The Internet mystery that has the world baffled - <AUTHOR> http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/internet/Cicada+3301+online+mystery+enthralls+codebreakers/9211024/story.html <comment><USER2> Fascinating story, but that article reads like the journalist took troll stories from 4c as sources. Seriously, whoever wrote this appears to be clueless.

> "a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image. > By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime"

 _Excuse_ me?

> "TOR is an obscure routing network that allows anonymous access to the > "darknet" — the vast, murky portion of the Internet that cannot be indexed > by standard search engines. Estimated to be 5,000 times larger that the > "surface" web, it's in these recesses that you'll find human-trafficking > rings, black market drug markets and terrorist networks"

Sure... the "surface" web is just the tip of the iceberg, right? Journalism at its best.

<comment><USER3> >> "a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image. By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime"

       #include <stdio.h>
       int main() {
           printf("%d\n",2147483629*2147483647);
       }
       $ gcc test.c -o test 2> /dev/null
       $ ./test
       19

<comment><USER4>
        $ python -c "print '0x%x' % (2147483629*2147483647)"
        0x3ffffff600000013

<comment><USER5> R terminal:

> 2147483629*2147483647

[1] 4.611686e+18

<comment><USER6> Please. The only proper answer is to gather as many friends as you can and all implement the peasant's algorithm together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Color me skeptical, but it seems like bullshit to me.

The newspaper article has basically one source. The Wikipedia article dates from the day the newspaper article was published, and only has the article (and a reprint) as its sources.

[http://uncovering-cicada.wikia.com](http://uncovering-cicada.wikia.com) doesn't seem to have any activity from more than 6 days ago.

I'm really not a cyber-sleuth like the guy in the story, but the first two pages of Google didn't show anything from before 11/26/2013.

I'm sure the puzzles are engaging, but this looks like fake buzz.

<comment><USER8> Here[0] is a reference from 2 years ago. I found a few more from the past.

[0] [https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/Cicada-3301-wiki](https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/Cicada-3301-wiki)

<comment><USER9> The "original image" linked to on this site also does not contain the plain- text "TIBERIVS CLAVDIVS CAESAR" etc. described, according to my hex editor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >For the growing Cicada community, it was explosive — proof this wasn't merely some clever neckbeard in a basement winding people up, but actually a global organization of talented people. But who? Speculation had been rife since the image first appeared. Some thought Cicada might merely be a PR stunt; a particularly labyrinthine Alternate Reality Game (ARG) built by a corporation to ultimately, and disappointingly, promote a new movie or car...Microsoft, for example, had enjoyed huge success with their critically acclaimed I Love Bees ARG campaign.

Sounds an awful lot like an ARG to me. While coordinating an ARG, a marketing firm never struggles to look like "a global organization."

I didn't do much detective work on _I Love Bees_ , but somehow one of my friends was paying attention when dozens of GPS coordinates were released. One of them was clearly pointing to the student center at NCSU. We were freshman living on campus (2004-2005) and we simply walked there at the prescribed time. There were two other guys standing there next to the payphones:

"Watcha doing?"

"Oh, just waiting on a phone call."

We all laughed. My friend answered one of the phones and had to answer some trivia question about the ILB backstory. It was quite surreal. Again, my pattern matching indicates a PR stunt more than a recruiting tool (there seems way too much fluff for that), but who knows.

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://uncovering- cicada.wikia.com/wiki/What_Happened_Part_2...](http://uncovering- cicada.wikia.com/wiki/What_Happened_Part_2_\(2013\))

        "After completing the test each solver was sent the following email
        to the address they had inputted. [...]

        'In the programming language of your choice build a TCP server
        that implements the protocol below.
        The server code must be written by you and you alone,
        although you are free to use any modules or libraries publicly available
        for the selected programming language.'"

Sounds like a very elaborate hiring process for a global organization. After solving all those sophisticated puzzles, being told to implement a TCP server is rather anticlimactic...

<comment><USER12> >Sounds like a very elaborate hiring process for a global organization.

I agree. In addition, the amount of chance involved in actually solving one of the puzzles in the OP article reminds me of those stupid brain teasers big companies used to ask in interviews years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We think of cryptography as the best way of information hiding. But it is not the only way. This sounds like some group is testing the limits of non- cryptographic information hiding. In particular, multiple possible messages encoded. How do you craft a message so that everyone is led to the decoy except those who know the secret key? And the size of the plaintext is completely hidden. Most likely this is a group associated with an intelligence agency, although they are likely not running an official project. They have an idea and are exploring it for now.

Interestingly, the NSA has access to enough Internet traffic to be able to identify people who are playing this game, even if they don't get to the final round.

<comment><USER14> WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Tor [... is] estimated to be 5,000 times larger that the "surface" web

Am I missing something? That obviously isn't correct.

<comment><USER16> You are not missing something the author has obviously mixed up the "dark web" and tor.

<comment><USER10> I think the author got it right and d23 hid that in the ellipsis.

>TOR, short for The Onion Router, is an obscure routing network that allows anonymous access to _the "darknet" — the vast, murky portion of the Internet that cannot be indexed by standard search engines.

>Estimated to be 5,000 times larger that the "surface" web_, it's in these recesses that you'll find human-trafficking rings, black market drug markets and terrorist networks.

[edit: To be perfectly clear, I was only highlighting what was actually said. I don't know anything about the dark webs.]

<comment><USER17> It's quite obvious from your very own quote that it's the author of the article who's confused about the three (!) different notions of unindexable contents larger that the indexable one (deep web) vs. anonymous p2p file sharing networks (darknets) vs. Tor hidden services. I'm tempted to call this "a confusion hat-trick". ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Whenever this comes up, I'm reminded of this series:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codename_Icarus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codename_Icarus)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301116/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301116/)

Very popular with the teens in my family with fantasies of being whisked away 'cause they're just so damn smart.

<comment><USER19> I used to harbor similar fantasies (witness my username and the television series 'Pretender'). But you can't just put some supergenius 8-year-old in a special school and have 'em pop out with the diligence required to achieve great things early in adolescence.

<comment><USER20> That's sort of the basis of Plato's Republic, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Drink your Ovaltine? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdA__2tKoIU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdA__2tKoIU)

</comment><comment><USER22> _By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime..._

Huh?

<comment><USER23> "To create encryption keys, RSA uses two huge prime numbers and multiplies them together to produce an even bigger prime."

\-- Sandeep Junnarkar, CNET News.com August 9, 2002

<comment><USER24> This must be some kind of journalist meme... :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would think someone would have been able to figure out who is behind this by ascertaining who registered the domainname mentioned in the article. It is, practically speaking, impossible to have an anonymously registered .com domainnname. Identities of .com registrar customers, as well as those who are authorized to process .com registrations, can be "hidden" from the public, but they do exist in at least one database, or several. And even the mere threat of litigation is usually enough to get the requested information released.

Why even use a clever dommainname? An IP address would work just as well.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Nerd sniping", [http://xkcd.com/356/](http://xkcd.com/356/)

<comment><USER27> Aha I remember him talking about that problem in a talk at Google! He got that question in a screening interview for Google itself, and be got nerd-sniped :)

Apparently he now this ks about it every time he uses public rest rooms.

His xkcd talk at Google is we worth googling :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've visited HN every day for years. How the hell is this the 1st time I've ever heard of this?

<comment><USER7> Cause it's fake. AFAICT Google doesn't show anything earlier than 11/26/2013.

<comment><USER29> [http://mentalfloss.com/article/31932/chasing-cicada- explorin...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/31932/chasing-cicada-exploring- darkest-corridors-internet)

From a year ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I remember back, maybe ten or 12 years ago, there was another difficult online game/puzzle called, if memory serves, notpr0n.com. It was pretty difficult, requiring lateral thinking, some amount of technical skill, and some strange trivia knowledge. I feel like this is just another version of that: hard internet puzzle. I'm also not discounting that this is some sort of ARG for something or another.

<comment><USER31> Yes!

I think I made is to minus 15 with a friend. I might start again...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Mostly it amuzes [and targets] people who feel a never ending desire to prove their own worth by taking tests, and going through ladders, games and rules imposed by others, presumably "smarter and more powerful".

Someone has to say loudly "who gives a shit about this crap" and just move on.

<comment><USER33> It's mysterious. Rarely does one say this about js, or ruby.

<comment><USER34> [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)

You did say "rarely".

