Bitcoin's Wild Ride Shows the Truth: It Is Probably Worth Zero - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-wild-ride-shows-the-truth-it-is-probably-worth-zero-1505760623 <comment><USER3> At least the author has a new argument I haven't seen before.

1) Gresham's law: bad money drives out good

2) Bitcoin is good money (deflationary, holds its value)

3) National currencies are bad money (inflationary)

4) People prefer to "hoard" good bitcoin and spend bad national currencies

(So far, so good)

5) Therefore, since people prefer to own bitcoin, it has zero value

(Not every new argument has to make sense, I guess.)

<comment><USER4> What you are referring to as 'good money' , most people would call 'stupid money'.

It's a stupid idea to run a country with a fixed amount of currency - as the economy expands, more currency is needed - either that - or _all prices_ of _everything_ need to adjust because the 'stupid currency' is fixed.

A 'well managed' currency is better than a fixed supply.

Of course - the 'existential risk' is that some political cowboy will 'print money' for political reasons - this is the great problem that fiat always faces.

But this can be avoided.

Most major currencies are very well managed.

Also - remember that they are backed by actual assets - so money is not coming out of nowhere.

Almost all Euros are backed by some kind of quality asset. It's very rational to allow entities to 'trade' some kind of asset for currency at the central bank. This is actually more 'free market' than any kind of fixed currency.

National currencies - irrespective of the quality of their governance, fixed or not - are _extremely useful_ to everyone. They 'spend' that currency because it's what's used to buy stuff.

Household expenditures: mortgage/rent, electricity, groceries, insurance, gas, car payments, cable/internet. Can you use BTC for any of that. Pragmatically - No. BTC is 'pragmatically worthless' to anyone - it has no reason to exist.

BTC is _very useful_ to money launderers, tax evaders, and other people doing illicit things, it's a _great_ currency for the black market. But beyond that, it serves no purpose. It's not a currency and it's a terrible store of value as compared to any of real-estate, gold, most commodities, a 'basked of bonds of equities' or a 'basket of currencies'.

It's a great intellectual exercise, and I think the 'paper value' of BTC will remain quite high for some time, but unless it sinks in as an actual currency of some economy (say, African nations where the currency is garbage), in the long-long-long run there's no reason for it to maintain it's value.

<comment><USER5> When will the bitcoin haters finally realize that bitcoin is terrible for illicit transactions. The transactions is recorded forever...on a public ledger...and any money in or out of your address is traceable

<comment><USER6> I know... every time I hear/read that it raises a red flag that maybe this person hasn't done much reading on the subject to begin with and just heard it through the luddite grapevine.

<comment><USER7> Because it's a currency that works like cash over the internet with no reversibility, it can be easily laundered via mixers, and has no ties to your real life identity unless you want it to.

It's not perfect but it's by far the best currency for illicit _online_ transactions.

<comment><USER8> When you use a coin tumbler, the image invoked is that of laundering like clothes tumbling in a washer machine. How can willingly jumping into an optional laundering service not raise a red flag? Is it possible that another cryptocurrency like Monero will have privacy as a default that makes it so you don't look like Al Capone when you [maybe] want to just preserve some privacy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He said gold was better, because gold doesn't cost electricity to produce whereas bitcoin does.

Thats not true, you need electricity (and other resources) to: \- mine gold \- build storage facilities to store gold \- transport the gold

<comment><USER10> Not to mention the very direct human and environmental costs of mining, particularly for the mines in Africa and China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nevermind the subject, this article is _really_ poorly written.

<comment><USER12> Most of these types of uninformed, regurgitated, bait-articles typically are, because _that 's_ what makes them so effective. They don't want you there admiring the technical or journalistic merits of the article, they want you to link it because it is so outrageous, "look how absurd this is, just click it and LOOK!"

<comment><USER13> I don't really see what's absurd or outrageous about the claims in this piece.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> non obfuscated article archive because nobody can read the WSJ at first place :

[http://archive.is/uUnGp](http://archive.is/uUnGp)

</comment><comment><USER10> If you look at how WSJ treats any subject, particularly bitcoin, you'll see that they are just a media company catering to their paying advertisers/audience. The substance of what they write is often questionable, if not out-right wrong.

With respect to bitcoin, WSJ was slightly curious, then quite suspicious, then outright negative, then cautiously optimistic, then very bullish, then "DO YOU HAVE A BLOCKCHAIN?!", and now reigning in some of their foolish enthusiasm (about how blockchains will revolutionize _everything_).

Like any successful politician, telling different stories at different times will satisfy more people.

<comment><USER15> Isn't this just an artifact of different writers having differing opinions on Bitcoin? I see no reason why a magazine with N > 1 writers should have a consistent opinion across the board on bitcoins (or anything).

<comment><USER16> I think OP complains about quality, not consistency.

> _So is a single bitcoin worth $500,000, $5,000, $500 or $0? I'm inclined to > say $0_

> _The digital currency's value depends on it becoming digital gold—or on > criminals_

This is opinion (aka bu*hit).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Overall, probably one of the weakest arguments I've heard yet about Bitcoin. Despite the title the author completely failed to show any evidence, let alone the "truth", of how or why Bitcoin was worth ZERO. This is obvious click bait, because the author knows that Bitcoin is trending right now and people considering buying it will open this when doing research.

So the author wins in the ad revenue category, but the point he's trying to make basically sums up to : "Bitcoin is just a craze with no inherent value. Even though it's good money like gold, and people hang on to good money because it has inherent value. People spend bad money because they know it can lose value. But bad money is good because it's well regulated. And even though bitcoin is good money then it's worse then bad money because it's speculative. Gold is also completely speculative but it's been speculative for generations so don't worry about it. Also, Bitcoin takes a lot of electricity to mine. It's no where NEAR the amount of energy that mining and minting a tiny bar of gold takes, but I'm not going to mention that. I didn't really think about that part because I trade gold using Forex, which means that I essentially hold a digital representation of gold and don't actually physically hold any gold except my wife's jewelry. But if the government collapsed, then gold would still have value because it's physical, and digital assets like Bitcoin would be worthless.

VERY convincing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Time to buy MORE BTC and LTC and other cryptocurrencies.

Remember, when WSJ and analyst says to do something, do the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER19> What I'm missing from the article is that Bitcoin often is seen as the "reserve currency" of the cryptocurrency world. Bitcoin might not be superior technology wise, but it is the de facto standard for trading other cryptocurrencies.

<comment><USER13> Are any of those less susceptible to any of the flaws mentioned here than Bitcoin is?

<comment><USER19> Yes, many altcoins serve different purposes other than just being a currency pur sang.

Ethereum and NEO for example enable developers to build smart contracts (Dapps) with real-life use cases.

Musiccoin tries to solve unfair royalty payouts in the music industry.

There are so many new initiatived, and I'm convinced we are only at the very start of this blockchain revolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The most interesting part of this article also counter his point: the possible theoretical values of bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER21> The fact that the author knows about Bitcoin means that he will have it before other people. He understands that its value is either infinity or 0 counted in dollars... he just needs to change the direction

</comment><comment><USER22> According to his bio, James Macintosh (author) has a degree in Philosophy and masters in Psychology. Probably not the best basis for in-depth Bitcoin analysis/advice. #justsaying

<comment><USER23> Really? Psychology seems, to me, to be one of the best backgrounds for understanding Bitcoin.

<comment><USER22> Sure, for understanding people's reactions to it - but not understanding financial/technical/economical impact etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yup, just like gold.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish I could report these kinds of newspapers with paywalls. Hacker News should ban these sites. It doesn't make sense to share news nobody can read.

</comment><comment><USER26> To me the wild ride showed a pretty solid wall of support at $3k

</comment><comment><USER27> Well if a guy on the internet says it, it has to be true.

<comment><USER28> I think we found the guy that regrets not buying any Bitcoin (the author - <USER2> manbearpigg)

<comment><USER13> I mean I don't think anyone can deny that it turned out to be great to speculate on so far, but is it actually a good means of exchange or store of value? It remains extremely volatile.

<comment><USER10> In many situations it is an excellent means of exchange of value. Convert your fiat to bitcoin, make a global bitcoin transaction (for a comparatively small transaction fee, and within 30 minutes), then convert the bitcoin to fiat on the other end.

That's WAY better than a bank wire, and even better than the increasingly effective service that Transferwise provides. It's also beneficial to at least one party because no bank can reverse the transaction.

<comment><USER13> It's relatively inefficient and it's hard to see why someone would choose that over wire transfer unless they were doing something illegal. I also don't get why "no banks can reverse the transaction" is touted as a benefit so often; what sane buyer prefers to do online purchases where they have no recourse if they never receive the goods?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why link to this paywalled article?

</comment><comment><USER30> Why there is so much negative PR going around about Bitcoin suddenly? I believe that people like Jamie Dimon trying to lower the price by creating these kind of stories to buy more.

Bitcoin will rise no matter what. Atleast for 5 more years.

