I Bootstrapped My Side Project to $6k/Month (2017) - WD-42 https://blog.usejournal.com/how-i-bootstrapped-a-side-project-to-6k-month-while-secretly-hating-everything-it-stands-for-f7405823de4 <comment><AUTHOR> This was written last year, it should have 2017 appended

<comment><USER2> and had a HN discussion back then [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15713505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15713505)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> damn, this guy built a tool for growth hackers to make android app store spam, added gamification when it started failing, then added a pyramid MLM referral system for users to market it by word of mouth. he's obviously very smart and motivated. it's just kind of sad to me that the ad economy has grown so large that this is the best way for smart young people to make money.

i doubt he really hates his product at the end of the day, it's just a catchy way to market it. if he did, he would've walked away when his partner did to freelance some more or do another startup.

<comment><USER4> > best way for smart young people to make money

It's like when you see people on YouTube who make horrendous clickbait, yet get millions of views. It's easy to laugh and dismiss them, but financially they're probably rolling in it...

Are they the smart ones for exploiting the largest, most lucrative audience (young children who are more likely to watch more of the video before clicking off) and cashing in? Or are they legitimately not self-aware?

<comment><USER5> I'd guess it's just people reacting to financial incentives.

It's a bummer that our society is structured with financial incentives that are so poorly aligned with interesting goals.

<comment><USER6> I think it's incumbent on us to change that. Too often something dubious is justified by how much money it makes. But we don't have to buy into it. And we can call it out when it happens.

Look at how people treat the statement, "I work at Facebook", for example. It has changed a lot over the last decade. It used to be hot and positive. But I had a friend start just recently. They're doing something worthwhile and entirely unrelated to the many things terrible about Facebook. But they still felt obliged to apologize for it.

I'd like to see more of that pressure applied to people who are making money by making the world worse.

<comment><USER7> So should I tell other people in my coworking space that I think their job is total bullshit?

One or two happen to be in some field that trigger my bullshit alert and I think it's somewhat sketchy what they do. For example, stuff around network marketing for dietary supplements.

I mean, who am I to judge?

<comment><USER6> I don't know that I'd walk over and say, "Buddy, this is bullshit!" Just as a practical matter, that doesn't do much to change minds.

But as to who you are, I'd say you have several things that give you grounds to have an opinion. One is that you're a human being and want to see other humans treated well. Two, you're part of a variety of communities, and you have an interest in seeing those communities be healthy. Three, you're a successful entrepreneur, so you have real expertise in what makes for a good business. And surely there are more.

In your shoes I'd definitely look for opportunities to influence people like that. It can be as simple as the look that passes across your face when they tell you what they do. If they ask for advice, you can point them to something healthier. You could give a talk on what makes for good, sustainable businesses. And with people where you are already an influencer (e.g., friends, family) you can definitely help keep them from getting into work like that.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for your insightful and encouraging comment. This actually helps me a lot. The community-aspect is totally right: I don't want to have the coworking environment poisoned with "get-rich-quick" people.

> _You could give a talk on what makes for good, sustainable businesses._

I will do! And I'll try to find words that sound encouraging to them. After all, most of them probably just want more freedom for themselves and the sketchy business ideas probably look like the simplest way to get there.

<comment><USER6> Excellent point. My mom got suckered by a couple of MLM schemes when I was a kid. She was very sharp but really wanted to improve our lives, and these people sold the opportunity angle really hard. Although it made me absolutely hate get-rich-quick schemes, I also know that the people caught up in them are generally sincere and well meaning.

Good luck with it! Feel free to drop me a line and let me know how it goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> First page in HN, I bet he is going to get a few more users.

This "I feel guilty but they are making money" narrative thing is just genius marketing. I take my hat off to him.

<comment><USER9> Every time I get into my Porsche I'm reminded of how bad the project is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Holy shit. I have so mixed feelings.

First of all, thank you for sharing this story. Secondly, I envy your grit and the ability to just go and sell, instead of being stuck in impostor syndrome mode.

Thirdly, shame on you for building a product which sole point is to make money by destroying the Play Store. And shame on you for working on it after you realized this.

Foruthly, and this is the part I don't understand - how on Earth were you able to make money on that first app of yours? And how your customers are able to repeat that? I mean, _who on Earth downloads this kind of stuff_? I'm very confused about this. By your description, that app is "simple app with a list of videos, targeting a specific trending niche", i.e. not much more than a YouTube playlist. So who are the people downloading cookie-cutter apps when an universal one-stop app is available?

<comment><USER11> > by destroying the Play Store

One of the first comments on the post is asking about whether or not the OP intends to duplicate this effort on the Apple App Store. Say what you will about Apple's walled garden but the core difference between it and the Play store is that it's designed to prevent things like this.

The Play store invites this sort of thing. Kudos to the OP for capitalizing on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > I couldn't understand why users who were making a thousand dollars in ad > revenue each month, didn't upgrade their accounts, after all it only costs > $25. Turns out, a lot of these users were living in countries where they > couldn't have a Visa card or PayPal account, and just couldn't pay me even > if they wanted to.

I don't know if cryptocurrency is going to solve this problem, but whatever does solve it is going to generate an enormous amount of wealth.

<comment><USER13> One wonders how they get paid the ad money they earn?

Simple solution: "We take the first $25 in ad revenue your app generates and you keep the rest."

Complex solution: "We take 50% of the ad revenue your app generates unless you pay $25/month through outside means."

...unless they needed to create thousands of apps to make _any_ income and 50% is cheaper than $25/app.

<comment><USER14> > We take the first $25 in ad revenue your app generates and you keep the > rest.

You could invoice them for the $25 but you cannot "keep" it until/unless your service becomes the advertising network's client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The most valuable point for me: Gamification! A friend of mine wrote his master's thesis on that topic. And yeah, turns out it works really well if done right ;-)

Regarding the rest of the text: I wonder what value people using these apps get out of them?

I share some of his sentiment: The aim is to onboard a bunch of people with a "get rich quick"-kind-of-mentality and flood a platform with content of questionable content (I mean, the content could be good - but somehow I doubt it if a single person creates a thousand apps). On the other hand: Living on 6k$ in Morocco? Could be a worse life...

<comment><USER16> The secret of Hell, I think, is that you get there before death. By doing evil things, you invite an evil mentality into your mind which will prey on you as you become more feeble. The final transition from deathbed to the eternal fire is just a formality. If you plant the seeds of hell in your mind, they will be all that remains in the end.

I guess some people think they will never become feeble, that they will maintain the power to keep the evil stuff separate from the rest of their life. But we are all enfeebled in the end.

<comment><USER17> Did you come up with this personally and/or is there someplace I can get more? Damn

<comment><USER18> A famous Zen story says a very similar thing:

There was once a general who asked the Zen master Hakuin:"Are there really such things as Heaven and Hell?"

"What do you do for a living?" Hakuin asked him.

"I'm a general."

"Ha, ha, ha! What idiot asked you to be his general? You look more like a butcher to me", the Zen master teased the general.

"I'll cut you to pieces!" the general angrily pulled his sword.

"Here lie the gates of Hell!" said the master.

"Excuse me...Please forgive my insolence."

And Hakuin said:"Here lie the gates of Heaven."

Heaven and Hell aren't places that suddenly appear after death. They exist here and now. Good and evil involve just a single instant of thought, and the gates of Heaven and Hell are ready to open for you at any time. (From Zen Stories: The Staff and Shout of the Venerable Ones)

<comment><USER19>
        Pride ruined the angels,
        Their shame them restores;
        Lurks the joy that is sweetest
        In stings of remorse.

\-- from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Sphinx"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anybody have an idea what the apps this thing creates are?

</comment><comment><USER21> Okay. I ultimately liked this posting. It started out rocky because he exposed he had accomplished so much at a young age (#imverysmart). Sounded like at several times he wanted to spend money he didn't really have. I liked the reflection and how he tried several different strategies to grow revenue.

And the posting itself is a good way to boost visibility.

</comment><comment><USER22> So, OP worked hard on a product that help OP, so that it would help others. OP did whatever it took to keep revenue coming in and learned a valuable set of skills along the way. Now OP is providing useful services to many users worldwide and making a living off it.

Everyone has a disillusionment moment, and that's the real takeaway from this post, for me.

<comment><USER23> "Useful"?

<comment><USER24> Sure. The app allows non-technical people to create something that they want, that has value for them, and that they couldn't make on their own.

<comment><USER23> Giving some other people with questionable motives and/or aptitude what they want might be "useful" to them, in the broadest sense of the word, but the net effect may well be less than that. The author himself admits that this might just end up flooding the store with questionable, low quality content.