<comment><USER33> now that's interesting.

and didn't have to fly anywhere to scan a qr code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This bares a striking resemblance to the DefCon Mystery Box and badge puzzles that Ryan Clarke (aka LosT/1o57) designed. Lots of crypto, hidden messages, esoteric references, ancient languages and symbols, quasi-mystical, etc. I don't know if he's behind it, but I wouldn't be surprised if he designed the puzzle(s).

[http://1o57.wikispaces.com/DC20+Badge+Contest](http://1o57.wikispaces.com/DC20+Badge+Contest)

</comment><comment><USER36> click bait headline, this should have been edited.

subtitle is "Cicada 3301 online mystery enthralls codebreakers around the world"

</comment><comment><USER37> Complicated puzzles full of red herrings, medieval European literature references, music... this sounds like the work of 1057.

<comment><USER38> For those confused, he means 1o57 - he created the DEFCON mystery challenge and usually is involved in the badge contest.

<comment> at-fates-hands This is actually what I was thinking since a lot of the same motifs are used. Obscure literature quotes, cryptography, mythology and red herrings.

wouldn't be surprised if it was revealed he was working on cahoots with whatever person or organization is running this. With stuff happening all around the world, you'd expect some intern or low level employee would spill the beans sooner or later. I'm surprised nothing has really be released yet on who or what is running this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> _" Speculation had been rife since the image first appeared. Some thought Cicada might merely be a PR stunt; a particularly labyrinthine Alternate Reality Game (ARG) built by a corporation to ultimately, and disappointingly, promote a new movie or car."_

How about a shadow-crowdsourced game? You know, just a forum of people hacking stuff up and suggesting new twists. Like the submarine captains and destroyers in the 2nd world war. They almost felt they 'knew' each other.

<comment><USER40> > How about a shadow-crowdsourced game? You know, just a forum of people > hacking stuff up and suggesting new twists.

There are probably multiple extant communities where such a thing could be started. SCP comes to mind for already having a mostly-coherent fictional universe in which such a game could take place:

[http://www.scp-wiki.net/](http://www.scp-wiki.net/)

<comment><USER41> I only came across SCP last year. So awesome, though it's more fun if you don't read the comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am apparently using TOR wrong.

> "TOR is an obscure routing network that allows anonymous access to the > "darknet" — the vast, murky portion of the Internet that cannot be indexed > by standard search engines. Estimated to be 5,000 times larger that the > "surface" web, it's in these recesses that you'll find human-trafficking > rings, black market drug markets and terrorist networks"

</comment><comment><USER43> Here is full story of 2013 hunt and all the puzzles: [http://uncovering- cicada.wikia.com/wiki/What_Happened_Part_1...](http://uncovering- cicada.wikia.com/wiki/What_Happened_Part_1_%282013%29)

</comment><comment><USER44> For some reason I keep thinking "Google" when I read about this. It seems very Google like somehow... didn't they do something similar to this before (albeit at a smaller scale)?

That said, this does seem like it's a bit, erm, _big_ , to be a simple recruiting initiative, even if it is recruiting for the NSA or something. I'm leaning towards some movie / game promotion angle. There was at least one TRON reference in there, so maybe all of this is leading up to a TR3N announcement?

</comment><comment><USER43> So, what are chances that TOR website was made from the start to announce that "talented" individuals had been found? And rumors about emails were just circulated by organizers.

<comment><USER45> Non-zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Parts of this sound like Valve's crazy Potato Fools Day. [http://valvearg.com/wiki/Valve_PotatoFoolsDay_ARG_Wiki?title...](http://valvearg.com/wiki/Valve_PotatoFoolsDay_ARG_Wiki?title=Valve_ARG_Wiki) It involved slow-scan TV images encoded in sound files, and Mayan calendar decoding etc.

<comment><USER47> Perhaps they're related. Gabe Newell is really taking great lengths to obscure the coming of Half-Life (2: Episode) 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I saw this years ago on 4chan.

I stopped at about 2nd riddle. (Basically because I googled the solution and found all the results posted on some pastebin, deducing that somebody surely found the results first, plus, I am not THAT smart and good with riddles.)

Who cares, basically.

</comment><comment><USER49> Is that going again?

I did most of it a couple of years ago, got to the personalized e-mail stage before I decided to work on other things.

It was strange how the pictures got put up all around the world at the same time, though.

<comment><USER50> Easy to organize with craigslist.

<comment><USER49> true; some of the stuff wasn't though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> There was an episode of Numbers i saw recently about an augmented reality game where people were tracking down QR codes and such. Reminds me of this.

</comment><comment><USER52> Well, they may find the smartest 4chan users this way, but in reality how many really smart people have time to visit that website?

<comment><USER53> You would be surprised. The amount of creative and intelligent expression that anonymity allows makes it a magnet for smart people trying to get a break from the culture of 'satisfiers'.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/12/creativity_is_rejected_teachers_and_bosses_don_t_value_out_of_the_box_thinking.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> ITS: 4chan goes mainstream...again

</comment><comment><USER55> Seems silly that is was a first come first serve basis for recruiting.

<comment><USER56> It wasn't. Seems to me that it's a way to keep things going. No one was recruited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Did anybody ever figure out what the twitter user googuns_prod was?

</comment><comment><USER58> The hilarious part is that all of these "geniuses" are being tricked into spending tons of time on a puzzle that has no solution or end.

<comment><USER59> Its not wasted time if you enjoy doing it.

<comment><USER23> "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

\-- Bertrand Russell

<comment><USER60> "Time isn't wasted, when you're getting wasted."

\-- Asher Roth

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Frank Shoemaker would call this noise.

</comment><comment><USER53> Extremely curious how this turns out.

</comment><comment><USER62> This looks really fun.

</comment><comment><USER33> Alright. Game on.</comment>


Ask HN: Hours and salary of web developers working in Japan - <AUTHOR> How many hours a day do you spend in average in the office? How much flexible are your hours?
Which technologies do you use and what's your salary range?
Although for USA and EU the internet is full of information, it's hard to find actual data for Japan. I'm thinking in particular to startups. <comment><USER2> Market salaries in Tokyo startups for developers cluster in the $30k to $50k range. Market salaries for developers generally in Tokyo go up to ~$70k (assuming one is in twenties or thirties). There exists a separate scale in finance and foreign-owned corporations -- AppAmaGooBookSoft typically (but not always) pay at discounts to their US operations but not typically 70% discounts.

You'll find wide variability with regards to working hours in startups, with most of the range covering "high-growth US startup" or "Japanese professional employment" levels of expectations rather than "unionized public sector worker in US or Europe" level of expectations. You will find similar variance in flexibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply.

As basically the Japanese taxation (~23%) is lower than most of the countries in EU (~40%), even $50k sound interesting.

I guess that the focal point is on the life/work ratio that each company is going to offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> patio11 has posted a few times about that on HN. Here is one: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in- japan/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the link – I read it some time ago already but it's an evergreen worth of a re-read!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: As someone who turns 26 in a few days, I would like to ask - <AUTHOR> What is something you know now, that you wish you had known in your mid-20's? <comment><USER2> "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." – Chinese Proverb

</comment><comment><USER3> better association of people. read books about leadership, self-improvement.

</comment><comment><USER4> Intensity. Whatever gifts you have, without intensity, they are being squandered.

</comment><comment><USER5> start a blog</comment>


Batonnet.js, a universal, intercultural and user-friendly way to display numbers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BinaryBrain/Batonnet.js <comment><USER2> Alright, that is just an awesome script. I had no idea what it was until I hit Demo.. and the excitement hit me all at once. Like number to line conversion... hangman, anyone? I can definitely use that in one of my projects! I appreciate you sharing!</comment>


COAP endpoints on IKEA Trådfri - <AUTHOR> https://bitsex.net/software/2017/coap-endpoints-on-ikea-tradfri/ <comment><USER3> For those unfamiliar with CoAP, it's a REST based protocol for machine-to- machine communication targeted at IoT (Internet of Things) scenarios particularly in Home Automation.

NB: Unlike REST though, URLS begin COAP:// instead of HTTP:// or HTTPS://.

This site gives a good overview: [https://www.slideshare.net/jvermillard/co- ap](https://www.slideshare.net/jvermillard/co-ap) Whilst this gives a lot more info: [http://coap.technology/](http://coap.technology/)

<comment><USER4> Also, the RFC is quite a nice read: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7252](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7252)

I particularly like the introduction, which succinctly explains the value in realizing a subset of REST common with HTTP, while not just blindly trying to make a compressed version of HTTP. The end result is a protocol which is quite easy to map to each other, not just in terms of implementation but also in terms of mindset. Being familiar with HTTP means you won't feel completely lost in trying to learn CoAP, which is pretty cool.

