ProtonMail blocked by Vodafone Turkey - <AUTHOR> https://protonmail.com/blog/turkey-online-censorship-bypass/ <comment><USER2> In just so many countries (including those many people never know are in too) the state-led war on privacy and communication freedom is getting hotter and hotter. Some countries do it openly, some manage to look liberal until you look closer. Just try to start marketing a proprietary privacy-oriented messenger app or something like that and the intelligence guys will emerge promptly at your doorstep, demanding you to bake a backdoor in. Sad but true. I don't really know how are we (the people, who value privacy of themselves and of the others) going to win this war while keeping legal, it's an open challenge so far...

<comment><USER3> Technolgoists need to remember that tech is nothing without law.

<comment><USER4> Lawyers and law makers need to remember technology will continually outpace them. Both in execution of ideas and in value creation.

<comment><USER5> Lots of our technology cannot work without the support of a complex society and I think you can't have that without court and some kind of rules. We are interdependent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (x) Don't use public DNS such as google (or the DNS provided by your ISP such as Vodafone). Look for an anonymous non-logging service preferably outside Turkey

(x) Tor is is one of many layers for anonymity to circumvent blocking. Don't "just" install the tor-browser or tor-proxy on your system but run tails from a clean machine. If you know what you're doing you might want to help others by isolating whole networks using PORTALofPi to guarantee no DNS-leaks. Pro- Tip: build a LEDE based device and share your design with the community so others can benefit and give you input (because you will make mistakes).

(x) Don't use mobile internet if you don't know what you're doing (those who know what they're doing don't use mobile phones for critical comms)

(x) Use burner phones with anonymous SIM cards and aggressive hardware based compartmentalization. Check this article for good OpSec/compartmentalization tips (second half of the article after the discussion on browsers that looks dated).

(x) Despite popular claim VPNs don't give you anonymity. They shift the trust from your ISP to the VPN. If you pay for a VPN service by credit card consider what the payment provider knows about you.

see [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vodafone-blocks-protonmail- tu...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vodafone-blocks-protonmail-turkey- joachim-bauernberger/)

<comment><USER7> >Look for an anonymous non-logging service preferably outside Turkey

what's the point? DNS isn't encrypted, so it's trivial to log/intercept your queries.

<comment><USER8> You could run DNSCrypt and use a server that supports it:

[https://servers.opennic.org/](https://servers.opennic.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A totalitarian government blocking a service is a good sign they are unable to break its security and thus use it as a surveillance tool. It's a great advertisement for ProtonMail.

<comment><USER10> Unable to break its security or the service's owners are not cooperating.

<comment><USER11> Unable to break its security AND the service's owners are not cooperating maybe even

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A small note (though it may be unrelated), some ip address ranges are not accessible from Vodafone TR (3G/4G) connections.

220.127.116.11 <\- For example this address returns "HTTP 504" from Vodafone. There are some other addresses like this which happen to be around, randomly.

So it may be a misconfiguration on Vodafone TR Network, routers or such thing. Sample curl output below.

      $ time curl -vki 184.108.40.206
      * rebuilt url to: 220.127.116.11/
      * trying 220.127.116.11...
      * connected to 220.127.116.11 (220.127.116.11) port 80 (#0)
      > get / http/1.1
      > host: 220.127.116.11
      > user-agent: curl/7.47.0
      > accept: */*
      >
      < http/1.1 504 gateway time-out
      http/1.1 504 gateway time-out
      < server: webproxy/1.0 pre-alpha
      server: webproxy/1.0 pre-alpha
      < date: mon, 08 may 2017 07:04:23 gmt
      date: mon, 08 may 2017 07:04:23 gmt
      < content-length: 0
      content-length: 0
      < connection: keep-alive
      connection: keep-alive

      <
      * connection #0 to host 184.108.40.206 left intact

      real 0m10.909s
      user 0m0.012s
      sys 0m0.004s
      $ curl -vki http://188.8.131.52/
      * trying 18.104.22.168...
      * connected to 188.8.131.52 (126.96.36.199) port 80 (#0)
      > get / http/1.1
      > host: 220.127.116.11
      > user-agent: curl/7.47.0
      > accept: */*
      >
      < http/1.1 504 gateway time-out
      http/1.1 504 gateway time-out
      < server: webproxy/1.0 pre-alpha
      server: webproxy/1.0 pre-alpha
      < date: mon, 08 may 2017 07:56:58 gmt
      date: mon, 08 may 2017 07:56:58 gmt
      < content-length: 0
      content-length: 0
      < connection: keep-alive
      connection: keep-alive

      <
      * connection #0 to host 188.8.131.52 left intact
      $

</comment><comment><USER13> They recommend ProtonVPN. Does anyone know the legal ramifications of using a vpn with shared exit nodes? EG: A 'crack' squad of computer crime investigators in Jackson Mississippi track illegally uploaded content to a forum originating from ip address [184.108.40.206] (which is a VPN exit node). Unbeknownst to you that is _YOUR_ exit node now.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/digital-equivalent- rum...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/digital-equivalent-rumor-should- never-lead-police-raid)

<comment><USER14> Why would that be any different to getting assigned somebody's previous IP address by DHCP? It's non-incriminating because it can be demonstrated you didn't control that IP during the time illegal content was uploaded.

<comment><USER13> True. But my general ISP dhcp'ed ip address doesn't change much AND when it does I have decent odds someone (who would do illegal uploads) wouldn't be dumb enough to do it over a non-VPNed line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I lived in Izmir in the 90's, and the vibe was actually fairly liberal. The locals seemed to feel pretty free, optimistic, and not overly worried about their government. Sad to see things regressing so much.

<comment><USER16> Everywhere is regressing at the moment. Brexit, US protectionism, China's a dictatorship again.

It's like none of the 'leaders of the world' have read any history. Or they have, and are arrogant enough to think 'that won't happen now that I'M in charge'.

<comment><USER15> Sure, but Turkey is a little different. It's going from, for some people _" no issues, I'm influential and popular, if perhaps a little controversial"_, to suddenly _" I'm in jail now, for probably months"_.

<comment><USER17> This is not a recent thing. Turkey has been topping the incarcerated journalists per capita list for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Forgive me for this n00b question, but what do you get with ProtonMail (with respect to security) that you don't get with, say, gmail?

<comment><USER19> ProtonMail team here. Here is our assessment about how ProtonMail compares to Gmail from the security/privacy perspective: [https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-vs-gmail- security/](https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-vs-gmail-security/)

<comment><USER20> >"No tracking and logging Google records literally every action done by its users. This includes your IP address, every search that you do, which emails you open, which websites you visit, and much more. ProtonMail takes the opposite approach and by default, does not monitor or record user activity, not even IP addresses."

Has this been verified by an independent third party?

Also how do you determine there's an issue with with IP prefixes in AS 15897 Vodaphone Turkey[1], if you don't log IP addresses?

[1] [https://bgpview.io/asn/15897](https://bgpview.io/asn/15897)

<comment><USER21> > Has this been verified by an independent third party?

For one thing, it seems to have been verified by the Turkish government, seing how gmail is not blocked, and protonmail is ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They couldn't have paid for better advertising than this.

</comment><comment><USER23> Seemingly this is nothing to do with the government, as controlling through the website of the insitution where there's a form to check if a given domain is blocked [1], it tells me that there are "no blocks on this domain", i.e. protonmail.com. You can try instead wikipedia.org to see what it looks like when a domain is blocked.

[1] [http://internet.btk.gov.tr/sitesorgu/](http://internet.btk.gov.tr/sitesorgu/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Another public DNS is available from the IPredator.se guys as well. Forgot what page on their site they had it under though. They also run some tor nodes. They're one of my favorite VPN services. The staff is very welcoming on their IRC server too.

</comment><comment><USER20> >"Our support team first became aware of connectivity problems for Turkish ProtonMail users starting on Tuesday. After further investigation, we determined that protonmail.com was unreachable for both Vodafone Turkey mobile and fixed line users. Since then, we have also received some sporadic reports from users of other Turkish ISPs. At one point, the issue was prevalent in every single major city in Turkey. After investigating the issue along with members of the ProtonMail community in Turkey, we have confirmed this is a government-ordered block rather than a technical glitch. Internet censorship in Turkey tends to be fluid so the situation is constantly evolving"

Vodaphone like every major ISP has a NOC. Did Prontomail reach out to the ISP to see if it was a routing issue?

I don't see that mentioned above anywhere in the investigation methodology. How did you confirm that it was a "government-ordered block" if you only worked with "members of the ProtonMail community'?

<comment><USER19> ProtonMail is quite prevalent in Turkey and there are actually ProtonMail users who work within Vodafone Turkey, and that is how we got the confirmation.

<comment><USER20> So did you also contact their NOC via the handle listed for them in their RIPE routing registry entry? That's the normal protocol.

Just because there's "ProtonMail users who work within Vodafone Turkey" doesn't mean they have enable level access on Vodaphone's routers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Things are getting worse in Turkey, but I don't think it's worth to block this service: Most of Protonmail users are familiar with VPN, TOR...

<comment><USER26> I disagree. I've recommended ProtonMail to many novice users and helped them get setup. It is so simple that I suspect many less technical users are using it in countries with oppressive regimes.

