A collection of text mode fonts, system fonts and BIOS fonts from DOS-era PCs - <AUTHOR> http://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the time I asked about the "rock" font (from the Slackware days) on StackOverflow, and got WAY more information than I could possibly have expected: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/226593/where- can-i-...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/226593/where-can-i-find-a- modern-version-of-the-rock-or-t-console-typeface) Sadly, I'm not in a Linux console very often these days.

<comment><USER3> What an incredible answer. I love posts like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related, and similarly awesome:

SGI screen fonts: [https://njr.sabi.net/2015/11/01/sgi-screen-fonts- converted-f...](https://njr.sabi.net/2015/11/01/sgi-screen-fonts-converted- for-os-x/)

DEC VT220 font: [http://blog.fosketts.net/2015/10/06/the-best-mac-os-x- termin...](http://blog.fosketts.net/2015/10/06/the-best-mac-os-x-terminal- font-glass-tty-vt220/) (related blog post as canonical site appears to be down)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's Commodore 64: [http://style64.org/c64-truetype](http://style64.org/c64-truetype) Atari 400/800: [http://members.bitstream.net/marksim/atarimac/fonts.html](http://members.bitstream.net/marksim/atarimac/fonts.html) and more Tandy fonts: [http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/trs80.shtml](http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/trs80.shtml)

Just looking at these fonts makes me smell the techy plastic of those old consoles.

<comment><USER6> +1 for KreativeKorp's wonderful archive of fonts: [http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/index.shtml](http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/index.shtml)

They also have the Apple II fonts, which I (incorrectly) superimposed on a VT520 using WebGL here: [https://langworth.com](https://langworth.com)

<comment><USER7> Save functionality doesn't work on your site :(

<comment><USER6> It's not that long. You got farther than anyone else though ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The IBM VGA8 sent me into a funk of nostalgia not only for the early 90s, when a trusty 386 was my best and only friend, but also for 99+, when my first forays into Linux forever cemented the default console font in my visual memory.

This is my terminal font now, and I don't care what anyone says.

<comment><USER9> Oh good, it's not just me. I've set it as my default font for emacs, terminal and window manager, and it's really great watching people get all nostalgic when they visit my desk.

(Though I'm on PxPlus VGA9.)

<comment><USER10> Ha, yes, I've done this too over the past year. Including on isolated networks where transferring things from the Internet is mildly complicated, but I gotta have my PxPlus VGA9.

It is amazing how comforting it is to use that font. It's not the first one I encountered certainly, but it was there for what seems like a long time, and for many formative experiences, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "For TrueType fonts, Microsoft has somehow seen fit to require an unsupported registry hack"

this is an interesting comment. iirc it is because most 'fixed width' true type fonts aren't actually fixed width enough to not make a mess out of the console when used there... any pixels that bleed out of the fixed width bounds are left behind when removing the character.

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070516-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070516-00/?p=26843)

<comment><USER12> So how do Linux and Mac graphical terminal emulators manage to use monospaced true-type fonts? Granted, sometimes box drawing characters don't appear fully seamless, and sometimes a character printed on console isn't in the chosen font, so the fallback font mechanism kicks in and the glyph is rendered with some non-monospaced font and looks ugly and out of place, but by and large, it seems that most terminal emulators manage to work just fine with true-type monospaced fonts.

<comment><USER13> They redraw more than it would be strictly necessary. Remember that the linked post refers to Windows 95, and the corresponding state of the art in the Unix world was bitmapped X11 fonts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone have something similar for the original mac fonts? [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Original...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Original_Mac_fonts.png)

<comment><USER15> There's this: [http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/urbanrenewal.shtm...](http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/urbanrenewal.shtml)

Edit: And this: [http://www.andreagrell.de/eworld/download1.html](http://www.andreagrell.de/eworld/download1.html) (Fontforge can read/convert .sit "suitcase" files)

<comment><USER5> Thanks. That ParcPlace font really takes me back. I still have a copy of my beloved August 1981 "Smalltalk Issue" Byte Magazine, which I reread so many times.

<comment><USER16> I copied Cream to Apple IIs (as a "shape table font") that was used on many educational titles from Senac (a Brazilian organization that was doing research in computers in education)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's a picture :(

[http://int10h.org/images/text_mode_lives!.png](http://int10h.org/images/text_mode_lives!.png)

<comment><USER18> Pretty sure encoding it into DOM would take way too many elements and be unnecessarily slow to load.

<comment><USER19> Someone needs to write an ANSI to CSS converter that can work inline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Discussion from when this came out last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021430)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's like having a BBS in my web browser.

This does bring back a lot of memories of sitting in front of a 486 trying to get Commander Keen to load.

<comment> nils-m-holm Make that a 286! :) A 486 was far out of my budget back then. Fun days, anyway!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If someone was wondering, the website is made using IBM VGA8 font. Going to try it as my konsole font.

Edit: Can't get konsole to use true-type fonts.