Lots of actions have consequences beyond their direct and immediate effects, realizing that is one of the harder parts of growing up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is from 2017

</comment><comment><USER26> this is both terrifying and enthralling. A beautiful capture of the rationale behind the creation of monster. Love it.</comment>


Ask HN: Software for designing software - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
being a hobby programmer for a couple of years, I want to step it up and try my hands in something rather sophisticated at work.
Whilst in the past, I was working here and there on some projects which were in the 10k+ LOC range, I would like to tackle this project as professional as possible.
Is there any program/service with which is being used in the designing phase of a tool/software? E.g. something where you type down the objectives, functionality, flowcharts perhaps, track time etc.? Or is all of this being done in other mediums (onenote, kanban etc.)? <comment><USER2> Visual Paradigm has tool for almost all the things you need in process IMO.</comment>


Saleor Commerce – the fastest growing e-commerce platform - <AUTHOR> Hi there! We have launched Saleor Commerce on Product Hunt today! Saleor's become the world's fastest growing open-source e-commerce platform. Our headless solution powers ultra-fast, dynamic, personalized and beautiful experiences and drives billions of dollars of revenue for fast-moving brands. And it's made with open source love!<p>Check out more details: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/saleor-commerce <comment><USER2> [https://saleor.io](https://saleor.io)

Took too long to find a link to the open source version. very very busy site. wow

[https://github.com/mirumee/saleor](https://github.com/mirumee/saleor)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there! Thank you for your feedback. We're still working on some performance improvements. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to help.

Best

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/saleor- commerce](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/saleor-commerce)</comment>


Show HN: Shootback – let you access target behind NAT or firewall - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aploium/shootback <comment><USER2> This is going to be used maliciously. I guarantee it.</comment>


The true power of regular expression - <AUTHOR> http://nikic.github.io/2012/06/15/The-true-power-of-regular-expressions.html

<comment><USER2> > But when programmers talk about "regular expressions" they aren't talking > about formal grammars. They are talking about the regular expression > derivative which their language implements. And those regex implementations > are only very slightly related to the original notion of regularity.

That's why we call those derivatives "Franken-xpressions". They can take exponential time in the worst case. See "Regular Expression Matching Can Be Simple And Fast (but is slow in Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, ...)" (<http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html>).

The additional power of Franken-xpressions comes at a cost.

For general purpose parsing, I suggest using a parser combinator library.

</comment><comment><USER3> in case it's not clear - the "regular expressions" he's using are perl's (well, based on perl's - PCRE) which are notoriously extended past the theoretical definition, or past what almost all other regexp libs / languages provide.

the examples won't work in python or java, for example.

<comment><USER4> Right. In Python you might check out my <https://github.com/darius/peglet/blob/master/peglet.py> which is PEG-based but tries to feel like a modest extension of the built-in re module.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Your [computer] scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they _could_ , they didn't stop to think if they _should_ "

</comment><comment><USER6> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5109549>

</comment><comment><USER7> A nice little article. But I think it misses a noteworthy issue.

> Context-sensitive languages are something that you will rarely encounter > during "normal" programming.

In my experience, context-sensitive languages, _as a class_ , are _never_ encountered in programming. Certainly, one might need to deal with a formal language that happens to be context-sensitive but not context-free; however, the fact that it lies in the context-sensitive class does not _ever_ seem to be a useful fact.

The concepts of regular, context-free, and recursively-enumerable languages are obviously useful ones for us. But I think the only reason programmers ever mention the class of context-sensitive languages is that they feel obligated to, having mentioned the other three classes in Chomsky's hierarchy.

If anyone knows of an instance where the fact the concept of context-sensitive languages/grammars was useful in a computational context[1], I'd like to hear about it.

[1] Heck, _any_ context. Are context-sensitive grammars really useful in the study of natural languages? I wouldn't be surprised if the answer turns out to be "no".

</comment><comment><USER8> One of my favourite modern regex libraries for C++ is Boost.Xpressive, which allows for parsing context-free grammars using recursively nested rules. After fighting with Boost.Spirit (a more formal parser framework) for some time, I achieved what I wanted with Xpressive in a fraction of the time.

From the manual:

 _The theoretical computer scientists out there will correctly point out that a self-referential regular expression is not "regular", so in the strict sense, xpressive isn't really a regular expression engine at all. But as Larry Wall once said, "the term [regular expression] has grown with the capabilities of our pattern matching engines, so I'm not going to try to fight linguistic necessity here."_

</comment><comment><USER9> > (Reminder: When I say "regular expression" here I obviously mean it in the > programmer sense, not the formal language theory sense.)

Once I read an article where the autor recomended using "regular expression" meaning the formal theory and "regex" to point out the (more powerfull) implementation. I think it's a good way to provide a common vocabulary.

</comment><comment><USER10> The main point against using regular expression for me is that it takes developers that are new to the code (or yourself in a few months) so long to figure out what is happening there, not that they are not powerful. The fact that there is no way to debug them in most environments and no comments does not help.

<comment><USER11> I've been on several projects maintaining code by people who were ignorant to regex or otherwise refused to use them. Their code is littered with indexOf operations and charAt and all sorts of things like that. And they build those calls up one after the other creating all sorts of intermediate variables. It's a gigantic mess and I can usually remove 50-80% of that code (my guess) with regex. I think regex is far more maintainable and easier to read.

As far as no comments or not being able to debug, you can place each regex in a clearly named variable. And for debugging, there are a wealth of external tools out there, and in Java you certainly can step through them in a debugger (if you like pain). Like code, there are ways to write regex that are more readable and maintainable than others. We should make our regexes clear and used in conjunction with well thought out code. Then the software is a joy to work with, after spending 2 days studying regular-expressions.info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So...on the off-chance that the default SDKs for Java / .Net do not implement this natively, anyone have a link to some (preferably free) libraries that do make use of this implementation?

<comment><USER13> <http://www.pcre.org/>

<comment><USER14> How Perl-compatible is pcre nowadays? Does it implement all the regular expression features in Perl?

<comment><USER13> The Perl 5 compatibility is good. Here's a list of the differences: <http://www.gsp.com/cgi-bin/man.cgi?topic=pcrecompat>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While these 'regular expressions' are unreadable, on the plus side they don't ensure O(n) runtime. There should be an anti-Turing award for their creation.</comment>


Comma.ai founder George Hotz wants to free humanity from the AI simulation - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/9/18258030/george-hotz-ai-simulation-jailbreaking-reality-sxsw-2019 <comment><USER2> Sounds like some of the guys I knew from zerostate.net. Some of these ideas can be a serious rabbit hole, and articles like this only barely scratch the surface. Losing one's mind in the process is a real risk of entertaining such philosophies for the wrong reasons.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this the geohotz that found PS3 exploits?

<comment><USER4> FTA

> He landed himself in hot water when he jailbroke Sony's PlayStation 3, > leading to a contentious lawsuit that was later settled.

yes.</comment></comment>


A Look at Paper'Understanding Early Word Learning in Situated Artificial Agents' - <AUTHOR> https://syncedreview.com/2020/07/18/grounded-language-learning-a-look-at-the-paper-understanding-early-word-learning-in-situated-artificial-agents/ <comment><USER2> Side note: the hyphens in the title are weird. First I tried to scratch off some dirt between the words "Paper" and "Understanding" on my monitor...</comment>


FBI Director to citizens: "Let us keep spying on you" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/10/fbi-director-to-citizens-let-us-spy-on-you/

<comment><USER2> i would trust governments who would protect you from terrorist.</comment>


Linux Foundation Sponsors Now Include Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetnews.com/blog/skerner/linux-foundation-sponsors-now-include-microsoft.html

<comment><USER2> That's entirely expected. You can spin Linux VMs up on Windows Azure and they support Python, Node.js, Java and PHP out of the box.

<comment><USER3> apache hadoop is also now available as HDInsight

[http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions- technolog...](http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions- technologies/business-intelligence/big-data.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Call me when they sponsor the FSF.

<comment><USER5> Its a sad day when open source wins over freedom software.

<comment> mkr-hn Did you create a new term or is this one I haven't heard yet?</comment></comment></comment>


PNG vs JPG: 6 simple lessons you can learn from our mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/png-vs-jpg

<comment><USER2> I think there's a much more important distinction to be aware of. Namely, that PNG is good at representing graphics while JPG is good at representing photos. A screenshot of my browser while typing this comment is 388 KB in JPG, only 80 KB in PNG. If your image consists of few colors and large areas of solid color, you should always use PNG. The image will probably actually be smaller. If your image is a photo or something photo-like, you should use JPG.

Either way, your master images should be the format you first obtained or created the image in. If the image came from a camera, the master should be the raw camera image. If the image was created in photoshop, the master should be a photoshop file.

<comment><USER3> For screenshots and other linear graphics, choosy moms choose GIF.

<comment><USER4> Not unless you have only 256 colors on your desktop.

Edit: Even if you're OK with indexed color, the indexed PNG will still be smaller.

<comment><USER3> It usually doesn't matter. If you have photo-like data in your screenshot, you're better off going with the JPEG.

EDIT: You're probably right about the indexed PNG.