<comment><USER5> This is great. Thanks for the link! Its well written and shows great clarity of thought. The practical considerations are always mentioned, and they thought of everything, even ddos amplification attacks. A thing of beauty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's open source work being done on these lights in the (totally awesome) home assistant community [https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/61zuao/ikea_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/61zuao/ikea_tr%C3%A5dfri_lights_on_home_assistant_pi/) and preliminary support is at [https://github.com/home-assistant/home- assistant/pull/6263](https://github.com/home-assistant/home- assistant/pull/6263) The lights use ZLL, [https://www.letscontrolit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=219...](https://www.letscontrolit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2197)

<comment><USER7> If Tradfri bulbs use ZLL, is it theoretically possible to connect Tradfri bulbs to an existing Hue network?

<comment><USER6> Yes, some people have done it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcBp3wamIU0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcBp3wamIU0)

However Philips appear to be modifying Hue software to prevent it. Cloud lock- in. [https://developers.meethue.com/comment/2337#comment-2337](https://developers.meethue.com/comment/2337#comment-2337)

<comment><USER8> According to Phillips [1] it is IKEA not implementing the standard as they expect it to be implemented. That said, it's hard to say who is right here. Either way, consumers are losing out.

As a side note, IKEA's brightest bulb is 1000lm which is much brighter than the brightest Hue bulb, and it's cheaper :) I can perhaps see why Phillips would not go out their way to resolve this issue.

[1] [https://developers.meethue.com/comment/2686#comment-2686](https://developers.meethue.com/comment/2686#comment-2686)

Edit: fixed typo of watts vs lumen :)

<comment><USER9> "IKEA's brightest bulb is 1000W"

1000 Lumen. 1000 Watt bulbs exist for grow lights but IKEA doesn't make them that thirsty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Second article in a short while that praises Ikea's implementation. In the face of the security disaster that IoT devices usually represent, I'm somewhat dumbfounded by the idea that it would be Ikea, of all companies, to break the mould.

<comment><USER11> I think Apple's HomeKit deserves a mention here.

<comment><USER12> It does? I honestly haven't heard much about HomeKit from a security perspective, so I guess it is either not used or working out well so far :)

Has it been generally well received security-wise then?

<comment><USER13> It's probably the most secure, but that's because they cheat and require a secure element in all products with a pre-shared key.

Not a good solution in general.

<comment><USER12> You mean that HomeKit-compatible products all need to include some kind of HomeKit-chip with a pre-shared key or something? I'm completely unfamiliar and a quick search on homekit and pre-shared key didn't make me wiser :)

<comment><USER14> You don't even get to know what's inside HomeKit until you're an MFI-certified developer with Apple. And yes, there's a chip involved (again, which you can't even touch until you're an MFI licensee). The chip handles all the security protocols involved.

[https://mfi.apple.com/MFiWeb/getFAQ.action](https://mfi.apple.com/MFiWeb/getFAQ.action)

<comment><USER12> That doesn't sound in line with my preferences but quite Apple. So maybe high quality (hard to say?) but quite proprietary.

Makes me curious about how that homebridge node thing makes it work.

<comment><USER14> Well, it's pretty simple. If you want into Apple's ecosystem, you follow their rules. They've hardware-locked many other external things (dongles, charging cables, etc).

Cynics will say it's a money grab, proponents will say it greatly reduces or eliminates the risk of buying something that will not work right. Apple sells itself on the ability of their things working right out of the box.

<comment><USER15> > proponents will say it greatly reduces or eliminates the risk of buying > something that will not work right.

IIRC, it's been shown that a massive percentage of the Apple chargers for sale on Amazon are difficult to spot counterfeits. Some of those use dangerous electronic designs.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, unfortunately Apple can't stop everyone from making bad 5VDC bricks with USB sockets. Perhaps the "approved" cables have some kind of overvoltage protection in them, but otherwise that's always been a weak point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For reference, Tradfri is an IoT lighting kit:

[http://m.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/art/90353361/](http://m.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/art/90353361/)

<comment><USER12> I got the impression from an earlier article that it is completely without Internet though. So more LAN of Things?

<comment><USER17> That's the real problem with most of the "Internet of Things" products - <USER2> really shouldn't have skipped the "Network of Things" step. So many of the problems with these products could have been reasonably and properly shaken down and out... but instead all of the companies decided to unnecessarily bridge their products with the cloud and hastily rush to the market.

<comment><USER18> The problem is that with mobile and all the NAT firewalls in use today, going to a cloud service and back is easiest way to connect any two devices.

<comment><USER19> Security aspects aside, that's fine - what isn't is the inability to run that external server yourself.

Imagine if instead of using "proprietary cloud xyz" for a particular IoT product, you could spin up a cloud server or container up somewhere and install it yourself - and as long as you pay for the server, you have access.

Let the consumer decide based on their "expertise" level what option they want to use - but the option should be there, and included in some form with the product itself (maybe on an sd card or something), so that they could at least transition to that should the company go out of business. Ideally, the system would be open source as well, so it could be expanded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I bought some of these this weekend. The big perk? You don't need to use them as IoT devices at all. Hold one button to pair with a remote and you are done.

Unlike say the very expensive power mattress base (bad Ergotron) I bought which has sleep tracking that will only work if I reveal all my health data on my phone to their app. This includes data not collected by the mattress. It also requires you give your wifi password. They explicitly tell you they are going to sync it all to their cloud.

They basically demand the keys to the kingdom when all they should need is some basic bluetooth syncing to my phone. Obviously I did not move forward with the sleep tracking functionality.

</comment><comment><USER21> There seems to be conflicting info on whether the lights themselves support ZigBee Light Link (ZLL) or only ZigBee HA. Has anybody tested this?

Also I'm curious if they're still ZigBee 2 or if they're ZigBee 3.0, which essentially merges those standards together.

</comment><comment><USER22> IOT, how long until the Homebridge plugin is posted? [https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge](https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge)

<comment><USER22> [https://github.com/stenehall/homebridge- ikea](https://github.com/stenehall/homebridge-ikea)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> COAP is so much nicer than MQTT. MQTT is consultant-driven over-engineering and under delivery par excellence.

<comment><USER24> I use CoAP in my small DIY projects (ESP8266 mostly for now)… but sometimes I wish I used MQTT, because with the broker model you can put your device in deep sleep and only wake up occasionally, saving power. On the other hand the REST server model lets me adjust polling frequency on the client side, without storing any config in the device…

<comment><USER25> Is there anything about CoAP prevents a deep sleep? I use CoAP for work your comment left me confused

<comment><USER24> Well… the device being a server instead of a client :D

I mean you could make it a client, sure, but I think that kinda defeats the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had no idea .well-known was a standard (RFC 5785). Strange choice of name for a site metadata location.

<comment><USER27> It's to prevent a proliferation of things like /favicon.ico, /robots.txt, etc. each of which may actually be dynamically generated (e.g. think of subdomains like someguy.tumblr.com ), and therefore requires separate handling in firewalls, routing, etc. Basically many of the same problems you might encounter with librarys whose API is a bunch of globals; or a shell script which takes in options from hardcoded file paths rather than commandline flags or env vars.

The ".well-known" path makes this easier to manage going forward, since you can single it out for special handling _once_ , and implement the contents however you like (statically, dynamically, whatever).

<comment><USER4> Not to mention that there's also an IANA registry for these URLs, so things can be a little less ad-hoc: [https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known- uris/well-known-...](https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well- known-uris.xml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good to see. Investing time in any IKEA infrastructure is probably a high- factor value return.</comment>


Handling of U.S. trade dispute causes rift in Chinese leadership: sources - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-politics-analysis/handling-of-u-s-trade-dispute-causes-rift-in-chinese-leadership-sources-idUSKBN1KU0TU <comment><USER2> One good thing that could change from the tariffs is finally breaking the forced sharing of intellectual property with Chinese companies before allowing production. That was supposedly going to end around the end of 2018 already. A second positive change would be ending requiring selling a part of any foreign venture to a local Chinese company, which I don't think was planned to change. But the overall idea that trade deficits were generally bad for the us is a silly idea, so wrong.

The us has done a terrible job helping workers find new employment when their old factory or similar manufacturing jobs were lost to another country. It's hard to see how we'll ever do a good job on that because half the country has an ideological resistance to helping each other (social security, medical insurance, a job, those are all things we should make on our own). I can't see that these tariffs can ever bring back many factory jobs to the us. We need a strategy to find new jobs and industries. The current plan is just not going to accomplish much of anything.