<comment><USER22> Actually the top right holds a font switcher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The "PS/2 thin fonts" ([http://int10h.org/oldschool-pc- fonts/fontlist/#ibmps2_isa](http://int10h.org/oldschool-pc- fonts/fontlist/#ibmps2_isa) ) look very similar to the larger sizes of the X "fixed" font ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_\(typeface\)) ) which I've taken a liking to using for just about everything, including in my terminal and editor windows.

Also noticed that the owner of the site, VileR, seemed familiar... then realised he's one of the authors of this astounding demo: [https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break- al...](https://trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/8088-mph-we-break-all-your- emulators/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice. Related, if you need some old-school look bitmap fonts, but need more unicode glyphs: [https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs- fonts.html](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I always found BIOS fonts ugly, especially the uppercase and lowercase D letters.

What I _do_ like are monospace fonts having one-story lower A letters. My short list of modern fonts with this feature:

\- Monaco (Mac-only, 9pt and 12pt bitmap); "()" and "[]" appear circle- and square-like, resp.

\- Anonymous 9 (Mac-only, bitmap)

\- Anonymous (TTF, like Anonymous 9)

Plus, some monospace fonts have one-story as cursive/italics letter forms.

Anonymous Pro has two-story a and has much more complete Unicode coverage; has more latin-like proportions (x-height) and has (not strictly necessary) serifs on eg. letter C, lower letter F, etc. so probably doesn't go well with a sans font for other text?

<comment><USER6> Monaco bitmap 9pt should have a warm place in every classic Mac user's heart, along with Helvetica 9pt.

If you want a flashback into Classic Mac development, a while back I tried some development with MetroWerks CodeWarrior, Symantic C++, and more, and I took screenshots: [https://imgur.com/a/scNE2](https://imgur.com/a/scNE2)

<comment><USER25> I spent so long looking for a font that rendered on Windows like Monaco 10 did on Mac that I wound up just making it myself, with a few changes. I called it Monocle and I still use it.

[https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/517659/monoclefix...](https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/517659/monoclefixed)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Missing the Apple II fonts: [http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/apple2.shtml](http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/apple2.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER27> My BBS nostalgia is spiraling out of control right now. This is so rad.

</comment><comment><USER16> Shameless plug:

Also, not pixel-perfect and with many symbols absent from the original, is [https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font](https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font).

Sadly, it never made it to the PCs, being confined to mainframe terminals.

<comment><USER28> That's actually really nice. Reminds me a little of Computer Modern. Very legible.

<comment><USER16> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The Hyundai XT clone my parents bought for me had an ATI Small Wonder Graphics Solution card. Such a tease: It came with a demo diskette that could show off the 640x200 16-color mode it (and my monitor) supported, but of course no games used it as anything but CGA.

<comment><USER30> I remember those Wonder devices as well. They could emulate Hercules or CGA, but not EGA. The two available modes didn't look very different on a monochrome monitor though

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some time ago I was looking for DOS era fonts (for the grub4dos project) and found quite a few, see here (there are some previews of converted fonts):

[http://reboot.pro/topic/19076-grub4dos-menu-font- type/](http://reboot.pro/topic/19076-grub4dos-menu-font-type/)

I just checked the links to the actual fonts on the thread above and they seem still all working.

</comment><comment><USER32> For anyone wondering how to set their macOS Terminal font to IBM VGA, select the font, set your font size to 16 and turn off the anti-aliasing checkbox.

</comment><comment><USER33> Love this website, we need more sites like this!

</comment><comment><USER34> How bad is the legal status of this web site?

<comment><USER35> I'm curious about this. Can anyone elaborate on this?

I mean, the fonts on this site are >30 years old, so:

\- would it really be 'illegal' to share these files

\- would the copyright holders (say, IBM) have any reason to take a site like this down?

<comment><USER36> Copyright terms are much longer than 30 years, so unfortunately, it's probably illegal without permission from the copyright holders. It's unlikely that they will take action, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is quite appealing

</comment><comment><USER38> Too bad most of these can't be installed on a Mac :(

<comment><USER39> Which ones? Did a straw poll of the .ttf fonts and I could install all of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> too bad they dont work in the browser

<comment><USER41> They do if you convert them to webfonts, it's a few seconds with FontSquirrel

<comment><USER40> they will not be pixel perfect. antialias make them blurry. i would love to be proven wrong though.

<comment><USER41> But they do work in the browser :) I can live with antialias and other things and other imperfections. Old monitors were blurry too.

<comment><USER42> Old monitors were not blurry in good condition, and the distortions from applying un-needed AA to these fonts don't resemble what an out of focus monitor will do.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did group chat never really take off? - <AUTHOR>

In the online world, instant messaging, email, video chat, and even Facebook walls have become popular mainstream mediums of communication. But why is it that the concept of group chat never took off?
If you are separated from your friends for a long time, you can keep in touch with each of them with any one of the various popular mediums of communication. But there's no way to feel the live company of a group of your friends online (IRC channels are not included because they involve mainly strangers).
People love talking to their friends one-on-one over instant messaging or video chat, but for some reason you don't see people talking live to more than one person online. Why is this the case? Is it a problem with the medium? If so, how can the medium be improved to fix this? <comment><USER2> I think we've gotten better at compartmentalizing our conversations. When IRC and AOL chatrooms were big, the idea of online communication was fairly new. Nowadays, most people can handle the concept of asynchronous chatting with ease-- being able to follow multiple, non-real time (in the sense that you aren't forced to listen to the person at that moment in time-- a chat line can be read instantly, or when you're done with what you're doing) conversations at the same time.