<comment><USER4> I don't have a .jpg optimizer, but a PNG screenshot run through pngcrush has been consistently smaller than a .jpg compressed to the wrong side of tolerable for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's rare when this is good advice.

Most of the time you want PNG for drawn images. JPEG is only for photos taken with a camera.

You just happened to have images with lots of gradients, but most of the time PNG does a better job.

Also when you downsampled the images, whatever program you used was not very good. When I tried it the images were always one row better than what you showed. i.e. when I changed it to 128, it looked like your 256, and my 64 looked like you 128, etc.

<comment><USER6> >Most of the time you want PNG for drawn images. JPEG is only for photos taken with a camera.

You clarified this in your next line, however the above summary, particularly the comment on JPEGs, is wrong.

PNGs are appropriate for areas with common colors, and where clarity is critical - most logos, charts, web comics, etc.

JP(e)G is appropriate for photorealistic images, where there are significant varations, such as, of course, photos, rendered images, photorealistic images, and so on.

I am kind of shocked that anyone is having this discussion right now. This is like circa 1995 that these sorts of discussions were cutting edge (though it was GIF versus JPEG)

<comment><USER7> > This is like circa 1995 that these sorts of discussions were cutting edge

Of course, people born in 1995 are now 15 years old, a good age to begin figuring out the nuances of image formats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Photoshop's save for web option makes quick work of these decisions, if you have access to a copy. In the '4-up' view you can visually compare your original file to three different formats with information on file size and precise control over color indexing, etc.

The save for web option will also strip out any extraneous info, such as exif data, that can add to the image size.

<comment><USER9> Agreed, Photoshop is the right tool for the job here, not a command-line tool. Some images will need more colors than others, some will need more dithering than others; and the tool used here doesn't look like it picks palettes very well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Don't judge optimized pngs from this example. Those pngs look terrible.

Here's what a 64 color png looks like created in Photoshop: <http://i.imgur.com/4p2SW.png>

It's smaller and better looking than the jpeg that they actually use on their home page: [http://www.turnkeylinux.org/files/images/icons/twiki.jpg?125...](http://www.turnkeylinux.org/files/images/icons/twiki.jpg?1256307560)

The photoshop version would look even better and be even smaller if it were created from the uncompressed source instead of a jpg.

<comment><USER10> You're right, these guys just don't know how to create indexed PNGs properly. I ran their originals through Photoshop, with 100% dither at 96 colors, then used pngout (the best* png compressor), and came out with better looking, smaller files.

* <http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there seriously still enough people out there who don't know the differences between PNG, GIF, and JPEG that this article makes it to the front page of HN?

</comment><comment><USER12> Look at the "Try Turnkey on Amazon..." banner at the top of the turnkeylinux.org home page and tell me the artifacts don't look like hammered ass. I'll stick to lossless for anything with textual elements, thanks.

<comment><USER13> I also don't get the use of these icons where the text is really fuzzy. Can you make out the word "Linux" at the bottom?

[http://www.turnkeylinux.org/files/images/icons/drupal.jpg?12...](http://www.turnkeylinux.org/files/images/icons/drupal.jpg?1255238189)

<comment><USER8> No, but I can't make that out in the png version either. [http://www.turnkeylinux.org/files/images/blog/jpg-vs- png/dru...](http://www.turnkeylinux.org/files/images/blog/jpg-vs- png/drupal.png)

Looks like an issue with the original file - it was probably created at a higher res and then down-sampled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I sure hope anyone who calls themselves a web designer knows this stuff inside out already...

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not a web developer, but could html5/javascript replace the need for some static images? For example, simple text logos. While a text banner could take several dozen KB's, some form of drawing javascript code could take only a fraction of that. Unless I'm misinterpreting how html5 works. :)

<comment><USER13> And lay out your "images" via CSS and try to make it work on all browsers? On top of that, for a complex image, you'll end up encoding your image data in JS or HTML or some other text format, which would take up much more space than a format like JPG/PNG/GIF. Those formats are designed to handle images and that's all they do.

Plus, with JS you wouldn't necessarily get immediate rendering of the image, so you would be making the UX worse, not better.

<comment><USER15> That is not what I meant, actually. I meant rendering a logo via some paint methods, where all the information the methods have is some text, color and style attributes, etc. Then the logo gets drawn on-the-fly by the user's browser. It could work for simple logo's, I believe.

<comment><USER16> This is worth a try for a lot of reasons. If not for logos, then for buttons on your site. When I switched to painted buttons vs images in my downloadable desktop software, I (1) saved a lot of space on downloads, and (2) saved a TON of time whenever I wanted to add a new button or change the color scheme, or gradient, or shadow, etc. Re-creating each button (even just creating a new one) was a total pain in the ass compared to simply instantiating a new button or playing with the paint method.

I haven't tried it in html5 yet, but if I use buttons on the page I will definitely give this a shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> JPG for photos; PNG for logos, graphics, ui elements, sprites or anything else that has a vector (adobe illustrator) master.

I'll probably get some downvotes for this, but IMO hacker founders shouldn't get their panties in too much of a bunch over this (with the possible exception of mobile stuff). Work on your startup and solving a problem–then– when your traffic warrants it–you can start obsessing over a few kilobytes of savings. Swapping out graphics in your page templates or CSS is trivial.

When I see a good-looking site, I don't need to go digging into their source to see if they used JPGs or PNGs before it catches my eye.

Follow the above rule, keep your master PSD/AI files, and you'll be fine.

</comment><comment><USER18> On Windows, here's a neat free little program: <http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/>

This way you can instantly try out different jpg/gif/png formats and see their visual and quality impact.

Also, something to beware is pre-packaged icons. We were an icon pack, and on examination, found some of the PNG icons were vastly larger than they should possibly be. A 16x16 pixel PNG was 5K instead of a few bytes.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if they have considered serving images through a separate domain/CDN and whether that would have had a bigger impact. Also, using CSS sprites might help.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Premature optimization is the root of all evil". We used SimpleCDN for a while, but the increase in performance didn't justify the increase in complexity.

<comment><USER13> Oh, I agree. I was just wondering whether you thought about it and I guess you have. BTW Google Page Speed's biggest complaint for your home page was that images were not served from cookieless domains and downloading them was not paralellized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Simple trick to make smaller PNG files: Posterize your image to 64 before compressing

<comment><USER9> I don't think that's good advice. Posterize just throws away data and causes banding; and if your image contains mostly one hue, or a limited number of hues, then you're removing more colors than you need to.

Use a tool that will create a perceptual or selective palette like Photoshop's "save for web" tool. You can choose png-8 with 64 colors, but it will pick the _right_ 64 colors for the job.

<comment><USER19> Since most users use 6bit dithered LCD displays, the quality loss usually isn't noticeable--for images that have more than 256 colors, it can be a big win.

edit: also those that require alpha transparency; adding alpha values uses up a lot of palette entries, and most tools don't support it (Fireworks?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This reads more of a guide on why it is good to avoid gradients.

</comment><comment><USER21> mogrify is the right tool for batch image processing, not a kludgy convert loop.</comment>


Home Office responds after password displayed in government building window - <AUTHOR> https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/home-office-responds-after-password-4415320 <comment><AUTHOR> The office was a passport office in Plymouth.

The password was:

       Passw0rd1</comment>


Telling people to leave finance - <AUTHOR> http://mathbabe.org/2012/09/30/telling-people-to-leave-finance/ <comment><USER3> I worked in finance (as a trader). And I left. But I loved it. Most people didn't, but I did; I found the history and the _mission_ captivating and I was not shy about showing that passion.

I left because they fired my charismatic manager and the firm's culture grew neurotic as the scandals and random terminations piled on. I saw the over- worked, sociopathic, misanthropic archetypes. But I saw the same personalities in Silicon Valley.

The capital markets are a critical piece of our modern world. We're still figuring out how these fascinatingly complicated machines work - they act differently in different cultures, in different sentiments, and under different geopolitical constraints. When they work...it's magical. The philosophical dimension of a weighted democracy doing better what kings and emperors through antiquity failed to do is a powerfully individualist statement. And there is _so much more_ that has to be done. There are literally not enough hours in a lifetime of lifetimes to see all the implications and interactions and human potential waiting to be unlocked.

Do I sound like a crackhead? Probably. But I love the idea of taking what is not understood, considered "random" or "exogenous", and building something to bring it from the unknown to the known. I understand the historical struggle these resource allocation machines (how I think of them) have faced and why we need people to carry the flag, even if it means being hated and misunderstood by the public.

A lot of people go into finance for the wrong reasons. I feel sorry for them. A lot of them are held there by a fear, not of losing the cash flow, but of losing the prestige or business card. These people need help, not derision. But concluding the entire industry is corrupt is like looking at JustFabulous and a handful of overworked founders and concluding Silicon Valley a blight on humanity.

