Bitcoin payment processor BIPS compromised, 1295 BTC stolen - <AUTHOR> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252308.msg3645043#msg3645043 <comment><USER2> Pretty sad, especially for folks who lost coin.

The part that intrigues me is the whole security aspect of it. Take your average bright guy and say "Lets set up a place where people can store and move around gold coins. All the gold coins are going to sit in your living room, and of course if anyone were to get there hands on those coins they could melt them down into pieces and resell them so that you never knew where they went. There is going to be more than a million dollars worth of coins in your living room, do you think you're door lock is up to it?"

Ok so its a stretch, but Bitcoin has two interesting properties, one it is pretty fungible, and two most if not all governments consider it about as 'real' as the gold in World of Warcraft. If CFAA doesn't apply (say the server is outside the US) then what exactly would you even charge someone with who "stole" 1000 BTC? It isn't recognized as currency by any jurisdiction on the planet as far as I can tell, so what got stolen? Numbers? Block chain data?

This fairly unique combination of properties quite possibly make Bitcoin the _ideal_ target for thieves. Better than cash, better than raw gemstones, better than pretty much anything except possibly bearer bonds [1]. Have you seen how much security there is around vaults that hold bearer bonds?

And yet people create exchanges or wallet services or whatnot and then seem shocked when they get compromised by very sophisticated programmers [2], that steal all their BTC? You are surprised?

Given these huge thefts where is the money going? I mean is there a steady stream of redemptions at exchanges? Is there a note in the chain when the coin is transacted for cash? Should there be?

[1] [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/bonds/08/bearer- bond.as...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/bonds/08/bearer-bond.asp)

[2] When the payoff is huge, the risk small, you can pay someone a lot of money if they are good to get you the coins.

<comment><USER3> _" It isn't recognized as currency by any jurisdiction on the planet as far as I can tell"_

Wrong: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/07/federal-j...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/07/federal- judge-rules-bitcoin-is-real-money/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link, the reasoning from the ruling [1] is a bit more precise however. For the purposes of establishing standing the SEC to prosecute. The judge reasoned to that in part with this:

 _" First, the Court must determine whether the BTCST investments constitute an investment of money. It is clear that Bitcoin can be used as money. It can be used to purchase goods or services, and as Shavers stated, used to pay for individual living expenses. The only limitation of Bitcoin is that it is limited to those places that accept it as currency. However, it can also be exchanged for conventional currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen, and Yuan. Therefore, Bitcoin is a currency or form of money, and investors wishing to invest in BTCST provided an investment of money."_

The key here is that the judge is trying to understand if the transactions involved met the standard of being an 'investment of money.' Which he reasons to by establishing that you can convert currency to and from BTC and you can buy products with BTC. He doesn't address the question of people who create BTC out of the act of 'mining' it. Let's say Van Gough was alive today, you could use his paintings as "money" in exactly the same way, except Van Gough could make new money just by painting something. Which makes other things more complicated (are bottles of tide "money" if you can trade them for drugs? [2]) It sounds like this ruling simply allowed the SEC to move forward with their case, but I'll be interested to watch it to see if it gets appealed (the ruling). Clearly ruling to overly broad here would put the onus on people with collectibles to follow FinCen rules when trading them, which to date they have largely avoided.

[1] [http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/08/06/Bitcoin.pdf](http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/08/06/Bitcoin.pdf)

[2] [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why- are-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-are- criminals-stealing-tide-detergent-and-using-it-for-money/254631/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That technical explanation sounds almost like word salad. How did a DDoS hit your SAN in the first place and how did your SAN blowing up allow a compromise?

<comment><USER5> iSCSI san, so attached via ethernet or similar, taking network devices offline would take san offline. The rest is pure magic.

<comment><USER6> If your iSCSI network traffic can be impacted by an Internet-based DDoS, your network architect is an idiot.

<comment><USER5> yep, sounded like they shared switches between public and iscsi lans, or worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Address of the stolen funds: [https://blockchain.info/address/1LuG91tcSQxKj32BsCoRkX7yQLfj...](https://blockchain.info/address/1LuG91tcSQxKj32BsCoRkX7yQLfj9LtkCs)

<comment><USER7> Since every bitcoin transaction is in public, why don't we build a public blacklist for these addresses with stolen coins (and all addresses these bitcoins further transferred to)? such that the hackers cannot get too much from their actions

<comment><USER8> if you could get such a thing in place, couldn't everyone just roll back transactions?

I feel like having such a system in place would probably end up breaking a lot of the legitimacy (since you'd need over half of miners to agree to it, in which case some sort of "central" entity would exist)

<comment><AUTHOR> You could to a point, but you would need a lot of mining power and the ability to act quickly.

BIPS didn't announce that they'd been compromised until over a week since the funds were sent out, so it's completely impossible at this point. If you wanted to get a transaction with one confirmation reversed, you would need to convince the two largest pools (ghash.io and btcguild) to mine a fork that doesn't contain your blacklisted transaction in under 10 minutes, and even then they'd create a very noticeable reorganisation. You'd also then have to race to get your funds out, as you know your keys have been compromised.

It's fairly impossible really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1295 bitcoin stolen with a value of x dollar. See, they didn't care about the bitcoin they cared about the dollars behind it. As long as a bitcoin its value is measured in dollars and accepting bitcoin is merely done because it is at a high dollar rate, how can this possibly be a viable alternative currency? Apart from the whole fluctuation on steroids, bitcoin is nothing more than a wrapper for American dollars.

Because, at the end of the day, you have to pay for your groceries and mortgage in dollars. _B-but muh Subway sandwich_

<comment><USER10> Honestly, let's think a little bit here. If this story was reported on in China, what currency would it be converted to for the readership?

If a story about American dollars being stolen was reported on in China, what currency would it be reported in? Is the dollar just a wrapper for the Yuan?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How do we know this isn't an inside job?

<comment><USER12> A good question to be asking. I agree with this sentiment:

> Every time a company loses somebody else's bitcoins, the main assumption > should be that it was an inside job. It's way too easy for a company to take > the money and say that they were hacked.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rexob/bitcoin_paym...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rexob/bitcoin_payment_processor_bips_attacked_over_1m/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's their security page: [https://bips.me/security](https://bips.me/security) \-- "industry-leading security" .. "BIPS ... does not store bitcoin on its servers".

Is it time for a PCI-like consortium that will validate your bitcoin storage security procedures? (Not that PCI is guarantee of anything, but at least following it prevents you from having full credit card data lying around in files).

I.e. analyze your fail-safes (which seem to be lacking) and validate that unless someone is holding a gun to the owner's head, that your 1000 bitcoins held for you in their "vault" cannot be sent off to a random address.

<comment><USER14> Bitcoin advocates talk about lack of regulations a feature, not a bug, so I'd wonder how well it'd go over.

I think it's important and will have to happen eventually.

<comment><USER15> Could see if voluntary adoption works out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > It is imperative to understand that everything was wiped out from our > servers and getting functionality back is priority #1. The wallet part of > BIPS was a free service to make payments easier for users. Web Wallets are > like a regular wallet that you carry cash in and not meant to keep large > amounts in. Hence we offered a paper wallet as a cold storage alternative > for those who wanted a safe storage solution.

"Oh, we never said that our food is screened against infection - if you wanted that you should have checked out the premium section!"

</comment><comment><USER17> Hey, how about just disconnecting the critical machines from the network when under such an attack?

<comment><USER18> Our DDOS recovery plan is to just shut everything off and admit defeat. Brilliant.

<comment><USER19> That seems infinitely better than catastrophic loss of customer funds.

<comment><USER18> There's no difference as if you shut your site down everytime someone DDoS then you'll have no customers anyway.

<comment><USER20> mmm i think at this point in the Bitcoin community, stating that practice on your homepage would actually get you _more_ customers.

"In the event of an obvious attack, we disconnect from the network and begin diagnostics after __ minutes of sustained activity."

<comment><USER21> ddos can run over a rather long period of time and come and go fairly quick. cutting the internet connection just is no viable solution for an online service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1295 stolen, sounds like a lot - does that figure count as actual bitcoin transactions?

</comment><comment><USER10> Why do people use online wallets? I don't understand.

<comment><USER23> BIPS was a payments processor. Merchants used them to accept Bitcoin payments AFK.

</comment></comment><comment> iso-8859-1 Linked post is from November 19, 2013.</comment>


US takes 'richest nation on earth' crown from Switzerland - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelocal.ch/20190919/us-takes-richest-nation-on-earth-crown-from-switzerland <comment><USER3> > But debts in the Alpine country are far higher than in the US...

Debts make this comparison difficult to make meaningful.

A few cases:

\- Minimum wage earner barely scrapes by but does not seek any credit.

\- Someone in a high cost of living area takes out a mortgage.

\- A young neurosurgeon with fresh educational debt takes on a very high paying job.

\- A billionaire borrows to finance a major real estate project

The net worth of these cases goes from highest to lowest. The "means" run in the opposite direction.

Sometimes indebtedness is poverty. Sometimes it's consumption smoothing. Sometimes it's a reasonable investment in a home or earning potential. Sometimes it's a dangerous source of leverage on a foolish bet.

I don't know how we disentangle all those when trying to measure or compare human welfare.