<comment><USER27> Aren't you actually agreeing?

He's saying they'll use tunneling to get around the block so they can carry on using it.

<comment><USER28> No, he's saying that some (possibly many) users know how to use the service, but not VPNs or TOR. Therefore, they are easily blocked, compared to advanced users.

<comment><USER27> Oh OK, they were disagreeing with the last part, not the main point. They both at least agree it shouldn't be blocked...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's time. Browser should integrate hardened-DNS features. TLS 1.3 is just a stepping stone. Local DNS resolver, DNSSEC, DNS over DTLS/HTTPS/QUIC (pick one) and of course, Tor.

</comment><comment><USER30> The picture of the monitor displaying traceroute with dirt clinging to the screen and some finger smudges and the reflection of the photographer is pretty hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER31> To get the Tor Browser try to download it from the official Github repository: [https://github.com/thetorproject/gettorbrowser](https://github.com/thetorproject/gettorbrowser) Then use meek-amazon as a pluggable transport which should work.

<comment><USER2> AFAIK the fact of TOR usage is rather easy to detect. AFAIK (from some news here on HN) you can get SWATed and arrested for a mere suspicion (e.g a false positive by an automated traffic analysis system) of using an end-to-end encrypting messenger or even Twitter in Turkey. I doubt it is legal and safe to use TOR in such countries. We need something that is harder to detect on the client ISP side.

<comment><USER32> it is by no means foolproof and won't get around a deep packet inspection/flow analysis system, but this is why obfsproxy exists:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=obfsproxy+tor&ie=utf-8&oe=ut...](https://www.google.com/search?q=obfsproxy+tor&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1)

<comment><USER31> But be sure not to use the default bundled obfs4 bridges, they're known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> When I visited Egypt a three years ago I was using Vodafone to connect to my mail server. They performed a MITM attack and stripped the STARTTLS from the SMTP dialogue.

I had to switch to the legacy SSL port 465 for SMTP to use encryption.

</comment><comment><USER34> TBH vodafone blocks just about anything in italy. i have to click thre warnings to download binaries from bitbucket for example. Their secure browsing "service" is half a scam.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why use protonmail instead of actual PGP that would never be blocked?

<comment><USER36> Protonmail makes it easy. Even today using PGP Email is not something I would trust the average computer user to pull off and pull it off _safely_

<comment><USER35> > Even today using PGP Email is not something I would trust the average > computer user to pull off and pull it off safely

I'd argue it is not that complicated once you take the time to explain how it works.

<comment><USER36> If I have to explain it, it's already a lost cause. If you want any hope of PGP being widespread, or any cryptosystem for that matter, you need to have it being self-explanatory.

Someone at the age of 90 should be able to download the software, click a "yes" button and secure their mail.

Secure E-Mail must be as DAU-proof as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Just a note to anybody who wants to try their free tier, they add a tapatalk- like message in every e-mail you send ('this email was sent via protonmail' or something in that nature), unless you pay.

It's not like the e-mail receivers couldn't already see the host, but I was unaware of that when I was registering an account, so I'm calling that a dark pattern.

At least it was easy to self-delete it afterwards.

<comment><USER38> It is just a default email signature that you can see in your compose window and delete manually if you do not wish to pay.

<comment><USER37> No, it is not. It is not related to the signature settings anymore.

<comment><USER39> It is. They add it automatically on mobile but you can delete it. And it's never on desktop. Just tried to send from both clients and didn't have any extra added to the message.

<comment><USER37> When was your account created? Mine was created in the previous 30 days.

I even had brought up the browser's dev tools and tried to disable that setting but with no luck. It might had been a A/B test, or specific only to my country, but the point remains that it was a separate setting than the signature and it was impossible to disable it without paying. On desktop.

<comment><USER38> Are you still able to manually delete the added line from your email messages at compose time?

<comment><USER37> Thank you for sticking with me, I'll try to create a new account in a few days. I don't rule out the possibility I am wrong about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Turkey is the largest prison for journalists they recently started a genocide on Kurdish population in Syria in city of afrin and they are hugely cracking down on anyone who is criticisizing their war on kurdish civilians. Unfortunately they have extended their censorship outside turkey and even in United States to get Kurdish accounts banned for criticizing erdogan's government

</comment><comment><USER41> Probably impossible to tell, but I'm willing to bet this is related to the fact that the YPG uses ProtonMail for communications.

<comment><USER19> Is there actually a public source for this? We were not aware of this (but then again, we know almost nothing about users)

<comment><USER41> They YPG International communications page: [http://ypg- international.org/contact/](http://ypg-international.org/contact/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> For the love of everything, I can`t remember the name and can`t find/google it, of a private mail service also from Switzerland. It had simpler marketing and UX, maybe not even web clients and had some affiliate program and I think the name started with "m". Help?

<comment><USER43> If we're starting a list of possible alternatives then Tutanota is good (Germany IIRC).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What I don't understand is if it is a "government-ordered block", which wouldn't be surprising, why is it limited to Vodafone users? I would expect half-government hold TTNet and even Turkcell to block as well.

<comment><USER45> It isn't limited to Vodafone. The original headline is "ProtonMail is being blocked in Turkey. Here's how to bypass Turkey's online censorship."

<comment><USER44> I read the article not only the title. i would also recommend you to read the article.

<comment><USER45> I did read the article before answering you. I referred you to the original headline because it better fits the article's contents, not because I stopped reading there.

<comment><USER44> In the article they are stating that Vodafone users can not access to proton services. They have written they have seen some complaints from other ISP users as well but there is neither a statement nor a clue that it is blocked by other ISPs as well. After all, the fact is that it is not blocked by other ISPs only by Vodafone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> the suggestions that are proposed are: \- use a vpn >> when protonmail is unreachable, protonvpn is unreachable, too. so not so useful. \- switch dns >> till when? till it`s not only a dns problem anymore. by the looks of it, it`s not gonna take much time. \- use tor >> tor is blocked, too. so... yeah.

i guess when people in the us or europe think about censorship, then think of this romantic blocking of some services, and if you`re tech-savvy enough, you can bypass anything.

no you can`t (at least i can`t). it`s turkey now, it`s gonna be universal tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER47> It should be blocked by all public mailing lists too, quite frankly. Its users cannot be bothered configure the webmail properly and often send atrociously formatted replies to threads.

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone know why they have this weird onion url "protonirockerxow.onion"? Kinda hard to remember.

<comment><USER49> You can't just choose your onion url, since it's directly derived from your key, and that's probably the best they found (if you want to have any choice at all, you have to bruteforce try keys until you find one matching the pattern, so everything more than choosing a few letters gets difficult/expensive)

<comment><USER48> thanks so much for taking the time to explain!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> So I wonder - does that have any negative impact on vodafone brand in other countries?

</comment><comment><USER51> Actually, I am not sure if it wise to circumvent that block. I mean its probably as easy as typing

      echo "126.96.36.199" > /etc/hosts

to a root shell, but since we know that in the past people have been send to prison, just because some app on their phone requested an URL from the wrong domain, I suspect that something similarly can happen to the people who try to use Proton mail.

On the other hand, if everybody stops using those services, the surveillance tyrants have won...

<comment><USER52> _> but since we know that in the past people have been send to prison, just because some app on their phone requested an URL from the wrong domain_

Do you have a citation? When did that happen?

<comment><USER53> It wasn't one big event that someone got arrested for using the app. It was, civil polices were arresting anyone who uses crypto-message apps like ByLock.

We've seen cases where people sent to prison because they are wearing certain T-short. Really.

edit links:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/11/turks- detained...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/11/turks-detained- encrypted-bylock-messaging-app-human-rights-breached)

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mahir-zeynalov/turkish- police...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mahir-zeynalov/turkish-police-say- no-bas_b_13319222.html)

<comment><USER54> Here in Lithuania (EU) you can also get in trouble for wearing the wrong t-shirt.

Nazi and Soviet symbols are banned from being shown in public, and you will end up with a fine if caught with a t-shirt or bumper sticker. I believe it's the case in a few other post-Soviet countries as well.

<comment><USER12> Here in Turkey, you can get arrested for wearing the wrong t-shirt. [https://www.google.com/search?q=hero+t+shirt+antalya+arreste...](https://www.google.com/search?q=hero+t+shirt+antalya+arrested&)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I sometimes wonder, wether paranoid dictatorships could not be fooled, by automatically creating fake users in fake relationships, sending each other conspiring comments and information. That way all those secret service snoops could be kept busy chasing wild gooses, leaving the normal people they usually harass into oppossition, to go on about there lives.

<comment><USER16> So long as you're covering your tracks when creating these and using these fake accounts. Covering your tracks by using all the tools that are outlawed and detectable, thus putting a bigger target on your back.

If you're going to tickle the toes of dictatorially-run law enforcement, your security had better be watertight.

<comment><USER43> It sounds like a lot of work but if you performed it from outside of the jurisdiction you'd be safe. Not your friends and family inside, though, so still better not to be identified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I think they have not been blocked, rather they had an outage.