P.S. I don't expect a huge salary just for working at a bank. But if I'm coming up with original ideas, I will do the calculation of what I could earn if I went out on my own, and if the bank figure doesn't line up with that figure (it didn't) it makes sense to arbitrage. This is classic entrepreneurship and there is nothing more sinister about JPMorgan having to compete with a star player launching their own fund than there is Google having to pay out to top performers who may otherwise do well launching a start-up.

<comment><USER4> This was a great a comment. I normally rail against Wall Street precisely because I've been around some of the people who go into the business and seen some shitty attitudes about life, but the call out to a higher calling of doing humanity a necessary and useful service really strikes a chord.

In your opinion, are there any trading firms that you feel embody that idea that they should be working to create systems to better allocate capital (instead of, say, gaining all of the capital for themselves)? I'm attracted to the problems that banks have to solve and deal with, but the culture around the current solutions is incredibly off putting.

<comment><USER3> Bridgewater Associates catches my eye as a firm that has fun with economics - they pioneered risk parity in the 1990s and have invested so much in intelligence and analytics that Paul Volcker commented that they have "a bigger staff, and produce more relevant statistics and analyses, than the Federal Reserve" [1]. Another one, going off the academic papers coming out of the firm and conversations with people I know there, may be AQR.

Note that it's more fun to prance around the trading floor Gangnam Style than compose oneself as an extra-dimensional intelligence, a memo the tech industry has taken to heart. The loudest kid isn't driving the bus.

[1] <http://www.economist.com/node/21549968>

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the suggestions. I wonder how possible it is to find a position at either firms if you aren't explicitly in the finance industry. I have no idea how to apply there and would be interested in talking to somebody about what goes on there.

<comment><USER5> Why not just do some projects relevant to what you'd want to do there, and then try contacting HR about a job with a link to your projects?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I spent my first few years out of college working for an investment bank, and feel the same way as the piece author – I have no regrets leaving. Finance can be a great way to start / springboard your career: I sharpened my analytical mind, saw how companies worked under-the-hood, really learned how to work hard and was able to save some money. But as a long-term profession, at least in the area I was in, it's brutal. The job took a huge toll on the people that stayed with the career for 5-10 years. And like the author said, once you're making insanely great money it's hard to give that up.

When my (now wife) and I went to my going away party, she was approached by many of the other banker's wives. They said they were so happy for her that I was leaving the industry, and expressed the difficulties the lifestyle presented to raising a family and relationships. I loved the people I worked with - they were hard working, honest, great people. But only an all-consuming industry could generate this kind of response from the families of my co- workers.

After my stint in banking, I left to start my own company which I've been doing full-time for nearly five years. And while banking provided the initial savings safety net to scale-up the business I couldn't imagine going back. For anyone interested in the full story of my departure from finance, I wrote about it in the post below:

<http://www.ecommercefuel.com/my-corporate-escape-story/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll never forget the conversation I overheard where someone who was utterly and completely miserable (at arguably _the_ quintessential Wall Street investment bank) described how miserable he was, but also that they pay him so much money, at age 34, that he'd "lost the ability to complain."

The hours, lifestyle, verbal abuse, sociopaths and general disregard for virtually everything except making more money, will eventually wear you out. As an influential managing director at an investment bank once told me in a moment of honesty, "This business brings out the worst in everyone."

<comment><USER8> I can't see how even the pay could justify living such a miserable life. I feel like the life of a miserably rich banker scales perfectly down to a simple conversation I had with a taylor in Hong Kong last month.

He mentioned to me that it had been a long day for him, so I asked him what long was. He told me he'd been working for 17 hour, and that he's used to working only 15. Aghast, I said wow! That's a lot of work, but at least it's Friday. He told me it didn't matter, because he worked 7 days a week. He also mentioned that the last day off he'd taken had been over a month prior, and that it was because he was sick.

I remember thinking, what's the point of living? This man works all day every day so that he can live, but he's only living to work. And honestly, that's exactly what I see in the bankers. Yeah, you make an enormous amount of money, but your job makes you so miserable that you don't even enjoy having it, so what's the point?

<comment><USER3> Some people work so they can earn money to live the life they love. Others find living in work as much as out. Neither is better, they're just different personalities and cultures.

I've felt compelled to put down a book and get a drink with friends as often as to postpone travel to fit around a client. Just because someone leads a different life from the one you choose to or would choose to if uninhibited doesn't mean they're miserable. Watching _Jiro Dreams of Sushi_ where Jiro, a world-renowned sushi chef, takes pride in doing the same thing every day for the rest of his life (his words) helped me reflect on that.

<comment><USER8> I actually just recently saw that movie. To be honest, I couldn't help but wonder the entire time whether he really was the happiest person he could be while making sushi, or if he just couldn't bring himself to let it go. The scene where he visits his friends for example, is in my opinion, the happiest he appears throughout the entire film.

Obviously his lifestyle is one that I won't ever understand. I suppose some people's minds just work differently. But then again, studies show that the happiest people are those that have warm networks of friends and family that they speak to regularly, and I can't imagine that making money for your family (at least past a certain point) is better than simply spending more time with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whenever I read articles like this, I try to remind myself that there's an entrepreneurial component to finance as well. One of my friends from school was a trader for several years at a major bank. In 2012, his MD slashed his comp and the theme communicated to him was, like in the article, if you aren't happy with it, then "Just Go". He left. He took a handful of his smartest peers with him, and started a hedge fund where he now runs 500 million dollars and is up 15% on the year. If you lower compensation across the board, you provide more incentive for the rock stars like this to leave and create value elsewhere instead of for your firm. In this case, my friend took risk, and earned a reward, and I don't think anyone begrudges him the many millions of dollars more he will now earn in his new position.

It's not too different in tech. I have developers who work for me who I have to pay $250k/year + serious benefits, because if I didn't, I know they'd either start their own company or be poached by an early stage team. For me the challenge is figuring out who the real rock stars are from amidst the vast sea of wannabes.

<comment><USER10> Just a tidbit: The _market_ is about 15% up this year, so his investors are probably worst off that if they just invested in an index fund.

<comment><USER11> It depends what the volatility is. The S&P hasn't dropped below about 14% vol this year, and looks to have been about 18% on average.

If a hedge fund returns 15% at 10% volatility that is much, much better than the market.

<comment><USER12> why is the volatility a factor ? My intuition say that you with high volatility is a lot easier to pick the wrong equities. Is that correct ?

<comment><USER13> There are two ways to compare returns. Higher returns at the same risk or the same returns at lower risk. Either is better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >a majority of them are miserable. They feel trapped and they feel like they have few options.

This describes the feelings many of us have towards grad school; by now there's a rich anti-grad school lit that I've contributed to in my own small way. [1] Interestingly enough, here people are risk-averse too—but instead of being awesome, the money is _terrible_.

The interesting thing is that very people seem to be leaving, despite the money issue, which makes her last point less analogous.

[1] [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should- kno...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before- you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and- opportunity-costs/)

</comment><comment><USER15> If banks paid less, they would have to pay their shareholders more instead, which they always seem reluctant to do. Banks dont horde cash like industrial companies, or pay vastly more to the executives than the workers, so in many ways theu are model companies. The problem is the level of profits they make, and the amount to which they are subsidised by the government (especially recently).

<comment><USER16> > _"and the amount to which they are subsidised by the government (especially > recently)."_

False. TARP has been paid back, at a small profit, to the FED, which returns the money to Treasury. The auto companies are a black hole of subsidies, but that's another story.

<comment><USER17> What about TARP's big brother, TALF (at least $1 trillion)? We don't even know where most of the money has been spent.

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

 _"The way TALF loans were set up, 100 percent of any profit is retained by the borrower, but the Fed and the Treasury absorb any losses."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Do banks have a monopoly on sociapathic culture? I wouldn't disagree with anything in the article, but there are probably companies in other industries that are just as bad as banking, they just don't pay their employees as much. At least if you're going to work with crap get paid reasonably for it.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure they don't, but finance people are actually pretty unique creatures in my limited experience. Talk to someone working in criminal justice, for example, and they'll happily own up to all the ways their work creates human misery and they'll probably float some interesting ideas about how the system is broken.

Then go out and try to find a banker, trader or mortgage person and try to get them to accept some actual blame for the highly-leveraged, taxpayer subsidized horror their profession periodically unleashes on the world. It's surprisingly difficult to do, given the obviousness of the problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's a typical day like for a software engineer working in finance? I've worked in a variety of environments so I know that arrival times, perks, leaving time, meetings etc can all vary a lot. However I've never worked in finance or known anyone that has.

I'm under the impression that algorithms and data structures knowledge is very important. But do software engineers in finance really deal with this on a day-to-day basis?

<comment><USER7> Bottom line: everything about financial software is what Joel Spolsky warned you about. If you want to work on software, go to a software firm. If you want to just pay the bills and are not passionate about software, finance software is..well, read below.