> the strength of the US dollar [also contributed]

If high Swiss property values and a strong US dollar conspire to to flip the #1 and #2 countries on this specific metric, I'm worried we're drifting into Spaceballs territory. What's all this mean? Possibly... absolutely nothing.

<comment><USER4> When you take out a loan, it doesn't decrease your net worth, right? If I'm worth $X, then I take out a $1MM loan, at that moment I'm still worth approximately $X (because the $1MM the bank gave me and $1MM I owe the bank cancel each other out).

So I'd rank them as:

\- Billionaire

\- Home owner

\- Minimum wage earner

\- Neurosurgeon

<comment><USER5> Why is a house an asset but an education isn't? Do you think a potential spouse would pass over the neurosurgeon?

<comment><USER6> A house is a nearly guaranteed asset. The value will likely steadily rise throughout the years, and with good homeowners insurance you'll get paid even if the house is destroyed.

An education guarantees nothing. The neurosurgeon could die, or suffer an injury preventing them from performing surgery, or just plain quit and decide to pursue art instead.

Of course the neurosurgeon has a significantly higher potential _future_ value, but it's an unrealized asset.

Also, it's possible to discharge a mortgage through bankruptcy, while student loans are much more difficult to discharge, so you're effectively stuck with that debt forever regardless of your career choice.

<comment><USER7> So without the insurance, then the house would be similar to the neurosurgeon? A natural disaster could wipe it out.

And can't a Neurosurgeon take out equivalent insurance to cover the worst case scenarios that you described? I am sure I have heard of famous singers insuring their voices.

<comment><USER8> Almost.

A house can be liquidated and potential profit realized rather quickly. Education, not so much. You can insure yourself (and should, if you could lose your work by getting in an accident), so that you get a set amount paid out each month in case you end up in a wheelchair or similar state that would keep you from working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> US has high average net wealth per capita but is not close to top in median net wealth. Switzerland is close to top in both measures.

Median tells how rich the typical person is.

United States ranks #22 in median wealth [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult#List_of_countries_by_median_and_mean_wealth_per_adult_\(USD\))

<comment><USER10> > United States ranks #22 in median wealth > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult#List_of_countries_by_median_and_mean_wealth_per_adult_\(USD\))

It's off-topic, but could someone explain how is Ukraine last on that list? 40$ for median wealth and ~1.5k$ for mean wealth sounds incredibly low.

I knew Ukraine is in not great economic shape, but completely last sounds insane.

<comment><USER11> This measures "wealth", not income. You can be in the top 1% of earners, but if you save nothing, you can still have a net worth of $0.

Apparently, the median Ukrainian has only $40 to their name, by whatever means they measure wealth. However, Ukraine has compulsory socialized retirement funds. Minimum wage is $160/month.

The median US-American supposedly has 60,000$ to their name, which must be mostly due to IRAs.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I understand that wealth is not income, but in Ukraine there are plenty of oligarchs worth multi-billion sums. Dividing that wealth over whole Ukraine population is definitely more than 40$ per person.

Though probably that's where rampant corruptions comes in and I will just guess that rich oligarchs "on paper" have little to no official wealth in Ukraine (have no clue how wealth is calculated country-wise if it's international)?

<comment><USER11> > Yes, I understand that wealth is not income, but in Ukraine there are plenty > of oligarchs worth multi-billion sums. Dividing that wealth over whole > Ukraine population is definitely more than 40$ per person.

That's the arithmetic mean, not the median. The median is computed by sorting all the values from low to high and then picking the middle one. That's why it's a better measure for ordinary people. The few outliers at the top are not factored in.

<comment><USER10> Ah. Indeed. My error and feeling dumb for this mistake. Dunno why I always mix mean and median.. (clearly English is not my first language).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I suspect using the median net assets instead of the average would lead to vastly different results.

<comment><USER13> Actually the 20% poorest in the US has it better than the average EU middle class. Ref: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/the- poorest-20...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/fee.org/articles/the- poorest-20-of-americans-are-richer-than-most-nations-of-europe//amp)

<comment><USER14> And you still have plenty of homesless and destitute. Pretty sad that you can't look after the most vunerable.

<comment><USER15> Homelessness rates in the US are lower than many big European countries: [https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless- population.pd...](https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless- population.pdf)

Lower than France, Germany, and the UK, Sweden, Canada, and Australia. Equal to the Netherlands.

<comment><USER16> I'm European and I've been to several major cities in the US. I've also visited most european capital cities.

In both cases, as a tourist, I never go too far away from the popular places and never been there for most than 3 or 4 days.

Don't know the reasons (honestly) but the homelessness and poverty I've seen in the US is nowhere to be seen in Europe. I repeat, in "popular" places and vicinity.

How do they come out with such numbers? Is the impression of a tourist wrong? Where are the poor and destitute in Europe compared to the US?

<comment><USER17> > How do they come out with such numbers?

Different countries define and count "homeless" in different ways.

Some places will only count rough sleepers, and they'll do that by once a year sending people out to count people who are sleeping on the streets. This obviously severely undercounts those who are homeless.

Other places will have a definition for "statutorily homeless" which will include people living in bread-and-breakfast style accommodation - <USER2> short term lodgings funded by the state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Misleading stat is misleading. Page 47 of the source ([https://www.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/azcom/Allia...](https://www.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/azcom/Allianz_com/economic- research/publications/specials/en/2019/AGWR_2019.pdf)) : "By average net financial assets, the USA are the richest country in the world, not least thanks to the strong dollar. But if we drew up our rankings of the world's richest countries based on median values, they would look different. The US would slide by a whopping 12 ranks from the top spot to 13th place. Also Singapore (from third to sixth place), Sweden (from seventh to 12th place), Denmark (from tenth to 22nd place) and UK (from 12th to 16th place) would drop significantly. In all these countries the difference between median and average values tend to be bigger than in most other countries. For all countries analyzed, the (unweighted) average for the median value expressed as percentage of the average value is 44%. In the US, in contrast, this number is just 15%; in the UK and Sweden it comes to around 30%"

<comment><USER19> I haven't checked the data, it really shows the difference between countries who have wealthy elite and countries which have wealthy citizens.

By median:

1\. Switzerland

2\. Japan

3\. Netherlands

4\. Belgium

5\. Taiwan

6\. Singapore

7\. New Zealand

8\. Australia

9\. Canada

10\. Italy

11\. Israel

12\. Sweden

13\. USA

14\. France

15\. Ireland

16\. UK

17\. Austria

18\. South Korea

19\. Spain

20\. Germany

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are they including the billionaires in their statistics, and dividing the total sum by the population!?

<comment><USER21> As much as I hate the anti-US tone on HN, this article is kind of crap.

Fact is, getting good wealth data is really hard. Income is much easier as the govt collects that data.

<comment><USER22> It's really hard, but Global Wealth Report does really try. This news is crap, the report referenced is not. If you are interested do read the report.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If I have a billion dollars, and start a country that consists of me in my palace and 2000 other people living in abject poverty, we are now the "richest nation on earth" by this definition. Big whoop.

<comment><USER24> Except your country would be very poor, because you'd have either another country's currency, or you would have a $1bn trade deficit and little actual wealth - thats after you somehow get yourself some UN recognized sovereign territory

<comment><USER25> Just have $1b worth of gold

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can we talk about medians, not averages, please?

This page provides some nice insights:

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

For example: The US has a median/mean ratio of 15%, which is very low (ranked with the bottom 10 of countries), where Egypt, Kazakhstan and Ukraine are at the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER27> One of the more baffling statistics I've seen lately is that consumer debt continues to increase and credit card interest rates are at multi year highs despite the fed funds rate being at historical lows. Things don't add up.

<comment><USER28> Sounds like the credit card companies are expecting a vanishing fraction of the people for whom credit card interest is relevant to actually pay them back...

(At least among my family, common knowledge is to treat credit cards like debit cards or charge cards - make the full payment, every time, and if you can't make the full payment you shouldn't have made the purchase)

<comment><USER29> Same here - I'm using credit card only for extra protection (chargeback and so on) always making the full payment at the end of the period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How does this reconcile with the data listed at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult) ? That shows $530,244 for Switzerland and $403,974 for US. Difference in sampling or does the wiki one not reflect net wealth?

<comment><USER22> Wikipedia uses Credit Suisse and this news uses Allianz.

<comment><USER31> That's much less important than the date, which is 8 years apart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> That may be true, but what about the chocolate deficit compared to Switzerland?

</comment><comment><USER33> TIL Switzerland is the richest nation on earth. If I was going to guess, I probably would've guessed Saudi Arabia or Luxembourg.

<comment><USER34> Visit Zurich. Prices are ~2x what they are in my (fairly pricy already) area in the US. That's the direct consequence of high median income: businesses charge what the market will bear.

<comment><USER35> The high price of the CHF also has something to do with it. I visited the French-speaking part of Switzerland a couple of summers ago (Geneva and Lausanne) and at some point during that visit I realized that those two cities (and the rest of the Swiss cities, of course) were among a very short list of European cities not directly affected by war in the last 200 years or so. Under these circumstances of course that everyone will be busy giving the Swiss their money and valuables for "safe keeping", which among other things translates into said high price for the CHF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It seems like if you are slightly more business-friendly than competing countries then you have a big advantage (not to mention network effects), but if everyone tried to be more like America then the world would be worse-off.