[https://twitter.com/ProtonMail/status/974167124892700673](https://twitter.com/ProtonMail/status/974167124892700673)

<comment><USER19> There was a brief outage, but the block in Turkey is something entirely different.</comment></comment>


Telepresence Robot Crosses Atlantic Seven Times Trying to Get Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.fedex.com/apps/fedextrack/?tracknumbers=806020716375&language=en&cntry_code=uk

<comment><AUTHOR> Finally Delivered...

The package is a QB robot from Anybots. It's on it's way home from London to San Jose (we thought) for an upgrade. Over the last 18 days, FedEx has literally flown it across the Atlantic 7 times.

The sender inadvertently reversed the Sender and Receiver on the waybill, and was advised to 'just put arrows between the two, it happens all the time'. It got as far as San Jose distribution, who apparently missed the arrows and shipped it right back to London. Since then, and in spite of literally dozens of phone calls, this guy has been racking up frequent flyer miles.

QB in action: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz4FshiMu3U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz4FshiMu3U)

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, based on the fastest crossing of the Atlantic by ship, the same feat would take just over 24 days by sea using a transatlantic liner (which don't really exist anymore as they were obsoleted by the 747 and replaced by cruise ships). Of course it's not in any way a direct comparison because one flight across would take <8 hours, but I just figured the crossing by sea would take much longer. By sail it would depend on the boat - 19 days for a small vessel averaging 5 knots a day, a week for a larger one averaging 12 knots, and 3.5 days for a racing trimaran doing 30 knots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ah, this reminds me of a test parcel that inadvertently got shipped by a client - it had our company name (mis-spelled) and the city it's in on it, and Uruguay as the country (we're UK based). Nothing else.

The thing went to Uruguay, to the US (same city name), to Australia (ditto), to the UK, back to Australia, back to Uruguay, to the UK again, to Spain and Germany (think it wanted a holiday), and finally showed up on our doorstep 18 months later, thoroughly mangled, covered in scrawls by bemused postal workers.

Hell, you can't fault them for trying, and I was impressed it ultimately reached us - and that its 40,000 odd mile journey cost the grand sum of £2.95.

<comment><USER4> Makes me think physical packets needs a TTL or something.

<comment><USER5> Pretty sure physical packets get dropped at every hop!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I'm understanding this correctly and it is just a package shipment being re-directed 7 times, I would say that the title is misleading. At first I thought that a (flying?) robot was actually crossing the ocean 7 times by itself, with some sort of AI that was "trying to get home". That's a far more interesting story.

<comment><USER7> The real story is that if you want the shipment to go where it needs to go you should reprint the waybill with the information on the correct lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Screenshot in the event the listing gets removed:

[https://i.imgur.com/Gz1ZI3X.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Gz1ZI3X.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of this Austrian problem: [http://fashion.onblog.at/bilder/201108/missent-to- australia....](http://fashion.onblog.at/bilder/201108/missent-to- australia.jpg)

Common enough that they have preprinted stickers.

<comment><USER10> The converse is likewise common enough that they too have pre-printed stickers. [https://photos.travelblog.org/Photos/4167/29805/f/148243-No-...](https://photos.travelblog.org/Photos/4167/29805/f/148243-No- Kangaroos-in-Austria-0.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Weirdest shipping experience I've had was a DHL package to a relative in Khabarovsk, Russia (far east Russia, north-west tip of China). Package was shipped USA to Germany to Moscow where it was turned around, shipped back to USA where it puttered around for a couple days before finally heading east to Khabarovsk via Japan. Apparently couldn't get to Khabarovsk from Moscow.

<comment><USER12> A developer friend of mine from Ukraine sent me some snail mail (I'm in NY) and it took somewhere around 8 months to arrive. I wasn't home when it was delivered and they left a note on my door to pick it up at the post office (I thought it was a mistake as I wasn't expecting anything).

Anyway, I was in the middle of moving and misplaced the note and forgot about it for some time. When I went to the post office I was informed that it was mailed back to the sender since I did not pick it up in time. It has been a few years and my friend never received the returned package.

<comment><USER13> In the US we are pampered - our internal mail is orders of magnitude more reliable than most anywhere else.

Anecdote: my brother mailed photos to his in-laws in Bangalore. The in-laws never got the package, but they found local children carrying the pictures around as novelties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had a similar thing happen, though on a much smaller scale. I used to have to send letters that needed tracking & delivery confirmation and for whatever reason fedex was the cheapest. An evenlope I shipped from Queens, NY to Brooklyn, NY went back & forth from Memphis twice in three days before ending up at its destination.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this a corner-case of their shipping algorithms? Is this the kind of problem that supposedly get you millions of dollars if you manage to solve it?

</comment><comment><USER16> /r/mildlyinteresting

<comment><USER17> rakshasa?</comment></comment>


The Duct Tape Programmer (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/09/23/the-duct-tape-programmer/ <comment><USER2> This brings me joy and confidence.</comment>


Startup School 2010 Notes and main points - <AUTHOR> http://preona.net/2010/10/startup-school-2010-notes-and-speakers-main-points/

<comment><USER2> Great writeup -- thanks much! Nice summaries of the talks by Andy, Paul, Andrew, Tom, Greg, Reid, Ron, Adam, Dalton, Mark, and Brian ...

Hey wait a second I'm noticing a pattern here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quick edit note, its Robert Scoble, not Scobler. Great writeup altogether.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, fixed it, forgot that it was his nick ;)</comment></comment>


A Buffet of French History - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/05/11/histoire-mondiale-buffet-french-history/ <comment><USER2> Yet another attempt at dismantling any sense of shared identity, and history of a European country. It has been the same strategies, used over and over since the 60s.

Zemmour is right, and what's more, him calling out that process has awakened a whole bunch of people (including myself) from the propaganda we have been subject to for decades in France. Giving the monster a name, and identifying his methods makes it so much easier to resist and fight back its attempts at dissolving our culture into the joyful globalism they so desperately want the french people to embrace.

In a couple years, the most eminent historians will tell you that there never was French people in France. In fact, there never was such a thing as France. The hexagon is just a geographical area in which different individual co-exist peacefully, and nothing more, not a culture, not a civilization, not a language. This sort of historical revisionism and the obvious agenda it serves will only further feed the identitarian right's narrative.

Deconstructionism has been deconstructed by Zemmour, Michéa and others. The pendulum has started swinging back, in the coming decades you will only see it accelerate.

<comment><USER3> > Yet another attempt at dismantling any sense of shared identity, and history > of a European country.

What if the identity is built on (even partially) a set of lies? Lies that prevent us to see ourselves as who we really are. And therefore, prevent us to being who we really are and who we really should be.

France's history indeed deserves examination and criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The book rejects the notion of a French identity that has existed from the > beginning—a beginning associated with the cliché "our ancestors the > Gauls"—and that has been refined over the centuries to constitute a distinct > and particularly rich civilization.

Really? I'm curious what the argument is here. Do they mean it's a modern invention or mostly an imaginary/idealized concept?

I live in Canada having lived in both francophone Quebec and growing up in Ontario I believe there is a strong french identity. One they take serious care in protecting and developing even as expatriates in Canada. This as a result influences personality/psychological traits as well through things like parenting and cultural experience.

A lot of people I knew in Montreal were recent immigrants from France and to me it seemed they equally shared this identity, although they were far less likely to look up to France in a good light. Although many youths leave France to seek opportunity in Canada, and french Canadians may hold an idealized view of France, so that might be why.

This difference between angolophone vs francophone cultures is one of the reasons I had a lot of difficulty living in Montreal. The differences went well beyond language. Similar to the east vs west coast (vs south) dynamic in the US.

Whether or not being so protective of their identity/culture is a positive thing is a another matter (one I believe is self-destructive to an extent). But whether or not it exists is doesn't seem any question in my mind.

<comment><USER5> I think the meaning here is that French identity has been formed slowly over time while interacting with the outside. I would be surprised if a group of academics, specially if French, denied the existence of French culture. I suppose some French people find disgusting the idea of having much more in common with a contemporary German (for example) than with a medieval French. I'm not French nor do I follow French politics so just guessing by extrapolating what I know from my own country.

<comment><USER2> This is not the main thesis of the book though. I do not blame you because the article strawman hard on the book's opponents at the same time it does a poor job at extracting the actual thesis from the book.

No one says that French culture has been created at a discrete point in history, and since then never changed. This is the biggest strawman of this article. They wish their enemies were that stupid. In fact, it is known that France is a marvelous mix of celtic, latin and germanic influence. The criticism stems from the book's anachronisms and obvious Multikulti undertones. It defines France, not as an entity in itself, but as one that solely makes sense in its interaction with others. Nothing is French anymore, and the so-called french culture is just a collection of sophisticated anecdotes.

It's nothing more than a poor attempt at taking away whatever is left to the French: their sense of culture and history.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I was commenting on what I understood about the book review, not on the book itself, which I have not read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of the most controversial facts of the recent history of France is how the General de Gaulle came back to power in 1958 through a coup [1]. This isn't and probably will never be taught in class because the General is the founding father of our current constitution.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle#1958:_Collap...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle#1958:_Collapse_of_the_Fourth_Republic)

<comment><USER6> That's not a particularly fair presentation of the events of 1958.