<comment><USER31> Because they've finally entered the mainstream. The normal press cycle follows a predictable pattern to keep people interested and reading:

1\. New and interesting thing that the hardcore people use

2\. Hopeful stories about the potential

3\. Growing excitement as adoption reaches into "real" things

4\. Doubt stories

5\. Attack stories

6\. Non-story

<comment><USER32> First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win

<comment><USER33>
        ... the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does
        not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses.
        They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton,
        they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also
        laughed at Bozo the Clown.

        Carl Sagan</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Canadian IT Business Syndrome - <AUTHOR> http://aarontait.blogspot.com/2008/01/canadian-it-business-syndrome.html <comment><USER2> Some questions...

-What the hell is UOIT? No offense, but I live in Toronto and have a degree in CS, have interviewed candidates from almost every program in Canada, and haven't heard of this school.

-Canada's companies try to 'prove themselves to their big brother'? Let's look at RIM, OpenText, NCR and many other companies that have been innovative and dominated a global market.

\- 'Stop putting maple leafs on every little thing you do. It just makes our society look like more of a joke because we have to constantly remind ourselves that we are in Canada.' National pride is not a joke.

-'The Blackberry Perl is a modest shot in the dark to get consumers hooked on the crack, but it is getting devoured by iPhone and other consumer oriented devices. RIM can compete because it works in an industry that is void of taste, and more often than not, substance.' All I can say is you know nothing about the industry. The Pearl is a great device (in both tastes and substance), and is selling exceedingly well. The iPhone goes after a different type of customer, and isn't even available in Canada.

Your comparison between Brightspark and YC is really off base too, they are not the same type of company. Both fund early stage startups, but they take a vastly different approach.

Sorry, Canada's innovation is no joke. This article makes you look like a joke by showing how little you know about the local business environment.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill These are generalizations based on my 20 years of growing up and living in Canada.

Canadians are too bound up in credentialism - they want to see degrees, preferably from schools that are prestigious. They want to see a degree that maps to what you do (e.g. medieval music to Java programmer does not have the credibility of BA Business to Marketing Dept.) .

Uber-hacker jwz would not have been hired by a Canadian company, for example.

Canadians want safe money. They are more than happy to trade the safe valuations of more staid companies instead of adding more risk in doing something, well, riskier.

<comment><USER3> How much time have you spent in the US? I would argue most US companies are "safe" in the way you describe. The US is bigger overall and thus has more diversity.

I agree that Canadian society generally has a complex with the US, ie. look at any local Canadian newspaper story involving the US.

But I dont think that affects the top tier Canadian tech companies much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The original article accused Canadians of being too concerned with "proving themselves to their big brother." I would just like to point to the following blog post: <http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/digg-heat-map.html> to show why we do that. The article basically makes the assertion that most digg users are American, because most of the signups happen during times where Americans are at work. Not like there is another country sharing those same timezones.

</comment><comment><USER4> He also forgot about flickr (though he has a flickr photo stream) and stumbleupon - 2 Canadian companies that had successful exits.

<comment><USER5> I stand corrected. Thank you. Although I'm not too sure on the financial status on whether or not Flickr actually makes a profit. There appears to be a lot of speculation surrounding Yahooo and Flickr's profitability.</comment></comment>


Astronaut Accessed Ex-Spouse's Bank Account from International Space Station - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/astronaut-accessed-estranged-spouses-bank-account-from-international-space-station <comment><AUTHOR> Of interest as it is the first-ever allegation of a crime committed in space.</comment>


Performance Review advice - <AUTHOR> Hi, manager here. We've got this horrible internal performance review process using Excel sheets and hope that people do them properly.<p>Has anyone seen a better way to do this? <comment><USER2> Rohan,

I'm not 100% sure what you're asking for, but I'll try to give a few helpful answers

1.) You may not have the ability to effect change for the entire organization, but if you do, you may want to look into software specifically for human resource functions: [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2492792,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2492792,00.asp)

2.) For a pragmatic approach, and if you have a small team, you may want to do a mid-year practice review with your team members. This will do two things: (1) it will ensure they fill out their reviews properly and (2) it will make sure they know how they will be judged before it's time for the formal review.

3.) If you have a large team, I would schedule a meeting where you show team members the correct way to fill out the spreadsheet. And then schedule an hour on their calendars for alone time at their desk to properly fill out the reviews.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've reviewed a lot of people and been subjected to a lot reviews, including stack ranking at some pretty big companies. Mostly I thought they were not only unproductive but also could send the wrong signals and hurt morale.

I can also offer a few suggestions:

1) Don't stack rank, it doesn't help anything.

2) Make self assessment forms short, like one page if you have to do them. Some companies just schedule checkpoints with minimal paperwork.

3) Read what you can from Joel's companies (stackoverflow), he's always had a knack for creating productive and healthy environments. One post is here: [https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/blog/3-ways-to- rethink...](https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/blog/3-ways-to-rethink- annual-tech-performance-evaluations)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is the process horrible because it uses Excel or the content in the Excel spreadsheet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Those might go hand in hand. Super manual processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are looking for a product recommendation, impraise is decent.</comment>


Amazon Buys A Text-To-Speech Firm To Rival Apple's Siri - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3005067/amazon-buys-text-speech-firm-rival-apples-siri

<comment><USER2> Anyone else notice Siri sucks compared to the Google stuff?</comment>


Founder salary at pre-seed stage? (raised 500k) - <AUTHOR> Hi!<p>Currently trying to budget for the next year - how much should the founders be paid if they're based in the bay? :) <comment><USER2> General rule of thumb, until you have revenue and customers you should take the smallest amount possible while not putting yourself in any danger, health wise or other. That holds true until the Founders have found revenue basically.

It is very common to pay yourself minimum wage or so. If you are older and have more responsibilities it is fair to pay somewhat more but just keep with rule #1 above. For a multi-time founder with solid exists it wouldn't be unheard of to see a six figure salary because they have proven their worth. But in most cases you'll see even those prior founders taking the smallest amount possible, it is just that as they gain in personal responsibilities their costs go up so yea they are paid better.

I know it isn't a number, but hopefully that helps a little, it is pretty generic advice because it is also something very specific to the person and situation.</comment>


MIPSfpga 2.0: the CPU architecture course that's different from the rest - <AUTHOR> https://www.mips.com/blog/mipsfpga-2-0-the-cpu-university-course-thats-different-from-the-rest/ <comment><AUTHOR> Related Links:

[https://www.mips.com/downloads/mipsfpga- labs-2-0/](https://www.mips.com/downloads/mipsfpga-labs-2-0/)

[https://github.com/MIPSfpga/](https://github.com/MIPSfpga/)

[https://blog.digilentinc.com/tag/mipsfpga/](https://blog.digilentinc.com/tag/mipsfpga/)</comment>


Network theory suggests consciousness is global in the brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/etwork-theory-suggests-consciousness-is-global-in-the-brain <comment><USER2> I'm not sure "consciousness" really exists. A computer surely isn't aware of what it is computing and you don't need a global state of consciousness to describe its functionality. Why point to things like "consciousness" when our brains being biological automatons is a perfect explanation already?

It gets even sillier when you consider that the criteria for what things are considered conscious seems to be quite arbitrary. They say a human is conscious. Is a dog? I think most people would agree if a human is conscious a dog is. Is a squirrel? I think most people would agree. Is a lizard? Maybe. Is a spider? eh... Is a worm? well some might only have ~300 neurons... Is a plant? Well, no neurons, but they technically do react to stimuli...

How about a rock? Well it certainly doesn't have any neurons and doesn't react to stimuli but what is so special about neurons and reacting to stimuli anyway? The concept of a threshold for consciousness doesn't seem to hold any weight to it. It has nothing backing it up.

When two particles interact with each other is a barrier of consciousness formed? Are all systems conscious? Is the universe conscious? Are all possible systems made up of all the connections of all the constituent parts of the universe conscious?

<comment><USER3> That depends what you mean by "consciousness". If you mean the "experience of awareness", then we can't even properly define it, let alone begin to explain it.

This whole question is so hard because we find it impossible to define the terms. It could be that by default, we cannot define consciousness. Perhaps that implies that the universe is made of consciousness, rather than the other way around.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. But if the universe is all consciousness, then one can ask what it is conscious about, and why this consciousness is forced to follow the laws of physics.

On the other hand, I find it surprising that science does not deal with "experience of awareness", for clearly it is part of reality (since we are talking about it) and hence of physics (there is only one way out of this, which is to say that we are all zombies just making up that our awareness is influencing reality).

By the way, anyone know of a more concise term for "experience of awareness"? I have been looking for it, and I'm sure it must exist, but no luck so far. How do philosophers address this concept?

<comment><USER5> You could be looking for "Qualia": [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The analogy I fall back on is the concept of a wave in a body of water. Where, in the body of water, is the structure that defines the wave? How does a wave arise from a bunch of water molecules?

What we call a "wave" is actually a broadly distributed energy pattern in the water. We just have created a single word for it to help us recognize and talk about that pattern.

Consciousness might be like that--a (very complex) pattern of energy in the matter of the brain. "Consciousness" would refer to a pattern of behaviors, rather than a physical "thing" like a rock or a hand.