Just like a classic coordination game.

</comment><comment><USER37> Hmm, US does not look or feel like the richest nation on earth. Is that just me?

<comment><USER7> Probably because the income inequality is higher. If you think of some famous super rich people I am sure most of the names you think of will be from the US.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#/media/File:2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#/media/File:2014_Gini_Index_World_Map,_income_inequality_distribution_by_country_per_World_Bank.svg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Mean wealth is not very meaningful. What is the median in the two countries? Better still what does the distribution look like and how does it compare to other countries?

</comment><comment><USER39> Going to that link I was punched in the face by about 20 ads and saw one sentence of content that basically just restated what was in the title... did I miss something?

</comment><comment><USER40> I'd be curious to see the proportional gap between the top 10% and bottom 10% compared. My guess is a much larger gap in the US, but I wonder by how much.

<comment><USER22> The report linked in fact does such gap analysis.

<comment><USER40> I guess I should have dug further than the introduction, thanks for point me further in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am as American as they come but wealth as reported by this article is a false metric. The Swiss have an amazingly high quality of life and standard of living. For most Americans, I don't think our quality of life is anywhere near what it is in Switzerland.

</comment><comment><USER42> Too bad money can't buy happiness [0]

[0] [https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-happiest- countries...](https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-happiest-countries- united-nations-2019/index.html)

<comment><USER7> Too little money does cause misery though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Couldn't find any content here. Just a full page of ads.

</comment><comment><USER44> When you get to compare the average lifestyle though, this is a joke...

</comment><comment><USER45> What is the point of this article other than to make the internet more dumb?

Say Bill Gates moves into a town of 10,000 people. Congrats! The average wealth of that town per person is now over 10 million. Everyone is a multi millionaire.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you remain friends after a startup? - <AUTHOR>

Do you remain close friends with a cofounder after a startup? <comment><USER2> I think it's important to be able to separate business from friendship. The worst is when you're romantically involved with one of your start-up partners. Never do that.

It also helps to start companies with people who are exceptionally laid-back, but you have to also realize that with that sometimes comes laziness. It's hard to find teammates who are both laid-back and highly driven/motivated, but when you do, they're solid gold. Whether you're friends before/during/after your endeavors is immaterial at that point.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started Joystickers with 2 other founders and we had to part ways with one. It was messy, but we're all still friends.

I bought an investment property with a different friend and our friendship has definitely suffered. We don't hang out for fun nearly as often as we used to.

It really depends on the dynamic between the friends. If you guys are comfortable butting heads without taking it personally, then go for it. Think twice otherwise.</comment>


Life360 CEO calls patent troll "Piece of Shit" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ChrisHulls/status/467799031251365888 <comment><USER2> Hi guys, Life360's CEO here. Thanks for the help. As a bit more color, the company that is suing is seems to be failing and this is a desperate last gasp.

Checkout [http://www.agisinc.com/](http://www.agisinc.com/)

As Steve mentioned, we just raised $50m, so we have to spend some real cash to get this invalidated, we'll do it. When we were smaller we would just pay these assholes off, but now we have a warchest we won't roll over so easy.

<comment><USER3> Good on you! You were lucky to the point of creating something that you got the rich to back you and lucky that people used your product.

For the unlucky their is the patent system in which can be used to get ones fair share!

<comment><USER3> Why is this being downvoted?

This is not a patent troll, rather it's a company still in business who is struggling. Are they supposed to just shut down and fail and give up their IP because of it?

In start-ups your either lucky or unlucky. The unlucky work just as hard as the lucky!

<comment><USER4> Because any sentiment other than "fuck those patent troll piece of shit douchbags, bro" will be voted down by the pro life360 cabal.

<comment><USER2> I think it is being downvoted because it doesn't address the real content here. We are being sued for having markers on a map. Who cares if the company is operating or not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're hoping to see patent reform, this dispute seems to be the wrong one to focus on. This strikes me as more of a genuine argument, and not a flagrant abuse of the system that would likely lead to change:

* AGIS seems to be a genuine company, that filed its own patents, and has a real product. There are much clearer examples of trolls out there.

* The patent claims are highly specific. This is not a "...on the Internet" type patent.

* Life360 is not (yet) claiming they don't infringe; they are focusing on obviousness.

* The patent system now has a relatively straightforward, quick and inexpensive system for getting a patent re-examined. Life360 hasn't (yet) said they will do that.

* The Life360 strategy seems to be primarily PR-driven: attention-grabbing language, posting things on Twitter, contacting journalists, etc. This reminds me of the legal saying: "If you're weak on the facts and strong on the law, pound the law. If you're weak on the law and strong on the facts, pound the facts. If you're weak on both, pound the table."

To my mind, this argument seems more likely to boil down to "should ideas be protected by patents", instead of "should we do something about shell companies that abuse patent law to extort money".

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't really think that AGIS is a patent troll... It looks like they're a real company that makes real products.

<comment><USER2> You can be a "real" company and still be a patent troll. These guys are probably failing and using their patents to get a few bucks before they finally die.

<comment><USER4> Your definition is not accurate. Just because one company raises more money than another does not make the company failing in the market place a patent troll. By this definition IBM is a patent troll.

<comment><USER2> I don't think amount raised has anything to do with it.

I'd say you are a patent troll anytime you are using a bullshit patent to extort a third party. The rub is what constitutes a bullshit patent, but "sending messages through a map UI" seems obviously in this camp. It sucks you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for the courts to validate this logic though.

So by that definition, I'm sure IBM could be a patent troll, just like any other company with BS IP.

<comment><USER3> So your company doesn't own any patents?

<comment><USER7> There are patents and bullshit patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Calling a spade "a spade" is one thing, but this does seem a bit childish.

Edit: typo

<comment><USER9> Morals are out the door when attempting to extort money from legitimate companies to fill your coffers.

<comment><USER10> I wasn't aware we should behave poorly just because patent trolls behave poorly.

<comment><USER11> One party is engaging in extortion, the other used an insult. Have a sense of proportion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The relevant case documents:

[http://dockets.justia.com/docket/florida/flsdce/9:2014cv8065...](http://dockets.justia.com/docket/florida/flsdce/9:2014cv80651/441826)

<comment><USER9> And the patent numbers:

7,031,728, 8,126,441 & 7,672,681 which cover "using a map to initiate a rapid voice communication or text message"

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just speculation (I work at Life360), but we announced our $50m Series C this week.. looks like the patent troll got the news, too.

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome if it is a troll. More people should do it.

It appears this is an actual company though and they filled in Florida not East Texas?

</comment><comment><USER13> So explain like I'm five: is this an overly broad patent on an idea, e.g. they have a 'system and method for catching mice' and they're suing everyone who makes anything that catches mice? Or did they invent a particular type of mouse trap, and they're suing over someone who is selling the exact same implementation? I love a good angry mob as much as the next guy, and can fully get behind the name-calling if there's something truly nefarious, but help me understand exactly what's being litigated here and why AGIS is deserving of the 'piece of shit' label.

</comment><comment><USER14> What i don't understand is why do they start with a lawsuit. Why didn't they contact Life360 to work something out, like a partnership. Life360 seems to be the big fish. A greedy small fish trying to eat a big fish is a bad idea i think.

<comment><USER15> The document very explicitly states that they contacted Life360 to work out a patent licensing arrangement, not with a lawsuit. So they did exactly what you suggested.

It looks like the suit wasn't filed until they were called a "Piece of Shit" for attempting to work something out.

<comment><USER14> ok got it. jeez with the down votes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is HN now.</comment>


Ask HN: Awesome examples of initial startup blog posts - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the midst of writing our startup's first blog post and want to make sure it's awesome.<p>What are some examples of awesome initial/introduction startup blog posts? <comment><USER2> This is a powerful introduction of Silent Circle's encrypted communication services. Aggressive and visionary.

[https://blog.silentcircle.com/why-are-we-competing-with- phon...](https://blog.silentcircle.com/why-are-we-competing-with-phone-makers- skype-and-telecom-carriers-all-in-the-same-week/)</comment>


mrjob: Yelp open sources its Elastic MapReduce framework for Python - <AUTHOR> http://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2010/10/mrjob-distributed-computing-for-everybody.html

<comment><USER2> This past week I started working on a Python 3 port of this, mostly to learn. No EMR unfortunately, but Hadoop should be possible. I just got back from a trip, so it's still not very far along, just runs the "local" version, but it should get a bit farther next week.

I can confirm that it is a _great_ way to learn about MapReduce.

Link: <http://github.com/irskep/mrjob/tree/py3k>

I will likely totally restart the py3k port now that I know what I am doing a bit better. I've been writing Python 3 for about, oh, two weeks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazon EMR is an amazing value proposition for virtually any research need, and it's very cool to see wrapper frameworks targeting it directly. Still, for anyone managing their own compute clusters and wanting to do MR in python, I'd suggest checking out Disco.

Disco (<http://discoproject.org>) is a really elegant MR framework implemented in erlang and python, with additional support for jobs in C and Java. I've used it for a little over a year and am convinced it is the superior MR platform (Hadoop's terasort victories notwithstanding). New features are being integrated very quickly, the core platform is rock solid, management is simple and it's extremely flexible.

</comment><comment><USER4> this was a game changer for us -- instead of everyone contending for the Hadoop cluster, each developer has their own personal arsenal of Hadoop clusters. huge win.