There was indeed a coup but De Gaulle became prime minister and was given emergency power for six months by the national assembly all according to the Constitution of the fourth republic.

The coup of 1958 didn't happen in metropolitan France. It was lead by generals in Algeria. It certainly helped the decision of calling De Gaulle back to power but "through a coup" is stretching it.

The new constitution was then enacted by a referendum, new election called and De Gaulle was elected again.

By the way, it's hardly not taught. That's part of the official curriculum for the class of première (at least for L and ES).

As a side note, Mitterrand used to call the fifth republic constitution "the permanent coup". That didn't stop him from using the large power it gives to the executive when he became president.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mobile users beware: The website buffers an HD video advertisement, not to mention additional ads...</comment>


Why Obama should ditch YouTube  - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10106214-46.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 <comment><USER2> Lame idea, YT was a wise choice because people KNOW YouTube.

Case in point I was grabbing video of my family riding ATV's one day. At the end I told them I would put them online. The next day they called and said they couldn't find them. I was confused because I didnt' tell them where I put them. They replied "we looked on YouTube but didn't see them".

I not only have my OWN website which they know about, but I also frequently put videos on other video sharing sites. None of that mattered as the default instinct they all had was to search YouTube. To them there is no other video site.

Also, hosting on YouTube exposes your video to a whole host of people who would not see it if it was only hosted on a .gov site.

It's about the audience, not who's hosting it (hint: no one cares)</comment>


Superb PBS Frontline program: life on the digital frontier - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/

<comment><AUTHOR> Excuse me self-commenting, but frankly I'm surprised and disappointed nobody else posted this - I just happened to catch the program by accident. Well worth the 90 minutes or so of your time it requires...in fact I'd say it's pretty much essential viewing for hackers.</comment>


Neptune's Navy (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/11/05/neptunes-navy <comment><USER2> There was a more recent article in the NYTimes that offers a more flattering coverage (possibly as Paul Watson had stood down after a number of costly court cases)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/world/a-renegade- trawler-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/28/world/a-renegade-trawler- hunted-for-10000-miles-by-vigilantes.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> So those activists are ready to sacrifice human being just to harass another ship, which changed nothing. I think I know who's the villain of the story here. Also having the whaling ship coming to help the activists must have stung.

And he's a liar a and a fraud.

<comment><USER4> How is he a liar and a fraud? I can understand if you disagree with his methods, which are extremely confrontational, but he seems quite honest about what he does and what his intentions are: he doesn't want whales to be die. He doesn't want people to die either, and doesn't use deadly force, but is willing to cause material damage if it stops people from killing whales.

But the liars in the story are clearly the Japanese whalers who claim to be killing whales for science, which is obviously a lie. It's tragic that the moratorium on whaling is so easily ignored.

<comment><USER3> A fraud might be a little much and he's honest with his goals, but he's openly telling people to lie for the cause: "Watson advises readers to make up facts and figures when they need to, and to deliver them to reporters confidently" and "By Watson's count, Sea Shepherd has sunk ten whaling vessels in port. By my count, he and his crew have attempted to scuttle two vessels and have successfully sunk two others"

<comment><USER4> Fair enough. If you need to make up facts and figures to support your cause, that's definitely a problem. It's distressingly common in politics at any level; he's not remotely the only one guilty of that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Implementing single-file web components - <AUTHOR> https://ckeditor.com/blog/implementing-single-file-web-components/ <comment><USER2> I've been on the Polymer team, making web component libraries, for a long time. And while we used to promote "single file" style authoring in HTML files, we've come around (me very strongly) to the idea that it's better to do single-file components in _JavaScript_.

This has resulted in our newer lit-html and LitElement libraries, where the DOM rendering is done in JavaScript, but it's still possible to do single-file style:

        import {LitElement, css, html} from 'lit-element';

        export class MyElement {
          static styles = `
            :host {
              display: block;
              background: red;
            }
          `;

          static properties = {
            name: {},
          };

          render() {
            return html`

Hello ${this.name}

            `;
          }
        }
        customElements.define('my-element', MyElement);

There are a number of reasons why this is better, IMO. Not requiring any builds and utilizing the JS module graph are big ones.

The most important though is that the essential job of templates is to interpolate data into DOM. It's much easier this by building DOM in JS, than by trying to access and transform data in HTML.

Templates need some kind of expression language. If the template is in HTML then you need to invent expression delimiters, the expression syntax and semantics, and a way to get data into HTML: HTML doesn't natively have a way to refer to JavaScript objects. This is all custom, needs code to implement, and you need to train developers on it.

On the other hand if you write templates in JS you can take advantage of full JavaScript expressions, imports, and natural lexical scoping... and the data is typically already in JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> > On the other hand if you write templates in JS

As a non-programmer (UX), I used to watch Polymer with so much interest, since it had HTML tag-like syntax. I copy paste component codes & construct an UI. There was simplicity in <googlemaps lat="89.2" long="123.2" draggable="false"></googlemaps>

Now with lit-html, it went from unique HTML/WebComponent for non-coders, to another one of the JS frameworks out there.

<comment><USER2> I'm only talking about the _implemention_ of web components. You can still use any custom element from HTML.

If <google-maps> was rewritten in LitElement, you'd still be able to write:

        <google-maps lat="89.2" long="123.2" draggable="false"></google-maps>

</comment></comment></comment><comment> seph-reed The unfortunate issue with components is that they're kind of like wysiwygs or bootstraps. They save a small amount of trouble in the beginning, but always bite you in the end.

That being said, if it's all in a single file, you can copy and paste that file into your project and then modify the thing, unless the single file is itself a bundle.

At my last company we tried to make a button component. But then we wanted to be able to change url with it. But then if you ctrl-click, it should open in a new tab. And then there were certain styles of button, with mixed and matched shapes.

Nowadays, I see components as single use, or specific to a project. And for anything that's more about a visual than a function (ie buttons), just use css classes and implement the underlying Elements from scratch.

Point being, everyone wishes they could model the perfect abstraction of a component, but then you start adding config to make it do everything until it's basically its own miniature programming language (with worse docs).

<comment><USER4> I've encountered this issue a lot. Really, a button is a very fine-grained bit of functionality to write a component for, in my opinion. A component is just the wrong level of abstraction for a button. For me, it's worked to make a component when I have a grouping of elements that I will re-use together. For instance, I wouldn't make a component for a form field, but I would make a component for an entire form, if I would use that form again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is insane that HTML has no "include". None of all this would be needed if we could just do:

<include src="myComponent.html>

<comment><USER6> it was proposed and implemented, then the standards body did an about-face.

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/06/the-state-of-web- component...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/06/the-state-of-web-components/) (ctrl+f "HTML Imports")

"HTML Imports do lend themselves well to a simpler/more declarative workflow. [...] Imports don't offer enough control to be taken seriously as a dependency management solution. [...] Mozilla had a working implementation behind a flag, but struggled through an incomplete specification."

which to me reads a bit like: "js frameworks won't use it, and the spec didn't get enough love because everybody's only thinking about frameworks rather than vanilla-js."

<comment><USER7> Sigh.

A web that was built on documents fragments because the JS and server-side developers _think_ writing raw HTML and CSS is gross.

Email developers would like a word with them.

This isn't going away, and at some point, adding more abstractions is actually harmful.

As I have little else to do at this point - Tl;dr When you work for a public library, but are closed the public, nothing happens - I'm rewriting a small microsite I made for job hunting purposes.

Other than a Service Worker cache, it's markup and styles all the way down, stitched together with Make.

For my blog, I've stuck with Liquid, because Jekyll - _which I actually like_ (ducks) - will be interesting to see if this gets revived and actually lands one day.

<comment><USER6> would you mind sharing the source or stack for your microsite? your setup sounds like something i'd enjoy using.

<comment><USER7> Code is here - [https://github.com/chrisfinazzo/reverse-job- posting](https://github.com/chrisfinazzo/reverse-job-posting)

Started on GH Pages, but moved to Netlify which gives me a bit more fine grained control.

Pardon the dust;

First, I'm not a graphic designer and second this is actually an older deploy that I've "locked" so I can continue tinkering with the master branch behind the scenes. Will be a single page with just anchors to navigate when done.

Everything old is new again. Homepages, kids, ask your parents about them :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> question for HN: do single-file components _actually_ work better for you than having the script, markup, and styling in three separate files?

i've been doing a little Vue and a little WPF/XAML lately. with Vue SFCs, i find myself constantly scrolling up and back down in long files. with WPF, i'm switching between the XAML markup in one editor tab and the code-behind in another. i find the WPF workflow is better for me, because i lose my place less often.

<comment><USER8> Yes, and for a very mundane reason. When an application is long-lived there's inevitably some bit rot where one layer (template, style, or JavaScript) gets removed for some reason, and one or more of the corresponding layers is accidentally left in the code. This is especially likely to be CSS.

With single file components it's much easier to track the dependencies and rebuild / scrap chunks of code without leaving cruft around accidentally.

<comment><USER9> In over 10 years I've never worked somewhere where anyone was trying to prune unused CSS, especially in the traditional approach where you just have large .css files that become append-only.