</comment><comment><USER7> Jeff Hawkins wrote absolutely the same thing in his "On Intelligence" book (2004), and came to that conclusion from his brain model.

<comment><USER8> Something that you might find interesting:

There are two basic lines of thought here, the hard-electron AI school of thought that pushes the emergent hypothesis and the "Consciousness is not Computation" school of thought that accepts that Mind is Computation but states that Consciousness is something else.

Tip: the AI hypothesis does NOT explain nor predicts the thing that a Paramesium can do.

[https://www.singularityweblog.com/stuart-hameroff-quantum- co...](https://www.singularityweblog.com/stuart-hameroff-quantum- consciousness/)

<comment><USER9> > the AI hypothesis does NOT explain nor predicts the thing that a Paramesium > can do.

Can you elaborate? Off the top of my head, I believe Paramecia display slightly above amoeba-like intelligence; what I'm missing is the leap to how a theory of emergent consciousness would not be able to explain this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems rather tenuous to suggest that because all the parts of a conscious brain are active, all of the brain must then be conscious.

<comment><USER11> I think they're arguing that consciousness is an emergent property of a sufficiently large network, rather than being located in a particular cerebral structure.

<comment><USER12> I'm in agreement. Think of large social sites like reddit or 4chan. I think it would be fair to consider them as conscious entities for the same reason. They can have conversations with themselves about themselves and can even have conversations/interactions with outside entities all driven "by their own volition".

<comment><USER11> Ah, so I'm not hte only person that thinks that way. I've found it helpful to imagine the same mechanism at work in any large system like market, a nation and so on. Even things like ant colonies have a sort of slow primitive consciousness.

It's particularly interesting that you mention 4chan, since the the fact that it is anonymous by default actually fosters this behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Consciousness is typically understood as "the one that experiences". The failure of reductionism to explain it can be demonstrated by an example:

You accidentally burn your finger on the stove, this is detected by the nerves that send nerve signals to the brain that signifify pain. In the brain those signals create an incredibly complex reaction in the brain that cause you to withdraw your hand. For a "philosofical zombie" \- an awareless automaton - that is all that happens.

For an aware being, this is followed by an "experience" of pain.

How does this experience of pain arise? There is an action and reaction in both the aware and the unaware, an automaton does not EXPERIENCE pain, even though reaction and consequent actions are identical.

Let us focus on the experience of the aware observer - where does it start? If it is in the brain, we can reduce it to physical effects, in which case our automaton could replicate it. Plus, at what point does the feeling arise? It's clearly not in the hand itself, nor in the nerves. But nerves are an extension of the brain. We have a part of the brain that handles pain, but why should those particular brain cells cause a painful feeling to arise? These are just like all the other cells in the brain, just differing in connections.

Why would the activation of some cells cause pain to arise? If it is due to the connection that cause our brain to decide that this was a negative experience, then this would imply that the feeling arises when the pain center sends signals that it is stimulated to other parts of the brain. Then does the feeling of pain arise in the cells connecting to the part of the brain dealing with pain? If so, by what mechanism do those parts of the brain cause the feelings to arise?

There is no way to nail down a mechanism that isn't physical and anonymous (i.e. doe not know the context of what it is connected to), and trying to claim that inanimate objects are self-aware is a bit of a stretch. We reach the conclusion that there is no good way to describe aware experience arising from the physical.

Nor do any simple metaphysical notions of "soul" work, as any metaphysical system run into similar issues (if there is a soul, then by what process does it give rise to awareness)

</comment><comment><USER14> So analyzing the process of detecting a disk on a screen is somehow supposed to permit conclusions on consciousness?

Well, my cat meows when I switch on the light so I suppose I should write about how "Electricity suggests language development is intrinsic in mammals"

<comment><USER15> Yes. When a person is conscious of a disk on the screen, their brain scans look very different from when they do not detect the disk. And there isn't just one part of the brain that changes. I'm not saying fMRI is a great tool for this, but it seems like a pretty clear conclusion.

<comment><USER14> Well I think that 'consciousness' is a pretty strong term for something described in the article.

Just to clarify: Are cats or toddlers conscious? Are the people that do not see the disk conscious?

<comment><USER15> The fact that it's such a small thing that they're testing is what makes the large reaction so interesting. They were trying to determine what part of the brain is involved in detecting an object, but just that tiny bit of awareness seems to be widely spread out.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Perpetual motion? - <AUTHOR> http://neil.fraser.name/news/2008/10/19/ <comment><USER2> I'm not a physicist, but here's why I think the energy appears to be less at the top of the tower than at the bottom.

If you send energy up the tower as a light beam, gravitational redshift reduces the energy of each photon as it travels up out of the gravity well.

If you send energy up the tower as electron current in a wire, the electrons spread out from each other slightly as they go up, due to the lower value of the electric constant (epsilon sub zero) in lower gravity, which makes the voltage appear to be lower.

If you send energy up the tower by rotating a shaft, with a motor at the bottom driving a generator at the top, then the energy produced by the generator at the top will appear to be less than that put into the motor at the bottom, again due to the lower value of the electric constant in lower gravity.

In all three cases, if you send the energy back down the gravity well (in whatever form), it'll appear to increase back to its original value, so you can't make a perpetual motion machine this way. And of course I'm assuming perfect conversion efficiency, lack of friction, perfectly rigid materials, et cetera in all three cases.

<comment><USER3> Typically we don't consider epsilon naught to change as we move around in a gravitational field, we consider spacetime itself to change and leave the Maxwell equations unaltered. So that doesn't explain away the current in a wire or rotating shaft versions.

Really, the resolution of all of these problems is left to general relativity. Redshift is a consequence of gravitational time dilation, or the fact that if you bring a clock high up in the air and then down again, it will tick off more time than a clock you leave on the ground. If we consider each tick to be a spent pulse of energy, then it's pretty easy to see that the clock that went up and came back down spends more energy than the one on the ground.

Physically speaking, this would mean that if the shaft was, indeed, rigid, then it would actually be spinning at a lower rate if you went to the top and timed it with a stopwatch than it would be if you timed it at the bottom (your stopwatch is running "faster" higher up in a gravitational field, relative to the bottom). Similarly, the rate of electron arrival would be measured to be lower at the top than the bottom, etc.

NB: these rates I'm talking about are the _locally_ measured rates, i.e. hz as measured at the spot with a properly functioning stopwatch. The shaft doesn't need to twist or anything for these rates to differ, in fact, our assumption is specifically that it does not twist.

So when the frequency-based energy is obtained at the top and converted to mass-based energy (which doesn't undergo redshift, but instead exchanges kinetic and potential energies), the "exchange rate" between the two is based on the _local_ measurements of frequency, and we end up with less mass created at the top than we put in at the bottom.

Problem solved, as long as you trust the claim that any such energy transmission that doesn't suffer the kinetic energy penalty that normal projectiles suffer in a gravitational field has to be frequency based and suffer the time dilation effect. Briefly, energy is the time component of a four vector, so it _has_ to be affected like this, no matter how you try to transmit it, but I'll leave that for another rant...

<comment><USER2> That's a good point -- to avoid confusing people, I should mention that my explanations above are sort of the mirror image of how most physicists would think about this situation. I was trying to be careful to say "appears to be" instead of "is" to leave this interpretive door open :)

As you say, the most common interpretation is that time itself slows down as you enter a gravity well, leaving all the physical constants the same (since their locally measured values will appear the same to you).

But if you look at things from an imaginary "absolute" viewpoint outside of spacetime, you could think of spacetime itself as a sort of fluid that's denser in regions of high gravity. Light travels more slowly in this denser fluid, and since epsilon zero is inversely proportional to the square of the speed of light, you could interpret it as being larger where gravity is higher.

I guess you can tell that fluid dynamics was always easier for me than differential geometry -- whenever I see a system of nonlinear partial differential equations (like general relativity), it's just easier for me to think of them this way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is a basic flaw in this article that confuses 'perpetual motion' with 'over unity'.

The difference is subtle: A perpetual motion machine could in theory be constructed, and will continue to move as long as it's components don't wear out due to particle decay or some kind of impact. It simply means that a machine will continue to move.

The cleverest pseudo perpetual motion machines are very hard to debunk, some of the more intricate ones rob the earth of a little bit of momentum to function.

A 'real' perpetual motion machine (one without external energy input to overcome the inevitable engineering issues) has never been constructed but can't be entirely ruled out.

An 'over unity' machine produces more energy than goes in to it, and is an engineering impossibility.

For years I've had this up:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20050113055344/http://www.greenbi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20050113055344/http://www.greenbits.com/prize.html)

But sadly no takers :)

<comment><USER5> Well, that's too bad. I would happily pay 100'000 for a machine that "produces" energy. I mean, you build a few, connect them to the grid, sell the electricity and you've got you're money back in no time.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure whether you're trying to be sarcastic or not.

<comment><USER5> I'm not, I mean seriously, if you make a machine that "produces" energy, you have to be the worlds biggest idiot to sell it for 10'000$. It's like selling a chicken that lays golden eggs, you just don't. You keep it and make profits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess it costs energy to send that energy up the tower. Why wouldn't it?

