Dropbox Hasn't Learned Their Lesson - <AUTHOR> https://sethvargo.com/dropbox-hasnt-learned-their-lession/ <comment><USER2> For folks looking for a Dropbox alternative, I recommend Syncthing [0].

Syncthing is a free software (MPL-2.0) cross-platform [1] and decentralized peer-to-peer file synchronization utility with end-to-end encryption, and with support for relaying [2].

Check out their getting started guide [3].

[0]: [https://syncthing.net](https://syncthing.net) [1]: [https://docs.syncthing.net/users/contrib.html](https://docs.syncthing.net/users/contrib.html) [2]: [https://docs.syncthing.net/users/relaying.html](https://docs.syncthing.net/users/relaying.html) [3]: [https://docs.syncthing.net/intro/getting- started.html](https://docs.syncthing.net/intro/getting-started.html)

<comment><USER3> What about SpiderOak, if you still want something centralized?

If you want to access your own files anywhere, you're not really in it for the sync aspect, and you're willing to host your own, there's this great piece of software called OpenSSH, that implements remote shell access as well as a protocol called SFTP that you can use to remotely access files. There are clients available on all systems, frequently installed by default, it's incredibly secure - you may have heard of it. It's kinda new, and the up-and- coming thing in personal cloud software. The investors are really excited.

:-D.

<comment><USER4> I've been using SpiderOak for over 6 years now, and three things haven't changed:

Their UI is crappy and laggy, and doesn't look like it belongs in any platform.

It takes forever to sync files between devices.

It sometimes gets confused when I rapidly switch between branches in a git repository, touching thousands of small files each time.

But I love the ability to pick and choose exactly which files and folders to backup and sync. SpiderOak adapts to my workflow, instead of demanding that I put my files in specific folders. If inefficiency is a necessary cost of combining this kind of flexibility with full client-side encryption, I can live with that.

<comment><USER5> I've been pretty happy with SpiderOak overall. I lucked out and got a coupon to get 'unlimited' space for relatively cheap, so I like that I can back up all of my machines without worrying about needing to pay more.

1000s of small files, or one rapidly changing file cause me problems as well. It's also annoying that each client has to decode new data whenever something is backed up on another machine. This causes my cpu to hit 100% on my laptop while my desktop is backing up a bunch of new files.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi folks, Ben from Dropbox on the desktop client team --

This is an experiment that is being tested with a fraction of users primarily on beta releases (which Seth is on, as evidenced by the version number in his screenshots). We haven't shipped it to everyone so that we can continue to iterate and incorporate feedback. I checked with the team about the "Finder Toolbar" drop down and it looks like it requires a restart of the Dropbox client in order to take affect — let us know if that doesn't work.

<comment><USER7> Hi Ben from Dropbox. You seem to completely miss the point. It's not about the feature itself, it's your way of "hacking" or "injecting" Dropbox features into places the user didn't expect.

This is not the first time that Dropbox ignores the system guidelines (or even permissions if the user explicitly disallowed Dropbox access to Accessibility features). Why are you ignoring the feedback concerning Dropbox' way of "hacking" itself into system areas like Finder?

<comment><USER8> I completely and absolutely disagree.

Seamless Finder integration is why I like Dropbox. Sure, this is an annoying bug, but I'd hate it if the stopped doing it.

<comment><USER9> In 2011, a startup I was consulting with standardized on Dropbox (gratis at the time) to sync design files. Even back then, I was wary of Dropbox's ability to sync files at the level of the Finder/OS with badged folders.

To me, the Finder integration was straight up spooky, suggesting an extraordinarily high risk profile.

When my consulting gig was up, I uninstalled Dropbox precisely because of the Finder integration, and I have advocated against using Dropbox as a file- sharing solution in all subsequent consulting arrangements.

I've also avoided using it as part of my day job, even though some of my teammates used it.

<comment><USER8> Not entirely clear why you are posting this?

It's clear that there is some diversity of opinions on this topic, but we already knew that.

To me, your datapoint shows that Dropbox is right to behave the way they do: in 2011 you thought it was high risk, they have kept with that behavior and yet nothing bad has happened. I'm unsure if that was your intention, but that is how it looks to me.

It is entirely unclear why you think this is particularly risky: If Dropbox can do it, then other malicious programs can too.

Dropbox's behavior creates no additional security risk, but increases the usability of their software.

If there really is a security problem here, then surely that is a problem with the OS, not Dropbox, and it is the OS that should be fixed?

<comment><USER9> My reason for making my earlier post is unclear because I buried my lede when replying to the GGP. That lede should have been something like "Finder integration is not necessarily a selling point to security-minded users."

To my mind, the security risk comes in having multiple points of connection in the local file system that are tightly bound to files on an external system.

In the case of inexperienced users (and even a few experienced ones), those points of entry could be scattered throughout the local file system. Consequently, these external files were effectively pipelines from systems all with unknown security profiles. This combined with the Finder integration troubled me enough to stop using Dropbox as soon as was practicable.

EDIT: Clarify meaning in first sentence. Correct plural. Split last sentence into two. Change tense.

<comment><USER8> So your problem is with Dropbox's main purpose of existence?

That's fine, but don't pretend it has anything to do with the finder integration. A more consistent position would be to praise that because it makes the other functionality more visible, reducing the security concerns.

<comment><USER9> > That's fine, but don't pretend it has anything to do with the finder > integration.

I wasn't pretending but was, in fact, the victim of my own faulty rationalization.

That is, you're right that Finder integration has nothing to do with connections to potentially insecure systems.

By way of explanation: when I first saw the Finder badging, I intuitively understood the insecure nature of connecting my system to others. So, I conflated the two ideas in my head: "Finder integration is terrible", which of course is just plain wrong.

It was never my purpose to misrepresent my feelings. I wasn't "pretending". I simply tried to make rational something I only intuitively understood.

Good catch. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >If you were any other company, you would be liable for a lawsuit for hacking. Please stop using your position as a company to hack our systems.

This post is full of ridiculous hyperbole, and it really detracts from the actual message.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the feedback. I've removed the rants about Dropbox the company to focus on the UX and lack of disabling issues.

<comment><USER12> You're using a beta version of Dropbox, right? I haven't seen this behaviour on the regular non-beta version I'm running.

You'd expect bugs in beta.

<comment><USER13> Bugs, yes.

Blatant disregard of user-specified OS-level permissions and inability to access your own files when there are more than fifteen in a folder, no.

<comment><USER14> Keep in mind Dropbox literally got its start with adding the sync icons in Finder when Apple said it could not be done. The entire company was essentially based on their ability to make a better user experience through a tighter integration with your files then was technically allowed at the time. I'm not saying you have to find that acceptable but it is what it is and its the reason why millions of people have heard of Dropbox and proclaim its joys.

Anyway both things you mention are bugs even if you find them frustrating. The original poster was having issue with the option to turn off the Finder integration but the option was put there so you can control it. The only reason you can't access files with more than fifteen in a folder is clearly due to a bug in the beta.

If you want to say that a company the size of Dropbox should never have bugs of that scale even in their beta, then I would point at several of Apple's broken iOS updates (bricking phones, etc.) or Samsung's recent Galaxy Note 7 fiasco as evidence that much larger companies ship software and hardware that isn't in beta and has undergone much more due diligence with catastrophic bugs.

Anyway I don't use Dropbox really but I felt compelled to comment because I couldn't understand how you could say you expect bugs but don't expect the reported bugs in a beta.

<comment><USER13> You're right: in a sense, "everything you don't like is a bug". But it still seems important to distinguish "they broke the entire permission model, where I can no longer trust the sandbox boundaries" and "I'm locked out of crucial parts of my system" from "gosh, this is slower/more confusing than I might like".

I'm not sure the beta testers understood they were giving up that level of control by installing Dropbox's new software. The post's author certainly didn't.

True, Dropbox got away with grabbing permissions that apps shouldn't have, and then getting away with it. But it's still IMHO a bit more than a bug to take this attitude of "let's take whatever we can! It's Easier To Ask For Forgiveness..."

<comment><USER15> > _But it still seems important to distinguish "they broke the entire > permission model, where I can no longer trust the sandbox boundaries" and > "I'm locked out of crucial parts of my system" from "gosh, this is > slower/more confusing than I might like"._

Well, if they succeeded at that it means the permission model _is_ broken, and you can not trust the sandbox boundaries, _whether you have Dropbox installed or not_. So no reason to be angry at Dropbox; ask Apple to fix the sandbox model instead.

<comment><USER16> Dropbox is not a sandboxed app on macOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dropbox still refuses to answer why their client takes up a ton of CPU anytime there is IO on the system. It seems like they are monitoring ALL filesystem activity, not just the Dropbox folder. What they are doing with that data I have no idea.

They prompt continuously for access to Accessibility and the "control other applications" permission, no matter how many times you deny it.