Not until I experienced component-level CSS did I see it happen since now it's relatively trivial to see unused CSS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> upvoted: it's repost of a repost of a 2 year old article, but still great article. original from 2018 :[https://medium.com/content- uneditable/implementing-single-fi...](https://medium.com/content- uneditable/implementing-single-file-web-components-22adeaa0cd17)

<comment><USER11> The original article is actually this one as it was written by us and initially posted to our Medium account only to realize last week that we somehow forgot to publish it on our blog. Whoops.

So - this here is an updated, revised and improved version. Enjoy!

<comment><USER12> Thank you for posting this on a less hostile platform :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cappuccino does this. Compare the speeds of the work-in-progress ([https://wip.laser-tags.net](https://wip.laser-tags.net)) and the same site ([https://laser-tags.net](https://laser-tags.net)) after doing a 'jake release' which pulls the 90 or so files into a single .sj one.

There's also 'jake press', which goes through the JavaScript code, pulling out anything not actually referenced and binning it

(edit: and it occurred to me while in the shower, if anyone wanted to tell me where (roughly) you are located, and loading time for the 'released' site, it'd make me happy :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's an example of single-file Web Component. Markup (JSX syntax with embedded JS expressions), CSS and JS are in one file:

[https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder/blob/master/WebCompo...](https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder/blob/master/WebComponentsDemo/elements/ZxListEditor.tsx)

All you need is this tiny 250-line lib: [https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder](https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder)

</comment><comment><USER15> Polymer used to do the HTML Imports thing. Now LitElement does everything in JS files and it's.. better? Works great with bundlers like rollup, fits the npm module resolution thing much better.

</comment><comment> awinter-py 'can your tool run a full-featured app from a single file' is a really important test of simplicity

esp given how people learn online, a single-file example is much more palatable on e.g. stack overflow vs three files

way friendlier to learners

not that anyone is building large production apps with single files, but tooling quality matters and this is one way to measure it

</comment><comment><USER16> Why are the on-page examples images, instead of web components?

</comment><comment><USER17> Flip the order of the sections and it's how I write Svelte components.

</comment><comment><USER18> Angular</comment>


Why Gandhi Is Such an Arsehole in Civilisation - <AUTHOR> http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/11/why-gandhi-is-such-an-asshole-in-civilization/

<comment><USER2> I was expecting some explanation involving unexpected consequences or emergent behavior or something, but it really is just because of a stupid bug in the original game 25 years ago, and they've deliberately broken him in Civ5 as an 'Easter Egg.'

We need a new term for this kind of garbage, by the way. I don't think it qualifies as 'Easter Egg' since that's usually something you're delighted to find, and at any rate it shouldn't affect gameplay too much, as opposed to just reintroducing broken shit as some kind of homage of fans of the series from the start - most of whom are probably just frustrated that it's five iterations later and you still haven't fixed this basic fucking thing. I guess I'll start calling these 'Rotten Eggs.'</comment>


I recommend this two tools - <AUTHOR> This is a comment to the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10408169<p>The most tools mentioned in this thread I have used for a while. Few of them are obsolete or don't work anymore. Currently, I use the tool https://www.emailchecky.com/ for a complete email analysis. It's completely free. My second tool is https://www.emailtooler.com/. It is good to check the email body for common spam words. <comment><AUTHOR> What are your favorite tools to check an email for spam words and errors?</comment>


SoftBank is asking for the WeWork IPO to be put on hold - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-pressured-by-softbank-to-shelve-ipo-report-2019-9 <comment> james-mcelwain My favorite WeWork anecdote is the company paying the CEO 6 million dollars for the trademark "We" (which he later returned under pressure).

Say what you will, but you have to respect the grift.

<comment><USER2> He certainly has the trademark for "I".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > WeWork could cut the valuation for its IPO to under $20 billion and may even > postpone the offering, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing > unnamed sources. The company had been valued at $47 billion in its last > fundraising round.

> According to the report, SoftBank is concerned that if WeWork goes public at > a valuation much lower than its private-market valuation, it might hurt the > firm's ability to raise its second Vision Fund, hence its choice to pressure > the company into dropping its IPO plans.

<comment><USER4> Is postponing simply delaying the inevitable write-down? I can't see how their financial statements will improve by postponing for another few years. Can someone explain the rationale?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let it ipo and crash. Really the only rational thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wondered if this was because they don't want to mark down their investment and take a public loss. Yep - article seems to support that.

Makes sense though - softbank's business model seems to depend somehow on these mega funds. Be good to get more data on their performance (I'm skeptical).

</comment><comment><USER7> It sure seems like Softbank is a house of cards. This seems like the most likely place for the cards to come crashing down.</comment>


Turning around a startup - <AUTHOR> Hi! A year ago, my friends and I started a company based on a big (relatively) project referred to us by a friend. Now the project is complete and we've gotten deals with several companies to build software for them. Though the deals aren't necessarily big, we get by day to day expenses and operations from the income from that.
My problem right now is, we've build several applications but we don't have a product at all. Our operations right now is really all about developing customized applications for small to medium companies. We oftentimes accept projects at a really low price in hopes to gain customers and connections. This has been happening for the past several months.
We have some ideas but we haven't got the time to implement them due to several ongoing application development projects with clients.
Our plan is to reject all incoming projects so we could focus on our ideas.
What advice would you give me? <comment><USER2> Here's my take.

First, I want you to remind yourself: most aim-for-the-stars product startups fail. Most product startups fail. Most products fail. When you commit yourself to a product, to the exclusion of all else, you are making a bet at long odds.

You have another option: you can build a _business_ first, and a _product_ second. I'd encourage you to think of your consulting work as business- building, and not as a time sink that is cannibalizing your product. If you're doing it well, even when you're writing lines of code for someone else, you're getting other benefits:

* You're building a team and learning to work well together

* You're learning basic business skills, like _selling_ , and managing cash flow

* You're forging relationships with other businesses which you'll leverage throughout the life of your company

* You're getting exposed to the problems that (in your case) small-to-medium companies have with their IT, which will be fertile ground for product offerings

There are three other benefits to your approach, two of them obvious, and one of them much less so:

* First, you own your company. Like a lot of other people here, I've done the VC thing before, and it's not an exaggeration to say that when you do it, you're buying yourself a new kind of boss. A couple years from now, you're going to be glad you did it this way.

* Second, you've bought yourself a lot of time to slowly turn the dials until you find a product or service that _works_. Matasano's first product idea would not have worked had we taken it to market it. Even if we had gotten funded. In fact, _especially_ if we had gotten funded. We watched 4-5 companies get funded with essentially the same product, and then got to watch them all run aground over 3-4 years. The safety net is not a minor benefit of this approach. I think it's pretty huge.

* Third, having something other than a product to contribute to the business with can be a win. I've said this on HN before: if you're new to startups, you may have deluded yourself into thinking that you'll be redlining your productivity for years and years on end, working 80 hour weeks and committing thousands of lines of code a day. No. You won't. You will burn out. If you don't, seek psychiatric help! A benefit to having a thriving consulting business is that when you hit your doldrums, you can go be billable and know you're making a major contribution to the company.

A couple bits of practical advice:

* Get an actual office.

* It's hard to do a product and a service at the same time. Grow the services business and hire full-time product people (full-time product devs are cheaper than devs who can be billable).

* Don't lowball your rate with a customer you intend to keep. It's very hard to raise rates with customers. Companie with more than a couple hundred employees have "procurements" people whose entire job is to make sure rates go _down_ over time. Cut scope or schedule, not rate.

* Stay away from race-to-the-bottom services. Look for premium services. For instance, now seems to be a great time to be an iPhone developer, or a Rails/Django developer.

* Think of ways to increase the lifetime value of your customers. For instance, offer retainer-style maintenance agreements to all your customers, so they can get feature requests and minor bugfixes done on a predictable schedule. Something I've learned over the last couple years: many companies will pay for predictable schedules. You don't have to give "predictability" away for free.

* Read everything 'patio11 has to say about measuring and marketing a software business. Patrick has spent something like 5 hours a week nurturing a software business alongside a _Japanese salaryman position_ (there is no more "full time" commitment in technology on the planet, outside of those factories in China where they assemble the iPods). He's about to quit his job, because his product --- which I don't think he's be offended if I summed up as "hello world hooked up to a random number generator" --- is beating his full-time salary. I mean it, go to SearchYC, start at his first post, read all the way to the most recent.

* Use bcrypt instead of SHA1 to hash your passwords.

* Pick a product you can develop incrementally. Pick a product you can host, with a web interface. Pick a product you can measure task completion in. I wish I could figure out a way Matasano could do what Patrick is doing, watching the lifecycle of his prospects from first touch on the website to "printing first bingo card". It's hard for us, because we work in security, and our users are touchy. Don't be like us. Pick a product you can measure like the Oceanian Thinkpol.

My biggest piece of advice is, _don't_ shut off your consulting business. If IMVU can build a successful company with chatty online dress-up dolls and the lean startup methodology, imagine how much damage you can do with something that solves real problems for people. You are not running out of time. Build a business. Don't roll the dice on a product you haven't even tested yet.

<comment><USER3> _"Read everything 'patio11 has to say about measuring and marketing a software business."_

In addition to searchyc, read up on his blog, kalzumeus.com. Here's a reader you can use to read it from beginning to end.

