dropping "-std=c99" from the command line.

<comment><USER7> I was able to compile it on Ubuntu after moving the X11 includes to the bottom of the list:

      #include <stdio.h>
      #include <strings.h>
      #include <string.h>
      #include <stdlib.h>
      #include <stdint.h>
      #include <inttypes.h>
      #include <stdarg.h>
      #include <math.h>
      #include <X11/Xlib.h>
      #include <X11/Xlibint.h>
      #include <X11/Xproto.h>
      #include <X11/Xatom.h>
      #include <X11/extensions/Xrandr.h>
      #include <X11/extensions/Xrender.h>

<comment><USER8> I also had to do some fiddling with the includes (removing the `strings.h` include got it working for me. Why is this required?

<comment><USER9> Historically, including some headers ended up including some other headers automatically, such that the author might not realize what headers the file depends on, because it compiles without them explicitly included. glibc (and maybe gcc and xlib?) have been cleaning this up where possible, slowly over time. So a file that had "correct enough" includes for an older glibc might now be caught not including a header it needed all along.

Or maybe it's a similar situation but actually related to "feature test macros" (see [https://lwn.net/Articles/590381/](https://lwn.net/Articles/590381/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been thinking of using xcalib to invert my display colors to reclaim a sane black background.

My terminal/editor have always been dark background, but eventually I had enough of the web's blinding conventions [0], and installed a browser extension. But it doesn't work as well as it should and I'm thinking a blanket inversion would be preferable.

It seems like xcalib (and associated machinery) only supports a simple RGB LUT though, which means green turns to purple etc. It's unfortunate that it doesn't have the universal approach of LUT->matrix->LUT like a calibratable monitor, so the invert could be done in say HSV space.

[0] White paper makes sense because it's a _reflective_ medium that relies on ambient light. A glaring white background is the wrong choice for an emissive display. Notice how visual art applications (photoshop, maya, etc) default to a grey background and dark color scheme.

</comment><comment><USER11> The redshift binary can be built without any of the GUI stuff at all, so some of the bloat complaint is a bit over-blown - more a fault of the port provider to not offer the option of a stripped down install perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER12> Thank you for your work! It amazes me sometimes how simple such powerful tools can become.

> You start by getting information for each Canadian Radio-television and > Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)

wait, hold on a minute

<comment><USER13> Not sure if Ted is Canadian, but it's a joke.

Mention the letters to CRTC to any Canadian and that's what they think about.

The letters CRTC are in some of the function calls.

<comment><USER14> It's for CRT Controller (probably after the Motorola 6845 CRTC chip that was in the original PC)

<comment><USER15> Well, maybe the documentation for the function could have mentioned that. Oh no, there was none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for this.

Over the years I've decided the gradual adjustment lat/long bits are really a negative feature. It engineer cool but it's counterproductive to the goal.

I want the monitor dim between 7pm and 630am regardless of time of year so I cronned that into redshift.

Your body clock probably wants the full blue light in the am fwiw.

I'll give sct a try to see if its more pleasing to the eye.

</comment><comment><USER17> Another potential use case: improved accessibility to mitigate color deficiency.

"Help us Test the Adjustments for Color Deficiency"

[http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/09/intellij- idea-15-eap-...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/09/intellij-idea-15-eap- help-us-test-the-adjustments-for-color-deficiency/)

I was delighted to see this feature. One of those facepalm moments that quickly transitions from "neat!" to "why didn't I think of that?"

Having an OS level system wide setting might be useful.

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

</comment><comment><USER18> I wrote a small Python utility recently that provides a minimal interface for brightness and temperature: [https://github.com/nicholasbishop/xrandr- slightly-fewer-tear...](https://github.com/nicholasbishop/xrandr-slightly- fewer-tears)

It doesn't do anything fancy with geolocation, I tend to just tweak the sliders every now and then depending on what my eyes tell me :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Does it support changing temperature gradually when it's starting to get dark outside? This is one of biggest features of f-lux and redshift I believe.

<comment><USER20> If you have redshift installed but want to use this instead of xrandr to change color temperature you could run the following as a script:

        redshift -m dummy | while read line;do sct "${line/Temperature: /}";done

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a nice little idea; I'm cleaning it up for my own use under Linux, and I'd like to release it, but I cannot seem to find a license declaration for Ted's code.

Anyone happen to know what license it was released under?

<comment><USER22> I asked Ted, if I was able to upload my version to Github and he allowed me to do whatever I wanted to do with it.

Here it is: [https://github.com/faf0/sct](https://github.com/faf0/sct)

Compiles on Ubuntu 14.04.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cool, but is there any way we can do this without sacrificing colour precision? Also, the author didn't say if the values in the array are in linear or sRGB colour-space, though I'd bet it's the latter.

<comment><USER24> Maybe I don't get what you mean, but how could you? These utilities are taking your full 24bit colour palette and intentionally removing some colours.

<comment><USER23> Don't monitors have colour calibration settings that can be set programatically? So you can change the output light intensity that corresponds to each of 0-255, i.e. change the voltage applied to the crystal at each of them?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I just lost a few databases. What to do - <AUTHOR>

Hello there!
I recently cancelled my MediaTemple account, because we decided to host the sites ourselves. We migrated the sites, assets and databases..
But we forgot about one client. A sleeping one. I tried to logon the MediaTemple panel, to retrieve it, but sadly, the account has been cancelled, and thus I cannot login, nor can I create a new ticket.
Any tips, hints or ideas on how to handle this rather critical problem :( <comment><USER2> I'm going to second calling them... You might have to pay some money, but I'll bet it isn't lost forever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Call them.</comment>


When did Scrooge become a role model?  - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1355327_code672404.pdf?abstractid=1332842&mirid=1

<comment><USER2> Complete and utter trash.

"Returning to the original measuring stick, let us see if society is productive. Bashful is working to make ice cream. But Scrooge is not productive. If the venture is successful, then Scrooge will get money for nothing. He has gotten his money "to work for him."23 In fact that is not what is happening. Money cannot work. Bashful is doing all the work and Scrooge is taking some of the rewards of Bashful's labor. Is this fair? In history, this arrangement is thought to be fair because it is an equity investment.24"

This person doesn't have the faintest idea of what investment means. Scrooge didn't do nothing, he delayed his consumption -- he worked in essence for free, until his investment has returns.

In general when investing you're improving efficiencies for instance buying a faster assembly line. This allows you to make the more goods for less price thus customers are benefited and the investors take a return. It's a win win situation.

<comment><USER3> The problem with your analysis is that a business needs investors and customers to succeed. Excessive saving can harm an economy.

<comment><USER2> Excessive saving cannot harm the economy, as more people save the interest rates go down -- the earn less, and there is plenty of money to be invested. People do not put money in their mattress, they invest it either through a savings account or in the stock market.

<comment><USER3> Think of this way. What if today, everyone decided to spend nothing and invest all their money. What will happen to the world economy? You can't make money investing in a business if no one is buying their product. That proves that there is a point at which savings can be harmful.

Excessive savings will drive down the interest rates, and they have. Despite the fact that government borrowing is through the roof, interest rates barely hover above zero because of excessive savings.

I don't mean to deny the importance of savings but be careful that you don't take demand for granted.

<comment><USER2> Interest rates right now are not a function of saving, they are manipulated by the federal reserve. If you look at hayek's model of the business cycle you'll know that what we have going on right now is not good; primarily because we are printing money like crazy instead of letting the dollar adjust in value as it should.

<comment><USER3> The Fed can't manipulate interest rates down. They have to offer a high enough rate to sell their notes. Right now there is such over-saving that the fed can clear the sales by offering almost zero (really negative rates if you factor in inflation) interest rates. For all the talk I hear of the Fed printing at record rates, I have yet to see anyone point to a treasury auction that failed.

"we are printing money like crazy instead of letting the dollar adjust in value as it should." I can read that as you advocating for a variety of different things, and so I can't tell exactly what point you are trying to make.

Any way, thanks for the discussion and good luck in your engineering career.