<comment><USER8> This is my guess as well, although to really address his point you have to answer the question "why would it."

He seems to assume that energy doesn't have any mass. It does. "Converting" energy to mass is a misnomer--you're really just converting one form of energy to another, one of which may be stable enough last as "matter" but both of which obey the same laws of gravitation. Transferring the energy up the tower requires energy because the energy has (is) mass.

Note that the E=MC^2 equation is for rest-mass rather than total mass, while a mass in motion has something more like E^2=M^2*sqrt(C^4+V^4). In a different inertial frame of reference objects will appear to have different mass, although I forget if it's rest-mass or total mass. But the point is, in order to get up to the top of the tower, some of the rest-mass will have to be kinetic energy, which gets converted to potential energy as it climbs and back to kinetic energy as it falls.

If you try to beam the energy up as light, this manifests as a Doppler shift in the light frequency (I think this has been observed experimentally). If you send it up with electricity, I think you have gravitational drag on the electrons. In the case of a drive shaft whose axis is parallel with gravity... well, that one actually stumps me. I guess you'll have to work through the relativistic effects. It's probably something really subtle, like that the (slightly) different gravity at the different elevations slows time by different amounts, resulting in a different rate of rotation and therefore less energy out of the top than was put in at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A perpetual motion machine is pretty useless until someone hitches a harness to it. That would probably kill it before anything tricky.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you had a way to transmit and store energy with no loss, you could just transmit it back and forth, and that would be perpetual motion.

I don't know of any indication that the motion of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1> will ever stop.

<comment><USER11> "Perpetual Motion" is a bit of a misnomer. The term should be "perpetual force".

If it were "perpetual motion", then _everything_ would constantly be in relative perpetual motion until death of the universe. For example: despite me sitting motionless relative to my computer, I am moving relative to the moon, or the sun, or pretty much everything else in the universe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem is: "Assume perfect efficiency."

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think so. In analysing designs for perpetual potion machines you're allowed to assume perfect efficiency, unless you can show it to be physically impossible. Here we only need to assume the conversion is _sufficiently_ efficient. That's within the laws of thermodynamics, and the machine still works.

The problem lies elsewhere.

EDIT: In response to a down-vote, let me explain further.

By the laws of thermodynamics, even a perfectly efficient machine cannot result in a net production of energy. In the analysis of an engine the assumption of perfect efficiency is allowed, because really one is saying "assume sufficient efficiency that the production of energy will compensate."

In the case here we're assuming that we can convert mass to energy and _vice versa_ and getting net production of energy. That shouldn't be able to happen, and the falw isn't in the assumption of perfect efficiency. The flaw is elsewhere, and the challenge is to find it.

I _do_ know where it is, but it took me a long time to find it. I'm sure many people here will find it much more quickly than I did.

But the flaw is not in the assumption of perfect efficiency in the mass/energy conversion(s).

<comment><USER12> _you're allowed to assume perfect efficiency, unless you can show it to be physically impossible_

Even then, his specification is at too high a level of abstraction for us to prove that it's physically impossible. That seems unfair.

If the author wants people to ignore the abstractions that quickly prove something impossible, then he or she should provide enough detail to analyze it from a practical perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you're worried about the "perfect efficiency" and not concerned about the "convert the mass to energy" bit?

It's a thought experiment.

<comment><USER12> _It's a thought experiment._

Fair enough. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cool-RR I believe I have the answer.

There is no way to convert between energy and matter. Thinking that E=mc^2 is an "exchange rate" between energy and matter is a common misconception.

The meaning of E=mc^2 is _not_ that you can exchange E amount of energy for mc^2 amount of mass. The meaning of E=mc^2 is that in every system, the total kinetic energy is equal to the the total mass times the speed of light squared.

The common belief is: _When you cause nuclear fission in an atom, that very small mass gets converted into energy, and because the exchange ratio is c^2 (which is enormous), the lost mass turns into a huge amount of energy, which is the nuclear explosion._

This is wrong. The correct explanation is: Because of E=mc^2, we know that even in a small atom there is a huge amount of energy. That energy then gets converted using fission into a more useful form (the explosion.) The mass of the whole system stays constant through the whole process.

<comment><USER5> Well, no, that's not the answer. It's not important how the mass is transformed into energy, nor how much. He's just saying that if it's possible to transform x kg of something into y energy and back again (the second part being the real challenge), could I make a machine that "creates" energy?

<comment> cool-RR _He's just saying that if it's possible to transform x kg of something into y energy_

It's not possible. That's what I'm saying. That's the wrong assumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"It violates the laws of thermodynamics." This dismissive statement allows one to know that the machine won't work -- regardless of its details. But it is an unsatisfactory answer because it doesn't tell you why it won't work. Essentially it is a statement of faith that somehow the universe won't allow it._

 _Essentially it is a statement of faith that somehow the universe won't allow it._

 _statement of faith_

GTFO of my science.

<comment><USER14> I get the feeling that you have no idea how science works, or what he's saying.

He's not saying that the 3rd law is faith, he's saying that _you_ take it on faith. A statement of faith is one that rests on no proof or evidence. Someone who has either wouldn't be giving a dickish answer like "um, 3rd law" or "GTFO", they'd be busy explaining.

The most important part of science is questioning and attempting to falsify current theories. He has a legitimate question, answer it or be quiet.

<comment><USER15> You know, I sympathize with your argument, but... seriously, the second law of thermodynamics? If there's anything that qualifies as the cornerstone of sanity in physics, it's that.

Of course it's illuminating to analyze the question and figure out where, exactly it's gone wrong, much like it's fun to puzzle out subtly flawed mathematical proofs that 0 = 1.

But in the end an argument that concludes with something equivalent to "therefore, causality is broken" or "therefore, time is meaningless" doesn't really warrant serious consideration unless it's backed by some _very_ serious evidence.

<comment><USER16> Contrary to modestly popular belief, "faith" is not best defined as "choosing to act as if you believe something you actually know is not true". That's a fun definition to smear someone with, but is not useful in understanding very many real phenomena. Faith is much better defined as something like "acting on the truth of a statement that you can not (effectively) 100% prove"; note it does not preclude having a Bayesian probability of greater than 0, it is simply what you act on. When I sit in a chair, I can not 100% prove it will not collapse on me (after all, I have sat in chairs that collapsed on me and my Bayesian probability that a generic chair will support me can not be 100%), but I have faith that it will not; that is, I _act_ as if it will not collapse.

When presented with a perpetual motion device, I can have faith that it will not work. Thanks to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, my Bayesian confidence in that belief is quite high, so it is not as if my faith is stepping out on a limb. But I have not _proved_ that the perpetual motion machine won't work by actually examining it and finding the flaw, I simply have very-well-founded faith that such a flaw exists. Faith is a perfectly appropriate word here.

(I parenthesized "effectively" up there to avoid a massive and irrelevant discussion of exactly what 100% means, though it still pokes through. But is interesting to note that since reaching 100% confidence is very difficult, "faith" comes up in virtually every decision you make.)

<comment><USER15> I don't really disagree with any of that as such, but it doesn't really mesh with the common usage of the word "faith", especially on something as utterly fundamental as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. From a standpoint of Bayesian confidence, even a cursory understanding of physics would probably lead one to assign the Second Law a likelihood of one minus epsilon, where epsilon is taken to mean roughly "the likelihood that I'm crazy and hallucinating this whole thing".

As an aside, if you're going to be talking about Bayesian probability, you should know better than to call "100%" confidence just "very difficult"...

<comment><USER16> There's a couple of things I'm willing to assign 100% probability to, in particular something along the lines of "for some reasonably recognizable definition of 'exist', something I can reasonably call 'myself' exists", on the grounds that if I do not in fact exist there's no "my Bayesian probability" to be arguing about in the first place. (It's not _quite_ tautological in the strictest sense, for reasons too long to get into here, but it certainly is close.) So I can't quite go to "impossible". You can't very far on 100%, though; "impossible" is a reasonable approximation.

Oh, and part of my point is that common usage is wrong, on the grounds that the "common usage" is incoherent, meaningless, and information-free. (I basically take it as axiomatic that the worth of the definition of a word can be measured along those axes; I'm _generally_ a descriptive grammarian but that doesn't mean I have to throw _all_ standards out.) Use something more like my definition and you get meaning again.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


California has banned political deep fakes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20902884/california-deepfake-political-ban-election-2020 <comment><USER2> This is a severe blow against holding politicians accountable and informing the public on state wide corruption and abuse of power. This bill essentially bans criticizing those in office, by unofficial media sources, which is a horrible precedent to uphold. Especially given the monopolistic and heavily centralized nature of the media atm.

<comment><USER3> What? How does banning deep fakes (literal fake news) prevent holding politicians accountable? Are you suggesting we hold them accountable by making deep fakes of them?

<comment><USER2> It doesnt ban fake content. There are no guidelines or terms for separating legit content from lies. It merely bans criticism from anonymous bloggers and independent news sources that aren't part of the mainstream media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This feels illegal and I bet there'll be a lawsuit...