To that end, most people don't even think about having group chats. They compartmentalize what they're doing into single units of required information, and then go to each person they need that unit from individually. Let's say you're having a party at Bob's place, Jill is bringing the food, and then you're meeting at the movie theatre at 6 beforehand. It's almost an ingrained reflex to converse with Bob in one chat window about cleaning up beforehand, while talking with Jill in window 2 about how many peppers to use, all while telling Alice and Eve to hold on while you hammer plans out in windows 3 and 4.

And the thing is, while this seems inefficient, from the side of who needs to know what, it's actually simplified. Bob doesn't need to know what kind of peppers are going to be in the food in order to take care of what he's doing. Neither does Jill need to know the details of which cleaning crew is going to be at Bob's before the party. And all Alice and Eve want to know is which movie theatre it is and how late the party's going til. For the most part, 1-to-1 communication does what we need it to without being overwhelming (as the chat window would end up being if we had Alice, Bob, Eve, and Jill with us in the same IRC channel).

Which isn't to say there aren't situations wherein having groups of people are useful. But those are generally defined as "meetings", and there's both explicit and unsaid rules that usually pertain to such things-- there's a point to the meeting, an agreement to not speak over each other, a meeting leader that has a syllabus to follow. You're not going to have 3 separate conversations going on where 2-3 people of the 10 at the table are talking across the table to each other during the meeting. And any meeting that doesn't have this sort of order imposed on it ends up being a waste of time, because no information gets passed on and nothing gets resolved. All you end up with is a mass of chaos wherein you have to tease bits of meaningful conversation out in a process roughly equivalent to trying to get a pair of headphones out of a ball of wire that's been sitting at the bottom of a desk drawer for a couple years.

tl;dr: I don't think it's a software issue so much as it is a wetware issue-- meaningful unstructured communication gets exponentially more difficult when more people are involved.

</comment><comment><USER3> It feels like it actually was common in the 90s, though maybe that's just people I knew. But both techie and non-techie groups I knew in high school had chatrooms that groups of friends would frequently visit and 'hang out' in--- AOL or IRC chatrooms, depending on the circle of friends. It does seem like that sort of thing has gotten less common, though; not sure why.

I do still use IRC for that purpose (not just for large groups filled with people I don't know irl), but admittedly it's mostly with more-technical groups of friends these days. It doesn't seem that commonly using AOL-style chatrooms to chat with rl friends is as common among 'normal' people as it was in the AOL days.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it's just because the technology for it sucks, and I think it's a great idea for a startup -- you know, the idea of making it easy to just hang out with a group of friends online.

I think the difficulty of setting it up is multiplied by the size of the group: if it's difficult for 3 people to coordinate on installation and configuration of the technology (software) then imagine how difficult it is for a group of 7 people. Maybe the difficulty grows exponentially ..?

</comment><comment><USER5> It's awkwardly or not supported by the IM clients people use, that's why.

On another note, group chat is kind a crappy experience. It only takes 3 people talking for it to become impossible to follow, and the IRC idlers culture is foreign and strange to people.

</comment><comment><USER6> I believe group chat happens sometimes on a forum I have a membership with for people who are deathly ill and/or have deathly ill family members. Such people tend to have trouble getting out much and are willing to make the effort to do a group chat. They aren't going anywhere anyway.

There are logistical problems with having an extended live online group discussion, like bathroom breaks and the need to eat or drink (and the need to signal people that you are going to the bathroom, something you don't have to explicitly state in person when you get up and head for the loo). There are reasons why IRL gatherings very often revolve around food or involve food: It's the best way to keep people together for an extended period of time. If there is no food, drink, or bathroom access, you have a pretty short time frame before people will start leaving to go meet those needs. Some group members have a much shorter chain in that regard (people with small kids in tow, elderly people, people with serious medical conditions) and that means that unless you have somehow established a core group of ridiculously hardy individuals who can go for long periods without eating, drinking, or going to the bathroom, your group isn't sustainable for long at all in the absence of such amenities.

(Individuals who are that hardy are probably not much available for online group chat. They are at the pub or out hiking up some mountain or traveling in some foreign country without good internet access -- which is exactly where I would be much of the time if I weren't medically handicapped.)</comment>


Apple removes purchased movies, offers rentals in return - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/drandersgs/status/1039270646243414016 <comment><USER2> Yeah, but that's not really what happened. According to the letter, the content provider removed the content, so Apple had to in turn, remove the content.

And the counter to this is of course - if you bought it on disc, you'd still have it - and that's 100% correct. Digital media has different licensing then purchased physical media so digital purchases that are "streamed" must also follow those different licensing restrictions.