<comment><USER2> The fed doesn't sell treasury bonds in fact it buys them: <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123739788518173569.html>

Right now what is going on is the fed is loaning money to banks at 0%, the banks are buying treasury bonds which pay 4% and so they get free money fix their balance sheet at our expense. Every dollar the FED prints the less the money you own is worth.

<comment><USER3> Earlier you argued that people are not saving too much. However, your article says that people are in fact saving so much that the Fed is trying to turn them away. According to the article, the Fed first dissuaded savers by lowering the interest rate to zero, and when that proved ineffective they bought back the treasuries they had previously issued. I assume you have withdrawn your earlier argument.

I think your point now is that the government should not have bailed out the financial sector. That's a different discussion that should have its own thread. Perhaps your point is that the Fed and the Treasury are working against each other? I don't distinguish between the two and believe Bernanke/Geithner work hand in hand, but again that's a different discussion.

Also, for accuracy's sake, treasuries are not paying anything close to 4%, unless you're looking at very long term rates which are neither here nor there.

You jump around a lot, which makes it difficult to see the point you are trying to make. Unless you want to revive your "society can never save too much" argument, I would like to end this discussion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google+ Isn't Going Away - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/google-isnt-going-anywhere/ Proclaiming that Google+ won't survive is like saying that the Apple iOS will die, but the iPhone and iPad will live on. They are one and the same, just as Google and Google+ will be. <comment><USER2> _"Instead, Google+ is a social layer that has always been intended to sit on top of the company's flagship product: search."_

Flash back to an anonymous Stanford office, circa 1996, where two ambitious graduate students are sitting in front of a pile of lego servers:

Larry: "Hey Sergey...you know what the world needs? A place where people can share cat photos with their friends."

Sergey: "Oh, Larry...how many times have I dreamed of such a thing!?!? But...how will we get people to join our site if nobody is already sharing cat photos?"

Larry: (thinks for a moment) "I've got it, Sergey! We'll create a _search engine!_ Once we gain market dominance, we can use our captive audience to build our social network!"

Sergey: "Brilliant! They'll never see it coming!"

...

<comment><USER3> It seems clear to me that the author meant "always" wrt the inception of G+, not the inception of search. So your snark, while amusing, is misplaced.

<comment><USER4> That would seem to be true, as thinking otherwise is quite foolish of course. However, the very next paragraph is:

"Sure, Google hopes to build a social network that competes with Facebook, Twitter and other social services, but that is not the main reason the company has put so many resources behind Google+. Instead, Google+ is a social layer that has always been intended to sit on top of the company's flagship product: search."

What? "Google+ is a social layer that has always been intended to sit on top of the company's flagship product: search" just exactly as long as they decided to "build a social network that competes with Facebook, Twitter and other social services". He is somehow trying to sleight-of-hand away the causal relationship here. If Google+ fails to rival Facebook and Twitter as a social network, it might still turn out ok somehow, but it will doubtlessly be considered a failure internally and externally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a bit far afield. The most likely prospect for G+ is that it becomes a social network for the more technically inclined while Facebook remains the social network for all -- a bit like the differentiation between reddit and digg. The main reason is not something great that Google is doing, however, but the immense dislike that many have for Facebook. Facebook, of course, is sucking in all data it can get access to regardless of whether it has any legitimate reason to take that data and, despite willful violation of data protection laws, is likely to remain above the law like many other protected parties.

I think the long term hope is that Google+ might become something like Gmail is to Outlook. G+ is the innovative, feature-driven, technologically saavy option, whereas even if more people use the "Outlook" option today, because of the technological advances attached to the "Gmail" option, people will transition to it over time.

That said, I think that is the best possible option and I don't have any reason to think that G+ is really delivering in any meaningful way on these hopes. Let's see if they actually can stay one technological step ahead of Facebook. Some better APIs would be nice...

<comment><USER3> The problem with your assertion is that a lot of technically inclined people know a lot of other people and want to interact with them socially. It's Facebook's most powerful and most difficult to overcome feature: all your friends are already on it.

To me, the only truly viable way for Google to combat that is to create a truly open, federated collection of social networks that can interoperate, by releasing the underlying code to G+ the way they did with Wave, or the way email works.

It would enable Diaspora, identica, etc. to become full-fledged social networks, and all still be viable because they could talk to each other, as well as talk to G+. Don't trust Google or any other company? Host your own Plus server. Companies could host their own internal Plus platforms.

I can't imagine that Google can fight the closed platform of Facebook with another closed platform, and the open web has always been its symbiotic ally.

<comment><USER5> Generally speaking I agree, but Google screwed up Wave so badly that the lead developer went to work for Facebook; any developer that was in the community or building products for Wave was also so badly screwed I think they'll never work with or for Google again (Full disclosure: I was among them).

I think this needs a new company. Anyone interested?

<comment><USER3> That's fair, but I don't know who has the intersection of Google's clout and incentives. Google's the only powerful force that has the incentive to fight for an open web, as opposed to a collection of closed silos.

My not-so-secret hope is that the lesson Google took from the Wave debacle was to first focus on making a product that's compelling and engaging to users, get a critical mass of adoption, and _then_ release the code. I guy can dream, can't he?

<comment><USER5> It is ultimately not about clout and incentives; it is about drive. It is just like when a lot of people know what the right thing is to do but are too short sighted to pursue it (wasn't Google just trying to acquire Zynga, for example).

<comment><USER3> Google also seems like one of the most long-term thinking companies in existence. Self-driving cars come to mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really like G+, but I'm a bit dismayed that they seem to be addressing the concerns of brands over those of users.

The nymwars was a prominent example, of course, and even the resulting promise of pseudonymity features have yet to surface, while Pages for brands are now live.

The lack of an outward facing platform of APIs is also concerning. I continue to hope that the Plus project is the beginning of a way to implement social features into the web itself. I hope that Google doesn't forget that as the web gets better, Google gets better, and as people use the web more, people use Google more.

<comment><USER6> Give it some time. Likely Pages is dead simple to implement compared to pseudonymity. Possibly it was made by "secondary" team while the main tackles the pseudonymity.

G+ has not been live that long. Let it grow and evolve.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you're right. But it's not just Pages. It's also stuff like Ripples, +1 integration with web sites, badgets, etc. These rollouts all seem to point to a prioritization of brands over users.

I'm still hopeful, though.

<comment><USER7> I'm just a regular user, not a _business_ per se.

But I like what they are doing with the +1 button, or with the customized search results. I think it's pretty cool experimenting with my own blog / trying to stand out in the search results and it's also pretty cool seeing your face in that list :) -- not that I want to earn any money from it or whatever.

Google's direction is pretty clear to me. They are giving people the tools to promote themselves online. This is not necessarily a bad thing, although the nymwars left a bad taste in my mouth that I hope they'll rectify.

<comment><USER3> I think that makes you not really a regular user. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fine that Google is providing tools for self-promotion and features for brands. But it seems to me that the best feature for brands is a lot of engaged users.

The reason Google search ads have a stranglehold on the market is because they have so much search marketshare. Similarly, it seems to me that the best thing to do would be to aggressively provide _users_ with the best experience possible. The brands will follow, regardless of how good their tools are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google+ as a competitor to facebook _is_ dead.

Now, you can come up with all the creative ideas in the world about how G+ is not supposed to be a facebook killer. I believe that is a cop out.

Google really wants to kill facebook and hoped to make a dent with G+. Why is it hard to acknowledge that they haven't made any noticeable dent? And that for the most part, facebook was very quick to address the granular privacy features that made G+ somewhat interesting.

 _You can already see how Google+ is being integrated into the company's entire product line. The +1 button is visible on every YouTube video and search results page, and it is even on single images from the site's visual search. Earlier this week, Google began offering Google+ pages for businesses, too._

Very classic error: assuming development/integration equal traction. Yes, google can slap +1 button on every darn page. And of course a bunch of people might click on it. The billion dollar question is what longterm benefit does G+ deliver to its users? Is there any? Engagement metrics usually answer this question. But Google won't release engagement metrics. Guess away as to why...