</comment><comment><USER5> CA likes to ban everything they cant control, its the enforcement part that is difficult.

<comment><USER6> Deep Fakes have been shown to cause cancer in the state of California.

They like to put laws around just about anything that gets people in a tizzy.</comment></comment>


Awful or Awesome?: This Browser Extension Clicks Every Ad to Confuse the System - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3037661/awful-or-awesome-this-browser-extension-clicks-every-ad-to-confuse-the-system <comment><USER2> The one thing that pops into my head is Malvertising ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising)).

The idea behind it makes sense (like gaming survey data which results in useless analysis), but I'm unsure how it can protect the user from accidentally injecting malware from malvertisng ads. Seems like a dangerous game to me.</comment>


The future of becoming a job-ready engineer - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/22/the-future-of-becoming-a-job-ready-engineer/

<comment><USER2> _"But learning alone is slow, difficult, and doing so usually proves demotivating."_

That may be true for some people, but for many others (like me, and I suspect a lot of other HN readers) learning alone is our preferred method of learning.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you define "alone"? What I've found is that learning alone is a very high percentage of overall time spent, but _being_ alone, meaning relying solely on google / stack exchange, is vastly more difficult than having a conversation with someone either in person or virtually.</comment></comment>


COBOL turns 50 - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/319269/cobol_turns_50 In reality COBOL will be the 100 year language, it's halfway there. <comment><USER2> I am finding humor in this link, because earlier today there was an article "Is Java Dead?" Why not an article "Is Cobol Dead?" probably because everyone assumes it already was dead, but in reality is still going and will be for another 50 years.

What people don't understand is that languages of any kind don't die easily. New languages don't kill the old ones either, people transition to different languages because they better solve the problems of today, but problems of yesterday still exist and so do their solutions.

<comment><USER3> I generally assume that people who ask, "Is X dead?" or state, "X is dead" actually mean "dead" in the sense Paul Graham used in his essay about Microsoft:

> What I meant was not that Microsoft is suddenly going to stop making money, > but that people at the leading edge of the software business no longer have > to think about them.

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

<comment><USER4> Which is a mix of arrogance and selective blindness unlikely to do that self- declared "leading edge" much good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is just a thinly veiled press release from Micro Focus, a COBOL vendor. They try to make these stories pop up every few months (why is still something I don't understand - it's not like they're going to ensnare someone and get them to learn or use COBOL if they read one of these PR fluff pieces), but they really should be ignored.

</comment><comment><USER6> Fred Brooks' on COBOL's success: <http://bit.ly/jrnXp></comment>


Hackers download US government climate data store on EU servers for inauguration - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/891201/hackers-were-downloading-government-climate-data-and-storing-it-on-european-servers-as-trump-was-being-inaugurated/ <comment><USER2> Terrible headline. This is scraping, backing up, and transferring data. This is not hacking</comment>


ASK HN:What do you think about inserting affiliate link into free desktop app - <AUTHOR>

Hi I have small desktop music application that is downloaded few hundred times each month Its small utility that handles mp3 files, I thinking about inserting small affiliate link (Amazon) Do you think its good idea? Some one has experience with such thing? <comment><USER2> I don't see much ethically wrong with it. I do have my doubts about your potential earnings. Music itself will earn you peanuts(cents). Though if they click through your affiliate link and end up buying a bunch of other items, you can make 4-5 bucks/order. With couple hundred downloads a month, I just don't see the math adding up to much significant revenue.

But hey, can't hurt to try!

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe other ideas? to get revenue ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a user, would it bother me if you were trying to monetize your app via affiliate links? No, unless you annoyed me. Affiliate links don't bother me and, if links/products are embedded in an app, it's expected that the app dev made them affiliate links.

Is it a "good idea"? That's a different question. I don't know your app or anything about your users so I can't say.</comment>


Ask HN: End-to-end encryption – how do you know? - <AUTHOR> If something is open-source you can audit it (assuming you trust the official builds to be the same), maybe if it's a big enough company you trust that they don't want to risk being outed, but how to people <i>really</i> verify that end-to-end encryption is being done? Inspecting network traffic perhaps? <comment><USER2> I agree that the open-source ability to audit is one of the strong points of foss and that's an allure to keep everyone honest. Look at Signal, ProtonMail, Telegram, and to a lesser extent WhatsApp, AWS and Zoom. Once things get increasingly proprietary, they tend to pull the curtain wider across the stage.

Network traffic - or rather lack thereof - could conceivably be a good place to start. Wireshark not showing you any tangible information when you're sniffing the data? You stand a good change of being positively encrypted, but that's only one end of the end-to-end.

There's an interesting research paper from the 1984 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy written by Dianne E. Britton entitled, "Formal Verification of a Secure Network with End-to-End Encryption" \- the abstract being:

A formal specification and verification of a simple secure communications network using end-to-end encryption is presented. It is shown that all data sent over the network is encrypted and all heats on the network exchange messages only if they are authorized to do so. The network and its hosts are modelled by a set of concurrent processes that communicate via unidirectional buffers. Each process is viewed as a state machine. The specification has been formally verified using the commercially-available VERUS verification system.

I feel like this would at least illustrate the groundwork current systems have expanded on over the last twenty-odd years, but the paper is behind a research wall. If I can get a copy, I'll link to it here.

The other aspect worth mentioning is Asynchronous messaging with as strong as security as possible - the paper that details this ([https://people.cispa.io/cas.cremers/downloads/papers/CCGMM20...](https://people.cispa.io/cas.cremers/downloads/papers/CCGMM2018-groupmessaging.pdf)) uses the word "Guarantees", but is it ever? - the abstract for that being:

In the past few years secure messaging has become mainstream, with over a billion active users of end-to-end encryption protocols such as Signal. The Signal Protocol provides a strong property called post-compromise security to its users. However, it turns out that many of its implementations provide, without notification, a weaker property for group messaging: an adversary who compromises a single group member can read and inject messages indefinitely. We show for the first time that post-compromise security can be achieved in realistic, asynchronous group messaging systems. We present a design called Asynchronous Ratcheting Trees (ART), which uses tree-based Diffie-Hellman key exchange to allow a group of users to derive a shared symmetric key even if no two are ever online at the same time. ART scales to groups containing thousands of members, while still providing provable security guarantees. It has seen significant interest from industry, and forms the basis for two draft IETF RFCs and a chartered working group. Our results show that strong security guarantees for group messaging are practically achievable in a modern setting.

KeyBase and Wire ([https://medium.com/@wireapp/making-your-conversations- secure...](https://medium.com/@wireapp/making-your-conversations-secure- dab207ab77fd)) are both doing interesting things with end-to-end encryption, but verification from a user perspective - especially in the case of proprietary software - leaves the onus on the user to simply stay as paranoid as (reasonably) possible for the time being.

<comment><AUTHOR> So yeah- sounds like "make the code open-source and use a tested protocol" is about all you can do.</comment></comment>


The ugliest logo ever, but maybe it makes sense - <AUTHOR> http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2009/04/ugliest-logo-ever-but-maybe-it-makes.html

<comment><USER2> In the context of the other imagery they're going to roll out, it's actually pretty cool. It's a very humanizing illustration style that I think will go a long way towards making Symbian feel a lot less borg-like to mainstream folks.

Check out the accompanying illustrations at flickr: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/symbianfoundation/sets/72157616...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/symbianfoundation/sets/72157616422430716/)

<comment><USER3> Exactly my thoughts. I followed the link from the article to their blog, where the logo has more context than their main site: <http://blog.symbian.org/>

It really doesn't look too bad or out of place there.

<comment><USER4> It reminds me of Dr. Seuss as well as another guy who used to do a learn to draw show on pbs when I was little, I think his name was Mark something. I really hope more people change from Web 2.0 style images to something more friendly or minimal looking like they decided to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It was well received on a popular brand identity site: [http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/open_sou...](http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/open_source_with_a_heart.php)

Aren't you guys sick of gradients and bubble-buttons yet?

<comment><USER6> Nice -- I sent Brand New this tip about Symbian's redesign, and in return they linked to my startup from the tip credit. (I make video effects software that can be of interest to a design blog's readership, so the exposure is welcome.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They're taking a page out of IBM's "Peace, Love, Linux" campaign. I think nerds are fairly easily appeased. There's nobody that seemed more borg-like than IBM a decade or two ago and they've won over the hearts of lots of geekier folk.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/kino-eye/39036635/>

<comment><USER8> I don't think this is what won over the geeks. It is more of a mutual relationship -- IBM needed to take on Microsoft, and Linux was the easiest way to do that. So, IBM gives the open source developer time, money, and their patent portfolio, and IBM can compete better with Microsoft.

The Thinkpads are also mighty fine computers. (I know it's not IBM anymore, but times have changed...)