Or I'm completely wrong?</comment>


Ask HN: How have you dealt with the sharp edges of the Macbook Pro? - <AUTHOR>

Even though I have been using my mbp for a few weeks now, I thought I must be typing wrong. Having re-tried my typing style on my old laptop, and asked my wife to try typing on the MBP, I realized I wasn't alone with feeling the ridiculously sharp edges.<p>What solutions have you guys used to solve this problem? I am sure I am not the first to encounter this on HN...or am I ? <comment><USER2> I've had my mbp for a few months now and haven't had any problems with the edges. You could possibly try and adjust the way you access certain keys, I believe I had to make a few adjustments once I started using mine. Give it time and I'm sure you will adjust.</comment>


Live Webcast: Copenhagen Suborbitals Nexø II Rocket Launch - <AUTHOR> https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/webcast/ <comment><AUTHOR> The launch was predicted for between 6 and 13h UTC. It's currently 6:43 UTC, and they're about to start the liquid oxygen fueling. The commentary just said launch will be "soon" after that.</comment>


Tesla's Musk sells $10M in flamethrowers in four days - rwx<comment> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-musk-flamethrower/teslas-musk-sells-10-million-in-flamethrowers-in-four-days-idUSKBN1FL544 </comment><comment><AUTHOR> That Elon Musk can sell $10M worth of something as silly as flamethrowers, should be a sign of worry for car manufacturers. The cult surrounding Elon Musk is second to none in the auto world. Which car manufacturer could sell useless merchandise branded with the name of what is really just an experimental side project run by a sister company, not even the brand of the auto company itself?

<comment><USER2> Tesla investors should worry about stunts like these. Each time Musk sells nonsense products like these he trades brand equity for money. To be explicit, these flamethrowers diminish the value of Tesla.

<comment><USER3> This isn't even Tesla. It's the Boring Company. Tesla investors shouldn't care about other companies. Maybe do some research before posting.

<comment><USER4> There is another way to look at it.

How much of the Tesla valuation is due to Musk? 20, 30, 50, 90%?

Each stunt like this makes which ever percentage that is a bit bigger.

What happens if or more like when Musk retires from Tesla to focus on SpaceX or another company? He's running effectively 4 companies atm Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX and the Boring Company eventually he could want or will have to focus on fewer ventures.

Tesla is effectively the only public traded company if he leaves the stock can tank and tank to the point where it would put them in serious trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah, the good ol' Spaceballs Merchandising technique. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRFQJCHcPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRFQJCHcPw)

<comment><USER6> Musk tweeted about that [0].

edit: I'd forgotten that there's a flamethrower at the end of the clip. That YouTube clip you posted is broken for me.

[0]: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/937447589460426752](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/937447589460426752)

</comment></comment><comment> rwx</comment><comment> People will buy any thing if it is endorsed/sold by celebrities.

</comment><comment><USER7> The real news is at 1:15. I don't know if he planned this, but if I was in Musk's shoes I'd create a fake flamethrower-rights movement just to ridicule those who would like to ban them so fast even before they could be accounted for a single fire or injured person, while doing nothing about guns.

</comment><comment><USER8> And Kylie Jenner sold over $250 million worth of makeup last year. Celebrity sells, what's new about this?

</comment><comment><USER9> I realise that this is a marketing stunt, but _potentially_ this could have a serious impact on the Boring Company. A flamethrower is a weapon, even if it's a 'toy' like Elon's flamethrower. This means the Boring Company is probably in violation of any open source license that prohibits use in evil applications - for example, the JSON license ([http://www.json.org/license.html](http://www.json.org/license.html)). I'm pretty sure that there's a bunch of other OSS licenses that prohibit their use in military applications too.

I don't seriously imagine for a second that anything will actually happen as a result of this. It's just fun to think about.

<comment><USER10> Interesting, though presumably as long as the flamethrower itself doesn't use the json library, they're clear. Though I now imagine a licence that blocks use by any company that manufactures or distribute weapons, for example. Or is in the coal industry. Is 'licence activism' a thing? Could it be?

<comment><USER11> It is a thing (most memorably a piece of software which is freeware normally, but you must make a donation if you air travel over a certain amount year), but it's rare. Most definitions of Open Source and Free Software do not include licenses with such restrictions (a core freedom being being able to do _whatever_ you want with the software).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had to check, it's the 2 of February and not the 1st of April.

</comment><comment><USER13> Shouldn't it read "Boring Company's Musk"?

</comment><comment><USER14> I think in the name of decency the headline should reflect that this is about butane-powered novelty toy, not a defence contract.

</comment><comment><USER15> To the surprise of everyone involved, I'm sure.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is so weird.

</comment><comment><USER17>
        Musk!

        He'll sting you with his dreams of power and wealth.

        Beware of Musk!

        His twisted twin obsessions are his plot to rule the world
        And his employees' health.

        He'll welcome you into his lair

        Like the nobleman welcomes his guest

        With free dental care and a stock plan that helps you invest!