<comment><USER5> But then don't you have a lot of CPUs going unused, because you are partitioning your resources?

Is it really difficult to automatically allocate shared resources?

<comment><USER6> We're allocating EMR clusters as needed. When they're no longer needed, they go away. Waste is minimal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On this note, does anyone know a good tutorial on map reduce for experienced programmers? Basically, I want to learn how to frame advanced problems in terms of MR - I am particularly interested in expressing my discrete event simulation in terms of MR.

<comment><USER8> You want exercises, not a walk-through.

The thing with using higher-order functions isn't learning the definitions (which are rather simple, really,) but figuring out how to use those tools.

And for that you need practice. Start from describing trivial problems (word count, for example), and advance to more complicated ones. Any good book on functional programming would have lots of exercises (<http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/> is probably the most famous, but is surely not the only one.)

I grokked functional programming by learning Calculus of variations, but YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice to see one more production use of Cython.

<comment><USER10> mrjob doesn't contain any Cython. The author was just stating it was a challenge getting Yelp's codebase (which contains some Cython) running on EMR.

<comment><USER9> I understood that from the article. But, in the light of recent discussion on Cython, i though it was interesting to note a "2.0" company like yelp using Cython.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So does most of your data live in S3 in JSON format?</comment>


Django on Google App Engine w/ SQL in near future - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers/browse_thread/thread/eee872b03286075e

<comment><USER2> Looks like Google is feeling the pressure to keep up w/ Amazon's hosted MySQL service (<http://aws.amazon.com/rds/>). And they aren't fooling around considering the announcement was made by Wesley Chun (didn't realize he was a Googler, but he's the author of the excellent "Core Python" books) and Guido himself. Hurrah for competition!

</comment><comment><USER3> This was announced at Google I/O. But it's only for AppEngine for Business at the moment.

Talking to some Google people they didn't rule out making available for standard AppEngine.

One interesting thing about it is that it's built on a custom BigTable backend (or at least Google _has_ a custom BigTable backend - it's my assumption that it's being used for this)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish they provided an option for the datastore to be even less of an RDBMS, but much faster. I suspect a lot of the current write latency is due to the transactional guarantees they provide. Just give us access to the raw bigtable, please! :)

</comment><comment><USER5> From the links the App Engine team provided, it looks like this is only available for customers of Google App Engine for Business ($8/user/month).

[http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google- app...](http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google-app-engine- for.html)

I wonder how they're doing this and how their offering will compare to Big Table in terms of ACID and scalability.

</comment><comment><USER6> Djangy.com already has this :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> But it's still in beta ;)

I'm patiently waiting for my invite.

<comment><USER7> I have extra invites.

What's your email?

<comment><AUTHOR> jordan (at) jordanmessina.com

Thanks so much, I've been pumped about this and talking it up to the other local startups who use django too.

Edit: moved this to reply to your comment instead of mine, your comment didn't have a reply link earlier for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > MySQL-compatible

I hope that's free of Oracle's licensing DRM.</comment>


Modding a laptop's heatsink for better performance - Hacking/DIY at its best - <AUTHOR> http://jakeonthemove.com/upgrading-the-elitebook-8530-making-the-heatsink-extension-part-9/

<comment><USER2> >I also added a small aluminum heatsink I had to the south bridge – the chip is under the speaker box, and there was enough space, so why not.

Because you're blocking airflow in an already confined space, thus helping kill the machine?

> and I haven't seen anyone do anything like this,

hmmm, people with an EEE PC 701 4G sometimes would add shims to the single massive aluminum heatsink under the keyboard, to help with heat and prevent (as you mention) flexing keyboards.

I'd be interested to see what you could do with copper mesh and copper sheet - that'd avoid the need for drilling. (I mean this politely, but your drilling was AWFUL!!)

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no airflow around the south bridge - it's under the speaker box.

I know the drilling was awful :-) - I used an 800 Watts power drill with 1.6mm drill bits (that thing fits 14mm bits!), didn't have anything else. In the end it works fine.

A sheet and a mesh is a good idea, but it would take too much work and the heat transfer would be impacted - I specifically drilled the holes so that the copper sheet is cooled by incoming air, therefore acting like an additional (large) fin for the heatsink.</comment></comment>


Libtorrent adds support for the WebTorrent protocol - <AUTHOR> https://feross.org/libtorrent-webtorrent/ <comment><USER2> Amazing news. The upshot is, we are getting closer to a world where all popular torrents are streamable in a browser.

Libtorrent powers Deluge and a few other clients.

Brave Browser already has webtorrent support built in.

As more clients support BitTorrent over WebRTC, more of the torrent universe becomes available on the web.</comment>


Go Playground: Compile and run Go programs from your browser - <AUTHOR> http://golang.org/doc/playground.html There are obvious restrictions in terms of I/O and memory and CPU usage, but it is a nice demonstration of the speed of the compilers.  The examples show off some of the more unusual features of Go like closures, concurrent "goroutines" and channels. <comment><USER2> A duplicate of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1696871>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I didn't see that. Good discussion over there, but I think my summary is more self-explanatory.

<comment><USER2> Your summary is more self-explanatory, No doubt about it.

But I think (keep in mind that I'm fairly new on HN) that the idea behind the "avoid duplication policy" is simply to keep the comments all in the same basket.

Said that "duplication happens!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just curious. Is Go being used for any major project yet?

<comment><USER4> I wrote this Facebook app in Go: <http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=135488932982>

It's running very smoothly.</comment></comment>


Facebook Scripting Language - A really rough idea - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/2466121

<comment><USER2> This is what I always have thought to be a huge problem in RESTful API design of all major companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. It is mainly pull- technology. One has to ask the Facebook-server all the time: get a list of friends, get a list of friends, get a list of friends.

I'd love to see an API model based on events and callback URL's.

pseudo, but you'll get the idea:

[http://api.facebook.com/event/on-friend- connect?callback=htt...](http://api.facebook.com/event/on-friend- connect?callback=http://myserver.com/event/friend-connected)

IMHO, WebServices should communicate in an evented fashion. If I want to draw an umbrella on myserver if it is going to rain in The Netherlands, I don't want to ask the weather server every X minutes: is it going to rain? is it going to rain? is it going to rain?

No, I want:

[http://api.weeronline.nl/event/on-weather- change?location=Ut...](http://api.weeronline.nl/event/on-weather- change?location=Utrecht,NL&callback=http://myserver/event/weather-changed)

pubhubsubbub solves this issue for RSS feeds, but pubhubsubbub is way too narrow to me. I hope evented API's will become the next big thing, enabling developers to create a whole new bunch of awesome products.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't this what Webhooks was all about? I remember they were all the rage a while back but I haven't seen much more adoption since then.

I'd love to be proven wrong though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ha. Now I understand why Facebook said "Google and Apple need to _improve_ their browsers" a few days ago.</comment>


Show HN: Crabby: a web page performance monitor using Selenium and Graphite - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chrissnell/crabby <comment><USER2> this looks exactly what I was looking for; I was thinking of running some tests in selenium and see how the performance of the servers with graphite; I hope your project will save me time

However, I'm not a big fan of go lang :(

is there a way to simulate 100's or 1000's of users accessign the website at the same time?

thanks</comment>


Obama Just Became the First Sitting President to Publish an Academic Paper - <AUTHOR> https://mic.com/articles/148595/obamajama-obama-academic-paper-made-history?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=future&utm_campaign=social#.jn94vAigo <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12098980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12098980)</comment>


Using Gambit-C Scheme to Create Small, Efficient Native Applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.devx.com/print/opensource/Article/42778 <comment><USER3> Results 1-10 of 19 for gambit native:

Using Gambit-C Scheme to Create Small, Efficient Native Applications (devx.com)

2 points by b-man 2 years ago | 12 comments | cached

Using Gambit-C Scheme to Create Small, Efficient Native Applications (devx.com)

2 points by ColinWright 1 year ago | 0 comments | cached

Using Gambit-C Scheme to Create Small, Efficient Native Applications (2009) (devx.com)

5 points by ColinWright 2 months ago | 1 comments | cached

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah - auto-hoist, petard-wise. I hadn't realised I'd submitted this - <USER2> would've deleted it had I noticed sooner.

Never mind - if people like it it will float, if not it will sink. Thanks for the heads-up - I'll remember not to post from my mobile - HNSearch doesn't work on that, so I couldn't check.

<comment><USER4> I had missed it and I think it's a nice piece.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote that article four years ago. I hope it is still accurate re: the current Gambit Scheme. And, yeah, Gambit is pretty much awesome if your application does not need a lot of third part libraries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you want to know about typos? More than once you type "I" when you mean "i", for example. There may be more, but I just noticed those.

      Here, I and j are local variables that are
      defined only inside of the let statement.</comment></comment>


Airbnb host must pay $5,000 for canceling reservation based on race - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airbnb-discrimination-20170713-story.html <comment><USER2> Stupid of the host to act like that and inexcusable, got what she deserved etc, but....

This is one sided reporting. First of all Barker accepted the booking knowing who the guest would be, from her name, profile etc.

Then there were frequent polite comms where the booking was changed, renegotiated. Two extra guests were added. Then the guest asked to bring a small dog, and the host said no because they have a pitbull in the house. Guest persisted and eventually the hosts agreed to remove their own dog from the house to accommodate the dog.