<comment><USER9> I respectfully disagree. Was your expectation that G+'s user-base would eclipse FB after 5 months? I don't think that's realistic (really going out on a limb here). By that metric you could have said the same thing about FB in the early days when MySpace had all the users. Clearly, over time, people moved to the better product.

If you want to comment on the rate of adoption, that's one thing, but lets compare apples to apples.

<comment><USER8> I don't care about the user-base numbers. All I care about is engagement. Facebook had crazy engagement even when they had 1000 members. When they had 10M, over 50% of the users were logging in daily. Google now has 40M users and yet they refuse to release engagement numbers.

<comment><USER10> Facebook had great engagement early on because all the early users were in the same social circles. Wouldn't surprise me at all that 1000 users at the same college as me would result in more usage as opposed to 40 million users scattered across the world.

<comment><USER8> I chalk that up as a deadly blunder on Google's part.

No one forced google to just open up G+ to the entire world. I feel they botched the launch of G+ by allowing scattered masses to join instead of totally nailing smaller groups like how Facebook did.

<comment><USER10> I think they nailed a single group, the already fairly well connected tech and startups people. This also dragged along those interested in these people although they get less value from it as it's more of a Twitter like following medium unless lots of people are putting you in their circles.

Google certainly have the resources to nail more smaller groups, it's just not the way they operate as this doesn't scale well.

<comment><USER8> I disagree that they have nailed _any_ group. For me, nailing a group would mean that group ditching their competitor. Yet, I can't name a single Valley friend of hundreds who has ditched facebook for Google+. Now, I can name you dozens who have a G+ account and have tinkered with it. But that is hardly "nailing" it.

I think you actually nailed it: google doesn't know how to scale social because social doesn't scale the same way as most other products. Facebook scaled growth in a very methodical manner from university to university and later country to country.

<comment><USER11> Actually, Google+ is doing fairly well among bloggers, especially tech bloggers. Some references: [1] [2].

Also, success of a product does not mean ditching competitors (although one of the report does even suggest that!), it means gaining sufficient acceptance initially, so that later it becomes a valid option to ditch competitors.

For example: I was an Orkut user (was not happy with it) for quite a long time (1 year or so), even after joining facebook. Not because Facebook was not good or successful but because there was already some engagement at Orkut that cannot be replaced in a jiffy.

[1] [http://www.blogworld.com/2011/07/13/prominent-tech- bloggers-...](http://www.blogworld.com/2011/07/13/prominent-tech-bloggers- point-domain-names-to-google-plus-streams/)

[2] [https://plus.google.com/113117251731252114390/posts/3wfvDJEi...](https://plus.google.com/113117251731252114390/posts/3wfvDJEiJXq)

<comment><USER8> _Actually, Google+ is doing fairly well among bloggers, especially tech bloggers. Some references: [1] [2]._

Sorry, tech _bloggers_ is a vastly different segment than tech users. Neither are optimal groups to target if you want to build a mainstream social network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article is ridiculous on the face of it. "Proclaiming that Google+ won't survive is like saying that the Apple mobile iOS operating system will die, but the iPhone and iPad will live on" -- a better analogy is "Proclaiming that Google+ won't survive is like saying that MacOS will die, but the Mac will live on". Except that this _did_ happen.

If Google+ fails, Google can let it die, and slowly remove all the places where it has intruded into search. Or Google+ can fail, and Google can decide to drag the whole company down with it, by trading all of their goodwill and usefulness to drive people to their social network. But claiming that they are forced to do the latter is stupid.

</comment><comment><USER13> If this was Microsoft, I'd fully expect them to keep hammering away for years and dump as much money as it took for them to own the market, but Google has institutional ADHD.

If they don't outright kill it after three years of it not making them any serious money, I fully expect them to abandon it with only minor updates for some other shiny and new product.

</comment><comment><USER14> It does seem to have slow uptake, but it has a long-game feel to it - doing it right slowly is probably the right move.

They should just buy Twitter and merge it in by allowing aliases.

I'm really warming to Google - very impressed with the way they've re-skinned and consolidated their product set - it feels like they've crossed a bridge that Microsoft couldn't.

<comment><USER15> > I'm really warming to Google - very impressed with the way they've re- > skinned and consolidated their product set - it feels like they've crossed a > bridge that Microsoft couldn't.

Google Apps users still feel second-class, but seems that at long lasts, after years of failed promises they are getting around to fixing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> it's my understanding that google+ does not need to be a breakout social media phenomenon to be successful. google already has a ton of very successful social products, the + initiative is gradually integrating those product's social features under a common interface.

picasaweb, for example, is a huge photo sharing network with tons of users. blogger is a huge social network with tons of users. youtube is a huge video sharing network with tons of users. google already has those users. that's the core of their social business. just because people aren't writing public 'wall' posts, doesn't mean g+ is dead. despite how similar it looks to facebook on the surface, the core of google's social business is very much not facebook.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am hanging out on a team product meeting with peeps in Paris, Philly, NYC, and SF as I type this.

For me, this makes G+ 100x more valuable than FB.

<comment><USER18> Exactly! Google+ is brilliant for business use. I'm sharing stuff with colleagues far more effectively (and selectively) now.

<comment><USER19> It's not just business use alone that matters for Google, they are a complete productivity/life suite. Facebook fails miserably at this.

Enter the realm of Facebook and what do you accomplish, you add friends, like something, and look at photos, essentially nothing, a closed experience that ignores much of the internet as a whole delivered through an unusable interface (does anyone else feels like facebook has a b-rated windows 95 feel to it?). Seriously, try to find apps in Facebook vs. finding apps in Chrome Web Store. I understand the numbers behind it, but AOL was cool at one time too.

Google you have everything you need to help you be productive and useful. Amazing integration across all platforms, mobile phones, google docs, chat, news, reader(quit whining about the redesign) and discovery (google +, seriously video chat in hangouts thats pretty and easy to use, why do I need Citrix?). If your against the thought that google + can be successful and aide you in having a better social user experience online, then I'll let you get back your USWeekly and you can keep joining your "Kim Kardashian Support" groups on Facebook.

Google is the company that Microsoft failed(fails?) to be. Sure they don't make pretty iphones, but they make real, usable products.

<comment><USER20> This is a pretty good assessment. I could see G+ gaining traction as a work network a la yammer but that probably isn't a big enough prize for Google to bet the company on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've found its starting to get hard to analyze some Google products and their likelihood of survival when it comes to Google. In my case its when I get questions about the GoogleTV. If it were any other company I'd say "yeah that product is dead" but its not any company. Its Google, who has 40B dollars in cash reserves. They have an unprecedented ability to continue to develop products which are "flops" if they continue to see a strategic advantage to being involved in the space. With the amount of financial runway, and human intelligence Google can provide to a product - its hard to see _any_ of them continuing to fail indefinitely.

<comment><USER22> WP7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I already discover most new content via Facebook and the only missing piece is search. If Facebook builds a search engine and integrates within its core experience sooner than Google takes to get G+ to work and scale, it would be a good indication of who might eventually win. From the social perspective, Facebook already has the mental association at a massive scale that may be tough for G+ to get to, especially considering Google is perceived to be "more utility than fun" across its user base.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can we switch this to the original title? 'going anywhere' could refer to a dead end or perseverance.

<comment><USER25> They must have changed the title after publication, both the URL and some in- page links still say "anywhere".

<comment><USER24> Ah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the integration of G+ in the core of Android will do wonders for its adoption. Suddenly the millions of users with Android devices have an incentive to begin using G+.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't think Google+ should be trying to compete with Facebook and Twitter in the traditional sense of the word. Just because a website fits into a niche of companies under the broad heading, "Social Network" doesn't mean that it has the same intentions as its other incumbents. Facebook more or less eradicated MySpace because it was a case of two websites being too similar in function, and Facebook was simply superior. Twitter and Facebook coexist without one or the other being eliminated because they don't directly compete - Twitter is useful for different functions that Facebook doesn't accomplish; but neither does Facebook or Twitter _try_ to accomplish the other's specialties. While I agree that some competition is needed to expand user base and continually maintain attractive and trending features, it would be better for the social networks to specialize. A website like Facebook could never defeat Facebook - it has a de facto monopoly on vicarious, virtual socializing.