But, and it's a big but, lets not forget that trade between countries has a good chance of reducing the potential of wars between them. I really believe that extensive international trade between the us and china will have a good tampering effect on potential war between the two countries. Chinese building of military bases in the south china sea against the wishes of your neighbors and and asserting your power won't help anyone to trust china, but when there was extensive and growing trade between the two powerful countries war should be less likely.

<comment><USER3> Saying the other political party has "ideological resistance to helping each other," is ridiculous. That kind of bigoted dismissive ignorance just fuels our bitter partisan gridlock and helps nothing.

Of course are fringe nutters in the world and unfortunately some of them even get elected, but the vast majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats, are just ordinary people who care about their kids and their neighbors, want to see everyone prosper, and even agree about a lot more than they disagree about.

<comment><USER2> But Paul Ryan, leader of the house, wants to cut social security, medicare and medicaid. He's against unemployment. He's the titular leader of 1/3 of the govt. That's not an exaggeration, those are his stated goals in multiple interviews over many years. I agree that the vast majority of Americans want those things but the leader of the house does not.

He's not just a fringe figure that managed to get elected but has no real power.

<comment><USER4> > half the country has an ideological resistance to helping each other

> I agree that the vast majority of Americans want those things

I had to double check that this was the same username. You seem to have disagreements with yourself. Which comment is the accurate one in your eyes? Either way, lumping half the country into one harmful ideal, then not apologizing or explicitly admitting you were initially wrong to do this or actually believing it, is not ok.

<comment><USER5> Half the country and half the people are not the same thing. Someone told me that the US voting system is designed to make sure more populated regions (e.g. big cities) don't overrule the less populated parts.

<comment><USER4> There is no mention of "half the people" and definitely not worth the pedantic differences here on a large generic statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems to me that these tariffs really do make sense regardless of political orientation. The big difference between Chinese and American labor is that we place a much higher standard on human and worker rights. Chinese workers manufacture e.g. $1000 iPhones earning literally a few dollars a day, living in on-site dormitories, all the while surrounded by suicide nets to try to deter the frequent suicides.

That's obviously not a great situation. Yet we, as in American companies, vastly incentivize such systems by shipping trillions of dollars worth of production to China. So we pride ourselves on more humane standards, yet send trillions of dollars to the lowest common denominator on labor that's a hair's breadth above slavery? This never made any sense to me.

I think free trade is a great idea when nations are comparably developed with comparable values. But when you have asymmetric value systems, you just end up greatly rewarding the lowest common denominator while hurting the nations that place a greater value on labor rights.

Anyhow, glad to see the effect of these tariffs is almost certainly going to end up favoring American interests, and perhaps even the Chinese people as well if I can be allowed a bit of optimism.

<comment><USER7> > The big difference between Chinese and American labor is that we place a > much higher standard on human and worker rights.

I used to believe this until I read up on how prisoners in the US basically work like indentured servants for pennies.

There's a few news articles and occasional "anger" at the situation, but I read about it 15+ years ago and nothing has changed.

It's not like the average Chinese person is against human and worker rights. If you talk to them, of course they will say they value it.

It's just those in power don't care. And those that do care, don't have the power to change anything.

<comment><USER8> Most of the prisoner work programs are optional. Same with foreign labor, yes working conditions are not optimal and there are improvements that could be made.

However having an an alternative option is almost always better than not having that option. This problem may be best solved by actually making it easier for companies to participate in prisoner work-release programs, thereby increasing competition and driving up prisoner wages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My own view:

It is "a not a secret secret" that a lot of party higher ups covertly own big parts of Chinese industry, including export oriented ones.

The squabble is about them being caught in the crossfire. Their message: "make peace with USA for as long as we make money." Now the talk is over them being thrown under the train. Naturally, they are frustrated by that.

I want to remember that Xi Jingping himself came to power on the promise of "making party membership great again" and rode the wave of anger of minor and midtier party bureaucrats over them being sidelined during Jiang and Hu's eras. But now, he himself is busy throwing its own "powerbase" under the train.

<comment><USER10> Maybe so, I don't know. One thing is sure. Clinton's and W's and Obama's illusion that eventually China would follow the example of free trade some day because that was the supposed natural progression has led to this dispute that had been brewing unattended for decades.

<comment><USER11> Xi seems to have overplayed his hand over the past few years. Instead of China quietly amassing power as it had done since the early 90s, Xi pushed China into a much more assertive role before it was necessarily ready.

The US and others had looked the other way on China's mercantilist actions in the past on a strategic gamble that China would slowly evolve into a more democratic state, with open markets, freedoms and rule of the law. This strategy had worked out well with South Korea and Taiwan as they made their transitions from poor dictatorships to wealthy democracies (and peaceful US allies).

During the reign of Xi's predecessors this did seem to be a possibility but Xi's policies and perhaps most importantly his ascension to President for Life ended any illusion that China would make this sort of evolution.

The Made in China 2025 program for example explicitly codifies what many had long assumed - that China is directly targeting the most advanced foreign industries with a state backed industrial policy.

With China moving away from even playing lip service to liberalization and now directly threatening US/European interests with Made in China 2025 and other initiatives, there is no longer any reason for the US to play nice with China.

Frankly if China had simply continued quietly moving forward as they had under Hu and made perhaps some nominal reforms or concessions they probably could've continued their plans unabated.

<comment><USER7> > ...South Korea and Taiwan as they made their transitions from poor > dictatorships to wealthy democracies (and peaceful US allies).

If I'm not mistaken, both these countries became wealthy during the dictatorship period. It was only after the stability and wealth that they become democracies.

Taiwan's first democratic vote was in 1996 and South Korea's first public election was in 1987.

<comment><USER12> Yep. They were also basically peaceful US allies at almost their onsets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting discussion on the topic.

[https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2142568/us- ch...](https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2142568/us-china-trade- war-not-about-trade-not-about-trump-heres-what-it)

<comment><USER14> That article is interesting, but not very much so, given that it was written before the full implications of the ZTE incident were made clear ([https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/technology/china- technolo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/technology/china-technology- zte-sputnik-moment.html))

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > A backlash is being felt at the highest levels of the government, possibly > hitting a close aide to Xi, his ideology chief and strategist Wang Huning, > according to two sources familiar with discussions in leadership circles.

> A prominent and influential academic whose views have found favor in some > party quarters has also come under attack for his strident views on Chinese > power.

> Wang, who was the architect of the "China Dream", Xi's vision for China to > become a strong and prosperous nation, has been taken to task by the Chinese > leader for crafting an excessively nationalistic image for the country, > which has only provoked the United States, the sources said.

> "He's in trouble for mishandling the propaganda and hyping up China too > much," said one of the sources, who has ties to China's leadership and > propaganda system.

Wang Huning is a noted neo-authoritarian ideologue and a member of China's most powerful leadership body, the Politburo Standing Committee. Understanding his views gives a lot of insight into the Chinese government's current outlook:

[http://www.judeblanchette.com/blog/2017/10/20/wang- hunings-n...](http://www.judeblanchette.com/blog/2017/10/20/wang-hunings-neo- authoritarianism-dream)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/world/asia/china-xi- jinpi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-wang- huning.html)

<comment><USER16> Huning is one of the most underrated and understudied people right now.

<comment><USER9> Totally disagree, he survived so long just because he was near invisible, while being to some extend useful.

He got great luck that his scholarly postulates happened to align with prevailing winds during Jiang's era. From then and on, he was just an obscure speechwriter and unofficial chief of propaganda, with some "strategy advisor" cred.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The best article on this matter, by the best journalist on China, John Garnault.

[http://chinaheritage.net/journal/imminent-fears-immediate- ho...](http://chinaheritage.net/journal/imminent-fears-immediate-hopes-a- beijing-jeremiad/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Just a subtle reminder that China isn't a monolithic entity, but is instead made out of people, like all countries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Except that its business model IS being a monolithic entity.

<comment><USER19> Yes. The world's largest population is relying on an unsustainable economic model, under a political system that is not beholden to or representative of its people, propped up by western nations that aren't going to need it anymore in a post-robotics and post-automation world.

That really should worry people more than it seems to.

<comment><USER20> There is no reason a country of 1.4 billion people with strong work ethics and good results on STEM education cannot have a self-sustaining economy when organized with their largely capitalistic system. The only two critical resources China still lacks are oil and state-of-the-art electronics. They have alright homegrown alternatives to the latter, and those are improving every year. They are also addressing the oil security issue using many approaches in tandem.