Messages on the day of arrival have been withheld by the guest, but relationship broke down and became hostile, with the guest delaying arrival until 2AM-3AM. The host lost patience.

So I think the reason they cancelled is because the guest really did mess them about, but still really stupid to use those words in doing so. Tami Barker had the opportunity to refuse the booking long before, and didn't, then went out of her way to accommodate the guests. Of course, nobody is interested in that.

<comment><USER3> All well and good, none of which is relevant to the story. What _is_ relevant is that the host documented that she doesn't want to rent to Asians. That's why the host ended up paying $5K, not because the guest was a pain in the ass.

Yes, if she'd just said, "you're a pain in the ass, I'm not renting to you", all would be well. But some people just can't help themselves, I guess (I'm picturing the host as some letters-to-the-editor crackpot).

<comment><USER4> Does making racist comments you don't believe make you a racist? Does giving compliments you don't believe make you a nice person?

I seriously don't know. I want to say yes, but maybe not?

I was thinking about this in another context today. When people piss you off, many people (including myself) want to say things to them that will illicit a negative reaction. Often, offensive words seem like a good choice to accomplish that goal. If telling someone "you're a responsible human being who loves his mother" caused someone to be offended, lots of people would say that when they are angry.

I'm totally on the judges sides in this case, once those words come out of your mouth there is no going back and you should be responsible for them.

I guess I just wonder if there is a relatively easy and sure-fire way to piss people off without being offensive? What's a better way for people to express their anger in a childish way ?

<comment><USER3> _I guess I just wonder if there is a relatively easy and sure-fire way to piss people off without being offensive?_

I'll assume we've gone beyond the topic at hand, as I wonder who would wonder how to piss people off as an AirBnB host? :-)

Frankly, I find racial insults to be cheap and unimaginative. Oh, so I'm a $RACIAL_EPITAPH? Well, can't help how I was born. Nice try, though. No points for effort, though. "Maybe you wouldn't have that problem if you'd grow up, learn to accept responsibility, and quit blaming your problems on the actions of others. That failed business? That's wasn't a market problem, an employee problem, that was a _you_ problem."? Oooh, well, that kind of hits close to home.

Never go for the easy insult. Take a few extra moments, find that weak spot, and give that knife a good twist if you're genuinely intending to communicate insult.

<comment><USER5> Reminds me of the listing "When Insults had Class":

[http://allowe.com/laughs/book/When%20Insults%20Had%20Class.h...](http://allowe.com/laughs/book/When%20Insults%20Had%20Class.htm)

Some of those are pretty targeted and cut rather close...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's crazy is the person could have gotten away with it if they had just not specified why they were cancelling. Not only are they racist, but they want people to know it, _aaaand_ they're stupid enough to message the reason via a channel that is easily linked to the offending situation.

Also:

> The woman, Dyne Suh, a UCLA law student...

That's like picking a fight with someone and they turn out to be an amateur MMA fighter.

\-----

Side-note, does this ruling say anything about AirBnB's legal situation by declaring an AirBnB as a "place of public accommodation"?

</comment><comment><USER7> I do not see what forcing a class on someone like this (especially at their age) will accomplish. Does anyone really think a semester long course is going to make her go "well, gee whiz, guess I shouldn't discriminate against those Asians anymore"?

<comment><USER8> Honestly I think it's better than nothing. Discrimination like this is usually based on complete ignorance/lack of exposure to different cultures. A course on Asian cultures may actually have some effect of humanizing the asian people for this particular bigot.

<comment><USER9> _> Honestly I think it's better than nothing._

Actually, I think the forced class makes the situation worse. My life experiences tells me classes and other attempts at "re-education" only _hardens the attitudes for hatred and discrimination_.

For a person to change their racism/homophobia, it requires interaction with another human that triggers an emotional component. For example, a person who despises gays has a child grow up to be gay which changes their mind. Or a somebody who hates blacks later ends up stuck in the front line of a war with other blacks watching each others' backs and it eliminates (or lessens) the prejudice.

It doesn't mean that positive human interactions will always "cure" everyone but it seems to be more effective than classes.

Classes are more useful for cultural/etiquette topics (e.g. how to hold business cards with 2 hands in Japan).

<comment><USER8> There's a very good chance you're correct, of course. I suppose my comment was just my general hopeful optimism coming out.

Really, though, how does one actually "deprogram" someone with opinions like this? Can it actually be done?

Casual racists are a toxic population whose opinions and behaviors in favor of said racism bring no value to society. How on earth do we eliminate it?

I used to think that the steamroller of progress and information would gradually eliminate racism and sexism and denial of science and logic as older generations died out, but the rise of the next generation of racists and MRAs and flat earthers seems to be a fairly strong counterpoint to that.

I fear for the future of humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The host deserves a larger fine for her stupidity alone. She told the women who reserved straight up that she "wouldn't rent to an Asian." Why not just deny the request, and keep your bigotry comments to yourself about the "why." It's one thing that the host was racist, but if she would have just kept that to herself, it probably wouldn't have got her a fine. So not only is the host a racist, but she is clearly an idiot too. *smh

<comment><USER11> > Why not just deny the request, and keep your bigotry comments to yourself

I don't want you to think that I'm saying this is as simple as "blame Trump". It's not that simple. But it seems related to me.

It used to be that you could be a bigot like this and so long as you didn't make it public, loud, obvious, no one really cared that much. No one liked it, but no one cared. Now we're in a time when America has elected a President who is pretty openly bigoted in a number of ways.

There's a good question there about cause vs effect. Did people being more openly bigoted lead to Trump being elected, or did the President being pretty bigoted lead to people feeling more comfortable with their closed-minded beliefs? Or maybe there's a mutual cause to both things. But it sure does seem related.

<comment><USER12> The host outright said it was related to Trump. I see no reason not to believe her.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > In the video, Suh shows screen shots of the exchange, including a message > from Barker saying, "It's is why we have Trump" and, "I will not allow this > country to be told what to do by foreigners."

Conservatively considering 45% to 48% of the registered Voters voted for Trump, what %age of those voters think like this? => "I will not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners."

Alarming.

<comment><USER14> Percentage of voting age population that even voted at all was lower than that, and percentage of registered voters was not much higher.

Be wary of thinking "48% of America" => "I will not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners". It's not that different than thinking any Democrat will go off on you for assuming their gender. What I find more alarming is the percentage of people who really feel like they're reasonable and half of the country is their enemy on both sides.

<comment><USER15> But when you have president that is a rallying point for racism and actively says a major existential threat to humanity is "a chinese hoax", it is hard not to view that person as a threat and enemy.

He has demonstrated a stunning immunity to logic and willingness to harm American interests. He ignores open dialog. He and his who can't be talked to (which are most I have talked to) are the enemy. They represent and embrace ignorance and want a kind of backwards thinking and social order that only makes sense in the myopic view. They are anti-science while using tools made by and for science to communicate and often see no hypocrisy in any of this. They are the reason we have terms like "post-truth".

They often can't be reasoned with. They often seem will to deploy violence. They are doing real harm. How are they not the enemy?

<comment><USER14> >> They often can't be reasoned with. They often seem will to deploy violence. They are doing real harm.

You... _do_ understand that many conservatives think _exactly_ that of liberals and that's what I think is more dangerous than either one alone, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As disgusting as the host's behavior is, her reasoning is correct: the political atmosphere has approved bigotry, racism, homophobia, and misogyny at the highest levels. Given that, how do we hold the public accountable for those offenses for which we forgive the state?

<comment><USER17> State laws and regulations still apply, no matter who's president. Also, the federal government has faced resistance from citizens and states and lost legal battles. The current political climate is extraordinary, but to say that standards are not being held is a stretch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interestingly racism against asian people is usually not on people's radar, but they do face some significant racism. In particular, they face discrimination in getting into college. Because as a group they tend to make higher grades, they have to get the highest grades/SAT to get into colleges they want. [https://priceonomics.com/post/48794283011/do-elite- colleges-...](https://priceonomics.com/post/48794283011/do-elite-colleges- discriminate-against-asians)

</comment><comment><USER14> I had someone in Palo Alto decline my request because of my gender. Would that be viewed differently in the law?

<comment><USER19> You'll find a good summary of the relevant rules at [https://www.craigslist.org/about/FHA](https://www.craigslist.org/about/FHA).

If it was a roommate request, then it is viewed differently. If the property was at most 3 units and the landlord lives there, then the landlord cannot advertise that they will discriminate on gender but the landlord is allowed to. (Who said that the laws had to make sense?)

<comment><USER14> Yeah if I'm going to get declined after going to the trouble of applying, or if I'm going to enter into a housing agreement with someone who hates me, I'd rather their advertisement be smothered in discriminatory epithets. Seriously.

<comment><USER19> But if you're just browsing past the ad, do you need reminding of how many discriminatory slimeballs there are out there?

I don't like the mentality that leads to this kind of confused legal situation. But if I squint sideways and pretend that I don't have a brain, I can kinda see how someone could have thought this a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I know most commenters are well meaning, but the problem here is not that the owner was stupid enough to be overtly racist.

Top comments on this thread:

> Stupid of the host to act like that

> The host deserves a larger fine for her stupidity alone. She told the women > who reserved straight up that she "wouldn't rent to an Asian."