That said, you don't really go on Facebook to announce something to the world unless you have a really popular "Page" (as opposed to profile). You sign up for Twitter and tell your followers what the update is. It's much more professional for a working environment. Facebook is personal. I feel Google+ fits somewhere in between these two dichotomies right now, which is why it feels somewhat awkward for a lot of users. But I think it's still a very good network that has potential to specialize into something neither Facebook or Twitter quite accomplish yet. If it can create its own niche within a niche, competition won't be as important as maintaining its own superlative market share for specialized functioning. Otherwise, it will die out, because directly competing with Facebook will _not_ work at this point in time.

</comment><comment><USER28> "Google+ is Google"

So it might not be far fetched to think that they might start requiring (or implicitly nudging) you to sign-in to G+ to use their Search.

<comment><USER29> By logging in, your search results leverage your profile information and connections. I guess a pretty strong "nudge" would simply be to aggressive promote that when you're not logged in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not to hijack this thread, but no wonder Google+ isn't going away when they invite your work contacts and everyone else without warning you first. See this thread on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3219443>

</comment><comment><USER31> Whether G+ is dead or not, or if it will be killed as a product in 1 year or 5 is not entirely clear. What is sure is that Google is adding social to all of their products in the form of +1 buttons. So even if G+ is shut down like Google Buzz, Google is betting on social.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'll be happy with Google+ if it better connects all of the various apps in the Google eco-system like GMail, Apps, etc.

Right now its such a pain to invite people via email addresses in Google Docs and Calendar. I should just be able to type in peoples' names and it just works.

<comment><USER33> If the people you want to invite are in your Gmail address book, it already works like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> In terms of the average quality of their content, G+ : FB :: HN : /. That's just my experience, and YMMV, but if it's globally true then I expect G+ to win in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER35> It looks to me that Google+ is more of a replacement for Blogger than a competitor to FaceBook at this point.

</comment><comment><USER36> This may seem a little out there but maybe Google should buy MySpace and incorporate it into G+?

</comment><comment><USER37> I didn't start using twitter until tweetdeck came along.

Google need to work on the API.

</comment><comment><USER38> > a social network for the more technically inclined

I wouldn't be making many bets on that premise. It's a clearly defined reaction to Facebook designed and built by engineers lacking the empathy gene. Facebook defines relationships and has impact beyond what the user reads on the screen. G+ has none of that and is already being abandoned by early adopters.

</comment><comment><USER39> The NYT should install some +1 buttons.

</comment><comment><USER40> I like to fuck guys.

</comment><comment><USER41> I know google won't kill it for a long time, but in most ways it is going away since no one is using it. Then hopefully one day they'll finally admit failure and it will go the way of google buzz.

After listening to the zuck talk about facebook as a platform and the owner of the graph, I'm developing this scary feeling that it is going to be imposible for anyone else to break into that space.</comment>


CIA analyst at the center of torture report is outed - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2014/1221/CIA-analyst-at-the-center-of-torture-report-is-outed.-She-s-not-Maya-video?cmpid=addthis_twitter <comment><USER2> Alfreda Frances Bikowsky - [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/19/senior-cia- off...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/19/senior-cia-officer- center-torture-scandals-alfreda-bikowsky/) . I heard it on last Friday's 'Democracy Now'.</comment>


Amazon S3, you're out of order - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/aws-s3-youre-out-of-order/ <comment><USER2> Interesting story and some good detective work but the ending isn't satisfying.

I'm guessing this is Direct Connect out of the Equinix/Ashburn location, so they are probably working with a partner. There are probably a few black boxes in between their servers and AWS S3 edges. If this is affecting them I would expect to see a lot of people seeing the same thing.

I'm not really surprised an AWS support team shrugged it off but it seems like there are some more pieces to this.

[https://aws.amazon.com/directconnect/partners/](https://aws.amazon.com/directconnect/partners/)</comment>


Ask HN: Is accepting a phone call a threat vector? - <AUTHOR> Is it possible for someone to attack your device or gain information about you (other than the fact that your phone number is valid) by you simply answering a call? By which I mean native phone calls, not Whatsapp or Skype or anything. Is this something that could be a threat vector and just doesn't have any currently-known vulnerabilities, or is it a limited enough channel that it can't really even be one in theory? If it makes a difference, I'm on iOS.
The reason I ask is that I've suddenly gotten 42 calls from different states in the past 2 hours (up from the usual 1-2 spam calls per week). These are extra weird because they often don't wait more than a second before hanging up and calling again, which makes it feel like they're trying to brute-force something. They also sometimes-but-not-usually call from the same number multiple times in a row, which is unusual for spammers.
Part of me wants to answer one of them just to see if it is a garden-variety scammer, but I'm also pretty sketched-out. I wonder if it has to do with the "Zoom Bombing" or related activities.
Any info is appreciated. <comment><USER2> I believe there are several dangers, some more likely than others.

1\. If you've enabled voice verification on a service, like your bank account, recordings of your voice or AI generated recordings (based on you saying Hello, Yes, No, etc.) could be used to attempt to access those records. Even if you don't hear a lot about that today, I believe it's coming as a threat vector and will be more frequent.

2\. I have a good friend whose family was scammed out of several thousand by one of those "Your child has been kidnapped" type scams. Allowing people who aren't authorized to call you enables these types of interactions. What happens further down the line when AIs are able to imitate the voices of your loved ones?

Some would see these comments as over-reacting which I totally understand. I'm just pointing out that there are potential threats, and not assigning any probabilities to them.

I do run a spam blocking app called CallStop that can try, it might solve your problem: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/callstop-call- manager/id145589...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/callstop-call- manager/id1455892856)

It requires unknown callers to send you a whitelist request or enter a PIN to call you.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're points worth making, but not really relevant. All I want to know is, if I answer a call and listen, and don't say anything, is there a chance my device could be compromised?

<comment><USER3> If you were thoroughly paranoid, you could make a case that the background noise might, at times, give hints enough for a clever man to roughly figure out where you are.

<comment><USER2> Yes. Interesting but tangential: apparently gait can be used to identify a person instead of facial recognition [https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a](https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think what you're asking about is security threats such as RCE, information disclosure, etc, rather than threat vectors based on social engineering.

Modern mobile phones do send/receive call data in a digital format (albeit over an analogue transmission medium), so there is theoretically the potential for deserialisation vulnerabilities, buffer overflows, etc.

I'm not an expert in mobile telephony protocols, however my current understanding is that RCE/crashing a mobile device just by calling it using a standard phone line is extremely unlikely, but not impossible.

However, for desktop phone equipment (think office IP phones), the attack surface is significantly larger and there have been numerous proven attacks and against them, but these (almost always) require access to the phone via an IP network, rather than a traditional phone line.

Other 'calling' apps such as WhatsApp or Skype are a completely different question, as you've already noted.

If you're not a high-value target, I'd say that it's not a risk to be concerned about individually. Just keep your phone patched and follow other general best-practises.

In the event that a major vulnerability via phone call was discovered, it would most likely either be used in targeted attacks against high value individuals, or it'd be used in large scale 'annoyances', e.g. by teenagers pranking their friends.

As for your actual question, the repeated scam calls were most likely a broken automation system (as @lima said), or just a nasty scammer that really wanted you to answer.

As a side note, this article [1] by Google Project Zero goes into quite some detail about the fully remote/unattended attack vectors present on an iPhone. Though not directly related to your question, it's a very interesting read.

[1] [https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-fully- rem...](https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-fully-remote- attack-surface-of.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I have heard that sometimes they are recording your voice to be used to impersonate you for other scams (e.g. bank transactions).