As soon as I finish this project (where I need access to Dropbox) I'm uninstalling it.

<comment><USER18> "Don't attribute to malice what could equally be explained by ignorance" is one of my favorite sayings and though I would hesitate to attribute ignorance to Dropbox I do feel some empathy when it comes to dealing with multi-platform file-system permission settings.

I think it's completely reasonable to suspect at least some of Dropbox to be old code pushed quickly into production and caste almost instantly into legacy-matenence-mode that can not be easily refactored or iterated upon ("move fast and break things har har"). While this is _almost_ inexcusable for an established and well-funded company that does not have a shortage of resources to fix the problem, I find it significantly more likely then some 5-eyes-esque surveillance or data mining strategy as you allude to.

<comment><USER19> I think the original quote is

      s/ignorance/incompetence

<comment><USER20> The Jargon quote was "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity". [1]

[1]: [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/Hanlons- Razor.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/Hanlons-Razor.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just putting this here so that the Dropbox employees who inevitably read this can be aware: I've used dropbox for 5+ years, and as a paid user at that. Today I deleted dropbox because of the recent shenanigans and bad press as well as because there is a lot of high quality competition in the synced file storage space that I can turn to.

<comment><USER22> Out of curiosity, what did you switch to?

<comment><USER23> Not op, but SeaFile looks nice.

<comment><USER24> With a brief look at the alternatives, Tresorit [1] looks quite nice with their encryption features.

[1] [https://tresorit.com](https://tresorit.com)

<comment><USER23> It doesn't look like you can install Tresorit on your own webserver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Next up - Dropbox starts conditionally disabling features if it detects that the user is a developer (i.e. XCode is installed or Terminal.app is in the list of running processes).

</comment><comment><USER26> This is just blatantly false... the setting to disable the feature works after you've restarted Dropbox, just as the UI tells you to. Proof: [https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/782387668713771008/pho...](https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/782387668713771008/photo/1)

I'm toolbar free and it was a very minor inconvenience - not worth a rant- filled blog post like this.

<comment><USER27> Before you even posted this comment he already replied saying restarting Dropbox didn't work.

[https://twitter.com/sethvargo/status/782387877321867264](https://twitter.com/sethvargo/status/782387877321867264)

<comment><USER26> It's obviously a bug in his environment... this is a beta feature they're testing and hence not perfect. I've tried on multiple machines and it's working. Perhaps he should try a reinstall. Agreed it's annoying, but worthy of an entire blog post? Eh, not really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I see in the screenshot of the settings at the bottom "Finder Toolbar" set to On. Is that not how you disable this?

<comment><USER29> That wasn't present in 11.4, so that seems like a good bet. Still seems like a useless feature.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately that doesn't disable it. I've updated the post to make that point clearer. It seems like that option was added, but doesn't actually control anything. Maybe that UI option was never actually wired into the functionality /shrug.

<comment><USER30> disable and restart finder. works here...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm not sure why people still use Dropbox besides inertia.

I mean, it's not even competitive on the pricing. 1 TB @ 9.99$/mo while Microsoft gives you the whole Office suite plus 1TB of OneDrive at less than that.

<comment><USER32> Price sensitivity to consumer SaaS always catches me by surprise. Ten dollars a month is a rounding error in most budgets, a single grocery store impulse buy.

<comment><USER31> It's more about paying for something you're likely not going use or need. They only offer the 1 TB tier which sounds great, but I wouldn't be surprised if most people used at best 5-6 GB. Enough to fill the 2 GB free plan, not enough to justify the 1 TB, but there's nothing in the middle.

Also, subscriptions add up quickly. One less is always better.

<comment><USER33> The competition (Google, Microsoft) can probably only offer intermediate plans because they subsidize cloud drives with other products (Office, ads, etc.) to do a quick land grab. I am pretty sure that it will be hard to provide 1TB storage for $10 per month with heavy redundancy, proper security, support, etc. So they need to get their margin from people two use significantly less than 1TB.

Also, you are not only paying for storage, but also maintenance of network infrastructure and the client/server software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I said this last time but it bares reiterating:

Dropbox circumventing security restrictions is particularly worrying because they have board members who support warrentless surveillance.

In my mind Dropbox became a company not worth supporting when Rice joined Dropbox's board ([http://www.drop-dropbox.com/](http://www.drop- dropbox.com/)). Personally, with a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the security of my data, and I wont be using their service.

<comment><USER35> I remember the last time I used dropbox on my laptop. I tried to open a random file outside my dropbox folder and I got the error message that I can not open it because it is used by dropbox at this moment. I deleted the desktop app at that moment.

I am not an OS hacker but as a user I am pretty sure the desktop app should not access files outside my dropbox folder. The excuse of "testing some desktop features" is pretty lame. If you catch your housemaid sniffling your panties it is simply not an effing feature, even if your panties are clean and sexy!

And this is not part of the mass surveillance...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> That little overlay on the site that tells you how many minutes of reading you still have left I find infuriating. It disappears the second I stop moving and gets right in the way when I start scrolling. Especially when you increase the font a bit b/c eyes and it's no longer confined to an empty column on the right of your screen.

</comment><comment><USER37> If not Dropbox, what solution are others turning to?

I recently signed up for Sync.com, due to their prioritisation of security features and they seem like a good company. I have come across some minor bugs, but I sent these onto their customer support who were reasonably responsive. Even with these minor bugs I'm still happy with the trade-off to move off Dropbox.

I must admit the most difficult part was definitely the services I used that directly integrate with Dropbox, like 1Password syncing. So I also had to find solutions to not just Dropbox, but also third-party services that integrated. For 1Password, I signed up for their Account option where they handle the syncing for you at a cost of $2.99 per month. Again, another trade-off I was happy to make.

<comment><USER33> _If not Dropbox, what solution are others turning to?_

I mostly use Resilio Sync besides Dropbox. It works really great: fast syncing, nice user interface, etc. What keeps me from fully switching is that I hit some nasty bugs in the past (e.g. all folders suddenly getting disconnected, etc.).

 _I recently signed up for Sync.com, due to their prioritisation of security features and they seem like a good company._

I also tried sync.com recently. Unfortunately, the client did not look very native on macOS (poking around revealed a lot of .exe files, so I guess they are using Mono). Besides that sync was quite slow compared to Dropbox.

<comment><USER37> _...the client did not look very native on macOS (poking around revealed a lot of .exe files..._

I also noticed this. But I have the mind frame that they are still a fairly "new" company, 3 years old, compared to Dropbox, 9 years old, and their growth and features continue to improve. In saying that, I would definitely prefer a more native look on macOS.

 _Besides that sync was quite slow compared to Dropbox._

I'm from a place in Australia with a generally slow Internet speed, especially upload speed, and may not have noticed this pitfall as much as others might.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Another area where Dropbox seems to be slipping is customer support. DB stopped working on one of my machines after an unscheduled shutdown. Submitted a ticket along with a thorough description of the problem and error log, and after nearly a week the only response I've had was an automated reply that I should disable antivirus programs. This being an Ubuntu desktop, I don't have any AV installed.

This company gets $120/yr from me and they can't answer a support ticket? There have many competitors who charge less and I bet some of those competitors actually support their paying customers. You are looking at one soon-to-be-ex-customer unless DB pulls a rabbit out of their hat very soon.

</comment><comment> brian-armstrong Even if you can remove the overlay somehow, you still can't remove Condoleezza Rice from Dropbox's board, which should be plenty of reason to avoid it entirely.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is just like stuff that adds itself to right click menu in windows without asking during install

<comment><USER40> I think I've seen a few of those, but what are your examples? Interested to know. I normally check carefully for cases where the software tells you its an option (adding itself to right click menu, or to startup menu). But don't remember coming across one where it does it silently. Would like to know of those.

<comment><USER41> Does AMD Catalyst Control Center count?

Not sure if it prompts, but I usually untick optional things, and I still have that when right clicking on the desktop.

<comment><USER40> I guess yes. Any that meet the criteria.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> After learning about their mac client backdoor, I removed all their software from my devices and stopped using the service. I'd suggest everyone do the same and use the web interface if you absolutely need to consume or share with other parties who still use them.

<comment><USER43> what backdoor?

<comment><USER44> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Dang, I've always been a fan of Dropbox, but after upgrading from El Capitan to Sierra I opted to completely cut Dropbox out of my tools used, as I only ever used it hold an archive of documents I wanted to keep but don't interact with often (Such as license files for software and online receipts for things like tickets bought and stuff) and opted for using iCloud Desktop & Documents.

<comment><USER46> Siracusa probably knows what he's talking about when he tells you to run, not walk, away from this feature. Backup everything before you disable it too.

<comment><USER45> I'm unaware of what you're talking about..