I've worked in finance as a software engineer at several large investment banks for many years. The software consists of a mash-up of legacy stuff incorporated into generally very "safe" architecture choices. Unless you work in some highly specialized (and very rare) type of group, you won't be making any decisions as to what language to use, database, environment or any other project specific choices. They do not value the product. Expect no documentation of anything and consider it a gift if you ever see an internal wiki. While documentation may be the exception in some circles, any developer worth his salt knows the true value of writing stuff down, or at least commenting code, so you can come back to it at a later date. This isn't the type of software environment where they're going to appreciate the years you spent in school, learning how to measure time-complexity of various algorithms. For the most part, those algorithms are already written and those data structures have been decided upon for you. I literally have conceived maybe a handful of algorithms over the years.

You will spend your time maintaining hacked together code that was assembled by literally 30 other people who came and left before you. There will be little to no testing before software is deployed into production. You will likely not have an adequate test environment. If you are lucky enough to have a test environment, chances are that it won't resemble production in any meaningful way. This test environment may be called "your development environment." You will work with many people who do not understand, nor respect, the art of writing good software. You answer to "the business," ie: traders. Traders for the most part, will not appreciate what you do. Its too nebulous for them, and most people not in tech at the IB, for that matter. I'll never forget when we rolled out our new auto-trading system and the IBank laid off several dozen traders that day.

Depending on how your group is organized, you may be on call 24/7. Some groups have coverage structures, with people covering production software in shifts. Expect to be interrupted on holidays. Expect to work on at least one of the following holidays every year: Xmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, Easter, any other national holiday. Projects will be scheduled poorly. Timelines will exceed aggressive-scheduling and wander into "insane" territory. This may be the norm, depending where you work. The quality of the software you write will suffer for it. Your lifestyle, health, social-life, family-life, interests, hobbies and life will all suffer for it as well.

Politics will rule everything. Politics will stifle your productivity, unless you have a great manager who keeps you away from all of it. Unfortunately, I've never met a great software manager in finance. I'm sure they exist, but I've never had one. There will be many meetings. The meetings will run on and on and many topics will be discussed that concern none of you, which could have easily been hashed out in minutes over email. But you will spend hours in meetings because thats the corporate attitude, and finance is as corporate as it gets. The excessive meetings will impact your productivity and result in regular 12-14 hour days, year-round. You'll have far less resources than you require to do the job even adequately, because the people making the decisions about funding view tech as a cost-center. You'll frequently realize, when you read hacker news, that there's a great many exciting things happening in software outside of the world of finance software. You will see none of these exciting things.

I know this seems like a long, negative entry, but I assure you - <USER2> experience was not unusual. I strongly caution anyone passionate about software against going into finance software. I've worked as a software engineer and (unusually) in the front-office on the trading side.

<comment><USER21> I think this is a little too cynical. I've seen elements of what you describe in previous jobs, but never all at the same time, and never to the same extent.

Then again, the culture and the work varies in different cities and in different roles. In London we tend to get excellent developers joining the industry (traditionally there hasn't been much else for good developers locally) so you can typically expect to have skilled colleagues. And the closer you get to the front office, the more money there is for IT projects, and the more remit you have for writing good software.

<comment><USER22> I think most finance jobs are somewhat better than what he described-- it sounds like he's taken some crappy jobs-- but I don't doubt what he is saying. Code quality issues in finance are well-known and seem to be systemic. Hours are widely variable; there are 9-to-6 IT jobs and there are others that involve more stereotypical (read: awful) finance hours.

I think finance is a great place to work (yes, even as a full-time programmer) if you have a strategic reason for being there (VCs like financial experience, there are some interesting machine learning problems) but I would say that, in general, you're best off if you know you have the social and political skills to get the best work and, if you don't, finance is not likely to treat you well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As someone who works in finance in Scotland there are several other factors outwith this article to consider. I know people who have left because of the inertia at some banks - systems don't improve and "workarounds" are the norm. Retail banks that aren't risk driven can have horrific IT. But there are reasons to stay in - plenty of institutions manage to be places you can have a lifelong career at, they won't lay you off and you can do relatively interesting work. That is the flip side of the personal risk the author talks about. These places don't pay $400k. And especially don't do obscene bonuses - but they don't treat you like dirt either. Half the reason they don't get mentioned often is that people don't leave very often, there isn't scandal associated with the companies. My employer has a reputation for being the place people come to from other companies.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm currently new to the finance world (6 months) and know I'm not built for it. I entered as a top student but a worse than average programmer I feel. I work in production support and though this is good for me in terms of being a person who gets things done, it has zero learning for me. The only dev work is debugging which I'm decent at. Basically I see no learning, no personal growth in this and therefore its value is limited. I suck as a programmer but I'm willing to put the work in to correct this or find something I'm interested in to get good at. So the finance world isn't for me, however now I'm a comp sci grad with worse programming skills than I left uni with....what the hell is next or how do I work that out?

</comment><comment><USER25> I worked in finance and left when I realized that the people who were successful in finance were typically salespeople. Not necessarily by title, but more by action. It's bizarre how little the industry actually manages itself through data. We all know that a good index fund is going to beat the average hedge fund, but there is something so sexy about investing in a hedge fund. We all know that making 25% annually isn't realistic, but oh to make 25% annually and be able to tell your friends. It's all sales.

When I was 25 I swore it off. I was too young to sell versus build. But the cash was good.

</comment><comment><USER26> If I were a math grad-student type and actually had the talent and skills to get into a high-paying quant job, I'd consider doing the job for something like five years, saving everything I can, and then leaving for more fun jobs with the option to live off the investment income from the savings whenever I don't feel like working for a year or three.

If the salaries really go to $400k, saving up a million in the five years seems possible, and investing that with 5% annual return would give you a quite nice for the math grad-student type $50k salary for free.

<comment><USER27> They may go to $400k, but not until you have significant experience in the field, so you five year would be more like 10 years. Then you have a family, health insurance gets pricier, and so on such that $50k a year doesn't look that attractive anymore...

<comment><USER26> I did guesstimate that in. You'd only need to save an average of $200k per year to get to $1M savings in five years, you can do that before you hit the $400k rates.

I'm not really familiar with US costs of living, where I come from $50k is an upper middle class salary. Quick googling got me 5k as the ballpark for the health insurance fee for a single person, and with a family you'd probably have a spouse chipping in, so that doesn't look like a dealbreaker. Housing is tricky, apparently "live in an apartment, don't have a car" doesn't work in the US for some reason. You could always move to a rural area with cheap housing, but that does get a bit extreme, and then you'd need to figure out the costs of getting everywhere by car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It would be even more convincing if these former finance types gave away (or were forced to give away) their massive bonuses. Until that happens, people will still want to work for finance for a few years of mad cash, then quit and tell people about how evil it was and how glad they are that they left.

</comment><comment><USER22> Having seen finance, VC-istan, and a few other places I think finance is better on average.

People who bash finance are comparing it to some R&D Valhalla that doesn't exist anymore (except perhaps at a few cultural leaders like Valve) where everyone has complete autonomy over their work and no backstabbing exists because everyone is thrilled about what they do. If you compare typical finance jobs to typical real-world software jobs that are available to people without more published papers than years on this planet, then finance wins. That's not to say there aren't bad finance jobs (there are) or that finance is without its problems.

The software industry sucks. Programming is fun, but the software industry itself is a horrible place to be unless you have an edge that can consistently guarantee you a stream of high-quality work and no bullshit, and there isn't a much good work to go around in this industry, so that edge really has to be solid. The way you get good at software (and one of the things I admire greatly about software engineers is that a lot of us genuinely care about being good at our jobs; that's a rarity in the corporate world) is to get good work, but you can't get good work unless people think you're good. Hence, there's that need for some sort of edge when you're starting out. Finance, for its flaws, is a pretty good place to get this sort of edge: it gives you a certain credibility that helps you escape "Just A Programmer" mediocrity.</comment>


Robinhood: Cash Management - <AUTHOR> https://robinhood.com/about/cash-management/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a bunch of these financial apps (like Personal Capital as well) are jumping on the cash management train. Seems like a good thing for their customers. Anyone have insight as to why this isn't a good thing?</comment>


Mitmproxy – Open-source console-based proxy - <AUTHOR> https://mitmproxy.org/ <comment><USER2> Don't forget mitmdump. It is a great way to log sessions and chain to other proxies at the same time.

Also, mitmdump is one of the best and fastest ways to get ahold of web requests with Python to modify it on the fly.

[http://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/stable/mitmdump.html](http://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/stable/mitmdump.html)

I have been using mitmproxy over Burp for day to day web app hacking these days. But we still use Burp scanner for lots of chores. I almost always chain through both to then go back in and use Burp features missing in mitmproxy (exploring site contents, etc.). But those are edge cases mostly needed for professional use and not for tinkering.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how this can be faster or more friendly than using Burp.