        But beware of his generous pensions

        Plus three weeks paid vacation each year

        And on Fridays, the lunchroom serves hot dogs and burgers and beer!

        He loves German beer!

</comment><comment><USER18> This is probably a controversial opinion, but there's are similar forces at play here with Musk's flamethrowers and Trump's MAGA hats.

<comment><USER19> 'Celebrities' sell crap when they endorse it. What's new?</comment></comment>


Reddit bans non-ISIS supporter for posting ISIS videos on r/CombatFootage - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/6i9h9e/islamic_state_raqqah_wilayah_presents_the/ <comment><AUTHOR> Related relevant discussion in here, too: [https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/6ia39n/redd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/6ia39n/reddit_admins_appear_to_be_censoring_uarab/)

> As YPG veteran and SDF supporter, Arab-Moroccan has filled a vital hole in > the spam of pro-regime and pro-SDF content that fills this subreddit daily. > Daesh is a massive player in this conflict, and there is almost no attempt > by other sources to post their content. Censoring him doesn't really > accomplish anything. Watching Daesh propoganda videos is what motivated me > to go fight them in the first place.</comment>


Amazon cancels TV adaptation of Iain M. Banks' sci-fi Culture series - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21402585/amazon-cancels-tv-adaptation-culture-series-iain-m-banks-consider-phlebas <comment><AUTHOR> Now they can make movies. I'd like to see what Quentin Tarantino would do with _Use of Weapons_. Peter Jackson on _Inversions_.

<comment><USER2> Who would you have do Excession (my favourite)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Alfonso Cuarón. For _Player of Games_ , how about a spectacle by Julie Taymor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow already seven years since he died.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of Reddit's user supported monetization. - <AUTHOR>

So Reddit has really been pushing it's "Reddit Gold" membership thing lately which is mostly a vanity membership with the explicit purpose of "keeping the servers running with support from the community".
They have a little progress bar that resets each day giving users a visual way to see how much support Reddit needs and how much Reddit gold the users bought that day to help towards the progress.
I've been paying attention to this for a couple weeks now, and it seems to be working out really well for them. For example, today they hit 169% of their daily goal...which is awesome to see! The users are voluntarily paying for the site; something that in our ad-driven-and-supported-services world seems to be a crazy notion.
What do you all think about this? Can any Reddit devs or employees chime in? Has anyone tried anything similar to this before? <comment><USER2> I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it, but this is my first impression:

Reddit is a service that has truly created a community. And a community isn't just the good, it is the bad. For every bus driver being tormented that is saved with kickstarter story, you can find one where a user is being pestered and encouraged to commit suicide by trolls, or things like the Boston Marathon manhunt.

I feel as if the Reddit community is hitting a point of critical mass where one of two things are going to happen:

1\. It becomes much more segmented, with specific subreddits disregarding interaction between users who generally stick to a few specific few, and these communities do well because they are now the size of what used to be entire large chunks of Reddit.

2\. Reddit will fail to deliver enough new features fast enough to justify the spending, and it will result in many feeling slighted and we could see a digg- esque migration of users to some other service X that pops up.

Personally I have stopped using reddit as much as I used to, because I generally only peruse the programming and ruby/rails and clojure sections. Most of the stories I see posted are already on HN and have better discussion here. However, I am obviously a very specific case and the reddit userbase is quite widespread now that it has gotten so popular.

It really will be interesting to watch.

<comment><USER3> To be honest, your issue number one is basically how I think the site is supposed to work in the first place. It didn't take very long (even before the Digg influx) for the default subreddits to become just a sea of people where any discussions are both hard to have and difficult to read. However, the site gets infinitely better if you forego any of the default subreddits and you take the time to seek out all your areas of interest, and you cultivate a set of subreddits where the dialog matches your personal style and preferences. I think it's not a bad thing if the community segments, especially if a large portion of the overall community is not people you're interested in interacting with anyway...

I think Reddit has a huge longevity advantage over sites like the aforementioned Digg exactly because of the subreddits. You can consume as much or as little of the community as you want to and carve out an experience that suits your own tastes. With Digg, you either accepted the community as a whole, or you left...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I paid for a year's worth of gold in advance and my account was banned with 10 months of service remaining. I can't get a response from anyone explaining what happened or how I can get a refund for the unused service. Never giving them $ again.

It's interesting to note that their "progress meter" never tells you what the goal actually is - it's perfectly possible that their goal is very low, or that the entire thing is faked to generate interest/the perception of progress.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a redditor for more than two years, I think reddit gold is truly the most honest and sustainable way to make money off the site that is purely user- generated. We have seen how communities like Twitter and Facebook have responded to sites being taken over by ads. Also, as someone who has worked on social media advertising, they do not have as much returns as Adwords or other forms of PPC. Consequently, I see those advertising models die off as social media matures.