<comment><USER6> Yeah. Never just answer "Yes" to a question. That can be recorded and played back as the answer to a different question. (By the way, the same thing is true when talking to reporters.)

<comment><USER7> > "the same thing is true when talking to reporters"

Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER6> Let's say a reporter asks me whether I think that the National Guard should be used to keep people in their houses. I reply "Yes, but only as a last resort." A, um, _creative_ reporter may just cut after the "yes". But if I said "I think that, as a last resort, they might be used", it's a lot harder to play that game with my answer.

Worse is if the reporter next asks if I think the federal government should now declare martial law, and then pastes my "yes" from the previous question as the answer to that question. This takes an even more unethical reporter than the first scenario... but such reporters exist.

This kind of stunt can be done to you either by political or by business reporters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe the risk of effectively bugging yourself by accepting the call by accident. Answering UI varies by device.

</comment><comment><USER9> Certainly sounds like runaway automation - perhaps spammers do this to check whether the number is valid?

<comment><USER5> Makes me wonder if this can be beaten by changing the telephone system to ring continuously if an unused phone number is dialed.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best interview language: Java, Python, C++? - <AUTHOR> Like many, I want to get better at technical interviews to move my career forward. At this point, it seems to me I need to get good at one of the 'typical' languages: Java, Python, and C++. If I'm honest, I'm only barely proficient in these (my background is niche).<p>If I want to optimize my time and energy, which programming language do you recommend spending time mastering for the purpose of technical interviews? <comment><USER2> While I have a personal favorite, I recognize this as one of those question which cannot have one right answer. The best language for the interview is the language in which the candidate is most proficient and expressive in. If you're making the candidate write a lot of algorithms, it helps to have a basic ds/algo library that's flexible and easy to use. C++ has STL, which is great but for people unfamiliar with its style (iterators) or syntactic peculiarities (templates, etc), things may not be very smooth. Java has a decent library too, and I guess so does Python but I'm less familiar.

</comment><comment><USER3> Of those three? Python. Why? Lots of stuff built in or well-known.

But it's almost entirely irrelevant: reasonable companies will either (a) expect you to code in the language they're hiring for or something at least used within the company, or (b) not care (within reasonable bounds, e.g., don't do your interview in Piet).

</comment><comment><USER4> I started out with C and C++ almost 20 years ago, then moved to Java, then C#, and finally "settled" with Python.

They all have their strengths, and some are more suitable than others, when trying to convey certain topics. Some might argue that if you're going into an interview with heavy focus on data structures and algorithms, memory intensive topics, parallel computing, etc. then C++ would be a good choice.

Or if it's a job for enterprise style dev., then maybe Java EE or C#/.NET would be good.

With that said, I think it's more important that you pick the language you know best. Interviews (in my experience) rarely revolve around the technicalities of a language, and more around general topics and conceptual things.

The more you know a language, the less you have to "fight" it, and can focus on the problems at hand.

Python is currently the language _I_ enjoy the most, especially for technical interviews. It's (IMO) extremely intuitive and productive, and frankly almost feels like writing pseudo-code, which I value in the interview-setting. I don't need to waste a lot of time on getting utility code to work, and can spend my energy on the real problems.

TL;DR Use the language you know best / most confident with.</comment>


Website makes comparing cloud costs simple - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/14/free_public_cloud_storage_cost_tool/ <comment><USER2> Why not share the website directly instead of an article which links to it?</comment>


EdgeQL: We can do better than SQL - <AUTHOR> https://edgedb.com/blog/we-can-do-better-than-sql/ <comment><USER2> New query languages come and go almost every day. SQL has been around, mostly unchanged, for over 40 years and it's still the industry standard... Just saying.</comment>


Cities: Size does not matter much anymore - <AUTHOR> http://www.newgeography.com/content/001759-cities-size-does-not-matter-much-anymore

<comment><USER2> For certain aspects, this is true. For others, like entertainment, this couldn't be more wrong. There's more about living in a city than where you work.

I used to live in a very rural town. Everything 'fun' was an hour away, minimum. I knew people who had never left the county, and that meant they had never been to a movie theatre.

Now I live on the edge of a very large city and there is MUCH more choice for entertainment, dinner, everything.

And of course, there are more -people- in large cities. Look up some rural city with 3000 people and see how many meetup groups you find within 25 miles of there. Now look up a major city like Miami or Los Angeles and see how many you find.</comment>


Show HN: Pinmark.in – Remember all the links you share online - <AUTHOR> http://www.pinmark.in

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone - I've been working on a auto-bookmarking tool that collects and organizes all the links you share, like, tweet and favorite online.

If you have questions, remarks or suggestions please feel free to drop a comment - I would really appreciate it.

P.S. Also - if you're interested in the beta version of the app - you can sign up for early access - and additionally you'll get a 50% off when the app is publicly launched.

Thanks!</comment>


National Internet sales tax bill has bipartisan support - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20111109/NEWS02/111109734/durbin-gains-key-support-for-revitalized-internet-sales-tax-bill

<comment><USER2> So what does the bill say? This article told me pretty much nothing about that important detail.</comment>


Remote root hole in Samba  - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/491516/rss <comment><USER2> Has this remote root really been around for ten years?

<http://lwn.net/Articles/491523/>

edit:

Samba 3.0.x - 3.6.3

<http://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.0.0.html>

So... yeah... 9 years. Wow.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this is indeed exceptional. How can that really happen?

<comment><USER4> Maybe the proverbial "eyes" are on other projects or something?

<comment><USER5> Well, this bug was in auto-generated RPC code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't have SMB exposed on any public network anywhere ever.

<comment> throwaway54-762 So you want every client on your private network to have root access to your SMB server? Remote root is a problem if you have any networked clients.

<comment><USER7> He means that SMB is not a secure protocol and can't be run securely over an untrusted network at all. Vulnerabilities within a private network are a different class of problem. Obviously you should upgrade/patch and pull the fix. But if (say) the operation of your 20-person company depends on a live Samba instance, you might logically make the decision to leave it unpatched on your internal network for a day or so until you have time to test the upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The bugzilla entry (<https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8815>) contains reproducers for the issue.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> More detail here: <https://www.samba.org/samba/security/CVE-2012-1182>.

</comment><comment><USER9> How nice, now there's a public POC for a remote root exploit in a very widely used file-sharing service.

<https://bugzilla.samba.org/attachment.cgi?id=7433></comment>


Ask HN: What are some good Financial Q&A Sites? - <AUTHOR>

What are some good Financial Q&A Sites? <comment><USER2> Depends on what you mean by Financial - big difference between personal finance and raising money for a startup. That said, I would encourage you to take a look at Quora.com. It's a fantastic new Q&A site that covers a broad range of topics including finance.</comment>


$2B and Counting - <AUTHOR> https://news.spotify.com/uk/2014/11/11/2-billion-and-counting/

<comment><USER2> What is art to a platform can you remind me?

It is fact artists always present and accept stigma in this age. From the dawn of MP3 players to its platforms like iTunes and Zune there has been a hesitance among content shared not via CD. It is true that Taylor Swift has a point music is art but what is it to say I need a dollar everytime you look at my painting, I need a cent everytime you touch my statue. There seems to be the prophetic aura that exists with all our favorite artists at some point they realize that and need to capitalize on their own terms whether it be disregarding the fact they are getting paid and are being offered an entirely new music platform to share their music.

It is fact most people no longer buy Music. But it is fact they share music, they want to listen to music but will always look for that freemium model. Spotify is paying all contributors in total 2 billion as stated in the article. There more than the 40 million users but 1 in 4 pay for membership. But you know there is that stigma its free. So what if the other 30 million do not pay there is an eventual probability of frustration not being able to play what you want and when you want but that is solved for you pay the membership. Spotify exemplifies the new art form of music is to art as it is to its distribution. With this way of sharing how will it be able to stop them from changing the landscape since right now we are unable to listen to Taylor maybe they will find a replacement.</comment>


Mozilla Releases Second Largest Public Voice Data Set - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/mozilla-open-innovation/sharing-our-common-voice-mozilla-releases-second-largest-public-voice-data-set-e88f7d6b7666 <comment><AUTHOR> Previous related discussion : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14794654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14794654)</comment>


The Solitary Leaker - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/brooks-the-solitary-leaker.html

<comment><USER2> This paragraph is the ultimate in irony:

      He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create
      the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could
      make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed.