<comment><USER7> Sure. I didn't mean to imply that said campaign was the crux of the winning- over, but it was part of IBM's strategy to become cool again in the techie world. Just embracing Linux as a business strategy wouldn't have done it -- a lot of vendors have done that and remained uncool -- but what IBM pulled off was a strategic shift while bringing in the hacker community at the same time, which is pretty impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somehow it gives me the same impression as this: <http://www.boltcity.com/copper/copper_021_happy.htm>

<comment><USER10> And I would like to respond with this: <http://www.boltcity.com/copper/copper_023_waterfall.htm>

I don't think you know it's beautiful, it just is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like it. I guess it's just personal preference.

</comment><comment><USER11> well, I don't feel too bad for designing my product logos myself now.

</comment><comment><USER12> The London 2012 Olympic logo is better

</comment><comment><USER13> What sort of music does Symbian play? Are they going on tour soon?

</comment><comment><USER14> > Really though, it does embody "Symbian" pretty well; amateur, ugly, dated, > and kind of a joke

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice writing. "a fat, stoned-looking penguin and a drunken ox" made me laugh.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sincerely, I think it deserves the right to be included in this: <http://www.grupthink.com/topic/7964/Worst_logos_ever></comment>


Mike Crawford Is Dead, Contributed to Mac System 7.5.X and Activist - <AUTHOR> Some of you might know him on the west coast. He worked for Apple fixing/debugging System 7.5.X and attended Cal Tech. He was an activist for the mentally ill and homeless. He was openly bisexual and open about his schizoaffective disorder. His Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/repeatiblehairstyle?sk=wall&fref=gs&dti=2315152128&hc_location=group_dialog
I had helped him with his project Soggy Jobs: http://soggy.jobs/ which is unfinished. It was his project he needed a business model for.
He was on CNN about the taking away of tax credit from software engineers: https://youtu.be/VhLV7jydPJ8
His website is here: http://www.warplife.com/
He was a member here at Hacker News.
He had serious physical illnesses that made him suffer and he took his own life.
I was an online friend of his, and I too suffer from schizoaffective disorder.
http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/
His wish was not to be forgotten to be remembered through his works. To at least have a Wikipedia article written on him or some other Wiki. Wikipedia named him non-notable about ten years ago. But if you met him, he'd always show you respect and even if he disagreed with you he was nice about it. <comment><USER2> We are sorry for your/our loss. Thank you for sharing a bit of Mike's story (and your story, too).

</comment><comment><USER3> Him on SoylentNews: [https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford/journal/](https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford/journal/)

Him on HackerNews, shadowbanned it seems: [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=MichaelCrawford](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=MichaelCrawford)

How and where did he kill himself? (please copy from facebook if you can get at it there)

He seems to have been a rather nice guy. Not even counting the suicide, he had a strong tendency to make hazardous life choices. He was really into music performance, preferring to earn money busking instead of programming. He didn't have a lot of self-control with money, to put it mildly.

<comment><AUTHOR> He was MikeCrawford here. I don't know how to search users

This is his last Youtube Video and only one I know of: [https://youtu.be/3dGTmjUXH0Q](https://youtu.be/3dGTmjUXH0Q)

Weeks before his death.

He did Busk to earn money because he couldn't find contracts and he rejected Google and Amazon because he considered companies like them evil. He had an Interview with Google but turned them down. He had a contract to build drivers for OSX aka MacOS but wasted his money on a Litecoin miner that didn't even pay for electricity.

He claimed to live like a hermit but would often go to strip clubs and do hazardous things.

His weakness was accounting even with GNUCash he just couldn't do it. He was supposed to report it to social security but missed the deadline and lost his Medicare insurance and his 'happy pills' that keep him from being suicidal. I myself am on disability and Medicare and looking to get off it as well.

I got the details on his death from his Facebook user wall, there are people writing on it.

<comment><USER4> Huge bummer. Mike's golden years on K5 where everyone trolled him 24/7 about Haiku OS and he loved every second of it makes me smile. RIP in peace, Mikey.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is his obituary:

[https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/spokane- wa/michae...](https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/spokane-wa/michael- crawford-8232299)

</comment><comment><USER6> The world was a better place with Michael in it, and is a worse place without him.

It is tragic that he could not continue living in it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for letting us know. The story goes live in 18 minutes: [https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/26/0356205](https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/26/0356205)

</comment><comment><USER8> I met Michael David Crawford (MDC) for the first time when he was mickeyed up in the San Louis Obispo (SLO) County Jail. One of the other kuro5hin.org users had figured out that MDC hadn't been posting because he was in jail. He'd headed south from the Portland area, wrecked his car in SLO, and was arrested for being a nuisance at McDonald's -- probably for helping himself to free ketchup.

They dropped the charges and released him the day after my jail visit. He'd been locked up for several months, also spending time at the Atascadero mental hospital [1].

The criminal justice and mental health systems certainly did NOT do anything to help Michael with his actual problems.

[1] Atascadero State Hospital - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atascadero_State_Hospital#Popu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atascadero_State_Hospital#Popular_culture)

I told about my efforts to reach out to MDC on kuro5hin.org (k5 diaries reposted on my site):

 _I sent some paper and envelopes to Mr. Crawford_ \- [https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/09/i-sent-some-paper-and- envel...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/09/i-sent-some-paper-and-envelopes-to- mr.html)

 _Immigration anxiety at the county jail_ \- [https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/immigration-anxiety-at- coun...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/immigration-anxiety-at-county- jail.html)

 _More about visiting SLO_ \- [https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/more-about- visiting-slo.htm...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/more-about-visiting- slo.html) / etc.

 _harvesting life 's gardens_ \- [https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/08/harvesting- lifes-gardens.ht...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/08/harvesting-lifes- gardens.html) (a picture of the card I sent him - it had seeds embedded in it).

 _Selective Electromagnetic Interference_ \- [https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/02/selective- electromagnetic-i...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/02/selective- electromagnetic-interference.html) \- This one had a portion of the letter he'd sent me from jail: "... It really helps to know that I'm not forgotten in here."

Some months later I went to Oregon, and swung through SLO on my way back to Arizona. He'd been living at a shelter, I bought him breakfast and gave him a crossover cable for his laptops (any old network cable probably would have worked).

somewhere... pictures. They're on... .. . imgur. Picture of MDC pre-/post- haircut:

[https://imgur.com/aQO4kyE](https://imgur.com/aQO4kyE) / [https://imgur.com/IYPS7To](https://imgur.com/IYPS7To)

Sometimes what a person really needs isn't much: someone who believes in you can make a huge difference. He got a job after my second visit... Made some progress at debugging their problem, but then he fell apart again, I don't remember the specifics.

OH YEAH - Michael Crawford cycled through his Kuro5hin.org usernames regularly (he was good at getting himself banned). one of these was "Zombie Jesus Christ", which inspired me to name my kuro5hin.org account 'TaxiCabJesus':

 _origin of the 'tcj' moniker_ \- [https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/04/origin-of- tcj-moniker.html](https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/04/origin-of-tcj-moniker.html)

So long, and thanks for the 'nick.</comment>


Github Security - <AUTHOR> http://help.github.com/security/

<comment><USER2> That document looks out of date:

        All pushing and pulling of private data
        is done over SSH authenticated with keys,
        not passwords.

Surely that isn't true anymore, since they've now added the ability to pull/push your repositories over https. Which requires you to supply your GitHub password to your client.</comment>


Apple, Services and Moats - <AUTHOR> https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/9/13/Apple-services-moats <comment><USER2> From the article: "I'm pretty skeptical of the TV Plus project, but that shouldn't take away from the broader story - that Apple is, mostly, doing things that are entirely natural and correct for this stage of the smartphone S Curve."

As an Apple shareholder, Apple TV Plus seems like more of a corporate boondoggle than a serious investment. Giving away anything in very un-Appley but Apple has essentially pegged its initial consumer value at zero. I doubt if many Android users will switch to iPhone solely because of the free subscription to TV Plus, but perhaps some existing Apple customers will decide to upgrade to get it.</comment>


No to .io, Yes to .xyz - <AUTHOR> https://yarmo.eu/blog/no-io-yes-xyz <comment><USER2> Site seems to be down but xyz gave a domain away to my company if we did some promotional things I really didn't care about (using their domain essentially everywhere, including the code base so it'd be api.[domain...], they actually did check this).

My boss wanted it but I mostly ignored it, too many _actual_ things to do. Xyz was pretty aggressive, multiple emails a week, we never satisfied 100% of their needs. We used it on business cards, wrote a blog entry, advertised them for free, made it the primary domain, it was never enough. It was one of those high maintenance b2b partnerships where you're thinking "ug, screw these people"

So we let the domain lapse after I finally convinced him it was a complete non-priority and then they followed up to with renewal offers in the thousands of dollars that we had no intention of spending, almost as if they were trying to play hardball on something I didn't actual want.

I have their emails on a filter, I'll go find the last one they sent. Ah, may 1 2019. This one person always used a smiley face in her subject line even when writing some thinly veiled threatening email telling us to do stuff, it was fun.

They appear to be yet another snake in the game which is fine but it taints every pro-xyz thing I see since I know they have account managers that dictate and follow-up on astroturfed PR campaigns.