<comment><USER46> Probably you won't see this anymore, but this is just one example of things going very wrong with iCloud documents:

[http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/maybe-be-careful-with- os...](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/maybe-be-careful-with-osx-sierra)

In general Apple has simply been terrible at ensuring reliability of their iCloud services. Their idea of hiding everything away simply doesn't work - there are legitimate and regular edge cases that won't be handled if you don't give a UI.

If want to hear the Siracusa story, see this:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/44auj0/atp_155_liste...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/44auj0/atp_155_listen_to_john_siracusas_wonderful_rant/)

I don't know about you, but I simply don't trust iCloud with documents. Personally, I've tried it with something very simple first: Notes. It just doesn't sync reliably at all, totally useless.

<comment><USER45> Thank you for the links. I haven't had any issues with iCloud, and Desktop & Documents switch has been going swimmingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's remarkable that they have such a stellar product design team but push out stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Kill the messenger, eh?

If Dropbox really, to quote 'SilasX, "broke the entire permission model, where I can no longer trust the sandbox boundaries" \- well, the cat's out of the bag, Apple's sandbox model sucks. You should bring it up with Apple so that they fix it (either allow proper extensions or just patch up the hole and brick Dropbox in the process).

</comment><comment><USER48> We're still waiting on an answer of how does Dropbox do this without Accessibility. What happens when every other service wants to start putting toolbars on my finder?

<comment><USER49> Dropbox has been modifying the Finder since 2008, nothing new here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Listening to these comments one would think Dropbox is the worse company in the universe and we have a thousand alternatives. But then time goes by and people are still using dropbox and nobody talks about the alternatives.

Another point is, you're using someone else's drive somewhere in the cloud and storing there (more or less) sensitive files and you're talking about privacy and security? Gimme a break.

Third and last, if you're that unhappy with a piece of software that's for the most part free, go ahead and pick something else. Nobody's forcing you. Same goes for Windows, Office, Gmail and whatnot.

<comment><USER50> you are allowed to complain about free software

<comment><USER30> this is not complaining. this is villagers with torches and pitchforks at the gate

<comment><USER51> Do you have any footage from the gate cam?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Does the author not see the "Finder toolbar: On" option in their own screenshot? And they claim it can't be disabled?

<comment><USER53> > Update: As some folks have pointed out, there is a "Finder toolbar" option > that is enabled. Toggling that yields no results, although maybe it will > work in the future.

It's there in the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I removed Dropbox from my Windows computer as soon as they started to include a minifilter driver with new versions.

[https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/9249](https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/9249)

I don't believe a program needs to integrate so deeply into the system just to sync the files.

<comment><USER55> FWIW, I would presume the reason that was added would be some shortcoming(s) in [1], since I doubt they wrote a minifilter driver just for kicks.

(It might have been that some programs were doing IO that avoided triggering the change notification, and a sufficiently large {number of customers,customer} complained about it.)

I don't work for Dropbox, and I haven't used the API, but as I said, I really doubt they added a (signed) driver requirement lightly.

[1] - [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa364417%28VS.85%29...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa364417%28VS.85%29.aspx)

<comment><USER54> They made it primarily to support the functionality called "Project Infinite":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11571813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11571813)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I gave up on drop box long ago, but someone in my company uses a paid version of it for some reason still, and group policy means it's on my windows machine. I made the mistake of plugging my phone into my work PC to charge it recently and got a lovely little attempt to get me to back up my photos from my phone - so I don't lose my memories! which caused me to promptly circumvent corporate policy via my buddy working in helpdesk and uninstall it.

I don't understand why, once already installed, they are trying to get me to use it more. They won't make more money will they? Are they using this as a way to get me to get close to a limit and upgrade?

<comment><USER57> You may know it's possible, others on HN may know it's possible. But if you release Dropbox for Joe Random on the internet, it actually makes sense to notify him that he can backup his photos from the phone when you discover the phone is being connected. It's helping feature discovery, not pushing addons - as you say - they don't explicitly make more money from this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Question about Dropbox. Since their product uses open source software, that means they use non GPL licensed open source software, correct?

<comment><USER43> Probably, lots of non GPL software out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I haven't used Dropbox in forever. If you really need sync, SyncThing's your best bet, but all I really needed was access to all my files from anywhere.

SSH and Git work pretty well for that.

I'll take a trusted piece of open source sofware with strong security running on my own server (openSSH) over a magic pocket any day.

</comment><comment><USER59> Hmm I wonder what the author means by: "Aside from the fact that this banner looks like something free software would install as a toolbar, [...]"

As alternives, depending on your requirements, I recommend SpiderOak, SyncThing, or a third-party offering / your self-hosted Nextcloud.

<comment><USER60> ... or ownCloud.

<comment><USER61> nextcloud and owncloud are not basically same thing?

<comment><USER62> Next cloud is a fork of owncloud. Right now they haven't significantly diverged yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I use sshfs (FUSE on mac) with a mount point on a small instance that has mounted my S3 bucket. Files get transferred to the server and eventually make it to s3.

If you have a little time, you don't need Dropbox at all. And you can't get much cheaper than raw S3.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm using SyncThing ( [https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)) to synchronise files between my systems (Linux and Android) and it's great. No complaints so far.

</comment><comment><USER65> I completely uninstalled dropbox desktop client and replaced it with expandrive [0] which I was already using for mounting drives trough SSH

[0]: [http://www.expandrive.com](http://www.expandrive.com)

</comment><comment><USER66> Did they literally just remove it as fast as they added it? I have 11.4.21 and it's not there, and it also has no 'finder toolbar' in settings.

</comment><comment><USER67> I have not had dropbox installed on any of my devices for a few years now. I still have files in dropbox but that is mostly files from when I was in college.

</comment><comment><USER68> "The only way to disable this this is to completely quit Dropbox"

I went ahead and disabled it a few months ago.

<comment><USER69> Quit Dropbox and have been advocating against it for years.

<comment><USER70> But then what are you using instead?

<comment><USER69> [https://www.synology.com/en- us/dsm/6.0/cloud_file_syncing](https://www.synology.com/en- us/dsm/6.0/cloud_file_syncing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Same company that endlessly lies about getting unlimited space for an extra $2.50/month.

</comment><comment><USER72> I say people haven't learnt their lesson of they're still on macs.

</comment><comment><USER73> Dropbox will never learn their lesson if it's not in their interest (cf. Upton Sinclair).

For instance, client side encryption? Mwahahaha. Studiously ignoring that for the better part of a decade, why change now?

Valuation is OK, ain't it? Doing fine, then.

<comment><USER74> This is it in a nutshell, Dropbox won't care what the noise about this is because it won't be heard by the vast majority of their users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> This is more of a design problem than an engineering problem. Dear Dropbox Design Team, please get your shit together.

</comment><comment><USER76> To sum the post up to avoid this in the future :

\- OP needed to state he used the beta release, which are prone to be in an unfinished state,

\- Dropbox needs to be more transparent about their releases, with including proper changelogs (they're only stating "bug fixes and optimisations" in the Dropbox forum). If you're adding/changing the UX in some way, document it. If you want a feature to be developed discretely, make a private beta, but still - document it.

It's an opportunity to learn something from this.</comment>


FBI Opens Probe of iPad Breach - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704312104575299111189853840.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories <comment><USER2> I wish this would stop being referred to as some kind of iPad breach in every headline.

This is basically what happened: "FBI investigating breach in AT&T web site that led to exposure of AT&T customer information". Period.

</comment><comment><USER3> The web developers who put this into place should be the ones lynched.

All that "Goatse Security" did was put together a quick and dirty Luhn algorithm and start generating serial numbers to grab data from a publicly- accessible part of AT&T's website. Shady? Sure. Malicious? Perhaps. Illegal? I really don't think so. I'd kind of liken it to creating a script to check generated lists of phone numbers against one of those "people search" sites to scrape data.</comment>


Unveiling the Mandelbrot set (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://plus.maths.org/content/unveiling-mandelbrot-set <comment><USER2> Great explanation of how fractals work and the chaotic behaviour you can get. If you are interested in generating your own fractal Jean Francois Puget [0] has a great article on how to do it using Python and matplotlib. It is very easy to experiment with different values of the initial costant when you refactor the code to generate a Julia set.

[0] [https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/jfp/entry...](https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/jfp/entry/My_Christmas_Gift?lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> Re: the Mandelbrot set as a map of the connected Julia sets.

This means the Mandelbrot and Julia sets can be seen as different slices of a higher dimensional structure. Recently I found a video[1] with _very_ high quality render of both sets that explores this relationship, with a focus on what happens at the boundary of the Mandelbrot set (where the Julia set becomes (dis)connected. The video also makes several good attempts at rendering 3D projections of the complete Mandelbrot+Julia "object".