> I think people should be able to discriminate for anything they want when > letting others into their home whether it's a business related visit or not.

> I wonder if this whole thing really happened or was completely made up.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is crazy. I think it also explains why my rental properties have so many minority renters as my wife's picture is our profile picture(she's Asian).

I think people see her picture and know instantly that they would never have to deal with this kind of shit. Whereas a picture of my shaved head might not be very reassuring.

Personally, 5K seems too light a settlement considering the circumstances.

<comment><USER22> I agree. 5K seems very light for violating this woman's civil rights. I would say at the very least some community service needs to be tacked on.

<comment><USER23> The host is also required to take a course in Asian American studies.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that qualifies as community service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think people should be able to discriminate for anything they want when letting others into their home whether it's a business related visit or not.

However I think that people should be punished for explicitly commenting on protected classes in a hateful or angry manner in business related situations.

<comment><USER12> I'm fine with discrimination when it's non-business guests. But once you invite people into your home for business purposes, why shouldn't the same protections apply as they would for any other business? If you feel a need to discriminate in your home, don't use your home for business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Anyone know why this does not fall under the exemptions in the Fair Housing Act? Does CA have a stricter law on the books?

edit: Though the article doesn't mention it, I suppose the land lord could also own more properties than what the exemptions allow for.

</comment><comment><USER26> The lady canceled because she tried to show up with 4 extra friends and 2 dogs.

edit: 2 extra friends.

<comment><USER27> The lady approved of the extra people and dogs ahead of time for an added fee.

<comment><USER28> Where did you get it from? The comment on the video they have in the article says:

> "if you think 4 people and 2 dogs are getting a room for $50 a night on big > bear mountain during the busiest weekend of the year...you are insanely > high".

<comment><USER27> > "When Suh later asked if it was OK to bring two friends and two dogs along, > Barker said it was fine but the group would need to pay an additional $50 a > night, according to screenshots of their text messages." > [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/13/airbnb- > ca...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/13/airbnb-california- > racist-comment-penalty-asian-american)

They didn't put all the text messages in the video.

<comment><USER28> I wonder why they did not put the most important part of the conversation in the video? Instead they put the part where the host is not approving the request?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if this whole thing really happened or was completely made up.

If you check out her FB profile, you can see that she is supporting many violent terrorist/anarchist movements such as anti-capitalism, BLM etc.

Not saying it could not have happened, but what a funny coincidence...

<comment><USER30> > I wonder if this whole thing really happened or was completely made up.

Well, reading TFA, given that there seems to be evidence and a legal ruling involved, chances are likely that this incident wasn't "completely made up." But obviously you didn't create a green account simply to cast aspersions on Dyn Suh's character, and you must have read the article first, so clearly you _know_ that "the whole thing really happened." Unless you're accusing the LA Times, the California government, Tami Barker and her attorney of all collaborating to manufacture this story, but that would be absurd.

I also don't see evidence of support for "many violent terrorist/anarchist movements" on her FB account, although she does have a BLM sticker on her mortarboard in her banner. Of course, that alone isn't evidence of support for violence or terrorism, so I have to assume you know her personally and have supporting evidence of Mrs. Suh's radical sympathies, and have chosen to post anonymously out of fear for your personal safety, which is brave of you.

However, I don't understand what "coincidence" you could be referring to, or why you find it "funny." Perhaps you could elaborate?</comment></comment>


Essence of linear algebra [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab <comment><USER2> Hopefully some friendly admin can come along and fix the link.

The rest of the videos from 3Blue1Brown are pretty awesome as well: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw)

</comment><comment><USER3> I keep hearing about "linear algebra" and although I'm a third year engineering student and am finished with all of my dedicated math courses, I've never taken a course with that title. Looking at this guys videos, it seems like it's just "matrices and vectors" which I've done over the years during high school and in my Calculus courses.

It that all it is, or am I misunderstanding. Everybody seems to think that this field of math is very important, I feel like I should know it by now.

<comment><USER4> It can be tempting to reduce linear algebra to 'matrices and vectors', but there is more to it. Often times you can find a 'matrix algebra' course or something along those lines (I remember taking 'computational matrix algebra'), which really does pretty much just discuss computations with matrices and vectors. Linear algebra has more to do with the properties of vector spaces and 'linear transformations' on vector spaces—which can be _represented_ using matrices, but there are deeper underlying concepts than the matrix computations themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Other Linear Algebra resources here: [https://github.com/melling/MathAndScienceNotes/blob/master/m...](https://github.com/melling/MathAndScienceNotes/blob/master/math.org#linear- algebra)

</comment><comment><USER6> Delete the last character, in the link. The question mark.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like youtube isn't HTTP URL standard compliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I noticed that linear algebra courses are typically offered in colleges after calculus. Is there a reason why?

<comment><USER8> You need knowledge of calculus sooner in a typical undergrad curriculum for most majors. For example, freshman physics assumes you're taking Calc I/II concurrently. Most college kids can't handle two math classes at a time, so they take linear algebra after.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I failed to see the point of linear algebra when I studied in during my CPGE but it only took a couple of sessions of a Numerical Analysis class a year after to make me look past the tedious abstractions and realize its true beauty. (Compression (SVD), LU decomposition etc)

</comment><comment><USER10> Can anybody recommend a linear algebra course based in finite fields?

A lot of theorems like SVD and eigenvectors seem like they'd carry over, but they are always proven over complex numbers.

<comment><USER11> One possible approach is to take a class/read a book on coding theory. Algebraic block codes rely heavily on linear algebra over finite fields.

<comment><USER10> That is probably a good idea, but I'll always be wondering about the linear algebra tools they didn't use. Were they just not applicable? Or do they not work over finite fields?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> better link:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2x...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab)

</comment><comment><USER13> broken?

<comment><USER14> It is. But it has 4 votes :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2x...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab)

<comment><USER16> Thanks! We've updated the link.</comment></comment>


Solving Industry-Specific Problems by Combining AI and Subject Matter Expertise - <AUTHOR> http://www.bradfordcross.com/blog/2017/6/13/vertical-ai-startups-solving-industry-specific-problems-by-combining-ai-and-subject-matter-expertise?imm_mid=0f3d3e&cmp=em-data-na-na-newsltr_20170626 <comment><USER3> Vertical AI = Expert System, just an updated rebranding from 1980s to now. An expert system may be defined as:

>a piece of software which uses databases of expert knowledge to offer advice or make decisions.

The methods of inference have improved from predicate logic to statistics and "machine learning" now that computers have gotten much faster.

(I'm bootstrapping an expert system myself)

<comment><USER4> I don't see these things as equal, but I see where you are going with the comparison. Both require an understanding of a specific domain and problem(s) that need to be solved in that domain.

I really think striving to find specific problems where AI can add value is critical to making money in the space, and I agree with this article strongly.

<comment><USER3> The term "AI" is so overused that it can mean anything. Expert systems are considered "AI" for that matter. They may not necessarily use the most computationally expensive methods like neural networks, but "AI" doesn't prescribe any specific technique.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but "Vertical AI" is the thing the author was trying to better define.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hands down one of the best articles on the topic I've read - so many "wish I had known this years ago" types of insights.

The video contains bits that aren't fully reflected in the post itself, so it's worthwhile to watch the whole thing. The most important part IMHO is that you absolutely have to start with a known problem and work out the solution from there, not vice versa. This is a trivial insight for most startups, but a surprisingly common trap for even the smartest AI/ML people. It's very easy to get blinded by the sheer awesomeness of the data/model you stumbled upon, all while ignoring that you haven't fully grasped the problem space yet.

</comment><comment><USER6> My company[1] Analytical Flavor Systems is a vertically integrated domain- expert based AI for new product development, flavor profile optimization, and predictive manufacturing in the food and beverage industry.

Like the article and some of the comments here suggest, it took years of domain expertise (most of the team comes out of the Tea Institute at Penn State, a research Institute for tea and tea tasting), followed by years of R&D to collect the proprietary data-sets and develop the models. And then it took a year or so to build a product around the AI's predictive capabilities - <USER2> isn't the shortest or easiest path, but we're still going strong!

I think companies like this are hard to build, hard to fund, and hard to compete with.

Where I disagree with other comments is on the competitive side; we've developed a few of our own algorithms[2] (not generic or even "played with some options" neural nets / deep learning) trained on specialized and proprietary data set from years of work and collection - now that we've dug our moat, I don't think anyone will be competitive with out specialized AI for modeling human sensory perception and predicting preferences[3] of food and beverage products anytime soon!

[1] www.Gastrograph.com

[2] [https://gastrograph.com/resources/whitepapers/local- fisher-d...](https://gastrograph.com/resources/whitepapers/local-fisher- discriminant-analysis-on-beer-style-clustering.html)

[3][PDF] [https://gastrograph.com/resources/whitepapers/2017-market- pr...](https://gastrograph.com/resources/whitepapers/2017-market-preference- tasting-panels.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Did you forget footnote number one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> AI is not like ordering your lunch : "I don't like to sour, can you make it a bit spicy", doesn't work for AI. Cutting edge AI solutions require highly customized frameworks. The number of ingredients involved are very large in number and you can't go on making on creating a list of parameters to create your own "recipe". Therefore, a platform or stack will only affect solutions which are have least variance across industries - language translation, object recognition, photo tagging etc.