I'm also violating their NDA by disclosing this but that was my (now ex) boss who signed that paper, I'm in the clear.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having had an xyz domain name I have to warn people that many mail servers will automatically think you're a spammer if you send email with it. No idea why.

<comment><USER4> Here's why: they sold for cheap / gave away registrations for next to nothing with no vetting process, so .xyz was the go-to domain for spam and phishing for quite a long time after it was introduced.

Some of us (email administrators) have only recently started allowing .xyz email. It really was that bad.

<comment><USER5> If you're serious about a "vetting process" for domain registration, you haven't had anything to do with email admin for last 20 years.

<comment><USER6> I don't normally chime in on comments like this, but I just have to say: what are you talking about? If 99.9999% of traffic from a domain is spam,it makes complete sense to block it as spam.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but that is in no way limited to .xyz It was the the same with .info in 2001/2002 and .biz and whatever else.

The point was that there never was any "vetting" ever. Bulk-buy, spam, abandon. That's what spam was and is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We launched fronted using .xyz but a few suppliers (equifax and others) couldn't send or receive email to us, or view our website. Be warned.

<comment><USER8> The problem with all these new TLDs is that spammers have poisoned the well. The overwhelming majority of the spam I get comes from .club, .xyz, and other "gold rush" TLDs, so I can't be surprised if some organizations just reject them outright.

<comment><USER9> Makes a good case for expensive TLDs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Word of warning, the .xyz I once had and let drop is now listed as a "premium" domain they want 2 grand for

Considering the word is my name (Cohan) I really doubt they realised it was a super valuable word out of the blue.

Edit: Sorry it looks like Namecheap are now in on the secondary market game, it looks like a squatter's got it and somehow listed their price in Namecheap

</comment><comment><USER11> I first encountered .xyz in case of Alphabet[0]. And so I bought it for my own website[1] since I found it refreshing as you said.

[0][https://abc.xyz/](https://abc.xyz/)

[1][https://flashblaze.xyz](https://flashblaze.xyz)

</comment><comment><USER12> > The .xyz TLD is fun, small, refreshing, funky, a whole lot cheaper and you > don't support colonialism.

You _will_ be surprised by how many people will confuse it with .xxx

<comment><USER13> which can be part of the "fun"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want to come across as a fadtech startup with shitly named products, then go with .io and .ly.

</comment><comment><USER9> .xyz is awful. It takes 4 syllables to pronounce it and means nothing. .com only takes 2 syllables.

<comment><USER15> It's also not i18n friendly - I speak multiple languages and in each of them I'd have to think how to pronounce it, and it sounds awkward

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h ...as opposed to most other TLDs, which are English words or short versions thereof?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I went with `.co` for Ritza[0], but I still think `.com` helps you rank better, and is still 'assumed' by many people, and at this stage I would probably move a .com domain soon.

I noticed that places like Karat[1] moved from .io to .com, so I assume that they had issues running on the .io domain.

I've also written a lot on CodeMentor (.io) and it "feels" harder to get artices to rank well than on other places (e.g. DigitalOcean.com) that I have written for. Obviously there's a lot more to ranking than choice of TLD, and I do not have hard data, but I am fairly convinced that it remains an important aspect.

The `.dev` TLD also seems to be gaining in popularity (e.g. CodeMentor partially moved to arc.dev). And then places like `dev.to` are I think helping get people used to non-com domains, but to me it's pretty interesting how much the '.com' TLD has maintained reputation and how the newer TLDs have not taken off as much as I expected.

[0] [https://ritza.co](https://ritza.co) [1] [https://karat.io](https://karat.io) [https://karat.com](https://karat.com)

<comment><USER17> > I noticed that places like Karat[1] moved from .io to .com,

I would say, that once you've got past your initial incubator phase, and now have investor money, you can finally drop some cash on the overpriced .com that's been sitting on a domain resellers[1] list for years.

\---

[1] You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > But it doesn't mean "input/output". It stands for British Indian Ocean > Territory

I'm going to disagree on this. It's prescriptive. IO definitely means "input/output" in the context of tech startups. I don't think anyone sees github.io and thinks Indian Ocean, nor brew.sh and thinks Saint Helena, nor Apple.com and is frustrated that they sell computers.

<comment><USER19> It's what the TLD stands for; nothing prescriptive nor to agree with. It's a fact.

<comment><USER20> Still doesn't mean that people actually know or care about the original intended meaning.

Lots of words have a different meaning now than they had originally. Not even talking about the meaning of acronyms.

<comment><USER21> The point of the article is to teach people about the original meaning, to encourage them to care, and to point out that by paying .io domain fees you are directly supporting this ongoing human rights disaster.

This is a time when BLM protests have led to various aspects of structural racism in society being reexamined. For tech, it's a good time to reexamine use of .io too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you aren't convinced by the moral issues or ownership disputes, consider also that as recently as 2017 .io has had significant DNS outages affecting domain resolution. It seems the current operators have moved the root zones to more reliable providers since but if ownership of the domain is transferred in the future then that is subject to change.

</comment><comment><USER23> My firm blocked .xyz at the DNS level for malware frequency.

So, probably not.

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://web.archive.org/web/20200618161818/https://yarmo.eu/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200618161818/https://yarmo.eu/blog/no- io-yes-xyz)

</comment><comment><USER25> These gTLDs always have baggage. No one takes them seriously. If you spell it out IRL, people will append a .COM no matter what. There are also no price limits like there are for the traditional TLDs. The registrar of .SOFTWARE or whatever can squeeze you for $100k if they wanted and you were stupid enough to build a brand around the TLD. There are exceptions like .DEV and .APP which resolve fast and are owned by an entity not desperate for cash. But the random person will still append a .COM in their minds.

And the problem with ccTLDs is you never know when people might start randomly hating that country or the West goes to war with that country.

Just pay up for the dotcom.

</comment><comment><USER26> I agree that .xyz is not necessarily professional and that .com is still the most reputable choice. I own both snazz.xyz (because it's fun, short, and fits well with the theme of my username) and a more professional website with my CV and academic information at [firstname][lastname].com. I think that owning both serves me well at a lower annual cost than a single .io.

</comment><comment><USER27> Good luck finding my domain francisco.io with some other half-decent TLDN

Also open source is made for many different reasons, particularly there's a split between Open vs Free software. It seems like this article is referring to FOSS only, which is a minority of the ones used in these domains. The majority of .io I've seen is Open Source and not Free Software.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't know, but in times where search engines are kings, do TLDs really matter?

Some people in the past said shorter TLDs ranked better in terms of SEO, but that doesn't seem to be true either.

<comment><USER29> TLDs do still matter. Part of the indieweb movement is focused around not relying on search engines. The TLD is half of your domain so some consideration is needed.

Personally, I could have gotten yarmo.nl, given that I'm Dutch. I chose yarmo.eu because I'm fairly certain my future is not in the Netherlands, but elsewhere in the EU.

I also wouldn't want a TLD that support Britain's continuing colonial rule and defense of acts against human rights.

I'm not saying all should boycott .io, just the (open source) developers who wish their products (and domains) to reflect their core principles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Weird ccTLD extensions always comes with "issues".

Another example is .ly

<comment><USER31> this one has a lot of issues [https://True.ly](https://True.ly)

a little bit over 12000 issues actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only choice there is is what registry you cede the control of your traffic to.

It does not matter if it's ccTLD like .io or something else like .xyz, or some kind of second-level domain like github, gitlab, facebook or whatever.

Would it matter if news.ycombinator.com got shorted to news.yc? I seriously doubt it. Still it is already shortened -- try putting into the "address bar".

One can argue that TLDs lost their meaning already, because it's easier to google the brand than to guess what funky suffix they choose to have.

</comment><comment><USER32> .xyz is far too difficult to type to be a good tld, no matter how memorable it is.

</comment><comment><USER33> The only .xyz domains i see are from malvertising redirects that ive won amazon/Walmart gift cards for the 50 billionth search or whatever.

Tainted spam domain that is not for legitimate businesses as far as i have experienced.

If i was a network admin i would block the entire TLD.</comment>


Managing Node.js Callback Hell with Promises, Generators and Other Approaches - <AUTHOR> http://strongloop.com/strongblog/node-js-callback-hell-promises-generators/ <comment><USER2> Disappointing that most promise articles/tutorials reference Q as the preferred promise library, rather than bluebird - [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird)

Bluebird is not only so fast that it's almost on par with callbacks[1], but also innovates on the ability to filter on catching different error types[2], support for generators[3], context binding[4] among other things.

[1]: [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/benchma...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/benchmark/stats/latest.md)

[2]: [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#catchfunction- errorclassfunction-predicate-function-handler---promise)

[3]: [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#generators)

[4]: [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#promisebinddynamic- thisarg---promise)

<comment><USER3> We _just_ started using Q for our all--aaaargh, motherfucker.

Great to see progress being made, I guess. :(

<comment><USER4> The important thing is you're using promises. The differences between Q and Bluebird are minimal, compared to promises vs raw callbacks.