(or, if you just want to look at the beautiful complexity of the Mandelbrot's border for a while, this[2] 2^1116 zoom is amazing. The rapidly increasing complexity[3] in the last 1/3 is maddening)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfteiiTfE0c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfteiiTfE0c)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbwaFQ2r2c4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbwaFQ2r2c4)

[3] [https://imgur.com/a/qtlQc](https://imgur.com/a/qtlQc)

<comment><USER4> Holy shit, the "Juliabrot" slices were just unreal. Hadn't seen that trick before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Should be "... (2006)".</comment>


Show HN: Noisli for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.noisli.noisli <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

I'm Stefano and I am one of the two Noisli co-founders.

After launching on Web, iOS and as Chrome extension, today we just launched our Android app. Yay!!

Quickly about Noisli: Noisli is a service that helps to drown out annoying noises so to better concentrate and to enhance productivity, and it is being used by office workers, developers, writers, students and in general by people that have to work in an environment which is either too loud or too quiet. Noisli is also used to help you to fall asleep, to mask Tinnitus and to help with ADD and ADHD..

Being a very small team and aiming for high quality standard in both experience and design, the development for Android took longer than forecasted and has sometimes been very challenging. But we worked very hard to make it happen and I am very excited of this new addition to the Noisli family.

As for every respectable product, we see the development as an ongoing process and there might still be some bumps along the way, but this is the reason why any feedback you might have is very precious for us and for our mission.

If you have any feedback or comment I'll be happy to follow up :)

Have a nice day! Stefano

<comment><USER2> I think having a website: [http://www.noisli.com/](http://www.noisli.com/) where people can see what the program does without downloading the app is great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment! Sure, you can find more info about the Android app here [http://www.noisli.com/android](http://www.noisli.com/android) and about all the Noisli apps here [http://www.noisli.com/apps](http://www.noisli.com/apps) :)</comment></comment></comment>


Trump signs bill to shut down websites that facilitate prostitution - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/trump-signs-bill-to-shut-down-websites-that-facilitate-prostitution/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/stop-sesta- section-230...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/stop-sesta- section-230-not-broken)

<comment><USER3> Yea, we know it's bad. Now it's law.</comment></comment>


Why You Need To Start A Startup - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/24525/14-Reasons-Why-You-Need-To-Start-A-Startup.aspx

<comment><USER2> If one can program a computer, chances are that it would be foolish not to try to sell the result, if only to augment one's "luck surface".

A $30 a month EC2 instance can host thousands of users, depending on the service proposed. If a service has "any sort of value", chances are that some money will get out of it, maybe much more than was invested.

<comment><USER3> What is the source of the term "luck surface"? It's a good one.

<comment><USER4> It sure is. Jason Roberts of the TechZing podcast coined it: [http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck- surf...](http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area)

<comment><USER5> See Jason? They ARE noticing. :-)

<comment><USER6> Wow, that's kinda cool! What's funny is that by simply coining the term "luck surface area" I've actually managed to increase my luck surface area. ;)

<comment><USER3> Led me to sign up for the AppIgnite notifier. :)

<comment><USER6> ... in accordance with the prophecy (cue evil laugh). ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great post! I was especially curious about your statement that some of the info provided about startups is full of snake oil, so I posted a follow-up question:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1907065>

</comment><comment><USER8> Ok 134 tweets I can accept, but did 11,164 people really like it on Facebook in less than 24 hours or is that the likes for the whole site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whole site. It's connected to the FB fan page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wrong title. I was expecting something positive, explaining why I should start a startup; instead, I found something negative, explaining why these reasons not to no longer hold.

</comment><comment><USER4> Agree that the "11 Harsh Realities" post was somewhat overstated -- it was meant as a warning that startups are hard and demand serious work and optimism. But that shouldn't stop anyone. In fact, all the "harsh realities" could be considered attractive by some.</comment>


Nanoparticle gel helps rebuild brain and bone matter in rats - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32840280/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/

<comment><USER2> It's always amazing to hear about advances like this. Articles like this always upset me a little as well though.

I don't think I'm overly sensitive (I'm a fighter, I enjoy a good steak and I'm happy to go hunting) but reading things like this make you realize how many of our medical advances come at the cost of intense discomfort for the animals that help pave the way...

I look forward to more advances, like the new methods that help us culture realistic skin samples independent of a human, that allow further advances to come at a reduced cost to the animals/people involved.

<comment><USER3> Lobby your government to allow more and earlier research on human volunteers. Not only will this spare animals, it will also tremendously speed up research.

<comment><USER4> As someone who has (or had if you are a strong optimist) a rare form of cancer, I strongly dislike the restrictions on medical research. I understand the desire to prevent horrific abuses (e.g. Tuskegee) but I think the argument against experimentation in fully-informed, rational patients is weak at best. When my cancer comes back and if it lies beyond contemporary treatment, I invite them to pump me full of whatever they can think of. At worst, my outcome would be largely in line with my expected outcome -- but at least I had a modicum of hope. Either way, they are likely to learn something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know enough to know if a similar approach has been tried for soft tissue repair (joints, tendons, ligaments, etc.)?

EG: injecting nanoparticles with suitable coatings as a way of promoting faster joint repair (hips, wrists, shoulders, etc.).

<comment><USER2> They actually say in the article that they have had similar results with tendon repair (in the section where they're talking about bone repair). I'm not sure about other soft tissues.

Its unfortunate that because of the laws against the uses human stem cells we already miss out on a bunch of very valid and useful soft-tissue treatments!

There's actually a company that is already doing soft-tissue regeneration (specifically tendons) using autologous stem cells for dogs, very cool stuff! I'll post the link to the article if I can find it! Maybe this could be a viable alternative though!

<comment><USER5> I missed that; ctrl-f tendon doesn't find it, but ctrl-f cartilage turns it up. Thanks for bringing it up.

When you hit a certain age "oh my aching joints" is far more relevant to your interests than "brains might survive motorcycle crash", though the brain stuff is admittedly cooler.

Stem cells may not necessary for soft tissue; if you could inject some time- release hormones or steroids or whatnot you might get improved results vis-a- vis what's out there now.

<comment><USER2> Haha, unfortunately for me that age was 23... I'm 24 now and still dealing with knees that I almost destroyed via my love for martial arts...

I totally agree that stem cells may not be needed but it would be amazing if scientists got to explore _all_ of the possibilities, rather than just the ones people weren't afraid of for a number of un-informed reasons...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are "nonoparticles"? Are they particles whose size is in the "nonometer" range?

<comment><AUTHOR> triedness kills</comment></comment>


Online faxing service that doesn't suck? - <AUTHOR>

I just signed up for 5 different online "e-fax" services and they were all terrible. Buggy transmissions, terrible user interfaces, etc. Can anyone suggest a decent alternative? I'm happy to pay $10-$20 a month for it. <comment><USER2> <http://hellofax.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.phaxio.com>

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Phaxio.</comment>


Amazon Silk Web Browser - <AUTHOR> http://amazonsilk.wordpress.com/

<comment><USER2> When Opera Mobile introduced similar concepts in their 9.7 release, they caught tons of flack for both privacy concerns (what if I'm at my bank website, or looking at personal pictures?) and for technical considerations (they're breaking the Web!).

Either way, this browser will likely be used by millions. It'll be interesting to see what we developers will have to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did Bezos & Co. give a "live" demo? How noticeably speedy is this on different wireless connections?

The video they put out does a good job explaining but not "showing."

</comment><comment><USER4> wordpress.com? Seriously?</comment>


Climate change skepticism: you're doing it wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/02/climate-change-skepticism-youre-doing.html

<comment><USER2> I did not know that all skepticism relied on one picture. Actually I never saw that picture before…

<comment><USER3> According to the article it was a picture in two british newspapers. Hardly a basis to claim all skeptics are doing this. In fact the claim makes the exact same errors the newspapers did: looking at data out of context.

It's two newspapers in the UK that could very possibly be using a single reporter's work and reviewed by editors that don't understand proper research. It's happened before at many other newspapers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "One picture does not a systematic investigation make."

No, but it makes a great polemical tool, like polar bears sitting on melting ice and so-forth.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope there are stronger rejoinders in the pipeline than this one. Evidence of crumbling (if not collapse) of stout party comes with the final retort 'And even if it was ....'.

Thermometers located adjacent to aircraft parking areas? Sounds eminently sensible!

And which serious sceptic is claiming that 'one bad thermometer doesn't mean climate change can be thrown out the window.'?

<comment><USER6> Yeah this is what is commonly known as a straw man argument. Actual climate skepticism is at least as complex as climate theory, and one newspaper's incompetence in reporting isn't even news. If anything, this would make a good anecdote regarding current mainstream press' sloppy reporting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminded me of the "one way hash" rhetorical technique. I'd actually forgotten that the term was coined in relation to climate change discussions.