Founders weren't interested in the rights of the individual, protecting him from his own government? Frankly, I find _that_ view deeply cynical, far more so than anything the author points to in 'dem youths.

I think that this author's viewpoint boils down to: Whisteblowing on the US government is fundamentally immoral. Young Americans are restive because they are at the core antisocial, being raised in a newly flawed society that fails to make clear that the status quo, the hulking paternalist nation-state, serves the common good.

Frankly, it reads like an old defense of Royalism.

<comment><USER3> The whole article is so ad hominem ("look, here we have a freak breaking the law, he is a poor lonely guy without friends and almost a sociopath") and so wilfully pseudo-naïve ("And, of course, he's right that the procedures he's unveiled could lend themselves to abuse in the future.") that it is more than insulting. It is unbelievable that this has made the NYT.

Unbelievable.

Patronizing, like any government sponsoring person looks nowadays.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget the forced repetition to drive the point home He betrayed...He betrayed...He betrayed...He betrayed...He betrayed...He betrayed...He betrayed...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe it's my bias, and I'm probably not educated about the deeper arguments on both sides of the PRISM case - but this article feels very off to me. The cynic in me feels like this is pure inner circle propaganda.

 _" He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more."_

So our choices are to quietly ignore the fact that the circles he speaks of have already closed beyond recognition - and are continuing to do so without our knowledge or consent. We're obviously not involved in the debate in the fist place - so it seems to me that we have nothing to lose - at least out in the open we can actually watch the circle of trust close.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. That was the paragraph that put me over the top too. Blaming the vicim doesn't make any sense here.

"The reason I don't tell anyone outside my family anything is that I'm afraid my sister will tell them"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a mind-blowingly atrocious read.

It's an opinion of this unfortunate writer that poor Mr. Snowden is an outcast, a loser, someone who is a victim of this age of solitude. Why else would he throw everything away? David Brooks goes on to attack this leak, saying that it will further decay society, and lead to even more surveillance.

David Brooks: how stupid do you think we are?

<comment><USER8> i just tweeted the hacker news link to him, so there is a decent chance he is in fact reading this stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is... impressive:

 _He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can't do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods._

Wow.

<comment><USER10> More like he betrayed the privacy of the NSA...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Brooks is the NYT's token conservative and fuddy-duddy establishment mouthpiece. He's there to make Krugman look more credible and Friedman look more clever by comparison. Pay him no mind, anyone who would actually agree with any of his opinions doesn't even read NYT in the first place, they read the WP instead.

<comment><USER2> Eh, Washington Post has a few of these guys too: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen- leaks-n...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-leaks-not- the-nsa-programs-deserve- condemnation/2013/06/10/e91d09ac-d1c9-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can't do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods."_

So as long as you're spied upon unintrusively, it's all fine and dandy?

That the NYT should print this bloviating pundit's Orwellian attempt to twist a self-sacrificing attempt to defend privacy in to a cynical _betrayal_ of privacy shames the paper, if it could be shamed any further.

</comment><comment><USER13> _He betrayed the cause of open government. [...] He betrayed the privacy of us all. [...] He betrayed the Constitution._

Really? It's like a parody of a bought opinion. Surely there must be better ways of discrediting him.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a classic "hit piece" that Brooks has done. Find suspicion in everything the guy does and look at his whole life in a negative light. This is the epitome of an Ad Hominem attack. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't agree with Brooks's viewpoint, but I would be curious to read how HN readers might refute (or support) his argument.

<comment><USER15> I find the framing of Snowden's actions as "unilateral" to be suspect. He's a whistleblower at the NSA, not a union organizer at a trucking company. What else would he do, see if any of his colleagues want to join him first?

I also feel like you're loyalty to an employer should be based on more than a $200k salary and an office in Hawaii, as Brooks suggests.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, sounds like he thinks Snowden should have organised a coup d'etat. And that would NOT have been treasonous....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _" For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things."_

I'm amazed that the solution to being spied on by my government, showing that they have no basic level of trust in me or my fellow citizens, is to bow my head and treat this as a common procedure.

 _" He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can't do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods."_

Wait...what? He didn't betray my privacy, my government did. The second part of the argument there is the most amazing leap of logic I've ever seen. "If we outlaw this invasive procedure, then they'll do something far worse that we've outlawed." I don't understand this at all.

There are so many objectionable parts of this article that while typing out my problems with it I just started raging at my desk. I don't know what to say. I'm just appalled. Any discussion on Snowden and whether or not what he did was right is a sideshow and should wait until we figure out what to do with the information he gave us.

EDIT: No, let's keep going.

 _" He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed. Snowden self-indulgently short-circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else."_

The leaker of secret programs that on the surface appear to clearly violate my Fourth Amendment rights is the one who is not being held accountable? It was self-indulgent to tell the world about how the NSA is spying on everyone, all of the time? This is an ad hominem attack that makes no sense. The programs he exposed "short-circuited the democratic structures of accountability," not him.

</comment><comment><USER18> I am so shocked by this dingy piece of character assassination that I barely know where or how to begin refuting it. If Edward Snowden betrayed his society, then surely his society betrayed him first. The ineptitude and callous disregard with which the nation state serves it's constituents is the real crime here: No conspiracy, just incompetence. The banality of evil writ large.

Brooks claims that the bonds of society are weakening; that we are atomizing in an inexorable trend towards individualism. I refute this. The bonds of society are as strong as ever; but they are being reshaped and reforged in a manner that crosses geographical boundaries; that renders old allegiances obsolete and creates new societies; new movements, and new sources of power and influence.

Brooks may find it confusing and frightening; I find it exhilarating and liberating to live in such an age of change.

Edward Snowden; together with a great multitude of like-minded individuals are forging a new pact; a new power base. One built on a common culture of technological literacy coupled with socially progressive and economically libertarian views. We have no geographical focus, and our representation in traditional power structures is limited; but we are a real force for change, and the change is only just beginning.

The main slur that Brooks seeks to perpetuate seems to regard Snowden's anti- social behavior, Putting aside the disgraceful Ad-Hominem attack for one moment, let me use myself as a counterexample: (Perhaps not the best, but the only one I have to hand) I have a wife and a family; I am gregarious and social; yet my affinity (and loyalty) to like-minded individuals half a world away transcends all of that. Like Snowden, I have had security clearances in the past. Unlike Snowden, I choose not to leak what I know, but I make my choice not out of loyalty to my family, my community or my country, nor out of fear of reprisal, but out of a dedication to professional ethics.

There are more, and greater things in this world than governments and nation states.

</comment><comment><USER19> The author neglects to mention that "family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world" have all but been destroyed in today's world, to the point where national identities barely exist in my generation. We are not weird, just the product of our times. We are more taxpayers and consumers than citizens, this is actually more prevalent in europe than the US at the moment. I don't know how strong the American national identity still is, but seeing how they literally need to spy on everyone to keep the congregation from breaking apart is pretty alarming.

Maybe the author should wonder how it came to be that people trust facebook, google and other corporations(!) more than they trust the government they elect and its institutions.

</comment><comment><USER20> "For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures." two-way street

</comment><comment><USER21> This is one of the oddest things I've read all week. It accuses Snowden of a lack of character and claims that lack is a threat to society. But this society and its government are designed to minimize that threat.

The reason we have a "big government" is to make unnecessary the civic virtue Snowden supposedly lacks. The article calls "honesty and integrity" "the foundation of all cooperative activity." But we have a highly regulated economy, to ensure that it still works when most of its participants are dishonest people with little integrity. Now that integrity is unnecessary, it's predictably rare.