"But China's continental economy of 1.4 billion people could achieve almost all possible economies of scale while still maintaining intense internal competition; in principle, India could, too. The United States, with 300-plus million people, would suffer only slightly if it exported and imported little beyond its borders, and the same is true for the European Union's single market of 520 million.

Beyond some point, the potential benefits of wider trade between equally rich countries inevitably decline. If there was less trade among the continental- scale economies of China, the US, and Europe in 2050 than there is today, the direct impact on living standards would be small." [1]

In addition, China's AI research is already the 2nd most advanced in the world [2]. They are trading heavily with the west in order to grow faster, but they would still be growing without trading.

[1] [https://www.project- syndicate.org/commentary/protectionism-c...](https://www.project- syndicate.org/commentary/protectionism-can-no-longer-stop-china-by-adair- turner-2018-07)

[2] [http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2015/toyear/2017/index?ai&v...](http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2015/toyear/2017/index?ai&vision&mlmining&nlp&world)

<comment><USER21> "The only two critical resources China still lacks are oil and state-of-the- art electronics."

This seems like an odd thing to say.

China produces about 1/3 of the amount of oil Saudi Arabia does. So it's not the top oil producer in the world, but it is a major one.

And Intel's Fab 68, which produces 3DXPoint, is in China. Then again, I'm not sure how state-of-the-art electronics can be considered a "resource".

<comment><USER20> China still needs to import most of the oil it uses. _Any_ major economy would be crippled if it needed to cut down oil consumption by half or more within a short time frame.

<comment><USER21> Since oil is distributed all over the world, I don't think losing access is something that China should worry about any more than the US. Historically, the nations that had to worry about others cutting them off were the ones that set out to conquer the world and got everybody to oppose them together.

<comment><USER20> Geopolitics is much more complex than that. The US is still the world's number one power with global influence as well as allies and several bases in the most important oil-exporting region in the world. China does cultivate friendship with their big oil-exporting neighbor to the north but they do not want to depend too much on that either.

In any case, less dependence on oil import is a major reason they push EVs and renewable energy very hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a real possibility of escalation as I doubt Trump will capitulate.

Trump seems to like the pomp of a 'win'... real or imagined.

I think it will come down to how quickly things escalate and if Trump runs or wins in 2020. It's possible the Chinese will hold out until then and adjust accordingly... I think the stakes are high on both sides. Thus far China has had virtually no economic push back to the transfer of jobs and wealth from the US. If the Chinese can break through, I doubt anything will stop China's accent. Likewise, if Trump doesn't persist it's possible he'll lose his voter base and it's unlikely that any other administration will have the stomach to take on China.

I think it's possible that if a few other things go Trump's way (North Korean, Iran, the wall) he'll have enough voter support for a second term. I don't see a blue wave forming if that happens, nor do I see a large pool of credible Democratic Party presidential candidates emerging no matter how uncouth Trump's rhetoric. A perfect example is Ocasio-Cortez and her socialist policies who I don't see appealing to a large enough voter base.

<comment><USER10> It's too early to predict outcomes. I will say the Dems putting out more Ocasio-Corteses is a gift to the Reps. The afterberners have very specific constituencies which only exist in special environments. They don't have any broad appeal.

<comment><USER7> Reading Nassim Taleb's article [1], I feel politics will become more and more extreme in the coming years.

Where it will become the far-left vs the far-right. And honestly, the US "far- left" isn't really that extreme compared to some European parties.

1\. [https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the- dict...](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship- of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15)

<comment><USER10> But isn't that because the electorate itself doesn't support such candidates? The Dems going hard left will make it easier for Repubs to be electable.

<comment><USER23> Only to the degree that the Republicans _don 't_ go hard right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good. Anything that rattles Red Emperor Xi is a good thing.

<comment><USER25> This is a bad HN comment, regardless of your views on geopolitics. Please don't unsubstantive and flamebaity comments, especially not on divisive topics.

If you'd review [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and follow the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Basically the Chinese McCains vs the Chinese Trumps. This ought to be good!

<comment><USER12> Anyone who follows Chinese politics will realize the CCP has factions just like any other large political organization. However, factional divides are usually restricted to smokey rooms and kept out of public eye. But when personal wealth is at stake, they are bound to be more riled up.

<comment><USER27> And those factions have economic ties. I would expect that the sanctions lists would be exploiting those relationships. In China you have an entire village producing something like patio umbrellas or golf carts. This creates systemic risks because the US could wipe out industry of an entire village — takenit offline for six months and you can do a lot of political damage. China may be authoritarian but they are not immune to the will of the people. The Mandate of Heaven is almost an early version of democratic ideals. Lose the people you lose the mandate.

<comment><USER28> If you look at thousands of years of history, it is the power over-reach that causes a swift loss of the Mandate of Heaven. Tied to human nature. Always has been, always will be. There is no superiority to the system's design.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Microsoft Is Losing Its Way - <AUTHOR> http://vistasmalltalk.wordpress.com/2007/04/06/how-microsoft-is-losing-its-way/ <comment><USER2> I wrote a big reply, and by the time I submitted it, it said it was an unknown link. :(

<comment><USER3> thats not a bug ,,, it's a feature ~ <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/398269769></comment></comment>


Megaprocessor – A micro-processor built large - <AUTHOR> http://www.megaprocessor.com <comment><USER3> There's also the MOnSter 6502, an exact copy of the 6502 microprocessor built with discrete transistors on a 12"x15" board. It's operational and Apple Integer Basic runs successfully on it, slightly slower than the real chip. It's quite impressive, since unlike the real processor, the MOnSter 6502 has a bunch of LEDs indicating the internal state.

See [http://monster6502.com/](http://monster6502.com/)

<comment><USER4> The best part about the MOnSter 6502 is you can control the frequency through a potentiometer :)

A really excellent way to switch between actually seeing the individual instructions being decoded and executed and getting something fast enough to be (barely) usable!

<comment><USER5> What's really attractive to me is that it's also an existing, "real" architecture instead of a custom one-off (which may have been designed specifically to ease a particular implementation.) It would be fun to see a discrete 8080, Z80, or even 8086, for much the same reason.

<comment><USER6> The first generation DEC PDP-8 minicomputer was a discrete-component machine the size of a small refrigerator.[1] Probably the smallest pre-IC computer manufactured.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8)

<comment><USER3> The smallest pre-IC computer is probably an aerospace computer. These computers are very interesting, but almost totally neglected. For instance, in 1960 Atlas ICBMs (nuclear missiles) were guided by a computer that was a two foot cube and weighed 240 pounds. Side note: PROM memories were invented for this computer, so missiles could be aimed at different targets in the field.

In 1962, Arma created the first microcomputer, or at least the first computer with that name. The Arma Micro Computer was a general-purpose aerospace computer built from transistors and transfluxors (two-hole core memory with a cool name). The computer was a tiny 0.4 cubic feet and 20 pounds. It was a 22-bit machine; while we now think word sizes must be a power of 2, back then people used whatever word size gave them the accuracy they needed.

<comment><USER6> The original Atlas guidance computer was ground-based.[1] It was the first transistorized computer, but it was a sizable mainframe and not on the missile. Guidance was by radio control.

The ARMA Micro D is really obscure. It shows up in some lists of early computers. Apparently it was inside some versions of the LTN-51 inertial navigation system.[2][3] But this seems to have been around 1969-1970. The Concorde used that navigation system.

[1] [http://afspacemuseum.org/displays/BurroughsComputer/Burrough...](http://afspacemuseum.org/displays/BurroughsComputer/Burroughs_Historical_Summary.pdf) [2] [https://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFArchive/1970/1970%20-%...](https://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFArchive/1970/1970%20-%200479.PDF) [3] [http://www.seaboardairlines.org/aircraft/ins-2.htm](http://www.seaboardairlines.org/aircraft/ins-2.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Those LEDs! Those brightly lighty LEDs!

Never mind the gates. _Relaxen und watschen der blinkenlichten._

Indeed the LEDs are the most important part since this project seems to be all about exposition. For example:

> So how big is it ? Well an 8-bit adder is about a foot long (I use five of > these)

If he were optimising for size rather than clarity, it would be much smaller. Instead he has nice diagramtic outlines for the gates, and generous spaces between them. And those LEDs! Those brighty lighty LEDs.

<comment><USER8> When I got started in electronics, I imagine exactly a little LED lighting up when a bit is flip in a memory chip. The on in the post is a great illustration! well done!