Reddit has intelligently put the onus of making money on the users. And letting people upvote people with gold, they have intelligently integrated the community feature with monetization which I feel is really sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wondered how expensive their serves actually are. 1 month of reddit gold ($3.99) pays for ~276 server minutes at the moment, or so they say. That's about 0.0145 cent per minute. In a 30 day month there are 43200 minutes. Using these rounded numbers a month of hosting therefor would cost $626.4.

Though I highly doubt that figure is really that low (or doesn't include bandwith and similar, if applicable) I somewhat wish it was because that would be a sign of craftsmanship.

Unlike other similar companies who spend several hundred thousand dollars over two years just on hosting and go bankrupt, despite getting 1% of the traffic.

<comment><USER7> $626.4 would be for one server. $626 x 276 servers would be $172800 per month.

<comment><USER8> Units, people! If you have $626.4 / (server month), how do you get to $172,800 / month?

You need to multiply by servers. But what are our units on the 276 number you use?

$3.99 = 276 server minutes.

or 1 = $3.99 / (276 server minutes)

Dollars per server-month. Not servers. You can't multiply by 276 and get dollars per month.

<comment><USER7> I misread, sorry. I thought $4 paid one minute for 276 servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the idea. If the users are the one paying the bills then the site will focus making the best user experience to please users. If the site is advertiser driven, then the focus will slowly shift to making advertisers happy and increasing ad revenue. I think Jeff Bezos said something like this when he was talking about the newspaper industry.

</comment><comment><USER10> I actually posted an article about this subject here a week or 2 ago called "The Rise and Inevitable fall of Reddit" located here:

[https://medium.com/p/1e1fcdea99c4](https://medium.com/p/1e1fcdea99c4)

That's if anyone's interested.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it works because some people feel a direct benefit from the services a gold account provides. Others feel that because they are on Reddit a lot they should be contributing to it. In the future I see the potential for a structure much like Wikipedia, public radio stations or PBS have created.

</comment><comment><USER12> I feel the idea is good, but they should actively pursue ways to cut server costs. For sites of their comparable size, they're wasting a lot of compute cycles.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems like another thing they stole from 4chan.

[http://4chan.org/pass](http://4chan.org/pass)

<comment><USER14> Reddit gold began in July 2010: [http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs- help.html](http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html)

4chan passes are pretty recent.</comment></comment>


My life in London's houseboat slums - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/london-houseboat-slum-rents-barge <comment><USER3> Here's my personal story, some may find interesting- I was finishing my masters in the UK and split up with my ex girlfriend, this meant I had to get a job quickly to sustain myself because I had nowhere to live and no money. I visited some different groups of friends who were kind enough to let me stay for a few days on their couch but I couldn't risk outstaying my welcome.

At the same time the Occupy protests were happening in St Pauls. I secured a short term contract in an investment bank, and stayed in a tent with the protestors while saving for a deposit to rent a room. I had to put on my suit and dash away from the camp in the morning before I was spotted, I'd then change before coming back in the evening. I washed in the local swimming pools.

Looking back on it, it was nuts that I was able to finish my thesis. So yeah, rents are high, you need to know someone to make it in London.

<comment><USER4> _dash away from the camp in the morning before I was spotted_

Just to clarify: you mean they wouldn't have liked it if they had known that you were a banker?

<comment><USER5> Just to explain, it was protest and demonstration against economic inequality that took place in London, precisly St Paul.

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

<comment><USER4> Makes sense.

If it's anything similar to Occupy Wall Street, wearing a suit would be taken to mean that a person is some sort of terrible exploiter of the proletariat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really don't understand several things about this story.

1\. Why move to London if you're an unskilled worker? Are opportunities elsewhere even bleaker?

2\. London has a huge problem with absentee property owners because London real estate is currently a hot investment. It's a feedback loop. The more rapidly London properties appreciate, the more absentee owners there will be, and the more demand will rise. Why haven't bylaws been passed to curb this? For example, why aren't residences that are unoccupied by their owner for a significant portion of the year taxed at _much_ higher rates? It would probably be necessary to offer a renter rebate to compensate for increased rents, but this would discourage the practice of leaving residences vacant. If this doesn't actually drive prices down, at least it would prevent them from continuing to rise.

3\. Why aren't the barge-lords being treated like slum-lords when the barges they run are overcrowded, full of mould, etc.? I understand it's hard to legally enforce a tenant-landlord relationship when it's all under the table, but there must be something the police can do to hassle these guys until they improve conditions.

4\. Where are the government programs, volunteers, etc. that you usually see in other cities building low-cost housing? e.g. Why isn't anyone building legal barges with decent living conditions to compete with the barge-lords?

<comment><USER7> 1) You were born there. Your spouse lives there. Etc

2)!london is not monolithic; it has several local councils all with differing rules. They'd all need to agree and coordinate. I don't know why it isn't done better.

3) people living in slums ether don't know their rights; or how to enforce those rights. Sometimes their own legal status is dubious and they risk deportation. Even if they do know their rights, and how to enforce their right, and they can get the regulator to take action, and they're totally legal and above board, they may just end up without a home.

Housing in the UK is weird and broken and at the low end there are some strong weirdnesses built into the system.