Would you mind sharing an example flow?

<comment><USER2> I just like working in terminal. Some things I can do faster in mitmproxy (filtering with lots of constraints, shooting response or request data to a pipe). It has a mutt like interface so if mutt seems fast and intuitive then mitmproxy will feel similar. I have spent a lot of years thrashing around in the Burp GUI and mostly I don't need all the features all the time :)

Things that are a few clicks in Burp are a few terse keystrokes or key presses in mitmproxy. IDK, give it a shot and see if it makes sense . Most of our team just sticks with Burp FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not just a console, it also has a web based interface: [http://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/stable/mitmweb.html](http://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/stable/mitmweb.html)

<comment><USER5> I'd say, it's not just a web based interface, it also is a console.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This tool recently helped me troubleshoot a bug I was facing and unable to solve due to the lack of Safari's development tools. Here's a link for anyone interested: [http://eapen.in/mitmproxy-for- troubleshooting/](http://eapen.in/mitmproxy-for-troubleshooting/)

</comment><comment><USER7> one of the best tools for reverse engineering mobile apps. I'm just having problems when certificate pinning is enabled. Does anyone have an idea (or even a solution) how to deal with that?

<comment><USER8> Even without certificate pinning, starting with Android 7, you must decompile the app to allow user provided certificates. Or use an xposed module if you have a rooted device.

See this mitmproxy bug: [https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/issues/2054](https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/issues/2054)

And this tool is nice to automate decompiling, adding the line in the manifest to be able to use user-installed certificates, and recompiling: [https://github.com/levyitay/AddSecurityExceptionAndroid](https://github.com/levyitay/AddSecurityExceptionAndroid)

Also, if the app uses Google signin, you _have_ to be rooted, because play services uses the package manager to check the app signer before giving the app a token.

<comment><USER9> Just wait until they go full 'treacherous computing' and turn on remote attestation using TPMs.

<comment><USER8> Remote attestations already exist with SafetyNet, but don't use TPMs (IIRC). TPMs are interesting because they allow _local_ attestations; and it's happening already, for some use cases: [https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2017/09/keystore-k...](https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2017/09/keystore-key-attestation.html)

<comment><USER9> wow... thanks for the link. I need to keep a closer eye on the platform, apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just what I was looking for.

All I wanted to do was change a request header for one host.

After ~15 minutes I now have a transparent MITM https proxy - and I didn't even have to google the openssl command.

Edit: Also, the documentation is excellent as the software.

</comment><comment><USER11> This tool has really helped me on several occasions with a wide variety of issues up and down the stack. Even with debugging web apps because while the chrome Dev tools are awesome they (at least at the time as far as I know) didn't expose the initial headers/network exchange for certain types of auth like NTLM.

<comment><USER12> Mitmproxy is nice, but I think dev tools have become alot better, I discovered that because my standard work horse Chrome+Wireshark is very fincky with SSL:

        SSLKEYLOGFILE=$HOME/ssl_crt_dbg google-chrome --user-data-dir=TEMPUSER

Then you configure wireshark SSL decoding with with pre master key file as "ssl_crt_dbg", it fails too often for me.

Now days I use remote-debugging and Python a lot:

      $ google-chrome --remote-debugging-port=9222

      import PyChromeDevTools
      chrome = PyChromeDevTools.ChromeInterface(host="localhost", port=9222)
      chrome.Network.enable()
      while True:
         print chrome.wait_message(timeout=0.1)

But the simplicity of a Mitmproxy is almost as great as wireshark.

<comment><USER13> Can you explain more what you're doing with the python code?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/latest/mitmproxy.html](https://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/latest/mitmproxy.html) Nice TLS work

</comment><comment><USER15> Although I don't contribute to it anymore, I worked on a similar project that seems to have some continued activity:

[https://github.com/lightbody/browsermob- proxy](https://github.com/lightbody/browsermob-proxy)

It's Java-based and forked out from some old MITM code from Selenium. It has a bunch of APIs for manipulating traffic, tweaking DNS resolution, rewriting content, etc. Just passing along in case anyone is looking for alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER16> Beware that it listens on all interfaces by default:

[https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/issues/1293](https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/issues/1293)

I learned this the hard way. If you run a proxy on an unfirewalled machine with public IPv4, it's going to be abused _really_ fast. :-(

</comment><comment><USER17> Mitmproxy works pretty well for HTTPS - but it doesn't seem to generate HTTPS certs as well as Fiddler does

<comment><USER18> Mitmproxy dev here - please feel free to file a bug on GitHub if you have a reproducible example where we fail. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Many previous discussions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=mitmproxy&sort=byPopularity&pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=mitmproxy&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER20> I was just looking for something like this. Googling led me to Charles proxy, which seems a pretty capable tool, and I'm growing fond of it though the Java UI is jarringly ugly.

Does anyone have any experience with charles vs mitmproxy?

</comment><comment><USER21> I love mitmproxy, super easy to use (and to install an interception certificate) and the scripting support makes it very useful for pentesting iOS app traffic etc where I can't easily modify the client

<comment><USER22> how do disable certificate pinning on iOS?

<comment><USER21> Haven't had to as the apps I targeted weren't using it. Can't think of an obvious way without rooting the device though...

<comment><USER2> That is because there isn't a good solution. You can get away with repackaging an IPA and hand modifying the binary depending on how they are performing the pinning, but it is always going to be time consuming to do it this way. If you are serious about tinkering you pretty much need a jailbroken device, which is getting harder to maintain by the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been using mitmproxy to inspect HTTPS traffic. Are there any Chrome/Wireshark configurations to allow me to inspect HTTPS with Wirshark?

</comment><comment><USER24> Mitmproxy is amazing! And you can get it easily in macOS with brew. Highly recommended

</comment><comment><USER25> I love Mitmproxy and how easy it is to use! One of my favorite pentesting tools!

</comment><comment><USER26> mitmproxy is great for iOS and Android pen testing. A must have tool.</comment>


Firebase hosting is down - <AUTHOR> https://status.firebase.google.com/incident/Hosting/18002 <comment><USER2> Just noticed this myself, with many assets receiving 404s instead of the official incident notice of: "We are experiencing an issue with Firebase Hosting where 503/504 errors are being returned upon accessing the domains."

Comms could have been much better.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1.5 hours down and 45 minutes with no updates, that's really bad.</comment>


Kevin Rose joins Google - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/1/110318982509514011806/posts/VriPoJ6pHbd

<comment><USER2> So Milk had one product that A) was so useless it was mistaken for a parody app (<http://goo.gl/p8eEP>); and B) ended up getting shuttered after 3 months. Whatever. I guess Google has been getting exceedingly good at failing fast lately. Maybe Rose's team will be a good fit.

Too bad they can't pick up Ryan from The Office...

<http://mashable.com/2010/11/19/the-office-startup/></comment>


Age and the Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2008/05/01/age_and_the_ent.html

<comment><USER2> It's strange to me that people seem to _want_ the average age of the start-up founder to be low...why is it more fun if the founder is young than if they are in their 40s?

As a side note, there are some insightful comments that point out the differences in the two data sets that the writer is referring to (a study vs. anecdotal evidence from VC Fred Wilson). But it's an interesting read, none the less.

<comment><USER3> "want the average age of the start-up founder to be low"

Then they must be brilliant. If a 40 year old was brilliant, then why didn't he do this 20 years ago? (They tend to forget that it wasn't like this 20 years ago.)

<comment><USER4> plenty of companies got started more than 20 years ago. What would have prevented you from starting a company when MS or Apple started?

<comment><USER3> Having a grandfather worth $20 million.

Seriously, don't kid yourself. It was a VERY DIFFERENT world back then. You graduated college and hoped you could find a job. There was no www and you needed 5 to 10 grand just for hardware and proprietary software. It's utterly stunning how easy it is to get started today compared to then.

(Bill Gates and Paul Allen went to the private Lakeside School which had a privately donated PDP-11 in 1968. Imagine being 13 years old and having access to the same computing power as Stanford University. The other 99.99% of us had to wait another 10 years for access to a computer.)

<comment><USER5> Software was a lot harder to write when I was in high school.

Also, entrepreneurship wasn't encouraged.

<comment><USER4> Which means there was a lot less competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only real reason why it's harder for older people to make a startup is the high risk involved. Once you have a family you cannot mess around anymore.

<comment><USER5> Isn't it the responsibility of the wife to bring in a steady income?

<comment><USER7> Best comment ever

<comment><USER3> Your both either single or sleeping in the other room tonight.

<comment><USER5> It actually makes sense since women are so risk-averse. Wives should support entrepreneurship by making it easier for their entrepreneurial husbands to take risks. And that means bringing in a steady income.

<comment><USER8> I thought your original comment was funny, but now I realise you mean it. Oh dear

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a good snapshot of the population right now, I'm curious to know what the trends are. I suspect the 25-34 age category is growing and the 35-44 category is shrinking.