<comment><USER9> Dekatrons work like this :) The actual logical state of the thing is stored using a glowing plasma.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekatron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekatron) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF8CnG7ee-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF8CnG7ee-A)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've followed this project and really enjoyed it. I've built small versions of various circuits, a core memory bit, a 4 bit adder, etc, but never even considered something of this scale as practical. I really hope the London Science Museum buys it and puts it along the wall next to the Difference Engine[1] (sigh, they closed their exhibit). This definitely belongs somewhere that the public could experience it though!

[1] ARGH! They closed the exhibit -- [http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/plan_your_visit/...](http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/plan_your_visit/exhibitions/computing)

<comment><USER11> Yes, they closed it, because that was the deal: [http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/information-t...](http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/information- technology/babbages-difference-engine-heads-for-california-2008-04/)

and [http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/modernsequel/](http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/modernsequel/)

"The complete working Babbage engine is on public display at the Science Museum in London. A duplicate engine and printer, a 'second original', the Babbage Difference Engine No.2 was completed for a private benefactor of the project, Nathan Myhrvold, formerly chief technology officer and Group VP at Microsoft. The Babbage Difference Engine No 2. was on displayed and demonstrated from May 2008 to January 2016."

<comment><USER10> Here's the thing, as I understood it the Science Museum in London got to keep theirs, the second one, would go through the Computer History Museum for a year, and then on to Nathan.

Except if you read my link, _the London Science Museum_ has taken theirs (which is not Nathan's) off display. That was what I was saying "Argh!" about.

<comment><USER12> Apparently the Computing gallery is closed so it can be replaced with a new Mathematics gallery. Hopefully that will manage to incorporate the Difference Engine somewhere.

<comment> adam-a I went recently and it was still on display, although it was not in the computing exhibit as before, but sort of on it's own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of this DIY 4 bit processor: [https://hackaday.io/project/665-4-bit-computer-built-from- di...](https://hackaday.io/project/665-4-bit-computer-built-from-discrete- transistors)

The paranoid in me wonders if in the future we'll have to resort to projects like this for sensitive tasks to know our hardware hasn't been backdoored...

<comment><USER14> Through-hole components won't save you.

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

(explanation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzDTZuFJYX4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzDTZuFJYX4))

<comment><USER15> There's some serious head scratching going on when you watch the video. If you can, wait a day before watching the explanation. I'm not even sure what's going on after watching that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The project is fantastic, and I'd love to see it in person. However, that might be the worst game of Tetris ever memorialized in a YouTube video. I guess he was too busy building this awesome machine.

</comment><comment><USER17> The amazing thing about this is that you can't critique. I mean, you can _say_ anything you want, but you can't stop it or change this guy's mind. :)

It's pretty neat seeing him change the clock speed: [https://youtu.be/z71h9XZbAWY?t=3m38s](https://youtu.be/z71h9XZbAWY?t=3m38s)

</comment><comment><USER18> We see these types of postings here from time to time and it always brings to mind the famous quote from Edmund Hillary when asked why he climbed Mt. Everest. If one wants to go to 39,000 feet you can get on a commercial airliner and do so or pretty close. Similarly, I could buy a microprocessor board (e.g. RPI for $25 or so) but this guy climbed the Mt. Everest of computer, "because he wanted to".

<comment><USER19> It was George Mallory who is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort "Because it's there".

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess it's a lot quieter than using relays...

[http://www.nablaman.com/relay/](http://www.nablaman.com/relay/)

<comment><USER21> I attended a talk by the guy who built this thing: [http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/](http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/)

He included a live demo. It made a very satisfying "kachunk-kachunk-kachunk" sound as it multiplied two numbers. It also made me realize that the threshold of complexity necessary to construct a practical turing-complee computing device is quite low.

<comment><USER22> Indeed, it doubled as a beatbox machine, with 99% perfect rhythm! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3wPBcmSb2U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3wPBcmSb2U)

(Unfortunately the small demo isn't doesn't run to completion, perhaps because the source material didn't include it, or because uploading it all would have been nontrivial)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Doesn't the mega and micro cancel and we just have a processor?

:)

[Edit Addition: This isn't just a math joke, his mega-processor is exactly the size a processor was before micro-technology made them a million times smaller... so making something at 1/million scale scaled up million/1 makes it the same size as the original.]

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm watching the video thinking, wow, this guy has an amazing shed. Then at the end you realise it's in his living room.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of the MOnSter 6502 project that did the same thing with a 6502 CPU.

It was actually shown at the Bay Area Maker's Fair:

MOnSter 6502 monster6502.com

</comment><comment><USER26> Question: is there a market for servers twice the size they are. But a fraction of the cost.

I for example have really consolidated servers in recent years. VMs are fantastic. But the result is that I have lots of Data Center space spare.

I would love to buy servers of similar power consumption but larger foot print, for less dollars than small ones. Assuming that a lot of limitations and cost go into shrinking current systems.

Or are there other issues like distance between components that then come into play?

<comment><USER5> Due to how IC fabrication works, and the laws of physics, that is not really possible. Larger ICs will definitely cost more simply because less fit on a single wafer --- and defects will be more common, use more power because to use the water analogy there is more 'inertia' to move around the circuits, and also be slower as a result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me of a machine I saw on Tokio's Miraikan: it demonstrates the Internet (TCP/IP) with colored balls, rails, tubes and whatnot.

Wonderful post!

<comment><USER28> I saw that! Except when I saw it, it was mostly broken, perhaps under the DDoS of children putting too many bits into it too fast.

When I saw it, you could send a message from one designated terminal to another, but that's just rolling balls on tracks. In the intended design you could choose which terminal it went to using an 8-bit IP address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Lots of previous submissions, but the major thread (with lots of comments from the author!—maybe he'll show up again) was [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9755742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9755742). Since that was over a year ago, we won't count this one as a dupe.

<comment><USER30> Also because it was finished since then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> this would be fantastic learning tool. i could definitely imagine it being used to great effect in a computer architecture course.

</comment><comment><USER32> Does he mention the clock speed of this thing? Wonder what the size comparison would be if it was built on say a 20nm scale?

<comment><USER32> Oh found it on the Reg article - 20khz (0.02Mips)

<comment><USER33> 0.02 MIPS for real? I'd expect about 0.005 MIPS from a design like that.

Many early CPUs took multiple clock cycles per instruction, anywhere between 2 and 10+.

So all instructions are executed in a single clock cycle?

<comment><USER33> To add, here's a nice table of Meaningless Instructions Per Second for different CPUs:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second#Timeli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second#Timeline_of_instructions_per_second)

It's pretty representative of 8 bit CPU true performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What a madman! I mean this in a good way. This is really awesome. The link for "Stepping Stones" and worth a watch. I hope he finishes and does 8 through 10 on the video todo list.

I hope this finds a permanent public home at some point. This would be great addition to any technical museum or exhibition.

Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, that's one way to make completely open hardware :-) I wonder if it can run GPG.

</comment><comment><USER36> This reminds me of some other fascinating projects: The Clock[1] and The Tower[2]. Several years ago I thought about building a dead-bug style Christmas tree for a decoration competition. Projects like these continually remind me that when we're not optimizing for space, you really can make something functional _and_ beautiful.

[1]: [http://techno-logic-art.com/clock.htm](http://techno-logic- art.com/clock.htm) [2]: [http://techno-logic-art.com/tower.htm](http://techno- logic-art.com/tower.htm)

</comment><comment><USER37> I agree with him that the ~$25 Lattice Mach FPGA breakout boards are outstanding (but these days MachXO3 versions are available). They have an on- board FTDI FT2232 chip which provides JTAG programming of the FPGA, plus very key, an extra UART. With just one cable you power the FPGA, configure it and then talk to your design through the UART.

They are the FPGA version of ST's Nucleo boards (which have built in "ST-LINK" for programming and debugging plus extra UART).

</comment><comment><USER38> Ha this is timely for me ... last night I laid out an ALU in eagle using 7400 logic and was going to document the build of a 7400-based programmable processor.

<comment><USER5> You may find this interesting: [http://www.homebrewcpu.com/](http://www.homebrewcpu.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It belongs in a museum!

Seriously, that's quite an amazing project.

</comment><comment><USER40> Now you can see what a computer is doing.

Fantastic for understanding!

</comment><comment><USER41> Fantastic. That's all what I have dreamed when I studied Computer Architecture.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd like to see a story of somebody building their own IC fab in their garage.

<comment><USER43> This channel might be of interest to you: [https://youtu.be/-Qph8BNrnLY](https://youtu.be/-Qph8BNrnLY)

One of my favorite channels as she's done many projects I've had interest in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've really loved this project from the first time I saw mention of it. I've always dreamed of doing something like this, but have never been able to get the full technical abilities and resources to do it myself.