Industry specific customized solutions would require SMEs to build solutions. At this point, you are essentially buying people skills and not products. You'd also see a large increase in price points here which companies may not be willing to pay. Everyone wants something quick and cheap. AI is not a panacea or a magic wand. The hype is more detrimental to the progress of AI. Once the disillusionment sets in - people will blame the technology rather than people who took decisions to use AI in the wrong contexts.

</comment><comment><USER9> What's the opposite of Vertical AI? Is it a monolithic chunk of code like an operating system with millions of lines?

I've always been a bit confused about what the end goal will look like for 'general AI'.

Or is there potential for some general platform that these vertical AI systems can plug into, similar to the app store, but with some type of cross vertical communication so they be layered on top of each other.

<comment><USER4> I think the opposite is AI for the sake of AI.

He is trying to show that AI that solves business problems is more valuable than AI that scores 1% higher on some benchmark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I would like to understand is why are these startups defensible.

The tech value proposition is in running these algorithms, often tensorflow at scale cheaply in production. Companies like Google/Facebook/Palantir often have access to very similar supposedly hard to get to datasets, plus a lot more engineering expertise to running these systems at scale.

Why can't they start playing whack-a-mole pumping out vertical products presenting a serious threat to these smaller startups. Maybe it's not worth it for them but there is a fair bit of cash there ?

For example Deepmind with healthcare, and the google jobs API ?

<comment><USER11> The same reason small companies exist at all- they are more nimble and don't require to operate at large enough scale to survive.

IMO, it would be pretty mad to start a company today around general-purpose conversational AI or general purpose photo recognition service. Applying the same technologies for smaller, more specific groups of users is much less risky path.

I highly doubt Google/Baidu will get into business of recognizing manufacturing defects in fidget spinners or analyzing sensory data to predict when a punching press is about to fail.

<comment><USER12> > I highly doubt Google/Baidu will get into business of recognizing > manufacturing defects in fidget spinners or analyzing sensory data

They will build platforms for:

\- IoT - single robotic KIT/SDK, which allows you to easily install sensors and integrate data into rest of the platform

\- Cloud ML - image recognition/models optimization - will allow to train model and detect defects from previous step by two mouse clicks

and take a lot of added value from small companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone who is a subject matter expert that is using more and more AI/ML for their research, this makes intuitive sense. I could keep up with current AI research, but I would barely be treading water and couldn't create anything of substance.

However, incorporating mature ML methodologies (meaning it has a library) to subject-matter problems is now adding a tremendous amount of value in the research I do.

</comment><comment><USER14> Since a long time, I try to figure out an AI-based vertical in the tech recruiting space. However, I am stuck in agency mode ([http://coderfit.com](http://coderfit.com)). If you have good ideas how AI can help to source and hire software engineers, I have done the tedious work of getting paying clients and a database with engineers who are looking for a job.

<comment><USER15> [https://www.blog.google/products/search/connecting-more- amer...](https://www.blog.google/products/search/connecting-more-americans- jobs/)

<comment><USER14> Thank you, I am aware of Google entering the market since November, when they presented the Jobs API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In my opinion the mainstream AI startups are described in article, mainstream AI startup = unique data + algorithms. I think it is good to not be in AI startup mainstream and work on things that maybe won't make you rich but will make you happy.

<comment><USER17> but working at AI makes me happy

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you can deliver 'a totally new opportunity through rich domain modelling' (ie. You have a solution to a problem that hasn't been solved before), and your solution:

\- Is fundamentally tied to data that is proprietary and difficult to gather.

\- Is intrinsically extremely complex to build and maintain.

\- Can only be built by a diverse team which is difficult to gather.

Then... well, yes, I guess you could say that those of good metric for determining if a product can easily _be replicated_.

...but that's not the same thing as it being _useful_ or _profitable_.

It just means that the team has a bit more time to try to figure out those other two important things before someone else comes along and copies what they've done.

> My claim is that Vertical AI startups are inherently defensible.

Putting 'vertical' in front of 'AI' doesn't magically make things better than just 'AI'.

The problem with these products is you can't take a trivial 'proof of concept' or MVP, pitch it and then roll it out 'into production'.

This isn't some 'smoke and mirrors' jazzy demo of a website & app combo you can go away and implement properly later... the proof of concept you build may not scale. Like... it may actually _not be possible_ to scale. Maybe it takes too much compute to train; maybe it takes data you don't have; maybe it turns out your data isn't suitable.

You think building a business and getting users and sorting your workers and so on isn't hard enough?

Try adding a product that may or may not _actually ever work_ into the mix. Sound scary yet? It should sound scary. That's the sound of money draining out of a hole in the floor.

...and sure, you argue, these models _do work_ and they _are_ good; but there's the catch right there... :)

...if you use a model that _does_ work and isn't risky and does use available data... then you lose all the points at the top that made it an interesting business to invest in.

<comment><USER19> I'm not trying to be offensive, but what point are you trying to make? It sounds like you disagree with the author but your commentary seems like incoherent rambling to me.

I think the author makes excellent points.

It's hard to build a general AI business. E.g. a computer vision API provider. The technology is so democratized that you can't compete on algorithms alone. These APIs/services are more or less commodities nowadays.

Compare that to credit card fraud detection. For many years, there was one company/product (HNC/FICO/Falcon) that dominated the market (and largely still does) because they had a monopoly on the data. They smartly created a consortium and only they have the rights to train models on the data. They still use a relatively simple feedforward neural network with a ton of hand- tuned features. This is an example of vertical AI that created a wildly successful company.

<comment><USER18> tldr: The author claims 'Vertical AI startups are inherently defensible'.

My point is, so what? That's not a good indicator of anything meaningful.

The values that make them 'defensible' only make them difficult to replicate, that might look good on paper or in a pitch ('no one else can do this...') but they're not indicators of value, and the pose significant risks to execution.

/shrug

You don't have to agree, I really don't care; but this article sounds more like AI hype to spin to investors than meaningful advice.

Picking ML models that are difficult to replicate, hard to obtain data for and require a diverse team is _not_ what you should be trying to do.

<comment><USER4> I think he is looking at it from the point of view that you want to build a company that has value.

Focus on a problem that has value in an industry that has money. Collect as much data as possible to prototype and use the tool itself to collect additional data as it is used.

I don't see that as hype, I see that as a useful roadmap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not a word about adtech. Nice and informative</comment>


Joy of Clojure – In the Books - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2010/08/05/joy-of-clojure-in-the-books/

<comment><USER2> I was commenting to my wife the other day that while JoC does not seem to be written for complete beginners, that fact is actually a very good thing. There is a lot of Beginning Clojure / Beginning Lisp / etc. material out there. What I really wanted was a book for those who have already seen the light, so to speak, of Lisp. I've read The Little Lisper. I've read Lisp 1.5 Manual. I've written a Lisp interpreter in C. And so on. I'll use Lisp as long as I am still allowed to do so (I'm a grad student, so no issues yet!).

So I love Lisp and I love Clojure for being a new Lisp.

JoC talks directly to me. It references works and people I know about, but most of which I do not know enough about. It talks about how amazing Lisp is but tells me even more than I already knew. Much more. It's written as if the authors are saying, "Yes of course Lisp and Clojure are great, but here are all the reasons WHY." For example, the section "nil Pun With Care" is obviously written for someone who knows the variations on 'nil' found in different Lisps. JoC's style is similar to Rich Hickey's famous presentations ("Yes, nil is different in Clojure... ok, let's just get through this slide, you knew we'd have to at some point...").

JoC really takes Lisp appreciation to the next level. I was waiting for something like this!

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can't possibly wait for the book until November, you can get a beta version of the ebook at <http://www.manning.com/fogus/> for $28. Highly recommended.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just bought the MEAP ebook _and_ the print book, using the InfoQ 35% discount, for just $7 more. Highly recommended.

fogus, I'm not sure how these things work. If the discount affects your royalties, say so and I'll delete this comment.

<comment><USER4> Not at all -- the more people that read it the better. I'm not getting rich either way. ;-)

I think the InfoQ code is infoq35 if anyone else wants to use it.

<comment><USER5> Do you have any plans for discounts etc. for current purchasers if/when you release any new editions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Michael: I have been enjoying the MEAP while you have been writing it. My enthusiasm for Clojure is increasing and I like the book!

BTW, really off topic, but do you have any advice for making stack traces a little more useful (using Clojure 1.2)? This is still a sore spot for me.

<comment><USER4> Have you tried the functions in the clojure.stacktrace namespace? They are limited, but might get you some of what you want.

<comment><USER7> The clj-stacktrace third-party lib does a much better job of this. I have hopes that it can be merged into Clojure in the future. (Not in 1.2 though; it's already in RC-stage.)

<comment><USER6> Thanks Philip, that is good to know. Clojure is awesome, but it does still have some rough spots. BTW, I looked at your resume: you are a major contributor to open source projects (you have worked on 13 projects that I use), and I am not, so I should stop complaining if things are not yet just the way I like them :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now to begin the speculation on who the mystery author of the foreward is. Any guesses? I am putting my money on John McCarthy.

<comment><USER9> My money's on Yegge:

 _"I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure."_

<http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/07/blogger-finger.html>

<comment><USER10> Oh in that case, I'd buy the book just for the foreword.