"When starting a startup was expensive, you had to get the permission of investors to do it. Now the only threshold is courage." [1]

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html></comment>


Star Wars opening crawl (and beyond) from 1977 without HTML/CSS/JS - <AUTHOR>

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl <comment><USER2> [https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=towel.blinkenl...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=towel.blinkenlights.nl&sortby=create_ts+desc)

</comment><comment><USER3> I almost expected a link to a video file here ;-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Forum post from '06 about this: [http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2006040608472855...](http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060406084728559)</comment>


Alphabet's Wing begins making commercial drone deliveries in the US - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/18/alphabets-wing-begins-making-first-commercial-drone-deliveries-in-the-u-s/ <comment><USER2> Anyone else worried about the noise pollution that will result from widespread drone delivery services and "flying cars"? I'm thinking the pushback won't happen until there's enough penetration that wealthy interest groups will make it impossible to rollback. I can envision a future where we're all just stuck with a loud constant hum from drones overhead.

<comment><USER3> Are they louder than delivery vans? I never heard one from close distance so I really don't know.

<comment><USER4> Yes. They sound like weed whackers.

<comment><USER5> vuvuzelas You know, that annoying thing that ruined FIFA world cup matches?

<comment><USER6> I thought it was the corruption

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wing's trial here in Canberra has felt a little unremarkable. People don't really talk about it, apart from the occasional local news piece about someone complaining about the noise.

I'm quite interested to see how much people buy into it in the US. From a consumer point of view it seems they're directly competing with established services (eg. Uber Eats), and the main differentiator is a gimmick.

<comment><USER8> " and the main differentiator is a gimmick.

My bet is that drones will be able to service these deliveries MUCH more quickly than humans. They're not in traffic. They can scale up with demand much more easily (much of the wait for Door Dash et al. is just getting someone available to make the delivery). Those advantages even get more pronounced with distance (up to whatever serviceable distance drones will have).

I'm very bullish on the idea of drone delivery. I'm hopeful that it will empower smaller businesses to compete with Amazon prime even, but that's probably a pipe dream.

<comment><USER9> Who wakes up saying "gosh my life would be so much better if I could just buy things faster"?

<comment><USER10> You do not have kids, don't you?

<comment><USER11> I have kids, and this isn't a problem for me - not really sure what the children angle is here?

I live in a small rural town in Scotland, yet Amazon and others can deliver stuff to my door the next day. In big cities, some companies even offer same- day delivery.

Honestly, I don't need my stuff any quicker than that.

I'm sure there are some genuinely useful niche uses for drones - for example, there was a recent HN post about a company in Africa doing drone delivery of medical supplies to remote and inaccessible locations.

But I don't think it's a good idea to fill our skies with noisy, flying lithium batteries, just so you can get a pizza in 16 minutes instead of 18.

<comment><USER12> Do you own a blender? How often do you use it? Do you not think that the economic and environmental cost of producing that blender is too large, considering how rarely you use it? It literally sits unused 99.99% of the time. Talk about inefficiency!

If a drone service could deliver a blender in 5 minutes when you had blending to do, and take it away again when you're done, the blender could get much better utilisation by being shared with the entire town, at a lower economic and environmental cost.

The same probably applies to nearly everything in your house.

<comment><USER11> While you might have a point for some items, I think there are diminishing returns for most; I obviously don't have numbers, but it would seem to be highly inefficient to fly a blender around with a drone. Your 5-minute figure is also pretty unrealistic.

I could see how drone delivery _might_ work for high value items, but they could just as easily be delivered in an EV van/truck carrying hundreds of items instead of just one. One genuinely useful case might be quickly flying blood/organs to a hospital.

There is also the human cost to consider; the noise of a single drone is very irritating, I can't imagine the horror of having our skies filled with the things.

I know of course you were generalising, but in my particular case, I actually do use my mini-blender quite often (for making curry pastes) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So we have FedEx, Walgreens, and Wing (a.k.a. Alphabet, a.k.a. Google) all collaborating on this. Any of these huge companies could have run a pilot project by themselves and had a head start over the competition. I wonder why they joined up?

My theory #1 is that it's risk mitigation against inevitable public backlash. If and when something happens (drone crashes, a package falls, whatever) the media will be talking about the horrible thing that Google did, or whoever is the frontrunner in drone delivery. Just look at how critics gang up on Tesla when it comes to driverless cars. By combining forces, the media and critics cannot single out Google because it's FedEx and Walgreens and Google; it's everybody doing it.

My more mundane theory #2 is that Wing got the federal certification first, so FedEx and Walgreens paid Wing to be involved for fear of missing out.

Theory #3: It helps with lobbying the more partners you have. Lobbying at state or federal level I think will be super essential otherwise every city will be creating their own set of regulations and some may try to ban drone delivery.

<comment><USER14> I think the answer is simpler: they could not have run a pilot project by themselves.

Logistics are complex businesses. Google does not have warehouses in enough places to cover an interesting area. FedEx has. And drone deliveries are going to be expensive and only for lightweight items first. That means medicine makes sense. Walgreens will bring the clients.

And no, making reliable transport drones and the infrastructure to load them up, get a reliable GPS coordinate from your client, identifying drop-in zones is not easily done, and that's the value Google brings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would love to see the iterations that led to that final design, because there's almost nothing conventional about it. I know they spent a surprising amount of time just on the hook.

[https://www.wired.com/story/wing-alphabet-x-drone- engineerin...](https://www.wired.com/story/wing-alphabet-x-drone-engineering/)

<comment><USER16> I work in electric aviation, and we're looking at similar hybrid fixed/vtol/distributed designs. You need the VTOL for most practical drone applications including delivery, but you need fixed-wing linear flight for range. It's better to use many small fans for the VTOL part for reliability and stability, and it's more trouble that it's worth to try and re-use the same thrust units for hover and for forward flight (the design points are completely different). The main clever thing that strikes me about this design is the twin boom, which minimizes drag in forward flight and is very frugal with support structure for the lift fans.

On the other hand, this drone doesn't look production-ready to me. Too many exposed wires and servos. I don't rate its chances in a good downpour.

<comment><USER17> Any idea why the right tail is a different shape? Is that an antenna sticking out? Why the bulbous white part?

<comment><USER18> I believe that's a Pitot tube. It's to determine the airspeed of the drone.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Related topic... Drones delivering blood in Rwanda -- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnoUBfLxZz0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnoUBfLxZz0)

<comment><USER20> I can see specialised sectors where this will, like emergency / rapid medical supply delivery.

More difficult to see a regular urban / suburban application working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I'm always excited by reading these articles, my mind always goes back to the boring problems like privacy and noise.

<comment><USER22> there are simple solutions for minimizing drone noise :)

<comment><USER23> Sadly, shotguns within city limits must remain secure inside your vehicle...trying to figure out a more legal and safer way.

<comment><USER24> Probably not legal but definitely safer:

[http://jammers4u.com/drones-jammer](http://jammers4u.com/drones-jammer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Once drones really take off, I'm concerned about their impact on birds, bats and other aerial animals. Will we see bird hits left, right and centre? Will these corporations petition to "cleanse" their airspace of all birds and bees so that their drones don't take a hit? Nobody seems to have thought of this angle...

<comment><USER26> So long as drones are reasonably slow (bird-like speed) birds will get out of the way. Now, animals might be stressed or displaced by this which could be a bad "impact". But I doubt they'll be falling out of the sky. You don't see many birds colliding with bigger/faster birds.

<comment><USER27>
      birds will get out of the way

Windmills are _completely stationary_ , yet birds collide with them all the time.

<comment><USER26> When the windmills are stationary (the _blades_ that is), birds very rarely collide with them. When the blades do move, they are often a lot faster than these drones (120-180mph is not uncommon).

<comment><USER27> "Dr. Shawn Smallwood's 2004 study, spanning four years, estimated that California's Altamont Pass wind "farm" killed an average of 116 Golden Eagles annually... Smallwood also estimated that Altamont killed an average of 300 red-tailed hawks, 333 American kestrels and 380 burrowing owls annually – plus even more non-raptors, including 2,526 rock doves and 2,557 western meadowlarks"

[http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms- kill-...](http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms- kill-10-20-times-more-than-previously-thought.html)

<comment><USER28> How big is that farm to cover the territories of that many eagles? On first glance that looks like an amazing claim.

<comment><USER27> Almost 5,000 turbines.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This video is exactly two years old, the drone looked the same: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_zoJfkElmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_zoJfkElmw)

</comment><comment><USER30> What are the rules if a drone crashes in my garden. Is it mine? Do I have to spend time and energy giving it back?

<comment><USER31> By 2030, if GoogMazon's drone incidental landing feature is implemented, you will be required to put it into your house and rate it 5/5, lest your capital credit score is demoted for disrespecting our corporate overlord.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Alphabet wing needs to be at the forefront for creating policy that's serves both customers and businesses yet still avoids the swarm of nuisance, noise pollution, privacy violation, and operational failure. The only way to avoid public backlash.