[http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/04/06/climate-change- and-a...](http://www.juliansanchez.com/2009/04/06/climate-change-and- argumentative-fallacies/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I would say it's the proponents that are doing it wrong. The supposedly independent and objective inquiry into the climategate scandal has already had one member forced to resign (the editor of Nature, btw) [http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/11/the-team-that-cant- shoot-...](http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/11/the-team-that-cant-shoot- straight/)

and now another member looks very questionable

[http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/15/more-tricks-from- boulton-...](http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/15/more-tricks-from-boulton-and- the-hapless-muir-russell/)

</comment><comment><USER9> John,

I have a bit of cognitive dissonance going on here. I scanned this and have no idea what you're trying to do.

Is it to take one picture used by some skeptics and try to base an entire case of what climate science is like?

If so, that's clearly using a straw man argument.

Of course, in lots of dimensions climate change is a political/religious discussion, and you've every right to use all sorts of rhetorical tools to persuade us. But since your point is about science, logic, and reasoning, why the heavy-handed format? You're actually making the case that _you're_ not so good at the science end of things, and that certainly can't be what you wanted, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably not one of my best blog posts, I was just mad about the way in which two newspapers in the UK have reported the Rome airport situation as part of larger stories about how climate change apparently isn't happening.

<comment><USER3> I just find it ironic that you're making the same error in judgement that the newspapers did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 8% of weather stations are rated as "poor" (>= 2C error) and 61% of stations are rated as "worst" (>= 5C error). It's not just "one bad thermometer". It's the vast majority of thermometers that are bad. <http://www.surfacestations.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that those are the claims made by Surface Stations. Do you know if their raw data is available for download? I see their report on what they are doing, but I would be great to see the raw, uninterpreted data about their findings.

<comment><USER10> They're hidden in an obscure, non-standard UI element known as the "left side bar menu", with cryptically named links "Online Database" and "Resources".

<http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php> <http://www.surfacestations.org/resources.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> I've looked at those pages and the Gallery allows me to zoom into pictures of any individual station and look at scanned reports of the status.

But what I was asking for was something different. The project is apparently generating data which allows them to make specific claims about the state of each station and product roll-up statistics. I imagine somewhere there's a database or spreadsheet with that information in it.

I can't find that for download anywhere, can you?

<comment><USER10> I'm sure you could request it

<comment><AUTHOR> I have. Anthony Watts is checking with some collaborators to see whether they are willing to release it to me. It appears that he doesn't want the data to be public until they've had a chance to submit a paper based on it to some peer reviewed publication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> yeah, um, but they've recorded a couple of hundred even worse situations (next to ac exhaust, in asphalt lots etc)</comment>


Show HN: Almighty – Powerful Configurations for macOS - <AUTHOR> Almighty is a convenient and easy to use macOS menu bar application that exposes powerful configurations for your mac https://www.producthunt.com/posts/almighty <comment><USER2> Post the link to the project directly; sharing just a product-hunt link makes your submission seem like low-effort spam.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, it'd be great if we could get past the "year of the software startup influencer" in otherwords the entirety of Product Hunt...

I stopped following when an app meant to "map where you cried that day" made it to the front page of PH...</comment>


Improving download behaviors in web browsers - <AUTHOR> http://limi.net/articles/improving-download-behaviors-web-browsers <comment><USER2> Something that greatly irritates me while using Safari is a lack of feedback when clicking a download link. The author briefly mentions this as the last 'bad' but I've more than once accidentally downloaded a file more than once because of that lack of UI feedback and feel like it's a much bigger deal than just being unable to see a progress bar.</comment>


The Disciplined Pursuit of Less - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/08/22/pursuit-of-less

<comment><AUTHOR> I love that Tim Cook quote.</comment>


Being Happy With Sugar  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/06/being-happy-with-sugar/372220/ <comment><USER2> What I personally found out was that if you stay away from sugar and sweeteners completely, eventually you get used to the new taste and no longer suffer from lack of sweetness. I didn't think I'll ever be able to drink unsweetened coffee, but now I'm doing exactly that. More than that, things that had "normal" taste before (such as soft drinks) will now seem overly sweet, to the point of not being able to drink them at all.

So maybe instead of asking "what is the best sugar replacement" one should ask "how do I best get used to not sweetening everything I eat".

(I understand that the article casts doubts on sugar being evil. I still think that reducing sugar and / or sweeteners as much as possible at the very least will not hurt you, and most likely will be a bit of a benefit).

<comment><USER3> I was on no-carb/keto for 6 months. For a while I almost couldn't walk past the sweets section in the supermarket, but after a couple of weeks, I completely lost interest in it. I still had a piece of chocolate here and there, but I could just stop when I wanted to!

I'm still a little sensitive to sweet things. As a child I liked it but after keto it's not as appealing anymore.

Also, eating sugar makes my teeth feel really nasty.

<comment><USER4> When I started to fix my diet I had to purge myself of Caffeinated sodas first. I found the combination of HFCS and caffeine would make me crave junk food like an addict. I purged myself of the caffeine and ate junk food then after a few weeks purged the junk food and now I can turn away from the bag of potato chips without too much willpower.

Having gotten off of physically addictive drugs before I recognized the feelings and realized how much I had to slowly ween myself off of that stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Eliminating sugars from a diet can't constitute playing it safe"

That's ridiculous! There is no nutritional necessity to ingesting sugar. Not eating sugar IS playing it safe!

My god are people so ignorant as to think eating sugar is somehow part of an essential diet!?!? We're doomed.

... and by "sugar" we are clearly not talking about eating an apple.

<comment><USER6> Cutting fruit (fructose) from your diet doesn't seem like a wise choice. I agree that highly processed foods and sugared snacks/drinks are unhealthy.

<comment><USER3> You can eat a little fruit once in a while, but it actually isn't important for your health. Think of it as natural candy. Now, vegetables/greens are important.

Looking through history, humans only had fruit available a few months/weeks of the year. Nowadays we can get all the fruit we want.

<comment><USER7> How are vegetables important? They provide little to no energy.

<comment><USER2> That's why they are important. :) On a serious note, there is nutrient density.

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

 _Most commonly, nutrient density is defined as a ratio of nutrient content to the total energy content. Nutrient-dense food is opposite to energy-dense food (also called "empty calorie" food). [...] Fruits and vegetables are the nutrient-dense foods, while products containing added sugars, processed cereals, and alcohol are not._

This is why replacing added sugar with anything that contains at least some vitamins and/or minerals is beneficial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm fine with not getting my nutrition info from Oz, Gupta and Oprah if that's ok. I think they forgot to ask Dr. Phil what he thought.

I mean it's more than halfway through the article comparing pop garbage simplified nutrition before we start looking at any clinical studies.

<comment><USER9> I thought the article was trying to discredit the pop-nutritionists. To me, the point of all those quotes and anecdotes in the beginning of the article was to show the shallowness of their recommendations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree with a lot of the comments here. Just cut way down on sugars of any kind in general. I cut out about 90% of them about a year ago as part of a weight loss plan, and I'm sure I feel much better for it (Well, and losing weight too so no real evidence). I no longer have much craving for sugar and when I do have some it really tastes sweet now!

<comment><USER7> Sounds like your body is trying to get you back on the good stuff.

Your brain likes sugar. Get over it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> These so called experts seem to constantly go back and forth between which processed foods are good and which are bad for you. The obvious answer is probably to just avoid processed food all together.

The skeptic in me thinks that these experts are just pawns of the food industry which needs to push processed food as the potential for commercialization is much much higher than with natural food. Don't listen to any of them. Just eat something straight off a tree instead.

<comment><USER8> The very beginning of the article explicitly describes where one of these pop doctors recommended something just because it was natural (agave nectar) and ended up taking it back when it turned out just as bad as the artificial stuff (HFCS).

Thinking that good and bad is as easy as natural and artificial is exactly the type of bad simplification that end up teaching people that GMOs are unhealthy and meat is bad for you. Nutrition is complicated, and if you want to understand it there's no substitute for the research.

Let's also be clear - no one in this article is a _nutrition_ expert.

<comment><USER11> They may call it natural. From Wikipedia[1]

"To produce agave syrup from the Agave americana and A. tequilana plants, the leaves are cut off the plant after it has aged seven to fourteen years. The juice is then extracted from the core of the agave, called the piña.[2] The juice is filtered, then heated to break the complex components (the polysaccharides) into simple sugars.[Need to cite reference for production process] The main polysaccharide is called inulin or fructosan and is mostly fructose. This filtered juice is then concentrated to a syrupy liquid, slightly thinner than honey. Its color varies from light- to dark-amber, depending on the degree of processing."

So we have juice extraction, heating to break up the components, filtering and concentrating. It just shows how far the industry has gone to consider that as natural.

Or alternatively :

"An alternative method used to process the agave juice without heat is described in a United States patent for a process that uses enzymes derived from the mold Aspergillus niger to convert the inulin-rich extract into fructose.[6] Aspergillus niger, a fungus commonly used in industrial fermentations,[7] is "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.[8]"

We have a process to alter its chemical structure, luckily it is "generally recognized as safe".