<http://www.rizalalmashoor.com/reader/microisvjournal/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was in the same boat. We continue to do consulting but have been able to have a couple people working on a side project. Basically, the profit from our clients is used on our own project.

I wouldn't reject all incoming projects, but just take on the ones that are worthwhile time/money wise. I'd also try to dial in on a specific idea or two that you think you can turn into a business.

When you do work for clients and your own project it will take longer for you to get something out there, but it'll extend your runway. Once you can pay the bills, _then_ I'd ditch the consulting.

Anyway that's what works for me, your situation might be different. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> _What advice would you give me?_

Get tptacek in here and listen to him. He's done the model you're describing and has great stuff to say about it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think you should rework your contracts in such a way that you offer your clients a discount if you get title to the rights of the code you write, then select one of the projects in your pipeline and pitch that concept to the customer.

If they bite they'll pay for the development, they get a good discount and you have your first product.</comment>


Show HN: Free Bootstrap 3.0 Templates - <AUTHOR>

I started making free Bootstrap templates in my spare time to: (1) practice design, (2) add to portfolio.  If anyone finds them useful, I'll keep updating this site weekly.<p>http://coverstrap.com <comment><USER2> The laptop breaks when you reduce image size - looks like the z-index not set right for the image / laptop after resize?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [http://coverstrap.com](http://coverstrap.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice simple templates, thanks for sharing</comment>


CircleCI raises $18M Series B - <AUTHOR> https://circleci.com/blog/circleci-announces-18m-series-b-what-s-next/ <comment><USER2> We absolutely love CircleCI. They should charge more.

</comment><comment><USER3> CircleCI rocks.

The combination of Unlimited private repos on GitHub & 1500 free build minutes on CircleCI works just great.

</comment><comment><USER4> congrats! clojure all the way!</comment>


So, I tried Dwolla - <AUTHOR> http://blog.goodstuff.im/dwolla_clowns <comment><USER5> The other day I was trying to make some kind of transaction with Dwolla, and before I could, they asked me a series of questions to verify my identity.

The questions had obviously been pulled from a background check based on my name that I didn't know they had done. It was asking me what the price of a house was when I originally bought it, and what street I lived on in a given time period.

Outside of this being really creepy, all of the questions weren't actually useful for identifying me because _they all applied to my father_. I am a Jr., and the background check must have been run for my dad.

I also now have a reasonable idea of the price range my dad paid for a house that we moved into when I was 7, which I never would have known or asked about otherwise.

At this point I'm afraid to continue using the service. They allowed me to transfer $1,000 into it, but apparently don't know enough about me to let me make certain transactions. They should get everything they need for me to use 100% of their service up front, and not have this staggered approach where additional identity info is required to transfer money, at the last minute when you're trying to do the transfer.

Right now it seems that they could at any arbitrary moment determine that they haven't actually identified me well enough, and suspend my account.

I don't think Dwolla is the payment solution we've been looking for. At least not yet.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that Dwolla is trying a fairly unusual approach to handling fraud, which is that they pay out of their own pockets for fraud (instead of kicking it down the line as all other financial institutions do) but this requires that they actually _prevent_ fraud, not just identify it after the fact. And the cost of _really_ stopping fraud turns out to be something that many people do not feel comfortable paying when they're personally confronted with it.

<comment><USER7> Kind of, Trade Hill lost a hundred thousand or so when Dwolla falsified their tranaction record and stuck them with the fraud. This was a bunch of reversed ACHs (which Dwolla claims they don't allow). Very shady company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Clowns implies that they screwed something up or did something wrong - <USER2> his story, he signed up and moved 5 figures of cash immediately (which is either exactly the limit of a business account or over it, see <https://www.dwolla.com/about> ) if I were in the payments business (and I was previously) this would have been a fraud red flag.

This is something that happened today (April 18th) - this is not five days of waiting around for money to free up. This is a gripe because the author triggered ever fraud alarm in the book and they have not responded fast enough.

I'd lean towards the "give them a little bit a of break" - yes it sucks he had to provide additional documentation and they haven't sorted it out yet, but no business could allow anonymous folks on the web to sign up and move 5 figures of cash providing only publicly available information as documentation.

<comment><USER9> This is an excellent point, the site says "Up to 10,000 for businesses, with the possibility of increasing it". So obviously he's opened a brand new account, and then tried to pull more money than he's authorized for. That seems like it would take some time, and I would have talked to Dwolla before I had them send the money.

On a side note, I love their payment method comparison matrix (on the page you linked). It's factual, but a bit cutesy, and just a little bit mean to Paypal (who totally deserve it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I opened an account about a year ago and did nothing with it. I had my account suspended about a week ago, after not really touching it that whole year. When I asked Dwolla about it, they couldn't tell me why it had been suspended, so I just closed the account. Very unprofessional, all around, I was very glad I never attached any real accounts to it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I tried to use Dwolla and it it was absurd. I set my account up fine. My friend sent me $1200 for a ski lease. I withdrew it and it appeared to work. Days later when the money did not appear in my bank account, I checked back and it said, "processing withdrawl" (or something like that.) It said that for many days before I contacted them. They said I needed to scan my drivers license and send it to them. The only account that has a copy of my DL is the DMV. No other company in capitalism asks for a scanned DL except for (maybe?) my employer. They had my social for crying out loud! And their UI was so broken that it wasn't clear that anything was wrong. At that point I refused to deal with them and kicked the money back to my friend and had him go through paypal. To top it off, they won't delete my personal details from their servers.

<comment><USER12> Every bank I've opened an account with has asked for photo id...

<comment><USER13> Interesting, none of my (four) banks have asked for photo ID. Two of which were started online (but are still a traditional bank).

<comment><USER14> When did you open those accounts? "Know Your Customer" (which basically translates to SSN, government-issued photo ID, and blacklist checks) has been required of all US banks since 2003 thanks to the 2001 PATRIOT Act.

When I was 15, I was able to open a checking account by mail with no ID. Today, every bank I use lists government-issued photo ID as a requirement right on the website before you can start applying.

<comment><USER15> I work at a major online bank in the US. We have strong "Know Your Customer" policies as required by the Patriot Act, but they do not, in the normal course of business, require a copy of an ID. The Patriot Act does not require IDs, it requires processes to identify the customer, and different banks approach that differently.

<comment><USER14> Is that a relic of their being a Dutch bank until last year, or did CapitalOne actually change their application process at all?

<comment><USER15> No, ING Direct USA was always a United States bank regulated by US regulators, it just happened to be owned by a Dutch parent company (and thus ALSO subject to THEIR regulators in some ways). Capital One since taking over and rebranding as "Capital One 360" has not made any major changes to the Know Your Customer process or the application process. As I explained before, the legal requirement is to identify the customer, and there are a variety of different ways to do this which are acceptable to regulators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> America is a funny place. You can get 127 varieties of salad dressing at your local supermarket, but you can't pay for it except with cash, unless you want to be hit with credit charges, and when you do the prices are not as marked. Australia, in sharp contrast, has laws requiring that the price on the shelf matches the price at the register -- some of them even allow you to get incorrectly-priced items for free, although technically this is a voluntary agreement among shops, not a law. Also, Australia has EFTPOS nearly everywhere; in fact, people are justly suspicious of retail businesses that don't provide EFTPOS, because that's one of the first signs that the business is probably going to go under. And if you want to transfer money, the same system that makes EFTPOS ubiquitous makes direct deposit from one bank account to another a very simple thing. The result is that cheques ("checks" in US English) are very rare indeed, and people really only use credit cards for online purchases or when they're already living beyond their means. (Which means the use of a credit card in day-to-day spending is another warning sign!)

Granted, it's hard to get all 127 varieties of salad dressing here, so there is that.

<comment><USER17> I haven't ever been subject to differing costs between credit/debit card and cash prices, with the sole exception of the liquor store. Are there specific stores in the US that do this?

<comment><USER16> Credit cards have fees -- interest, account-keeping fees, and so on. It's why banks like them.

<comment><USER18> Only if you don't pay them off immediately, or you agree to an annual fee for specific benefits.

<comment><USER19> Depends on the card. I've got one that charges interest on purchases even if they were made in that same month. (In general you're right though)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My Dad owns an ACH processing company. This is typical for any electronic payment processor. It does sound like they went overboard with the identity verification.

It just goes to show that disrupting payment processing is not just about some awesome new payment API. It's also about preventing fraud and crime without pissing your customers off. From my observations, this problem has yet to be solved.

</comment><comment><USER21> > While there are no really good alternatives to moving money domestically > except via check

Does the U.S. really not have customer-to-customer wire transfers from regular banks? I'm continually amazed by how terrible your banking system is.

<comment><USER12> They cost about $20 and some banks double-charge (i.e. charge the recipient as well as the sender).

<comment><USER22> The reason why Americans still use checks so often suddenly makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Maybe I'm a little old fashioned here but I don't trust all those new private payment processors (including paypal) with any significant amount of money.