Required are

1\. Established routes

2\. Operational failure protocols

3\. Limits in Distance veering from established routes for deliveries

4\. Collision avoidance

5\. Noise to height ratio

6\. Minimum and maximum speed requirements

7\. Capability limits e.g. Video, audio, recording, delivery.

8\. Color codes

9... What else.

(inspired by hn comments)

</comment><comment><USER33> It will be interesting to see the implementation of three dimensional drone traffic.

Who is working on the drone path guidelines, and traffic control policies?

<comment><USER34> I feel like automated flight could always avoid incident by detecting all objects (at the same elevation) within $x feet, and if the object is north of you, move up $y feet, and if it's south, move down $y feet, unless another object is above/below you, in which case veer $z degrees clockwise and continue travel until you can change elevation?

<comment><USER35> For aircraft to aircraft there's a automatic advisory which coordinates this between aircraft.

[https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Airborne_Collision_Avoid...](https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Airborne_Collision_Avoidance_System_\(ACAS\))

I've heard some Airbus have it tied into their auto pilot too.

When all else fails, the rule is "turn right".

<comment><USER34> Cool, yeah, seems pretty straight-forward?

I think we may never have fully self-driving cars because fully self-flying cars is so much easier, and better! It just needs to get quieter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Drone deliveries is one of those ideas that look simple and always almost within reach, but the more people try them the more they reveal their complexity.

I wonder why hasn't any company just proposed or built a network of pipes in which autonomous pods can zip around to deliver goods. Doesn't seem too expensive- the pipes don't even need to be interred outside cities and they don't need to be huge- just enough to deliver grocery-sized stuff. Seems immediately feasible and with a load capacity that air deliveries will never support.

<comment><USER37> Victorian London had the London Pneumatic Despatch Railway for the Post Office.

[https://www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2013/12/londons- vi...](https://www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2013/12/londons-victorian- hyperloop-forgotten-pneumatic-railway-beneath-capitals-street)

Edit: Oh, and many large late Victorian shops and offices had pneumatic tube systems for passing money away from the shop floor, or exchanging messages. They're still made:

[https://www.aerocom.co.uk/air-tubes](https://www.aerocom.co.uk/air-tubes)

<comment><USER36> Of course, I know of the Victorian pneumatic tubes. But with today's technology would be very different: the pods would be electric and autonomous, and the pipes would be nothing else than enclosed rails. The routing would be performed by the pod itself in communication with the pipe, and the pods could use radar to avoid bumping into each other.

It would be a rather simple system, really: a closed pipe with a rough guide, with sensors and data exchange points every now and then and at junctions. The pods would not have to be very fast: 60km/h would be already a fantastic speed inside cities when the only stops are start and destination point. The pipes can be taken to individual buildings (shops, offices, houses), but there could also be public delivery and shipping points on each street/ block. The standard (small) size and shape of the pods (or of their internal container) means that they can be easily manipulated automatically: for example, collected and shipped on different transportation systems such as trucks or rails to reach distant or unconnected destinations, then reintroduced into the pipes system.

Elon, where are you? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> We now live in a world with little capital constraints afforded to some entities. After a successful... pilot these drones could be rolled out as fast as the electric scooters appeared (barring local/state regs). Competition for the last-mile skies may become fierce as investors flock to own a piece of a brand new category. While I don't think it prudent to 'fly fast and break things' I can't help but think its inevitable that scale will happen quickly- and drone insurance along with it.

<comment><USER39> It's not about capital constraints, the issue is with regulatory constraints. As long as there is a 0.01% chance of an unmanned drone losing control and flying into the engine of an airliner on final approach, it will be heavily restricted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> High frequency noise pollution until they fly like owls.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have my reservations about drone deliveries. But if they are proven to be reliable and somewhat cost-effective, I would pay a 10-15%+ premium to get my groceries delivered by airdrop. What's more valuable, your time or your money?

<comment><USER42> What's wrong with a grocery van dropping them off?

<comment><USER43> It would be nice if a drone could make deliveries to a spot in my backyard. There are too many packages being stolen from people's front porch in my neighborhood.

<comment><USER44> Calling it now: thieves will use cheap drones of their own to steal your packages with minimal risk to getting caught.

<comment><USER45> Or just shoot down the delivery drones

<comment><USER46> I'm very sure the drones would have cameras to catch the culprits. You wouldn't want to destroy property owned by a $800B corporation.

<comment><USER47> The strength of that defense depends on whether the cameras are streaming live feeds to a remote server, or just storing it locally.

<comment><USER44> A complete camera and RF transmitter is only a few grams in weight and negligible in power draw. (I fly a tinyHawk which is 42g including the drone, camera, RF stuff, flight controller, frame, motors, props AND battery) I can't see them NOT having real-time camera feeds, especially since they have actual pilots in control of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We don't have amazon so I'm not used to this extreme hurry this seems to be targeting. If I order something I usually go pick it up at the shop on the corner after 48-72h. In rare cases the day after or even delivery to my door (I prefer pickup tbh). I thought same-day or next-day delivery was already widespread in e.g the US. Is this a push to shorten delivery even more? Hours?

<comment><USER48> Amazon Prime Now (select locations only) already has delivery within a couple hours. This is about reducing costs of such services.

<comment><USER26> Are people willing to pay for it? How much? I'd probably rather go for 5% cheaper and delivery within 48h, for example. Is there a big market for "stuff, now"? I realize once you get used to it, you get used to it. I used to live in a smaller town where normal delivery was a week, now I live in a big city and can usually get 1-2 days and I can imagine how I'd feel if I had to go back to a week.

<comment><USER48> 1hr delivery is $10ish, 2hr is $5ish. It depends on what you order.

Edit: To clarify, most people don't use this most of the time, because most of the time 24-48hour delivery is fine. That said, it is VERY convenient when you realize you need X today and cannot wait. Even with the shipping fee, an Amazon basics cables is often cheaper than a trip to Best Buy.

<comment><USER26> Yeah I think one of the reasons I don't quite see the appeal is the lack of an Amazon (or equivalent). There is just no place that has everything and probably also has it cheaply. A cheap cable I'd need to chase online for an hour and then probably register at the obscure web shop where it was cheapest. It's a hassle, but also I kind of enjoy the lack of the shopping monoculture Amazon brings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The article says that they actually only did exactly one delivery. And they don't mention any specific details about more deliveries.

</comment><comment><USER50> Trust TC to put a 9MB file in their articles, ublock is quick to deny it

</comment><comment><USER51> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21295652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21295652)

</comment><comment><USER52> buzzing to a house near you!

</comment><comment><USER53> How would this ever compete with land-based delivery? What are the numbers?

<comment><USER54> I don't think it's really meant to compete directly to start with. This is a technology PoC that will be initially be used to deliver small, "I need it now" packages to locations that are easily air-accessible but might be a pain to get to via driving. In the future it's likely this will be a complement to normal ground-based delivery for heavier packages and packages in high-density areas, probably with a "mothership" ground vehicle or small local warehouse as a base of operations.

<comment><USER55> > locations that are easily air-accessible but might be a pain to get to via > driving

Also known as everywhere in a city

<comment><USER27> But an inner city context is exactly the worst for drone delivery. Where do they drop it safely? How do they navigate to that low an elevation around high rises, awnings, trees, overhead wires, etc.? How do they avoid pilferage or outright theft? Animal damage?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Why are companies so intent on turning this planet into an auditory hell hole?

I know happy people consume less than unhappy people, but it's probably just not giving a fuck about the negative externalities and having long since captured any public body that would interfere on behalf of sanity.

<comment><USER57> Do you feel the same way about cars that are much bigger and consume more fossil fuels?

Wing had to get approval from the FAA and the city to operate and noise level is regulated.

<comment><USER58> I would be skeptical that an electric mail truck on a route is less fuel efficient than a hundred drone trips back and forth.

<comment><USER11> It seems pretty improbable to me too. Is anyone aware of any numbers published by Wing or other drone delivery companies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> A pilot program to have pilot-free vehicles piloted by pilots

</comment><comment><USER60> Is it illegal to shoot these down and take their contents?

<comment><USER61> You just named two things that are already illegal. Why would there need to be a new law?

<comment><USER62> To make it legal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> How much cost/effort would it be to string up safety nets in urban areas for drones? My biggest concern with drones is that they fail, and that means they're landing on someone's head. If a city invested in nets, maybe 100ft above the ground, I imagine you could have a much less anxious civilian population with drones flying overhead. Someone tell me why this is a silly idea.

<comment><USER64> Birds

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Cool these can be shot down ... skeeting shooting now drone shooting/treasure hunting.

Also, so the sky is going to be littered with drones delivering packages from cold syrup to condoms? Further, aren't these things noisy?</comment>