Just because someone says it is natural doesn't mean that it is. Natural to me is picking an apple off a tree and eating it. Some food does need processing. Meat and some veg needs cooking, but anything beyond that is processed in my book.

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

<comment><USER2> When I read about the "natural" status of Agave nectar, I was immediately interested in the process of obtaining it. Thanks for placing this info right here!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I always think its a moderation and output issue rather than input.

In anyways, sugar fuels the brain!

<comment><USER13> Glucose fuels the brain. Fructose doesn't. And while more research needs to be done there's a lot of evidence that some people respond poorly to fructose.

<comment><USER14> Correct. Furthermore, if the subject is in ketosis, there is an adaptation which your brain becomes 'glucose free'. That's the whole point of keto diets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> sitting in front of the computer and reading this article makes you obese, better do some stretches. i canceled reading it at the half, because i already felt gaining some pounds:)</comment>


Free Dr Pepper Site Down (see the PHP) - <AUTHOR> http://www.drpepper.com/freeDrPepper/

<comment><USER2> <del>Looks like they fixed it -- good.</del> Exposing your web service code is a huge security issue; at least they were prompt about fixing it (says "Service Unavailable" now rather than serving PHP files)

Edit: Apparently not.

<comment><USER3> Exposing your code isn't a security issue if your code is written properly in the first place. You shouldn't be putting any private keys into your code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lucky for them it is just a recaptcha account. I wonder why the PHP was not interpreted though? It is wrapped properly?</comment>


Is Being Friendly a Competitive Advantage for VCs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Is-being-friendly-a-competitive-advantage-for-VCs

<comment><AUTHOR> Do not miss the debate in the comment thread for Chris Dixon's answer.</comment>


Black holes are like a hologram - <AUTHOR> https://earthsky.org/space/black-holes-are-like-a-hologram <comment><USER2> Another summary of a press release based on a study that doesn't seem to actually find anything new or 'surprising'. As the 'article' states, the holographic principle is an idea that is 30 years old.

As I understand it, this paper is novel because it has found a scenario, a set of rules, where the math shows that the universe could indeed work this way...but this particular set of rules doesn't seem to be the ones we see in this universe. (I'll get to the specifics in a moment)

Why is this still useful? Because it is a starting point, a model that confirms the theory is workable. If the result had been negative, then some parts of the theory could be ruled out.

Now to the specifics from the original paper's abstract:

> _We study this issue in the context of gravity with a negative cosmological > constant. We exploit the most basic example of the holographic description > of gravity (AdS /CFT): type IIB string theory on AdS5×S5, equivalent to > maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. We thus > resolve a long-standing question: Does the four-dimensional N=4 SU(N) Super- > Yang-Mills theory on S3 at large N contain enough states to account for the > entropy of rotating electrically charged supersymmetric black holes in 5D > anti–de Sitter space? Our answer is positive._

Lots of words. A few things to take away is that this paper talks about a universe with four spatial dimensions, not three, and it considers "anti-de Sitter space", which would be a universe that loops back on itself instead of being infinite and flat as our universe _appears_ to be. Last thing is that because the rate of expansion of the universe is accelerating, the cosmological constant is probably greater than zero but this theory only considers a scenario where the cosmological constant is negative.

<comment><USER3> For anyone who wants to dive deeper into the science of this stuff I highly recommend this playlist from PBS Spacetime: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsPUh22kYmNCHVpiXDJyA...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsPUh22kYmNCHVpiXDJyAcRJ8gluQtOJR)

Also, quick note: I think you're confusing anti-de Sitter space w/ de Sitter space? de Sitter has positive curvature (i.e. it curves back in on itself) whereas _anti_ de Sitter space has negative curvature.

<comment><USER4> I've really enjoyed PBS Spacetime - it's a great "more than layman" but "less than physicist" channel. They aren't afraid to show math, and explain hard concepts.

Additionally I've found this channel, from Anton Petrov, to be good in a similar vein:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/whatdamath](https://www.youtube.com/user/whatdamath)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating subject but the information density of this article falls short of my event horizon.

<comment><USER2> Same reaction.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23431458](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23431458)

This might be up your alley:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsPUh22kYmNCHVpiXDJyA...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsPUh22kYmNCHVpiXDJyAcRJ8gluQtOJR)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > For scientists, black holes are a big question mark for many reasons.

The writing of this piece is so shockingly bad that I wonder if it was machine translated.

</comment><comment><USER7> >"Yet, according to new research by scientists in Italy, black holes could be like a hologram, where all the information is amassed in a two-dimensional surface able to reproduce a three-dimensional image. In this way, these cosmic bodies, as affirmed by quantum theories, could be incredibly complex and concentrate an enormous amount of information inside themselves, as

 _the largest hard disk that exists in nature, in two dimensions._ "

</comment><comment><USER8> Somewhat irrelevant question but is the holographic universe theory a reasonable hypothesis for the universe expanding at different rates in its life since that could be explained by new material falling into the black hole that the holographic universe lives on.

<comment><USER9> IANAP but black holes evaporate without losing information. So in your model, how does that work?

Also, observation is that inflation has been ongoing for a long time, we don't seem to have spikes of growth. Afaik we have basically 2 phases one where inflation dominates and the one prior.

<comment><USER8> There's lots of examples of the universe expanding at different rates. The cosmic inflation early in the universe being one example and then the more recent dark energy acceleration of the expansion.

As for evaporating without losing information that's the whole point. The holographic universe theory states that a black hole doesn't destroy information. The holographic universe is a consequence of no information being destroyed in the formation or evaporation of a blackhole. It's literally the entire basis for the theory. My theory above is just postulating that as a block hole grows/shrinks due to information falling into it or evaporating from it a holographic universe on its surface would also grow/shrink.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If the universe is a hologram (or sorts) then non-locality should be expected, and spooky action at a distance is not paradoxical or terribly interesting.

</comment><comment><USER11> Black holes dont exists. Good try, anyway.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure they only look like they exist from where we're looking and they'll end up being cosmic mirages and this whole thing will reinforce the hologram theory</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is HN killing threads about the Chinese abuses in Xinjuang? - <AUTHOR> I've run a few searches for threads on the NYT's commentary and translation on the CCP leaks, but it seems like the mods are removing them. Are they in violation of HN policy? <comment><USER2> The thread you posted recently is still alive: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21560871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21560871)

HN Guidelines [1] generally discourage stories about politics, but this one seems interesting enough that it would qualify as something that "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".

Your post would have probably gotten more attention if you would have submitted the original NY Times story rather than a link to a Reddit discussion. (You might still be able to edit the link.) From HN Guidelines: "Please submit the original source".

Also, the moderators don't usually kill specific stories or topics (except spam). If articles are killed, it's usually due to users flagging them (e.g., as off-topic).

Finally, if you have questions about moderation issues, you can contact the moderators at firstname.lastname@example.com.

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

<comment><USER3> This transcends "intellectual curiosity". It's one of the most extraordinary pieces of longform journalism we have ever witnessed. Typically we only get an inside peek at the inner machinations of authority after the fact. Getting a glimpse in real-time of actual primary source documentary evidence seems unprecedented.

There are also a many points of relevance to consumer internet tech. The fact that leaders specifically call out WeChat, for example.

One wonders if the story behind the source of these documents will ever come to light?

'Absolutely No Mercy': Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detention of Muslims

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/ch...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china- xinjiang-documents.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been tracking a few and commented on one. It does not seem like they are being removed.

Sadly, it just seems that no one is commenting on them. Perhaps people are burnt out on talking about related issues or this is a chilling effect of moderation on previous related issues.

It is a shame that this is not getting more attention, I see the actions of the CCP as the biggest threat to western values globally.

</comment><comment><USER5> The moderators do not have an effective solution for wumamos. Discussion of China isn't really worth it under these circumstances.

There's no room for "intellectual curiosity" in regards to some issues. China tops that list. HN's apolitical stance amounts to discouraging discussion in regards to dissenting views.

Like other voting based sites, there is an implicit endorsement of the dominant narratives. Presenting this as curiosity seems like a bit of a stretch.

Perhaps this could be changed by ranking contentious comments and threads differently. Disputed information is a feature of the horizon.

Ideally people wouldn't down-vote those who they disagree with, but here we are. Even if there were a disagree button, wumaos act in bad faith by definition.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't want to upset China, a large marketplace and potential investor.

<comment><USER7> HN moderation has nothing to do with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have found that downvotes and flags tend to appear on them within a second or two of submitting, which does suggest automated suppression, whether by HN or just by bots.

<comment><USER7> If flags are appearing on them, that is because users are flagging them.

Your comments are likely being downvoted because they break the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Note the second-last one.</comment></comment>


Someone made 512 icons with pure CSS - <AUTHOR> http://cssicon.space <comment><USER2> This is a project of Wenting Zhang and she also gave a talk about this at dotCSS 2016: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0_FMCji3iE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0_FMCji3iE)

She also has a video where she explains her project: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOiRwXOIsx4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOiRwXOIsx4)

</comment><comment><USER3> These icons are released under CC0, meaning that it is as close to public domain as you can get in many territories.