I just found this after some cursory Googling and haven't tried it at all, but it appears to be a compatibility layer for Q on top of Bluebird (written by the author of Bluebird): [https://gist.github.com/petkaantonov/8363789](https://gist.github.com/petkaantonov/8363789)

<comment><USER5> I would not say this[1] is a minimal difference :P

[1]: [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/benchma...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/benchmark/stats/latest.md)

<comment><USER6> I am pretty certain he means in terms of code delta.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looking at it, in general, ignoring that I know about Node internals, you know what is the simplest way to solve this "problem"?

It is something like this:

\---

        callback(find_largest(get_stats(read_files(dir)))

\---

1 line.

If an error happens, an exception should be raised.

The fact that there are multiple such requests happening or that some of those operations have to wait for a select or epoll loop to return, should be handled by an underlying framework. The fact that even with promises you have to write 27 lines of code to do that, should be making you worried.

<comment><USER8> Please stop spreading FUD.

With promises (Bluebird) this sounds like very little code in practice, assuming promisifyAll has been called the FS module:

\- One line to read all files in a directory

\- Map them with .map to a .stat call on them, returning array of promises.

\- Reduce them to the largest element.

Something like:

        var fs = Promise.promisifyAll(require("fs"));
        var largest =  fs.readdirAsync("/your/file/path").map(function(file){
             return fs.statAsync(file);
        }).reduce(function(x,y){
            return (x.size > y.size) ? x : y;
        });

With arrow syntax:

        var largest = fs.readdirAsync("/your/file/path").
                      map((file) => fs.statAsync(file)).
                      reduce((x,y) => (x.size > y.size) ? x : y);

Alternatively, with Generators using Bluebird promises

         var largest = Promise.coroutine(function *largest(dirname){
            var files = yield fs.readdirAsync(dirname);
            var sizes = yield files.map(name => fs.statAsync(name));
            return files.reduce((x,y) => x.size > y.size ? x : y);
        });

If one error occurs, the promise rejects. VERY far from 27 lines of code. Not to mention you can of course compose these in one line if you extract them to methods like in your code:

        var largest = fs.readdirAsync("/your/file/path").map(fs.statAsync).reduce(largest);

<comment><USER7> > Please stop spreading FUD.

Was that addressed to strongloop.com? They are the ones that posted an example with promises using 27+/-whitespace lines of code and the initial problem algorithm only had 4 lines.

Sounds like you should write a blog post and not them about using promises.

I don't use Node.js on daily basis and am not familiar with promises so just commented as an outsider based on the article.

Your last one line looks fantastic and makes it clear what is going on. Any reason you can think of why that wasn't the "obvious" solution to the original posters of the article?

<comment><USER8> rtdsc: > Was that addressed to strongloop.com? They are the ones that posted an example with promises using 27+/-whitespace lines of code and the initial problem algorithm only had 4 lines.

Oh wow, this is my fault, I didn't read what they did there. I have __no idea__ why it took them 27 lines to implement this. It's rather trivial with promises.

\- They have a .then followed by a .map there causing nesting for no reason whatsoever.

\- They also get the file name, but handle this very poorly (with an array), where they could just do it as a part of the .map (the .all and .then are completely redundant) there

\- They assume the possibility of directories, I didn't. That .filter is justified but that's the only thing one might have to add here.

\- Generally, it's poor promise code.

I guess that promises are just not their tools of choice and they just used them _for that post_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The generator example has no error handling (at least not from what I can see).

Once the "callback hell" example was re-written with named functions, it is not much different than the generator example and depending on how you are testing, easier to test because it separates out IO from logic (Which you could still do in the generator example).

One thing callback style code has begun to make me think about is the nesting/IO complexity of the functions a I write. When you nest, the IO/event boundary is visible in the code (by the indentation). As you continue to nest, you can start to get a clear idea of the amount of IO being done and where a particular function may be doing too much. Anyhow, most of this is preference anyway :)

<comment><USER10> A simple try/catch around the whole thing would take care of error handling for the generator example.

<comment><USER8> only until you have a syntax error :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As you read all these many lines of code to simply find the largest file in a directory, recall that in any language with friendlier blocking/non-blocking semantics, it could be as simple as (e.g. in Ruby)

        Dir.glob('*').select{|f| File.file?(f) }.max_by{|f| File.size(f) }

Plus, the error semantics of this code are sane: if something goes wrong I get an exception I can rescue. If there were no files in the directory, I get nil.

Statting a bunch of files is rarely so costly that parallelism is warranted, unless it is impressed upon you as in Node. The cost in readability and dreaming up generators and promises to solve such a mundane problem is likely much worse. Before you charge headlong into building your next webapp with Node, consider this article food for thought.

<comment><USER12> It's definitely a trade-off. What Node gives you is async when you need it at the cost of giving you async even when you don't.

The pain and constraints introduced by this forced use of async sure has spawned a lot of wheels of all sizes, colours, and compositions.

<comment><USER13> Ruby is the wrong comparison. Write that same code in Go, suitably translated, and it _would_ be fully "async".

I hit Go just because it's the most Algol-ish of the sane languages. There's several other options where you just _write the code_ and the compiler and runtime do the async for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember doing a deep dive into node and evented JS a couple years ago and I realized that I couldn't recommend it to my team because the code would become such a huge mess on an large system that whatever performance you gain, you lose in maintainability in a large team environment.

The best I could find at the time is IcedCoffeescript, which sort of replaces the whole existing coffee script tooling, so now you are dealing with custom tooling to install for each team member as well.

I find it sad that years later it looks like what IcedCoffeescript did is still the cleanest looking solution to the problem. It feels like the evented model is maybe great for smaller things, but horrible for building and reasoning about in larger systems on larger teams.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd like to mention my favorite tool to deal with Callback Hell: Streamline, a JavaScript (and CoffeeScript) language extension that can compile to either 1) callback spaghetti 2) Node-fibers or 3) generator code. It basically writes the mess for you. It lets you focus on the higher order concepts and provides configurable parallel array operations as well as many other convenient features. The callback "error parameter" is thrown as an exception to be caught with a basic try/catch. I highly recommend that any Node and JS enthusiast give it a try.

[https://github.com/sage/streamlinejs](https://github.com/sage/streamlinejs)

</comment><comment><USER16> There is another nice feature of ES6 that helps a lot with callbacks and promises: __proxies __. Check out this article I wrote on Flippin Awesome ([http://flippinawesome.org/2013/11/18/taming-asynchronous- jav...](http://flippinawesome.org/2013/11/18/taming-asynchronous-javascript- programming-with-ecmascript6/)). The following is some sample code to show how code can be simplified with ES6 proxies, making async functions chainable (example in coffeescript):

        getUser = (user) ->
            _("https://npmjs.org/~#{user}")
              .get()
              .extractLinks()
              .filter( -> /package/.test(arguments[0]) )
              .map( -> "https://npmjs.org#{arguments[0]}" )
              .log()

        getUser("foo")

where `get` is THE jQuery get for Ajax requests returning a promise and is chained with the rest of the functions in a pipeline fashion. I've found that these techniques can work very well for form validation, as [you can check here]([http://www.vittoriozaccaria.net/chained/demo.html](http://www.vittoriozaccaria.net/chained/demo.html)) — Firefox required.

Edit: I wrote in markdown but it seems that only verbatim is supported. Edit2: some clarification

</comment><comment><USER17> The problem with all of these solutions (callbacks, promises, etc.) is that they make you adopt a certain programming style not because it's the most appropriate from a design perspective, but rather to work around scheduling limitations.

Lightweight threads first remove the problem, and then let you choose the most appropriate programming style for your domain. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7179144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7179144)

</comment><comment><USER18> an important omission here is the async.auto function which is a phenomenal relatively new addition that takes a amd approach to asynchronously running multiple tasks at the same time: [https://github.com/caolan/async#auto](https://github.com/caolan/async#auto) if you haven't seen it already

</comment><comment><USER19> Here is how I would do it using ToffeeScript ([https://github.com/jiangmiao/toffee- script](https://github.com/jiangmiao/toffee-script))

        fs = require 'fs'
        async = require 'async'
        path = require 'path'

        module.exports = (dir, cb) ->
          err, files = fs.readdir! dir
          paths = (path.join dir, file for file in files)
          er, stats = async.map! paths, fs.stat
          largest = 0
          for stat, i in stats
            if stat.isFile and stat.size > largest
              fname = files[i]
              largest = stat.size
          cb fname

I use ToffeeScript for everything now, since it makes things much easier to read.

</comment><comment><USER20> Promises have always been debatable. The new Generators is probably what I am looking for.

<comment><USER21> Generators and Promises play very well together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why would one use Q promises in Node in 2014? They're very very very slow. Especially when there are alternatives like Bluebird promises that are almost as fast as callbacks.

</comment><comment><USER22> When we had these things in other languages like Python, node's approach was better. Now that node has adopted them, node is even better still, I guess.

<comment><USER23> Some other camps ( [http://www.erlang.org/](http://www.erlang.org/) ) still strongly prefer their own approach, and I can't say I blame them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is satire, right?

</comment><comment><USER25> All that work and the findLargest routine doesn't seem to benefit whatsoever from fs.readdir or fs.stat being asynchronous.</comment>