<comment><USER8> 2) Council tax has all sorts of central govt limits on it, including the banding system. They can't fix the problem of empty property on their own.

3) A houseboat is not a _building_ , and is therefore exempt from all the laws about building minimum standards that were instituted the previous times London had a slum problem. I'm not sure if there even _are_ any standards about living on a boat, only standards about in relation to the river and other water users.

Housing in the UK is weird and broken. This is about 50% due to Right To Buy and the slow abolition of the council house.

<comment><USER9> I don't fundamentally disagree with the existence of Right to Buy, but it really required a comprehensive house-building program to back it up. Now we're fucked.

<comment><USER10> The requirement for all new development over a certain number of units (12? iirc) to provide a perecentage as affordable was supposed to deal with this but the govt has redefined affordable too. Some of my professional colleagues in their 30s not only qualified for these but struggled to afford them. this is where the system really failed IMHO.

<comment><USER7> > Some of my professional colleagues in their 30s not only qualified for these > but struggled to afford them. this is where the system really failed IMHO.

That is bonkers. It's just really weird.

The Tower Hamlets evidence pack has some eye-popping statistics. (Tower Hamlets are building more social housing than anywhere else in the UK)

They have 23,500 households on the waiting list for social housing.

48% of those are in category 1 or 2 which means they have medical need, or are homeless or overcrowded.

9500 households are over crowded. 1228 households are under occupied with 271 having 2 or more bedrooms than they need. (I think a bedroom is anyroom that can fit a bed in it.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That article is crazy:

1\. I lived in a car in London for 6 months. It was pretty fine. McDonalds was my washroom.

2\. These boats are rare. I mean really rare. This is not the norm. The boats and the moorings are damn expensive so this doesn't make sense even for the landlords. Even crappy moorings cost.

3\. You can go to the council and get a bedsit if you're in this situation. Literally the next day. Might have to share with a crackhead for a week but that's life.

4\. There are plenty of other places to go in the UK where the salary/housing cost ratio isn't crazy. I lived in Nottingham for a bit and had a 5 bedroom detached house in a nice bit for £500/month. £230/month will get you a 2 bed flat better than this.

This is a sob story - nothing more.

<comment><USER12> It's the Guardian. Its heavily biased reporting, warped to fit in with their agenda.

<comment><USER13> Their agenda here is completely reasonable. Successive UK governments have failed to address a crisis in housing.

Yes, a crisis.

<comment><USER12> There is only a 'crisis' if you don't believe in a free market.

It's like saying there's a crisis when it comes to affordable supercars.

<comment><USER14> Free market! London housing!? The politicians are all getting second homes funded by the taxpayer. The banks went bust but got bailed out by the taxpayer. "Emergency" low interest rates for the last 5 years.

The UK / London housing market is anything BUT a free market.

<comment><USER12> Not sure you understand quite what free market means.

<comment><USER14> I know that many of the banks would not be around if we had true free market conditions.

<comment><USER12> I agree, and the banks should have been allowed to fail. There should not have been any bail out. But that's a completely different argument to the one of "is there cheap enough housing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really don't understand why people are looking at the wrong problem the whole time. Housing is not a problem, transport is. Commuting from outside London costs more than 500 pounds. UK transport (trains, tube) got the worst price to quality ratio in the world. You can rent a whole house for 1000 outside London, but the cost of transport is equivalent to nice flat in London (plus painful commuting[1]). Many agencies won't let you a flat if you make less than 36k, but that's below average and way below median.

Any regulation or tax will we bypassed. Government should do the opposite, deregulate to reduce the cost of building new houses.

Startup idea: Cheap, sustainable and safe transport for London. Investors are reluctant to buy properties outside London, cause of poor liquidity, hence cheaper and faster transport would solve that problem. Elon! help!

[1] It's not only the time, but trains are so unreliable. 1mm of snow and everything stops. I can't image what would happen if there would be proper winter.

<comment><USER16> You could also just build higher in London, instead of building more around it.

<comment><USER17> I agree. I don't understand this reluctance to do so. I think it has a lot to do with good old british resistance to change and sticking blindly to some ridiculous traditions (2 taps in the sink I'm looking at you)

<comment><USER15> Sure, but the problem is with tube. It already works on its limits and higher destiny would require better city transport.

<comment><USER16> Higher residential density wouldn't add that much strain---the destinations (ie workplaces) still have the same density, it's just that commuters don't travel as far on the tube.

So you could make the system more intense, and less extense; concentrate the investments in tube upgrades on the centres.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So for £230 per month in London, you get an unpleasant, unsafe, tiny, and marginal place to live.

Given that it's one of the most expensive cities in the world to live ("typical" 2BR apartments in nice areas are more like £400-600 per WEEK), I can't say I'm surprised.

The ways people are willing to trade off comfort to live in the center of things sometimes surprises me, but not that much.

<comment><USER18> You can get a 3-room house with garden and parking for less than £300 per week. I know because that's what I have; 10 minutes by motorbike to Old Street, or 40 minutes by public transport.