</comment><comment><USER4> I never understood why people prefer abusing CSS to create icons when SVG is a much more suitable candidate for this kind of job. And in many cases they can be smaller in file size too.

<comment><USER5> Not only that, but some of these are terrifying:

[https://i.imgur.com/uRenwqm.png](https://i.imgur.com/uRenwqm.png)

<comment><USER6> Looks normal on my device

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand how this works</comment>


How Big Banks Thread the Software Performance Needle - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/02/02/threading-the-performance-needling-with-automated-pinning/ <comment><USER2> Self advertising on crappy tech. Running everything on one box is like moving back to mainframe era.

Thread pinning described in article is BS, software will run as process not threads and I don't think you can use custom scheduler for processes in linux kernel. This whole thread manager is just few settings on task scheduler and kernel config options. This type of tinkering with kernel is extremely dangerous.

AWS + Docker and I could be build much more flexible and faster platform.</comment>


Competitive Programmer's Handbook (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cses.fi/book/index.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16952222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16952222) from 3 months ago

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14115826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14115826) from one year ago

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if there has ever been a thread on algorithms competitions where people don't immediately come in and dump their job interview ptsd/angst.

</comment><comment><USER4> When I think of competitive programming I don't think of olympiads, I think of still having a job after other devs have been laid off in the latest downsizing. Which means kissing ass is a legit event.

<comment><USER5> I prefer the approach of putting myself forward as someone who is comfortable moving to a new company.

I'm totally confident in my ability to land a new job should I want to.

<comment><USER6> Every once in a while when I complete a project or something at my job I'll say to the higher-ups "one more thing to add to the resume". I feel like it keeps them from taking me for granted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish I had this book a couple of days ago !

</comment><comment><USER8> this or leetcode for FANG?

<comment><USER9> Realistically, depends on the FANG.

<comment><USER10> Elaborate pls.</comment></comment></comment>


A New del.icio.us Soon? - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/01/21/a-new-delicious-soon/ <comment><USER2> IIRC, there's been a semi-private beta of the new version available to certain members for 6 months, so this isn't really surprising anybody.</comment>


Securing Go web applications - <AUTHOR> https://stablelib.com/blog/securing-golang-web-apps/

<comment><USER2> Definitely a cool collection of, as the article calls them "quick wins." The stablelib.com business model is pretty interesting too. Not sure what to think about it.

<comment><USER3> The business is subscription, getting access to a (proprietary?) command line tool and "exclusive" (subscriber-only, proprietary?) training materials? That's what I guess from the home page. Accurate?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly it's for commercial support (maintenance: bug fixes, backporting of patches, security alerts, and technical support) of the packages included in the distribution, as we don't have the tool (will probably be open sourced) or exclusive content yet. Thanks for the interest!

<comment><USER4> How do you defend yourself against somebody just mirroring the libraries?

I was just researching licenses for a similar business model (in a completely different field) and came to the conclusion, that it does not really work.

AGPL would somewhat work, but would still have the downside that commercial entities could use the software just for tooling and internal processes, which most software is used for anyway.

In my mind Open Source prevents commercial use of applications only if the software is very likely to be shipped to the client, for example Qt.

With libraries it might look different, because people just get used to them and want to use them everywhere.

I would be very interested to hear your input!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the late reply! Since the original upstream packages are all open source, there's pretty much no point in mirroring. The major value of such business is mainly commercial support, which includes maintaining compatibility and solving the problems that clients have with packages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess it's great to know you /could/ do this in Go. But wouldn't anyone serious about these particular options just choose to apply them in Nginx? It's not like Go has completely kicked Nginx out of the mix. I still use it for static files (I trust/know Nginx caching) and for SSL termination (though yes, this /could/ be done in Go).

Would you use these options in Go or would you just set them at the reverse- proxy level?

<comment><USER6> > _wouldn 't anyone serious about these particular options just choose to > apply them in Nginx?_

It sounds like you are assuming that everyone "serious" already is or should be using Nginx. Also one shouldn't assume that you'll always be using a reverse-proxy. Even when you are using a reverse-proxy, in my opinion it's good to keep that layer as "dumb" as possible, minimizing application-specific details. For example, setting certain security HTTP headers correctly often requires a deeper understanding of an application than one should expect from the reverse-proxy layer.

Slightly off topic, but it reminds me of why I think web application firewalls are misused: they try to plug security holes that should be treated as application bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Love how "plug and play" some of these are! This is a great selection of packages. I didn't even know they existed.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a nice list of items, but I don't feel like it's informed from actual penetration tests on Go apps. Bad Content-Type headers and DNS rebinding affect almost every Go web application out there.

 _Any naked Go server is usually vulnerable to DNS rebinding because it doesn 't test the Host header._

Edit: see also: [http://0xdabbad00.com/2015/04/12/looking_for_security_troubl...](http://0xdabbad00.com/2015/04/12/looking_for_security_trouble_spots_in_go_code/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The first mentioned package, secure, has AllowedHosts option: [https://stablelib.com/doc/v1/net/secure/#Options](https://stablelib.com/doc/v1/net/secure/#Options)

I should add it to the post, thanks.</comment></comment>


No Facebook Messenger for Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.joshuawise.com/contact/no-fb-messenger <comment><USER3> Just wanted to let you know that not all is lost. To avoid keeping a FB window open all day at work, you can use messenger.com, which is facebook's solution for this. Or [http://www.goofyapp.com/](http://www.goofyapp.com/), which is that webview packaged as a mac app. There's tons of other software solutions as well.

Facebook messenger is an amazing platform. You can communicate with all of your friends (even if you don't have their phone number), on all of your devices, mobile and stationary. It also provides context to conversation - <USER2> full profile is only a tap away. Sharing photos and files is a breeze, and emojis and stickers add a dimension of fun that is not as effective on other platforms.

Facebook is keeping up with the times, changing, adapting, and not wasting resources on outdated technologies.

I get excited about change and technical improvements, even if it means I have to break old habits. Just something to think about.

<comment><USER4> Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't address the author's concern of keeping all IM sessions confined to a single desktop window. It's simply a method of using Facebook's Messenger platform without having facebook.com loaded in a browser. So it placates users with privacy concerns regarding opening Facebook on a corporate network, but it does nothing for the advocate of a single chat client.</comment></comment>


Database Build Process With Liquibase - <AUTHOR> http://flycereal.blogspot.com/2013/12/liquibase-database-build-process-part-1.html

<comment><USER2> Liquibase is a fantastic tool, but the quick-start guide on the website leaves something to be desired. At first glance, this looks like a rather better prospect for getting started with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's fantastic and under utilized as are most tools like this in the database realm. Up until recently Liquibase was the baby of one guy. Last I recall he was hired by a company and allotted time to work on it as part of the new job. Maybe this will result in more robust official docs.</comment></comment>


We're helping you overcome your indecisiveness - <AUTHOR> http://go.whichoneapp.com/download <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there! My team and I spent the last ten months working on an app where you can create polls to help make everyday decisions.

We launched on the App Store just two weeks ago and have seen a lot of really engaging and high-quality user generated content on there. People are using the app to help decide between clothes, hair colors, pictures and even sparking meaningful and fun discussions!

I'd love for you all to check it out! If you have any feedback or questions, I'm happy to answer. Thank you so much!

Download: [http://go.whichoneapp.com/download](http://go.whichoneapp.com/download)</comment>


Conrad Black: My prison education - <AUTHOR> http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/31/conrad-black-my-prison-education/

<comment><USER2> A couple great quotes:

"I had seen at close range the injustice of sentences one hundred times more severe for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, a straight act of discrimination against African-Americans, that even the first black president and attorney general have only ameliorated with tepid support for a measure, still being debated, to reduce the disparity of sentence from 100 to one to 18 to one."

I'm honestly surprised (& pleased) he would say that outright. I'm not particularly familiar with the workings of the U.S. justice system but a disparity of 100 to one sounds fairly unjust.

"America's 2.4 million prisoners, and millions more awaiting trial or on supervised release, are an ostracized, voiceless legion of the walking dead; they are no one's constituency."

This quote makes loads of sense when you consider that in the American justice system, prosecutors win over 90% of their cases (a point mentioned by Black).

In summary, I love that Conrad Black wrote this article. Most in his position wouldn't have.

<comment><USER3> It's all banalities. Standard lefty talking points. And of course, it's a lie. "100 to 1"?

[http://politics.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2007/10/01...](http://politics.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2007/10/01/crack- vs-powder-cocaine-a-gulf-in-penalties.html)

 _In 2006, crack cocaine sentences were 43.5 percent longer than powder cocaine sentences; the average length of imprisonment for powder cocaine offenders was 84.7 months, while crack cocaine-related imprisonments averaged 121.5 months._

<comment><USER4> Conrad Black would be amused at your description of him as a lefty. This guy founded a newspaper specifically to combat what he called "soft, left pap" in the Canadian journalism scene. He and his wife are so retrograde they are open admirers of the monarchy and nostalgic for the British class system.