Similarly, it says Snowden damaged "the social fabric" and has "no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good." The U.S. doesn't need its citizens "knit together". The country is held together by government power, not a fabric of common consensus. Citizens don't need to look after the common good. That's the job of the authorities the author commends. NSA surveillance is supposed to prevent "solitary naked individuals" from causing any trouble.

In summary, not just Snowden but the whole country fails to live up the the character standard set out by this article. And that doesn't matter. Unless the cynical people are right.

</comment><comment><USER22> > He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can't do > vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive > eavesdropping methods.

The problem with this argument is that it assumes these methods are used to the exclusion of other eavesdropping methods. In fact, they are used as a precursor to them - and increase the total amount of invasive eavesdropping that goes on.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't know the author and what trust means for him - but my level of trust in humanity increased after I read the Snowden story.

Have you guys noticed that the whistle-blowers of late are geeks? Snowden, Manning and before that Stockwell.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a lot of problem with Brooks' argument, but I still find it interesting enough to upvote and comment on.

We've had government secrets for hundreds of years, yet lately we seem to have an upsurge in leakers. What has changed? Have "those dang kids" just given up on traditional structures of authority, as Brooks believes? Or has the system itself grown evil enough that people view their obligation to their fellow citizen more important than their obligation to the structures created by those citizens?

I think as government continues to tighten the screws on society, more and more people are going to rat out the system. Some are going to be single-issue types who limit what they release. These guys have one issue that they feel a majority of the population would be outraged about if they only knew. I support these guys, although I would warn them that they could very well be wrong -- people might not be outraged. And they are gambling with their lives. The penalty for treason is death. This is not something to take lightly at all.

The other folks are mad at the system itself. They declare war on it and do whatever they can to hurt it. I do not support these people, mainly because some secrecy is necessary and we rely on our system of government to do good and necessary things.

99.999% of the time, your oath should come ahead of any personal considerations you might have. But not always.

I also note that the smearing of Snowden has begun and now is in full force. If I were some of these reporters, I'd be asking myself how I would feel if the rest of the media establishment treated me this way the next time I broke a major story.

<comment><USER25> > We've had government secrets for hundreds of years, yet lately we seem to > have an upsurge in leakers. What has changed? Have "those dang kids" just > given up on traditional structures of authority, as Brooks believes?

Well, Brooks come off as a huge blowhard to me, but the government is pretty objectively _less_ evil than it's been in the past (My Lai, COINTELPRO, Syphilis testing on unsuspecting blacks, state-condoned lynching, Trail of Tears, ECHELON, HUAC, Slavery, the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, "Separate But Equal", Kent State, Jim Crow laws, Nisei detainment camps, etc. etc. etc.)

I personally feel the reason that leaking is increasing is simply that it's easier to do, and the perceived consequences on national security are much less.

Back in the day you leak nuclear missile plans and you could get the entire world killed by tipping MAD over too far. But even this leak of NSA collection schemes will not drastically change the overall geopolitical picture, even if it does potentially lead to degradation of counter-terrorism capability.

However it's also possible that people are becoming more idealistic faster than the government is becoming less evil, which would IMO explain much of the hysterics over issues like this that can't be explained by their relative impact in an historical context.

<comment><USER26> Do you think you can reasonably predict how history will come to see the government that you refer to?

(I'm thinking that lots of things that seem normal now might not seem so reasonable in 30 years)

<comment><USER25> I can't reasonably predict the weather next week. But either way, I don't choose what to do based on what some Ph.D. will think of it 40 years from now, I choose what to do based on whether it's right or wrong. When it's not that simple, I try to go by what is the best overall solution.

<comment><USER26> I can see how the way I phrased it brings up the eyes of some Ph.D., but I was thinking more about having a complete picture of things, or new information changing the context of interpretation for things, etc.

<comment><USER25> Well, I always reserve the right to change my mind when the facts change, or my understanding of them does. I don't like to think I'm locked into a certain viewpoint or worse, that my viewpoint changes to be what's most advantageous for me personally at any given phase in my life. And I do think I have a good understanding of history.

But at the same time I think that a good understanding of history's past failures can enable you to essentially "try again correctly" in the future.

I think all of us agree that civil liberties are important and that a government's protection of its citizens is important. I see it as an area of tension, but not as a bloodfight like some on both sides of that issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you ever wanted a case study in bare faced propaganda, this is it. You'll rarely see a hit piece this brazen.

 _" But Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good."_

Aside from mentioning "Big Brother" this reads like something directly from the mouth of Orwell's Big Brother. The vague invocation of impossible to prove dangers ("cynicism", "distrust", "individualistic" people). The clear identification of an enemy: "solitary", "individualistic" people (who are harder to coerce and threaten). The rebranding of social control to "knit[ting] others together and look[ing] after the common good." It's all there, plain as day, in the most respected newspaper in America.

The sad thing is that more will come. The NSA's secret programs are so obviously indefensible that the only recourse available to the mouthpieces of power like Mr. Brooks is to mount pathetic ad hominem attacks against the messenger.

</comment><comment><USER28> Brooks argues, "He betrayed honesty and integrity, the foundation of all cooperative activity. He made explicit and implicit oaths to respect the secrecy of the information with which he was entrusted. He betrayed his oaths."

This argument negates the trust and integrity the government discarded when it chose to implement citizen surveillance.

Further, Snowden took an oath to protect the US against all enemies, foreign and domestic. He broke no oath.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm starting to think some people value social stability so much that they would condemn the leaking of "Soylent Green is people!"

</comment><comment><USER30> _If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way: Life is not embedded in a series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world._

It's pretty presumptuous to take humans' current social structure and say it's the best possible structure. The concept of hierarchy itself is directly opposed to equality and fairness, and it's perfectly reasonable to believe that equality and fairness are more important.

I personally hold just one level of hierarchy: humanity. We're all so similar in the grand scheme of things, we might as well be family and fight the universe instead of each other.

Also, he used two colons in the same sentence. Gutsy.

<comment><USER31> fascinating to listen to Brooks wax poetic about authoritative structures. One would think he might be a little skeptical of them ... guess not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> We need to make and maintain a list of all the sell out hacks that betray their own people. If that list already exists, who ever has commit access please add Brooks to it.

<comment><USER8> cut him some slack, he is just another Obama-worshipping sycophant :)

<comment><USER6> Given the love of authority, and OPs seeming inability to tell the difference between valid and invalid syllogisms, my money's on Bush-worshipping :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Take a look at the comment section and the reader picks vs. the NYT picks. The NYT picks are about 50/50, readers are up in arms.

</comment><comment><USER34> "He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can't do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods."

Wow, the mental contortions that were undertaken to produce this sentence are just astounding.

</comment><comment><USER35> Brooks' argument sounds logical until you realize it applies to all whistleblowers. His world is one in which there is no way to shine light on evil without being disloyal. This extreme I do disagree with very much.

</comment><comment><USER36> There can bee some amount of vanity on part of the leaker, but Brooks' argument boils down to "the government can do no wrong".

</comment><comment><USER37> When a multi-billion dollar corporation (X-Mart) forces its employees to go on the dole (for lack of a living wage) and live without health insurance (the providence of which companies directly and indirectly lobby heavily to leave in their hands), well, you have to wonder a bit at the assumption of this _series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world._

Oh, wait, he didn't mention employer in all that.

Brooks is, for all the controversy surrounding him, a good writer. A good _wordsmith._

But sometimes he expresses a perspective that appears to be rather sheltered and privileged.</comment>


Apple doubles down with Epic Games, seeks damages for breach of contract - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/08/apple-seeks-damages-from-epic-for-breach-of-contract.html <comment><AUTHOR> > ″Epic's lawsuit is nothing more than a basic disagreement over money," Apple > said in a filing with the District Court for the Northern District of > California. "Although Epic portrays itself as a modern corporate Robin Hood, > in reality it is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that simply wants to pay > nothing for the tremendous value it derives from the App Store."</comment>


Study Suggests Link Between Air Pollution and Psychiatric Disorders - <AUTHOR> https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/08/27/2151221/study-suggests-link-between-air-pollution-and-psychiatric-disorders <comment><USER2> Why does almost every study I ever read make me pipe up with "correlation or causation"?