</comment><comment><USER45> Like a computer from a 1960s movie - computers as art meant them!

</comment><comment><USER46> An extreme case is LEGO logic gates:

[https://www.randomwraith.com/logic.html](https://www.randomwraith.com/logic.html)

</comment><comment><USER47> The last picture in the article implies to me that it's running windows, is that the case, or did I misunderstand something?

<comment><USER48> I would say that more likely that is just a separate computer running windows for research/programming/design/cat videos/etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Watching the guy play tetris made me cringe

</comment><comment><USER50> seems an implementation of the book - <USER2> [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JDMPOK2/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JDMPOK2/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

</comment><comment><USER51> Hahaha this is so complicated xD

</comment><comment><USER52> Interesting stuff</comment>


Storing Clocked Programs Inside DNA - <AUTHOR> http://swarmknowledge.com/Interview-with-Dennis-Shasha.pdf

<comment><USER2> Israel had a working DNA computer back in 2004 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_computing>). Ray Kurzweil talked about it in The Singularity is near.</comment>


Pmarchive - Any thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://pmarchive.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> We put this together a little while back as a way to easily access all the best stuff from blog.pmarca.com.

We really think this is some of the best writing about startups on the web and deserved to be pulled out of the wayback machine and cleaned up a bit.

Hopefully it will be of help to you. Let me know if you have any ideas about how we could make it better.

<comment><USER2> Awesome, I'm glad this is still alive somewhere. His writing really was great while it lasted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Markets that don't exist don't care how smart you are._

Perhaps this bodes well for the Diaspora team. The donations they've received indicates that there's a demand out there.

It just occurred to me, that an App could provide a seamless front for combined access to Facebook and whatever Diaspora comes up with. What are the barriers to social network aggregation?

</comment><comment><USER4> Did marca release this stuff under Creative Commons or something?

</comment><comment><USER5> Also <http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Google Reader already has all of his blog posts archived. But it's nice to have it organized too.

</comment><comment><USER7> Like it--the content was already out there but this is a cleaner presentation.</comment>


The Wealthy Use Google, The Poor Use Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/02/the_wealthy_use.html

<comment><AUTHOR> IMO it's also about education, not just wealth. On the sites I manage, the quality of Google traffic is significantly higher than from others. I'd rather have one hit from Google than two hits from another source.

</comment><comment><USER2> omg stop the lovefest</comment>


Composable hashing in Clojure/Java - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/phlegmaticprogrammer/tillich_zemor_hash

<comment><USER2> Nice! With this, you can get the same parallelizability and fast incremental updating as a hash tree, with the same output as a simple hash-of-all-the- bytes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, exactly. I am using it for hashing btrees, will put this up next week or so on github.</comment></comment>


Two space missions are launching next week - <AUTHOR> https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2019-07-09-Issue-20/?s <comment><USER2> One of the two being a lunar landing mission, for the government of India. Which might not be the best use of their citizen's money:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20254416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20254416)</comment>


Mastodon Is Like Twitter Without Nazis, So Why Are We Not Using It? - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mastodon-is-like-twitter-without-nazis-so-why-are-we-not-using-it <comment><USER2> "We" are not using it for the same reason nazis are not using it: because hardly anyone's there. It needs critical mass first. Once that happens, nazis/trolls/etc will find their way there too, I'm afraid.

<comment><USER3> Nazis are banned by policy.

<comment><USER4> I doubt that Twitter's policy is very nazi-friendly either.

<comment><USER5> Depends. You can take free speech very seriously and hence not want to ban Nazis. For example the ACLU went to the US Supreme Court to support the National Socialist Party of America to march in USA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie)

<comment><USER6> Not every country is the United States of America, and freedom of speech is not exclusively defined by amendments to an American constitution.

You can ban the nazi symbols & language and still have freedom of speech.

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure that "banning Nazi's" is a catch all phrase meaning banning anyone whose opinions we do not agree with above a certain level / token candidates.

Twitter has a pretty well rounded TOS and they tend to go out of their way to block/ban people even when they haven't violated the TOS/CoC when there is sufficient pressure.

That said I don't understand why people want to turn their social networks to echo chambers, if you only having discussions that do not make you feel uncomfortable or challenge your views you often do not hold discussions worth having.

<comment><USER5> > _I 'm pretty sure that "banning Nazi's" is a catch all phrase meaning > banning anyone whose opinions we do not agree with above a certain level / > token candidates._

The mastodon.social terms ban this stuff:

> \- Content illegal in Germany and/or France, such as holocaust denial or > Nazi symbolism > \- Conduct promoting the ideology of National Socialism

So, er, literally "Nazis", not just "things I don't like"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Twitter addicted journalists have started to perceive their tweeting as one of the most important aspects of their job. This is not good for journalism or society.

You know what a better solution to Twitter problems would be than "clean" Twitter? No Twitter. Just drop it. This is a problem not a solution.

<comment><USER9> Twitter seems to have become an alternative to Reuters or AP for most journalists the days. Even major newspapers and news organisations seem to 'back up' their articles with numerous quoted tweets —as if the half-baked shite spewing out of Twitter in response to World events was some kind of confirmation of a story's authenticity.

<comment><USER8> it's pretty disturbing. I wish I had better insight into the causes of this but from where I sit (an outsider in a different industry) it looks like a noxious combination of race-to-the-bottom, intellectual and professional laziness, lowered standards, groupthink, and institutional corruption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> First time I've heard of Mastodon, but I really hope it takes off. Social networks are now too integrated into modern life to be completely owned by private corporations.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why is this flagged?

</comment><comment><USER12> If we use it, the nazis will come.

PS: this reads just like a big old advertisement.

PPS: the scrolljacking is real on this page.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash VICE lost me as a reader when they overhauled their sites and made them shitty to unusable. I would have stuck around using reader view, but their writing quality has gone down again too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a popular adage that technology only becomes useful when it starts being used for porn. The reason is that, when the technology was thought up, the idea was not to use it for porn, but for something else. However the fact that the porn industry has independently found the technology useful, despite it not being targeted at them at all, shows the true potential of the technology.

The same can be said about social networks, except swap porn for nazis.

</comment><comment><USER14> Since it's decentralized that means there wouldn't be an effective way to ban someone from the network without consensus. Anyone, "Nazi" or not, would be free to post offensive content without a central authority policing users as is the case with Twitter. I don't think this is actually a solution that certain users and most advertisers want.

<comment><USER15> Mastodon.social would ban them, and if other instances don't police content sufficiently then Mastodon.social doesn't have to federate with them.

<comment><USER14> It would defeat the purpose of federation if there's a different server for each political persuasion. Why bother with federation if you don't want to see anything you disagree with? Each server would be its own hugbox.

<comment><USER16> There is a big difference between "I would prefer not to be routinely confronted with literal threats to kill me" and "I demand my own hugbox."

<comment><USER14> The problem with that is there is no practical difference between the two points of view. Both lead to balkanization and isolation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why on earth was this flagged?

</comment><comment><USER9> What I would like to see from any of these FOSS alternatives to Twitter is a way to import your existing Twitter archive.

I don't know if it's colossal arrogance, or colossal stupidity that makes so many developers launch their "Alternative to Hugely Successful Product X" without giving people any way of bringing across their existing "Product X" content, that they may have spent years creating.

</comment><comment><USER18> So it's twitter with less content.

<comment><USER19> Less Nazi content, in particular

<comment><USER20> I wasn't aware that Twitter, or really anyone in 2017, had a Nazi problem.

<comment><USER16> Did... did you sleep through 2016?

If so, you might want to sit down. I've got a _lot_ of bad news.

<comment><USER20> Calling them Nazis is misguided and self-defeating. Whoever the they you think are Nazis are not Nazis. The NSDAP and its related organizations have been dead since 1945.

You may want to take another look at Godwin's law.

<comment><USER21> I mean neo-nazis are largely interested only in the racial policies of the NSDAP anyway, so it's not _that_ far off base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Who is worried about nazis? Really? Any why take any default political stance as a medium. About as smart as voat's strategy of going the opposite direction.

</comment><comment><USER9> So, you complain about Twitter's inherent lack of freedom, then offer an alternative which "bans nazis"? Given the frequency with which internet debates end up invoking Godwin's Law, that sounds even worse than what it's trying to replace. Who decides who's a nazi?

I'm also confused by the distinction (or relationship) between this and GNUsocial. The article seems to suggest that Mastodon is an instance of (or at least compatible with) GNUsocial. The Mastodon FAQ seems to suggest it's a completely separate and incompatible thing.