I'm usually fine with using the services for < $200 but above that I'm using wire transfer (within the EU) or checks. Yes, it takes longer (and in case of checks costs me ~40 EUR to cash in) but at least I know that the entities handling the transfer are registered banks and have refined their procedures over decades.

I happily pay the extra charges or wait a few days longer for minimizing the danger of getting into a kafkaesque verification loop comedy - or worse.

<comment><USER24> "have refined their procedures over decades"

Yet it also (still) "takes longer"???

<comment><USER23> Yes, it's not optimal. But still I feel more secure with banks than with the next hot startup payment processor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You know you can just print a check with your partner's account number on it and deposit it, right?

It's called 'Remotely Created Check' (RCC) and its as good as a check sent through snail mail with an actual signature on it. You just put 'Signature on File - This check has been authorized by your depositor' where the signature line would go.

I wrote a little program to generate my own checks like this a few years ago. I used to print them and take them to the ATM but since my bank added Check Deposit to their iPhone app, I just take a picture of the check displayed on my monitor. As a bonus, my signature is already in the back.

You'll need the OpenMICR font so your can print the MICR line, and it'll take a bit of tweaking to get the alignment right. I was thinking of rewriting it in HTML if anyone is interested... (client side only of course)

</comment><comment><USER26> As a word of warning to those who would try Dwolla. Not only do they ask for tons of information as many posters have mentioned, but they will not remove your data if you close an account. If you read the Terms of Service Closely they dictate they they will keep your data for a _minimum_ of three years and possibly indefinitely. This includes your name, address, phone number, SSN, and Drivers License. Think twice about how much you trust them before you fork over information to a company that provides you with that kind of ultimatum.

<comment><USER27> There's a chance - given you were doing financial transactions with them - that they have to keep that data around for a period of time.

<comment><USER26> There is, however even if you don't they still will keep it. Also as a bonus. The same law which binds them to keep that information mandates they give you privacy notifications, which Dwolla will not do, because they claim they are not a financial institution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have both bitcoin and dwolla, and between the two I've found Bitcoin much more useful. Dwolla has a difficult business model these days, and I will be sorry to see them fail. But they will fail.

</comment><comment><USER29> Citibank and Chase both have money transfer services via email. QuickPay and PopMoney, I believe. I have used both of them and they work. The sender needs to have an account with the originating bank, either Chase or Citi but the recipient can have an account anywhere with a routing number and account number. The bank facilitating the transfer will ask for ACH access to your receiving account and place some small transfers into your account. When you see those transfers they are like activation codes which you then use to validate that you are the owner of that account.

This certainly works in one off situations but I would love to see Citi or Chase productize this via an API for authorized merchants, etc.

</comment><comment><USER30> I had some minor issues with Dwolla or at least my perception of how they work that left a bad feeling for their brand and operations.

A buddy paid me money he owed me through Dwolla. I made the 'mistake' of leaving it in the Dwolla account instead of pushing it on to my bank account. A month later his bank was allowed to pull that back out because he had overdrafted.

<comment><USER31> > A month later his bank was allowed to pull that back out because he had > overdrafted.

How is that even possible?

<comment><USER32> This is something about the US banking system that I find completely crazy. Other banks/companies can 'pull' money from your account. Where I come from, all bank transfers are 'push' as far as I'm aware. Ie. the sender of the money has to specifically authorize an amount to be sent. In the US it appears that in a lot of cases, the receiver of money can specify the amount they want to receive and simply pull it from the senders account.

<comment><USER33> ANY company can do this including your employer. A dogshit group of villans I used to work for pulled money from an employee's bank account that had been deposited from a paycheck because he took two weeks vacation to train for a new job. Was it legal? Almost certainly not, but it happened.

<comment><USER34> It's a pain, but setting up multiple accounts can help combat this (an account to receive deposits before moving them somewhere else).

<comment><USER33> After this happened to my friend, I set up my deposit account as a sort of shell account where anything that enters gets transferred by the bank into a separate account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why is it that people think that they can open a payment account, transfer thousands of dollars into it as their first transaction and no one will ask any questions or be the least bit suspicious?

<comment><USER27> Yes I was kind of thinking of filing this under "the 1% problem". Who does that much money first time around?

<comment><USER36> Businesses? Depending on the industry a $10K invoice isn't exactly huge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is true that Dwolla are not professional but it never was meant to be a real business, it was always intended as a spotlight for Ben Milne.

Nothing wrong with that, ego has driven much of civilization but you certainly should build Dwolla into actual business plans, it won't be around much longer.

<comment><USER38> You can't just drop a bomb like that all innocent and matter-of-factly like that without further explanation. Smells like sour grapes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I can understand this guy's frustration. While I've never used Dwolla before, all the negative reviews of it make sure that I will never use it. Hopefully Ripple and OpenCoin take off, in the meantime it's probably better to use traditional methods of money transfer.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is why I'm eagerly waiting for Stripe to arrive in the UK (anyone have an ETA?) For some reason every company that has a service like this seems to feel the need to make you jump through a stupid amount of hoops. That wouldn't be that bad if they were completely incompetent at it. Take PayPal: My account was limited out of the blue. I provided them with all the information they needed. 3 weeks later they asked for more. Then after providing that they reopened my account. A further month later they closed it again and started asking for the same stuff.

I understand the financial industry is extremely locked down, but I was hoping itd be a little easier to accept payments now-a-days

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm curious if others have had similar experiences.

<comment><USER42> I've done about $120,000 of business through Dwolla with multiple parties and I've not had or heard of any bad experiences whatsoever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Moving 5 figures of needed funds through Dwolla immediately after opening an account. Come on - that's just pricelessly stupid, and I'm not surprised it raised flags. The clown is the person who would do such a thing. And he expects the funds to be available almost instantly. Send a few hundred or thousands of dollars to test an entirely new payment method first, and to establish that it works.

Anyone involved in technology should know - test before making a big commitment.

Sorry, I don't give any demerits to Dwolla on this and neither should you.

I've used dwolla quite a bit, mostly for bitcoin, and it's been fine. As with any place that handles your money, you need to establish a short record of legitimate transactions and use it sensibly. Otherwise you are a "clown."

<comment><USER44> He wasn't sending 5 figures; he was receiving it.

And why is he a clown for assuming his "verified with state and federal ids" Dwolla account could receive such amounts, and he could get it?

It's a business account--5 figures is nothing. This may have been his test.

Getting in the way of business? I do give them demerits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Their passive-aggressive credential demanding is nasty - I tried to create a basic account and then the demands started. Calling them clowns is insulting - to clowns. Dwolla: you are supposed to be upstanding midwestern folks: be G-D UPFRONT about your requirements!

</comment><comment><USER46> Is there really no "good-guy" alternative to PayPal? Since PayPal froze my account several years ago and robbed me of 2K, I have been in search of a better alternative. First came WePay, I tried using it, but it was awkward and slow, it took weeks to transfer a simple $500 in the U.S. between verified accounts, and customer service wasn't all that helpful. Then came along Dwolla, I haven't had any large transactions here yet, but it's been slow as well, and unwilling to work with me and my buddy with whom we share a referral credit -- not a very good beginning to start a relationship with a customer. And now this article. Le sigh.

<comment><USER47> The problem is, payment processing is _hard_. Fraud is a real problem, that costs real money and takes a massive amount of effort to prevent. You can limit your exposure (eg Stripe) by placing limitations on your solution (limit by country, by transaction types, etc), but there is no fix for it.

Big banks don't do much better than Paypal in regards to fraud prevention, the major difference is that they are regulated more tightly so they can't just freeze your money without recourse.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands >>>>>>"What I will not gladly do is let a bunch of folks who I have no idea who they are other than a web site ever again reach into my bank account."

Maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to let them handle so much of your money. To me, this is putting a LOT of faith in web site to handle that much money right away on a brand new account.

<comment><USER48> wtf. they are a lot more than just a website. they're a front end on top of "The Members Group" which IIRC is a financial services company for a ton of banks. But to say that all they are is a website is pretty lame. Sorry you couldn't move 5 figures of cash on hours after you create an account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Nothing could be worse than PayPal, but this is alarming. Personally Stripe is my go to payment method to use for clients.

<comment><USER27> Stripe is fantastic but 2.9% and 30 cents isn't trivial vs 25 cents if you're trying to have a client pay you $5000 or $10,000. If Stripe nails ACH that might be another thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Well, If its in the tens of thousands of dollars ($10,000) for a .25 cent charge, this seems like alot of risk to handle in house. Ie at that size 1 in 40000 transactions could be fraud and they would be breaking even on the .25 cent charges, assuming there is no overhead to running this business.

</comment><comment><USER51> Me too. I was totally frustrated when trying to signup. I didn't have the paper work they wanted, and so I had to use another service.

I understand that fraud is serious. However, I'm very disappointed that I wasted a lot of time trying to signup with them too.

<comment><USER52> Out of curiosity, which other service did you end up using?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> What a poorly written and immature article! Calling Dwolla "a bunch of clowns" because you couldn't get your account verified right away is just ridiculous.

It's also ridiculous to claim to "understand the whole fraud aspect" and then imply that they are engaging in fraud because the money hasn't been transferred back to the other guy's account within a single business day. And claiming that Dwolla is too good to be true because it didn't work out for you right away? Really you want us to take you seriously?