I mean, smog means big cities, noise, stress, traffic, little open space or green spaces and parks. The more smog, the more likely these things are present due to the nature of city management and the connection between traffic and smog.

It might be the smog, it might be one of many things it often comes with, likely some combination of all environmental factors.

<comment><USER3> The mentally ill gravitate to places with mental health/social services... Aka cities. It's not rocket science.</comment></comment>


Political Loyalties in Web Frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://plope.com/Members/chrism/political_loyalties

<comment><USER2> The governing metaphor doesn't work so much. The right/left political metaphor is overloaded enough as it is.

How hard is it to say that some frameworks provide some features that others do not?</comment>


Ruby Conference Buzzword Bingo - <AUTHOR> http://lolrus.org/RubyConferenceBingo.svg

<comment><USER2> As it turns out, this is a silly Bingo card because either everyone will lose or everyone will win at the same time, assuming that everyone pays attention more or less equally.

What you needed to do was take those terms (and maybe some more), put them as images, scramble them each time the page refreshes, so the cards are all different.

<comment><USER3> You could do that as an Web-scale HTML5 app with a RESTful API using a NoSQL DB and an awesome MVC DSL, assuming you're doing this all BDD (using Bacaon, of course) and have some ninja Ruby skills.

But I'm betting YAGNI.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was inspired while sitting through Golden Gate Ruby Conference.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I need to make a web app to generate these so we can actually play!

<comment><USER4> You want one?

[Edit: Took me half an hour. In my defense, it is Saturday morning and I was chatting with a friend at the time.

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/ruby-buzzword-bingo>

]

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hehe, having just been at DjangoCon it's funny to see where we have overlap:

* BDD (a single lightning talk) * NoSQL (a panel) * Bacon (served with breakfast on one day) * Web-scale (never said, per-se, but there were a few talks on scaling)

</comment><comment><USER6> Where is the _why square?

<comment><USER7> "Bacon" (chunky or otherwise).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ha Ha! Fantastic! I want to use this!

</comment><comment><USER9> I call 1st row to be filled first: "BDD, Active ____, NoSQL, Monkey Patch, Social Graph"

<comment><USER10> it already has been!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Missing: Awesome, epic, TextMate (or just 'mate'), Sinatra.

</comment><comment><USER11> Did you use Patrick's Bingo Card Creator for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, just inkscape.</comment></comment>


How not to get accepted to YC or Techstars - <AUTHOR> http://saint-rebel.com/2011/05/11/how-not-to-get-accepted-to-ycom-or-techstars/

<comment><USER2> Linkbait and strawman. "Why didn't we apply to what seems like a necessary program to launch a startup these days?" Even PG would not claim that YC is "a necessary program to launch a startup."

<comment><USER3> It is indeed pretty clever to claim that doing something the majority of startups do is a bold move and worthy of attention on that account. (I _wish_ the majority of new startups applied to YC, but that is almost certainly not the case.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this statement is very powerful by itself for YC, TS and all other accelerators:

"From all apparent sources they have seemed be similarly aligned with founders after the same things, successful companies. If this trend continues of more accelerators, and more startups applying to them, and the primary benefit becomes out of reach of non participating companies, then it would likely have the opposite effect."

and this...

"It appears though that it is becoming more and more necessary to participate in these programs and pay the price of admission to gain entrance to the club. "

So will accelerators become the next Subway Sandwich franchise?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to hear more about how you rolled your nice little snowball. Did you have any VC? You didn't have YC, but you did get support from Gangplank (gangplankhq.com) right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Entirely bootstraped. We had some personal savings that allowed us to run real lean and build up revenue slowly without trying to out run burn. We hit a tipping point about 8 months in where the momentum started to carry us.

We are an orignial anchor of Gangplank, but never utilized any funding but am thankful for the community support. Gangplank is a great collaborative workspace, in the early days though there was not the formal mentoring or incubation to speak of that has become available over the last few months.</comment></comment>


Containerized Builds for Rust on the ESP32 - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/mtnmts/containerized-builds-for-rust-on-the-esp32-e8m <comment><USER2> Great work! I have to try this out soon to finally put my ESP32 boards to work</comment>


Ask HN: Does your cable ISP suck? - <AUTHOR>

Does your Internet Service at home or work ever seem slow at times? Do you often have to unplug and replug your modem and wireless router at random times to get back online? Does this frustrate you?
It happens to me too much.
We have Comcast Cable Internet Service at our house(up to 12Mbps) and it generally works great but:
* sometimes it is painfully slow.
* oftentimes it is more like medium than fast.
* at least once per week we have to go downstairs and unplug/plug-in the modem and router.
* I have no idea the extent of the problem because I don't have a tool that measures the speed of my internet access throughout the day!
I know from experience and talking to people that this is a BIG problem that happens in offices and homes across the U.S.
Does this happen to you? How do you deal with it? Do you know of any software that can measure my internet provider's performance?
(P.S. Shameless plug: If a solution doesn't exist, I plan on writing one and you can own it by bidding here: http://jobpic.com/a221 ) <comment><USER2> Here in Sweden some government agencies and a foundation (who also handles the TLD) developed a program called tptest, which measures your speed against a server: <http://tptest.sourceforge.net/> <http://opensource.iis.se/trac/bbk/browser/trunk>

Now there is also a flash application available (but probably not foss) <http://www.bredbandskollen.se/> and commercial uptime monitors like <http://www.pingdom.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know about testing continuously throughout the day, but you can do on- demand tests at speedtest.net or dslreports.com

I have cox and it's hit or miss, depending on the day.

</comment><comment><USER4> At home I have Time Warner Business Cable 15mb down, 2mb up. The speed tests always report near-advertised speeds, and connectivity is reasonably reliable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know. Thanks for the data point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have no problems with the performance of SuddenLink, however I do absolutely hate their "helpful" redirects of domain typos to crap pages.</comment>


What does it take to make a good investment decision in a super hyped market? - <AUTHOR> https://icodice.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> I mean when you consider the fun/decadent website I linked and all the great looking ICOs competing mostly on the basis of "let's raise millions and try to disrupt this and that and see if it actually works". I assume most of you guys and gals are not deep in the crypto space. Is that correct? What's your educated opinion on the crypto/blockain technologies? Is it, in your opinion, really like witnessing the emergence of the world wide web?

</comment><comment><USER2> If you are new to the market, your best bet is not to make any investment - otherwise you are just playing the lottery.

You are way way too late to the crypto party - wait a few months, almost a certainty you can buy whatever you want cheaper. Insanity reigns right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am "old" to the market. But I was interested in an out-group view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's three things you can do with a super hyped market.

1\. Stay far, far away.

2\. Believe the hype.

3\. Don't believe the hype, but try to make some money, and then get out before it all falls apart. This tends to get converted into 2 in your own thinking, because you're making all this money for a while.

The safe option is to stay out. Yes, you may miss some gains. You should still have a shirt left at the end of the day, though.</comment>


CrossUO- OpenSource First Linux/mac/win Ultima Online Client - <AUTHOR> "CrossUO is developed by a team that worked on Orion. It's an open source suite that includes a launcher, an updater and a client, to play UO on the platform of your choice and that works with many eras of the game and with almost any shard!!! There's also an assistant Razor-like in development that is not released yet. The multilingal team is ready to answer your questions and read your feedback if there's anything with the suite.
To follow the project:
Website: https://crossuo.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/FhNvsb6
Github: https://github.com/crossuo/
Be a part of a new old school adventure! The immortal Ultima Online is now available on mac and linux!" <comment><USER2> Almost perfect dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024518)

To the OP, who appears to be new to HN: you'll get more attention if this is posted as a Show HN, which means that you put your website link in the "url" field and start your submission title with "Show HN: ".

Very cool project!

</comment><comment><USER3> UO is a fantastic game, going to be great fun picking it back up again on my Mac!</comment>