FWIW, there are already several longer established GNUsocial-based almost- clones of Twitter out there, offering more than Mastodon seems to. Personally, I use Quitter, to scratch my FOSS 'twittering' itch:

[https://quitter.no](https://quitter.no)

<comment><USER23> Mastodon uses OStatus to communicate between instances, so it's totally compatible with GNU Social. I checked it myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nazi, noun -- A person with a opinion "we" do not like/agree with.

See also: libertarian, classical liberal, conservative.

Update: -3 points for mocking the world view of, apparently, a shit ton of people these days? Damn...

<comment><USER25> Mustn't disagree with the hivemind, it bites</comment></comment>


Design lessons from World of Goo - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/11/world-of-goo-design-tour/ <comment><USER2> This is a really fantastic deconstruction of an amazing game. I'm looking forward to more of these reviews.

<comment><USER3> The game looks really fun. Maybe when I finish the semester I'll buy it.

Does anybody know how the built the game (which languages, toolkits, frameworks, etc)? Its on wii, pc, mac, and linux so it must have been done in an amazingly portable way.

<comment><USER4> SDL for boilerplate, ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) for the physics. My understanding is that ODE was started by a ex-Havok employee, and it is in fact an excellent oss physics engine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not Havok, but close. It was MathEngine, which made Karma physics engine (used for example in old Unreal).

They were later bought by Criterion (RenderWare) which was subsequently acquired by Electronic Arts, where it just died.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> wow what great free advertising - before that video was even over I had purchased the game via paypal. Reminds me of a combination of lemmings and fantastic contraption but with much lusher graphics and music.</comment>


Internet Citizens: Defend Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtt2aSV8wdw

<comment><AUTHOR> I never really understood why net neutrality mattered until watching this. A nice, clear explanation.</comment>


Ask PG: Is d(users)/dt constant on HN? - <AUTHOR>

Eternal September wasn't so much an issue of "too many users" as "too many new users that couldn't be taught local customs before they overwhelmed said local customs."  If it isn't roughly constant, especially over longer periods (i.e., quarter-over-quarter growth), you could work out when either you'd expect HN to fall victim to an Eternal March (demo day + applications = lots of press and spike in users?), or when you'd need to work out a different new user welcoming process? <comment><USER2> It looks like it's slightly steeper than flat. At least so far. Growth should flatten out at some point.

It's hard to predict social phenomena. I just try to react quickly when problems arise.

<comment><USER3> If frisco is correct, that sites degrade because of a too high rate of growth, this presents an extremely simple way to prevent that: rate limit new account creation.

You could cap it right now, and see what happens to the quality of the site.

<comment><USER4> This seems like a very good idea in terms of controlling spikes in comments - but you have to question whether this is the (main) cause of the degradation.

If limiting new accounts seems like the best solution, it should be done clearly and transparently - as the users you are trying to weed out are generally fickle and will not stay, so won't bother to check / sign up later. Let users know the reason why they can't sign up now, and when they should be able to.

However, users that have a legitimate need to comment (eg site / app owners) need to be allowed access - solving this could be trickier.

<comment><USER3> Let people input an email to be pinged when a spot in the queue opens up. Most people won't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PG - any chance that you guys are planning on releasing quarterly high level reports from HN? I did some searching for it, but couldn't find anything in the past (I'm a fairly recent user, but couldn't find any references). It'd be interesting in a navel-gazing sort of way to see what the HN crowd looks like.

Also, a lot of HN discussions are self-referential (esp. when discussing user testing, etc.). It would be really helpful to have some data to add to these discussions.

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks like some people were simultaneously banned following that thar' flamewar (a bunch of posters disappeared at the same time, and there's chatter) so d(users)/dt can be negative.

<comment><USER7> leaker, d(users)/dt can be negative without bannings.

d(users)/dt is growth in users, not their number. To illustrate: if 600 users registered in February, then only 400 in March HN's growth would be negative; d(users)/dt would be negative.

<comment><USER8> Erm, wouldn't that be the second derivative?

d(users)/dt would be the rate of change of users. That can only be negative if the amount of users decreases, ie through bannings.

You're thinking of the second derivative, d^2(users)/dt^2, which is the rate of change of the rate of increase of users. If that is negative, it means that the growth has slowed down, as in your example with February and March.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was asking about the second derivative; if d(users)/dt wasn't constant, then d^2(users)/dt2 is nonzero and eternal september risk is fairly high (assuming HN isn't shrinking). If you assume idealized user growth (which doesn't happen -- there are so many people in the end that would care to either join HN or troll HN), then eternal september is actually guaranteed if d^2(users)/dt2 > 0, since there will come a time t when (new users) > (old users).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Field of expertise and employability of older programmers? - <AUTHOR> The issue of employment for older programmers stirs a lot of interest here and elsewhere. I see a lot of both "I'm over 30 and can't get a job." and "I'm over 50 and am never without work."
One aspect that I haven't seen addressed and which might clarify things is exactly what fields are those in which older programmers are/n't getting work. The securely employed older guys I know tend to be in embedded systems, doing machine control and signal processing. The past-it 30-somethings tend to do web-related stuff.
What have you observed? <comment><USER2> I probably am not the ideal one to answer but I run the public web at a university and have two developers working for me. I also lead a larger scrum team for all public web work. As a developer I am responsible for most of the backend code. Data extractors from 3rd party apps and sites, middleware transport, transforms, database code and such. Most everything is written in Java with one-off programs in Python. Some bash stuff as well.

I've been at this job 9 years and am now 62 years old. I code maybe, on average, 25% of my time. Richmond, VA

Edit: And I intend to keep doing this till I am at least 65 years old and probably longer.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make me realize I had just assumed we would be talking only about industry employment. I would think the public sector, education, and NGOs would all be good areas of opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work for the Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) and have a lot of colleagues in late 50ies or 60ies. Most of them profile on some system or subject area, many spent like 20-30 years in a certain branch (like selling channels or timetable systems). So it's normally not about technology (like web/embedded), it's about solving business needs and technology is secondary. People that know cases and special cases and corner cases of special cases and exceptions from all that.

Needless to say, that's "bulletproof" employment. First, these people are extremely valuable, retirement of some of them is even critical to systems stability. And after all there are labor unions etc. making them basically non-fireable.

<comment><USER2> Here in the states it does not equate to employment stability at least not in the same role. There are numerous layoffs where people with critical knowledge are separated from the company. Some of them get hired back as contractors for a better rate and some have to seek employment elsewhere.

I have a neighbor that has very specific experience that is needed and the company had him and one other. They laid him off and hired him back as a contractor at a greater rate so for him this turned out great. But not always so.</comment></comment>


The Stock Market Is a Ponzi Scheme - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@timdenning/the-stock-market-is-a-ponzi-scheme-2776f075b67b <comment><USER2> Like other things, stock have value because other people think they have value. Even stocks than pay dividends pay it in fiat, which only has value if other people think it has value. Ultimately, there's not much difference between stocks that pay dividends to those that don't, when you really get down to it. I suppose you could make an argument that stocks that paid dividends in food or slaves would be the only ones that had "non-Ponzi" value, since these things have value apart from any sort of value other people place on them. Other items in this category of inherent value might include guns, ammo, or alcohol.

Perhaps some find it scary that we collectively value some things so highly that are pretty arbitrary, but I think it's only natural. Abstractions are core to what we are as a people.

In short, if non-dividend paying stocks lack any value, so do most things in the world. Also, about Ponzi schemes, there's no real problem if the amount of capital flowing in increases at an exponential rate. In the last hundred years, this exponential inflow has not been a problem, so things have worked out pretty well.

Though, in regards to the voting rights, I do think we'll see the end of ridiculous supervoting shares, at least for awhile. After WeWork, I think the paradigm has shifted.

<comment><USER3> > pay it in fiat, which only has value if other people think it has value.

That's not correct. The value of fiat currency is pinned to the production output of an economy due to the fact that taxes are exclusively paid with it.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the people in the government assign it value. How is that different from what I said?

<comment><USER3> > Yes, the people in the government assign it value.

No, they don't. At most "the people in the government" set rules that define the conversion rate between the domestic product and your contribution, which is expressed in fiat currency. No one states on a whim how much a unit of currency is worth. The process is not arbitrary. The only parameter that's arbitrary is the percentage of your anual production that you are obliged to pay the state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Step 1)

Sell your Google to me for $1.0.

Step 2)

Use board to increase dividends to me to 80% of cash flow.

Step 2) (Other party)

Whoops, stocks do have value even if they don't pay a dividend.

Article debunked.</comment>