These things take time and these businesses cannot and should not be run without adhering to processes and rules that aren't transparent to consumers. As a payment processor, a false positive is much worse than a false negative.

Dwolla is providing a fantastic and much-needed service. In my experience the people at Dwolla are providing a great service and doing a good job of it. Their support has been responsive and very well done.

<comment><USER53> You didn't read the complaint.

'Currently, there's 10s of thousands of dollars that have been removed from my business partner's account, that are sitting in Dwolla's accounts, that Dwolla claims they will "return in due course."'

That should never happen. If there are fraud problems, they should be clarified and settled before the fact, not while they hold onto the cash. The sum is too large to take to small claims court and I imagine too large for the author to just write off.

<comment><USER42> I did read it, and I see no evidence that they are holding on to the cash.

Dwolla was trying to verify his information at _this morning_ at 11 am. His business partner transferred money through Dwolla, so of course that's where it is right now waiting to get passed through to him.

If Dwolla is actually holding on to the money and refusing to give it back, then there's a story — but I don't see any evidence of that.

Like I said, these things take time. I believe this post was published about 3 hours after they called to verify the account — he tweeted about it at 2:06 PM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I currently use Dwolla for transferring funds over to Mtgox. Given this information, is there a better service for getting funds from a bank account over to Mtgox without doing a wire transfer?

</comment><comment><USER55> Maybe the time you spent doing it the way you used to do was not in vain at all. Security is not really something you can sell at a poor price.

If they can lower their prices, and if their business allows them to retain your money, maybe they want to target clients who are 120% cristal clear clean, because that's how most client are.

They're not bugged by that tiny percentage of people they prefer not to validate because paranoia can rule you out easily. You had the bad luck of having a bad smell even on all the paperwork you have them.

That's like calling brown people terrorists. That's not racist or mean. That's just unfortunate. Sometime security is a real bitch. That's just pickup up the pieces. That feels bad, but it's for a good cause.

<comment><USER31> I was with you right up until you tried to justify racial profiling. That's not security, that's racism.

<comment><USER55> Well security is something the US is having a lot of problems with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Try Balancedpayments.com I think it does what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER57> Do US banks not support direct transfers online or by phone?

<comment><USER6> Sure, for $30 each. Or you can use "bill pay" to have your bank mail a paper check.

<comment><USER58> This is not true, it obviously varies by bank. Bank of America allows free online transfers to other B of A accounts, and it costs between $3 and $10 to transfer to accounts outside the bank. The $3 option to transfer between banks is pretty fast, while the free, inside bank option is instantaneous.

<comment><USER59> As a counter point, in 2005, I had a BofA branch in New Mexico say I need a business account to do a transfer to a BofA in Washington state - <USER4> otherwise they'd do a wire transfer for $50. (When I was in Wa state transferring to NM was free.)

It could be time has made things better - or it could be you live in one of the better BofA fiefdoms...

<comment><USER58> You do know it's 2013, correct? :)

<comment><USER59> 7 years is a very short time in the world of banks.

I personally would prefer to never have to change banks again in my life - <USER4> since my banking has been near entirely online since the late '90s that has seemed reasonable for almost 2 decades.

In fact Citibank closed down my account type/product, and required I go through the whole rigmarole to set up a new account (vs just converting my account). Wells Fargo, started requiring fingerprints to do any action with my account. (Bad neighborhood - but depositing a check shouldn't require a fingerprint. ) And BofA did the above when I was flying between Seattle and Santa Fe every 3 weeks.

After BofA I switched to a local bank in Los Alamos (a town I've not been to in 5 years at this point) and it's working out splendidly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I use Dwolla to transfer less than $500 every month for splitting rent, utilities, etc. I've never once had a problem, they're just kind of slow sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER61> And surprisingly they don't have support for any kind of TOTP, like google authenticator. Any decent financial site today should use TOTP.

</comment><comment><USER24> All the exposed material can help in a law court. How about suing them?

</comment><comment><USER62> Try Venmo?

<comment><USER52> Venmo has a $5k per week limit on payments as well as cashouts.

<comment><USER63> Venmo now has payout business accounts: <https://venmo.com/payouts>

<comment><USER64> There is not much information on their sites. In what country does it operate ?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Edge.js allows you to run .NET and Node.js code in one process - <AUTHOR> http://tjanczuk.github.io/edge/#/

<comment><USER2> First, wow, this looks quite impressive.

Have you considered a Mono port as well? I know hosting Mono isn't as easy as C++/CLI (where IJW just makes all the magic happen) but it might be fun.

Personally I never quite "got" node.js, except for the fact that there's a slick library for _everything_, so writing a small DNS interceptor is trivial. Forgive me if I didn't read properly, but I still have to run in node for this, right? Do you think it'd be possible to set something up that'd let .NET devs easily pull in a node module? Or is it better to just port the code in question (like the DNS server part) to .NET?

<comment><USER3> I agree, quite impressive.

I'm thinking the reverse will also be impressive - calling node.js packages from within .NET code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We interviewed Tomasz about Edge.js on Herding Code a few months back, show and detailed show notes here: [http://herdingcode.com/herding-code-166-tomasz- janczuk-on-ed...](http://herdingcode.com/herding-code-166-tomasz-janczuk-on- edge-js/)

We asked about Mono support at 06:11.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty cool for in process, lots of people doing this now but across services using web services/rest or message queueing. nice to have an in proc option but the comment wrapper seems it will be hard to debug? Definitely an interesting direction and something to play with.

</comment><comment><USER6> In what scenarios would this be useful? Just to experiment?</comment>


Did Congress Really Expect Us to Whittle Our Own Personal Jailbreaking Tools? - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/did-congress-really-expect-us-whittle-our-own-personal-jailbreaking-tools <comment><USER2> Seems like the system is working as intended. The Copyright Office is powerless or unwilling to stand up to the copyright holders, and as a result they can only give us hollow concessions like "You can jailbreak this, but you can't buy tools from someone else to do so".

</comment><comment><USER3> While I support the idea of device control the EFF is pushing here, are we really expecting the company to go "Oh, then let me jailbreak that for you" and then take the software team off the current job to release the custom firmware/bootloader etc? I don't have an answer for this one, but I think expecting the company to spend money is not the best way. Much better would be ditching this garbage law and requiring right to repair so the initial release had the requirements built in.

<comment><USER4> Doctorow's essay was about not being able to distribute tools _to_ jailbreak your device; and on top of that, professionals not being allowed to jailbreak a customer's device.

<comment><USER3> Ah! I got the impression he expected the manufacturer to supply the code.</comment></comment></comment>


TwitZip: The startup that created Twitter accounts for nearly all U.S. ZIP Codes - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2010/08/twitzip-delivers-hyperlocal-news-via-twitter

<comment><USER2> The talk about "hyper local" and relate it to the 5 digit zip which can still encompass thousands of people. Hyper local to me would be if the went to the 9 digit zip, which would be basically a city block, or apartment building/complex. Of course if they went to the 11 digit number in the postnet bar code (9 digit zip + 2 digit delivery point) that might be going too far, essentially each individual house or apartment.

</comment><comment><USER3> With all the location data on tweets now, how long will it be until this is really useful and twitter allows you to just follow a radius of a given lat/long?

</comment><comment><USER4> Good idea, I found my zip and started following it. I like the groupon integration.</comment>


3D Printing Step by Step - <AUTHOR> http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/01/3d-printing-step-by-step/

<comment><USER2> Also worth checking out: <http://www.shapeways.com></comment>


African genetics 'critical' - <AUTHOR> http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTech/News/1132/8b4ddff004d34cd5a37e85a4fffe244e/01-05-2009-07-24/African_genetics_critical

<comment><USER2> No explicit mention of the San? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmen>

From Wikipedia:

The Bushmen have provided a wealth of information for the fields of anthropology and genetics, even as their lifestyles change. One broad study of African genetic diversity completed in 2009 found the San people were among the five populations with the highest measured levels of genetic diversity among the 121 distinct African populations sampled.[1][2] The San people can be considered the most basal branch of the phylogenetic tree comprising all living humans; its divergence node with other humans is the deepest ancestral state that can ever be reconstructed using DNA from living humans.

=== When you visit South Africa, a trip to the Cradle of Humankind is pretty cool.

<comment><USER3> Hmmm... this is difficult. Usually when they talk about Africans it is a pseudonym for black Bantu groups (San excluded).

That is why statements such as "Africans have more genetic variation than anyone else on Earth" is meaningless. It is like comparing Spaniards to Koreans and saying there are plenty of variation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _"Everybody's history is part of African history because everybody came out > of Africa," Ibrahim said._

Is this why Africa is referred to as the motherland?

<comment><USER5> It's not.

<comment><USER6> The following link was submitted before this thread,

[http://www.funadvice.com/q/why_is_africa_called_the_motherla...](http://www.funadvice.com/q/why_is_africa_called_the_motherland)

so there is evidence that people have been calling Africa the motherland before the issue came up here.

<comment><USER5> No, there is evidence that a single person calls it that.

I still don't think it's called the motherland by anyone except people who have lived there personally.

Every country is called the motherland by the people who live there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>