There is a disease in American politics of attacking the position for potentially being consonant with a particular ideology. Call it the _ad ideologicem_ fallacy.

Like, if this statement _could_ be said by a left-winger, it must not be true, even if it's made by someone with actual experience or data.

Maybe his 100 to 1 statement is factually wrong, or perhaps that was just hyperbole. The main issue is that there's any disparity at all between drug sentences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've followed this case over the years and it's completely in character to see that he has no remorse whatsoever. He had been draining funds from his company, Hollinger International, into his own pockets for years. Shareholder pressure forced an investigation by the board, upon which he resigned, and was subsequently convicted for securities fraud. And of course he now describes himself as one of the "people, who, like me, would never dream of committing a crime...".

Notwithstanding his personal shortcomings, he's right about sentencing and the public defender system. Not that he has to worry about that!

<comment><USER6> You know I got the other sense from this article. He doesn't want to show remorse because he wants to appear strong; a resilient rock against the ravages of other mere mortals. Yet, he knows that he did something wrong. He saw the pain and suffering of others up close and personal at a huge stretch of time for 2 years, and this is his way of dealing with guilt.

Somewhere in his mind he sincerely believes that by speaking on the behalf of these people he is making a form of penance.

I feel sad for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Veterans of even 20 years in the federal prison system could not recall anyone being bailed in mid-sentence like this, and particularly not on the heels of unanimous Supreme and Circuit Appeals Court decisions."

The justice system evidently works in mysterious ways for rich, connected neoconservatives. Conrad Black's fraud was blatant, he hid and destroyed evidence of it, and has shown no remorse. After siphoning more than $6M of money from the company, he served a little over two years. $3M/year is a pretty good salary for living in minimum security prison.

<comment><USER8> Evidence, please?

<comment><USER4> There are a number of citations in the references to the Wikipedia article:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Conrad_Black>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not earth shattering, but it's an interesting look at the broken criminal system (can't call it a justice system...) from the type of guy who is rarely in a position to really see it.

</comment><comment><USER10> "I have learned more of the fallibility of American justice, which does convict many people, who, like me, would never dream of committing a crime in a thousand years."

It is amazing the number of people who commit white collar crime [1] make the claim that they would not dream of committing crime. White collar crime is as inexcusable as any other.

[1] obstruction of justice and honest services fraud in this instance. As I understand it, the US supreme court ordered a review of the applicability of honest services fraud. From wikipedia Quote "The jailed former media baron's obstruction of justice conviction, for which he is serving a concurrent 6 ½ year sentence, remains in place."

Tho, the rest of the article is well written, I wonder if he considers himself to be small fry, since he states "A trillion dollars have been spent, a million easily replaceable small fry are in prison", tho not in the context of white collar crime.

Need less to say, he is big fry getting away with crime. Context is everything.

<comment><USER11> An interesting blog to follow, by a white collar criminal, is White Collar Fraud: <http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hate to say it, since this guy clearly must have suffered a lot, but this is just not a very well written article.

At no point does he try to explain who he is or why he was in prison. You get the idea that he was falsely accused, and you learn (at excruciating length) that he's been released, but no details as to the how and why of either event.

Then, 1000 words in, just when he's ready to tell you some of the interesting things that happened to him in prison (hence the title of the article), it just ends.

Really disappointing. I want my ten minutes back.

<comment><USER13> Black founded the _National Post_ and his trial was extensively covered in Canada (and even in the US). He's quite right to presume that his audience know who he is and (roughly) why he was in prison. As for how the article's written, your objection is really to the headline, which is scoped somewhat inaccurately. The article itself is written fine. (And I would have said one of its main points is that he _didn't_ really suffer a lot.)

It's interesting that this prominent arch-conservative is, through personal experience, now citing facts and making arguments that are unfortunately nearly exclusively those of the left. It's like the old line, "a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged", in reverse. I wonder if he will do anything about it in the future.

<comment><USER12> Why should the reader of a newspaper (or is it a magazine?) be expected to know who founded it?

I hadn't realized that this was a newspaper article, but if so that actually makes it worse. A journalist should know how to write in such a way that people don't require external context to process a story.

<comment><USER14> It should more be considered as an opinion/ccolumn, as opposed to a news story (you'll notice it's in the 'Full Comment' section of the paper). It's also not a one-off piece; since he's been in jail, Conrad Black has continued to write these columns for (what was formerly) his paper about life in prison, what he's been up to, and general news issues of the day.

In short, this shouldn't be considered (and wasn't intended) as a news report on life in prison, but rather one person's account of what life was like for them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Voyager 1 Has Outdistanced the Solar Wind - <AUTHOR> http://www.universetoday.com/81662/voyager-1-has-outdistanced-the-solar-wind/ <comment><USER2> Since it's such a large number and difficult to comprehend Voyager 1 is about 116 AU away. 1 AU is the distance from earth to the sun (150,000,000 km). Earths circumference is 40,000 km. Space is big.

Also, a neat summary of the computers on Voyager can be found here: <http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html>

I'm still trying to track down the article on the comm used.

<comment><USER3> Great websites to browse around.

I can only heavily recommend the "did you know" [ <http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/didyouknow.html> ] and "fast facts" [ <http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/fastfacts.html> ] pages.

It makes one truly appreciate and wonder about the amazing accomplishments of this machine (and it's sister, Voyager 2) and the men and women who made this 'grand tour' mission possible.

Sometimes I've wished I was born a few decades earlier so I could have been a part of the team that really pushed mankind's space boundaries and knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Initial reaction: Now that's reliable hardware! Somebody forgot about the warranty expiring ...

More serious thoughts: This is really amazing, I would never have imagined it would even be possible to keep contact with a probe for this long.

Makes you wonder, way back then we could launch a probe that runs for several decades and reaches the absolute edge of the solar system ... nowadays we can ... make missions into space on several decades old hardware ...

Something isn't right here guys, I thought rocket science was supposed to be bleeding edge?

<comment><USER5> Well, there is New Horizons on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Juno will launch in 2011 to Jupiter. Cassini will have explored Saturn for 13 years at the end of its mission in 2017. (Cassini is in many ways more impressive than the Voyager spacecrafts.)

Then there are of course Spirit and Opportunity on Mars and their successor, Curiosity, is scheduled to land in 2012.

It sucks a bit that not much else is planned at the moment, though. (Probably no Mars Sample Return before 2020, no missions to Europa, …)

<comment><USER6> It's kind of surprising there is no mission to Europa in any form of advanced planning, the idea certainly seems to have been around for a long time.

You would imagine to that there would be much to learn from Cassini like missions to Uranus and Neptune.

<comment><USER7> There have been a couple of Europa missions which got cancelled in the planning stages, which is why we don't have one in the works right now. Europa missions have a habit of getting extremely elaborate and expensive and then getting cancelled.

We'll get there eventually. In the meantime, the big (and very expensive) mission in the works which the grandparent didn't mention is the Titan Saturn System Mission:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission>

which is currently planned to have a Titan orbiter, a Titan lake lander, and a Titan _hot air balloon_. If this one launches in its planned form it's going to be impressive. Mind you, it's not due to launch 'til 2020 and it's got a nine-year flight to Saturn, so don't hold your breath either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is especially cool for me, in that I remember the day in grade school I told the other kids about how Voyager 1 was passing Saturn and was the farthest-away man made object; now, some 30 years later, it is still making news and performing a useful scientific function.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's awesome that they have a second probe to repeat and confirm the data from the first one.

The Voyagers just leave me astonished - something that far and we are still communicating with it. I hope we are able to collect them one day.

<comment><USER10> Yes, if the Klingons don't destroy them... ;o). Just kidding. I still remember the launch. A remarkable instrument indeed. Like Pioneer. Two of the most impressive space missions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just wondering about two things:

[1] If speed of the space-craft(craft) and solar-wind (wind) become equal that doesn't mean winds have stopped? That means they are same or slower than the craft. Right?

[2] The time that signal from craft takes to reach us, is that accounted for in their estimation of 'how much time in...' equation?

Dummy questions but just very curious.

<comment><USER12> [1] True. But the default speed of the charged particles are a lot faster than a spacecraft, so effectively they've stopped.

[2] The light travel time is on the order of hours, not significant on these scales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> But has it forgotten who its creator is yet?

</comment><comment><USER14> Almost about to jump into hyperspace!

</comment><comment><USER15> Graphic of locations of Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Outersolarsyst...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/75/Outersolarsystem- probes-4407.jpg)

<comment><USER16> From 2007. Would love to see something updated!

<comment><USER15> Add four pixels to each line. ;)</comment></comment></comment>