<comment><USER11> In that case maybe the foreword is half of the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would this be a good book to jump into Clojure with?

<comment><USER13> If you have previous experience with Lisp . Then probably yes. The book seems to assume familiarity with clojure already .

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> First thing to do: Put source code on the webpage. That is the primary thing to do.</comment>


Using Material Design? Keep the Design and Dev Teams Communicatin - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2020/06/08/material-design-imp/#.Xt5SVGP4akk.hackernews <comment><USER2> One of the major benefits of the Single Page App (SPA) or REST API based development model is that there is a clear separation between the backend and frontend (teams). And as long as they've documented their interfaces properly, they can afford to keep the communication to a minimal level. This isn't true in case of MPA development using frameworks like laravel, django, flask, etc. because the FE and BE are intertwined a lot in that case.</comment>


IOS Prototyping With Adobe Fireworks And TAP  - <AUTHOR> http://fireworks.smashingmagazine.com/2013/02/15/ios-prototyping-adobe-fireworks-tap-part3/

<comment><USER2> I really wish they updated fireworks ui, I find it unbearable.</comment>


Rolling Hypocycloids - <AUTHOR> http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/rolling-hypocycloids/

<comment><USER2> Please turn it off or I'll stare at it for hours.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you participate if there were a draft in your country? - <AUTHOR> This question is aimed largely at Americans, males, and tech folk, due to my country of residence, but i believe it has far reaching implications for all citizens of N. America and Europe.
The Story: Pretend the world stands on the edge of massive conflict.It has been 100 years since the last time this situation occurred, and all the theorists and politicians and bankers say it is impossible, so you continue to focus on your job and/or education when Boom! Another airliner is brought down, this time on camera. Gleeful partisans cheer and hold up abused teddy bears soaked in jet fuel. Every news agency starts spewing jingo like it is a game. Suddenly, the EU shuts down the Eastern flank of fortress Europe. The US shifts half of its Navy to either ocean. The 180000 plus soldiers in Central Europe go on to the frontline. bIn the US, roughly 2.5 million jobs need to be filled to balance the shift in forces after all reserves and Guards are called up. Europe's long vacation is over; the US troops that have for so long enabled European governments to spend money on healthcare are now just a thin, semipermeable membrane between Russia and their safe, little garden. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Denmark, Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Byelorussia, Canada, the US: if you are in one of these countries, and you get a notice, would you serve or object?
If you are in the Rodina or any of the loyal slavic satellites, would you join, serve, or object?
I know this disregards a huge chunk of the human family. My apologies.
I would object in the US, and volunteer in either Ukraine, Denmark, or Germany. I would try to get a tech/recon position. I would try to emigrate to Denmark when it was all said and done, if it ends and if there is a Denmark. <comment><USER2>
        > the US troops that have for so long enabled European
        > governments to spend money on healthcare are now just a
        > thin, semipermeable membrane between Russia and their
        > safe, little garden

You realize Europeans spend _less_ on healthcare than Americans do, right?

Also: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO#French_withdrawal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO#French_withdrawal) plus [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France)

Also: France, Germany, UK and Italy spend as much combined as China does, ignoring the rest of the European countries.

Also: your fantasy that European healthcare can be afforded due to American military spending is offensive, wrong, and appears to be a bewildered reaction to "How are we the only rich country who have screwed up our healthcare provision so badly?"

<comment><AUTHOR> very cute. your numbers are interesting. if you read your history, you will see that a certain coal mining consortium in the '60s and '70s decided to leverage an abiding presence of foreign troops into providing massive social programs for their citizenry despite the crippling effects of a huge, costly war. I said healthcare, but the reality is also roads, bridges, buried power lines, etc. By not having to fund standing armies, the governments of Europe were free to do a lot that i wish my country did for us.

I'd say sorry you were offended, but i find your frustration comical, so i guess i will say thank you instead.

<comment><USER2> I realize that Wikipedia is some kind of socialist conspiracy plot, but: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)

And the standing army thing is ... odd. Related: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel)

<comment><AUTHOR> God i hope so. At least someone is winning on the intellectual team.

As i see it happening, if there was a land war it would be fast and devastating in a very pointed way. Arguably suicidal incursions into city centers by specops chaps and gung ho paramilitary types using drones and wire cutters and wearing all manor of different uniform or guise. Then it is the blitz. This advance must occur before and effective air assault can be made.

All this to say it would go from peace to war in a matter of minutes to hours depending on your position. I don't see the Army of the Union responding very well to that.

This is all off topic really though, because i am more interested on the perspective of life through the war. That is why i asked. My answer changes like the wind.

So, what would you do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Europe's long vacation is over; the US troops that have for so long enabled > European governments to spend money on healthcare

Every OECD country, and probably every country in Europe outside of the OECD, as well, spends less -- and this is true whether in total, per capita, or per GDP -- than the US on healthcare, because they have systems that are more efficient than the system in the US.

</comment><comment><USER4> As I'm barely out of draft eligible age (over 35), I don't have to worry about it.

That said, I very much believe that 1) the US would quickly fill its 2.5 million troops needed, but also that 2) we wouldn't ever really need them.

To point 1) our military force is already insanely large, to the point that military recruiters turn away (or at least, don't rabidly pursue) recruits that aren't supremely eligible. They could _probably_ get half of the 2.5 million needed just by calling back would-be recruits that are 'on ice', meaning, they're passively being recruited, but there are more qualified applicants ahead of them, so the US just keeps them in contract limbo.

To point 2) the US military is large. It would take China actively recruiting (or secretly expanding) their eligible-for-service and rapidly training them before there was even a real potential for being outmanned.

That said, if China were 'fully engaged' they've got ~600 million persons eligible for service[1], and could likely overwhelm the US in a full on assault, if that was their only objective.

This is a fun (though perhaps dated) military force comparison chart that illustrates overall, potential and other types of manpower available to nations: [1] - [http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries- comparison.asp](http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-comparison.asp)

<comment><AUTHOR> oh, also, given the expanded capability of remote control warfare and logistics, a government could conceivably push the edge of eligibility to at least 50, maybe higher.

I would also make the argument that all humans are cousins, meaning we are all one family, meaning a draft in any or all countries is a big deal, but i bet i would be called crazy.

<comment><USER4> You make a salient point with the invention of the remote drone, but if I'm betting on it, I'd wager the bigger worry is them taking the draft age DOWN to tap into that primo gamer demographic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Holy shit, hide the children, the government is after their thumbs.

So would you do your 2 years Social Service or hide/ignore or leave?

<comment><USER4> It would depend on a rather lot. I hate to be "THAT GUY", where the answer to a hypothetical is always more and more questions, but if it were right now, I'd have a hard time supporting American imperialism more than I already do with my taxes, especially as it currently seems hell bent on restricting, removing and or curtailing my individual rights.

Our foreign policy has been, to put it gently, sloppy of late, and I have a hard time imagining that the kind of response you're describing as necessary isn't going to be seen historically as a "gross overreaction".

So, the best I can answer at this point is "unlikely".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No. I disagree with military draft for several reasons, not least that it tends to produce a belligerent force of malcontents that are much more likely to really fuck things up.

Also, is there really any point in being cannon fodder in a nuke fight?

Besides, I think your analysis is a bit mental.

 _US troops that have for so long enabled European governments to spend money on healthcare_

The US government spent more on healthcare per citizen that the European governments do, even during the Bush years. You then spend a shit-ton more privately. It isn't the existence of US troops that enable European governments to provide healthcare. Providing healthcare this way is just cheaper overall.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see your point, but i am not so sure you understand how expensive force maintenance really is. Healthcare is just one cost, as well as training, logistics, etc. By not having to maintain a standing army, there is a huge amount of available capital to spend on whatever.

I think it is a good thing, by the by, i just wish more Eurofolk were aware of how intertwined our countries are. Often times, it feels as if all that ever gets talked about is the 'bad' the US does, and the loudest tend to be the biggest beneficiaries of the 'evil' empire.

<comment><USER5> You have no idea what you are talking about in the slightest. The EU maintains several standing armies and has around 100,000 more active serving personnel than the US does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Typed huge response. Thought better of it. You may be right, but i do not think you are.

<comment><USER5> Here, I know it is from wikipedia which is a crap source, but the numbers are referenced:

US active serving personnel - 1,369,532 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces)

EU active serving personnel - 1,453,028 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_European_Union](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_European_Union)

edit - one thing to keep in mind is that although US expenditure is 2.5 times larger than the EU, much of that historically was spent on weapons rather than troops as it was directed towards trying to bankrupt the USSR by the meta-game of convincing them to play the game of arsenal oneupmanship, while having deeper pockets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You know, you could write a pretty decent novel with this train of thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Fourth World War: A Retrospective

or

Losing Humanity

or

我們贏了

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _I would object in the US, and volunteer in either Ukraine, Denmark, or Germany._

Why?

I feel like at that point, any objections to serving under the Evil Empire would be supplanted by the greater possibility of winning, and thus surviving under them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not believe in good and evil. I do believe that Denmark kicks ass, and i believe that free* thought and liberal socialism is worth fighting for.

Also, Denmark.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Edit: the 'healthcare' comment was asinine. I wish i had said shift the majority of their budgets to conflict logistics. Sorry, emotional ameribro.</comment>