The wildcard is your qualification of "nice area". There's a very wide scale, and what would qualify as "nice" somewhere else will be a lot more expensive here. I've never felt physically in danger, though I have had motorcycles stolen.

<comment><USER4> As an admitted tourist, my most tangible reference point was my friend's place in Marylebone, for which I believe he was paying about £500 pw. It was a 2 BR in a quiet, clean building but not over-the-top luxurious. I suspect the price came from the central location in City of Westminster.

Similar to NYC / SF prices if you do the conversion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Add '/print' at the end of the link for a less shitty reading experience.

[http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/london- houseb...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/london-houseboat- slum-rents-barge/print)

</comment><comment><USER20> I remember my friend moved to London a couple years ago. He said that tube tickets were taking up a large chunk of his income and barely had enough to pay for rent in his flat. He eventually moved back home to NZ 6 months later cause he was sick of being broke.

I know a few other of my friends have moved to London with great success, but I think the trick is to lock-in a well paying job before you move over there.

<comment><USER21> No..the trick is to find _some_ sort of network of friends before you go.

I went to London with about 500 pounds of cash and no concrete job, on a one- way ticket.

For a start - renting is out - you have to find someone who is willing to lend a couch. Living the highlife is out - no pubs for you. Your only status is to (1) clean the flat for the people who let you stay there and (2) look for jobs. This should be a full-time occupation until you find a job - any job. Your ability to continue to sponge off someone else is tied to how they feel when they get home tired and find you sitting on their couch, coupled with how quickly you can find employment and vacate said couch.

Locking in a well-paying job before you get there is like saying you should find a good looking girlfriend before you start university. It's not going to happen unless you are very established somewhere already and get a transfer, or are internet famous for something. Or you are going to get sold a pup and end up locked into a crappy job in a crappy part of town.

I found my first job within 10 days of landing, worked that for a couple of months, asked to be paid after 1 week and then spent the entire cash amount on a deposit for a short-term one-room flat, which took all my money so I ate pot-noodles for a week. Stayed there for 4 weeks until I amassed enough cash for a proper flat. By that time I found two other people who wanted to share and the three of us rented a decent place for a decent price. After that it was better jobs, more fun and a great time. I passed it on by helping other people out with time on the couch, coupled with strict rules on what goes on.

In case you think that was a fluke, I repeated the same thing about 4 years later, only this time it took 8 weeks to find a job because the economy was more strained. I had (marginally) more savings this time but it was more tense.

The hack for housing in London is finding a borough with low council taxes with the lowest transport zone you can afford, and if you have an established job, one which offers a short commute. And don't blow all your weeks surplus on a big friday night out including an expensive cab ride home.

The only trick is being hungry for success in a city that doesn't seem to want to give it to you unless you fight for it.

<comment><USER16> That's very start-up-y of you. But honestly, just interviewing at a few banks will get you a decent paying job before you move to town. (If you can bear that kind of work.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't imagine why so many people making under 2000 GBP after tax move to London. Especially younger people with no roots anywhere, why on Earth moving here under these conditions?

Part of the problem is the influx of recent young immigrants from other EU countries where they have it even worse and they seem to default to London when many cities in the UK would be much better at least as a starting point.

<comment><USER23> Do you mean, making under £20k after tax?

<comment><USER24> Might mean 2000/month?

<comment><USER22> Yep, I didn't realise I didn't mention it was per month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was in a similar situation but I was not living in a houseboat slum but was technically squatting for a short while. The reasons people do this is varied - they could be saving up to be able to pay down a deposit to live (and trying to find a decent place here is bad enough!), they could prefer to live 'in' London instead of outside due to the cost of transport and also more opportunities in London and so on. There are other factors as well - <USER2> example you had to have a NI and have a bank account to get paid, and to get an NI/bank account you needed a place to stay.

The thing here is that unless you are in the upper-middle income bracket then you are locked in the London rat race. London is good to live in for a few years but in terms of a lifetime here, it's not good or you find 'strategies' in evading council tax.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Comfortable rooms appear on flatshare websites from time to time, at typical > rents of £600 a month in areas such as Richmond.

Even if you are working at minimum wage* you are earning over £900 after tax. Assuming you spend £100 a month to get to work, that's still £200 to spend on food, the pub, whatever else takes your fancy. You could also save more by not trying to live in one of the most expensive areas of London. When I was there (ok nearly two years ago now), I was paying under £400 a month for a rather comfortable (and warm) house share in South Wimbledon. It was zone 3, and took 25 minutes to get to work in central London.

*A 'living wage' of £8.80 has been getting popular over the last few years, I'll use the UK minimum of £6.31 though. Also, yes I understand not everyone can get a full-time job, but bear with me for sake of argument.

<comment><USER27> Many US landlords I've seen will require the renter's income to be 3x the monthly rent. Is that not common in London?

<comment><USER28> Not in my experience. The requirement of 6 weeks' rent as a deposit is, however. I wouldn't be surprised if some ask for 8. This is partly what makes it so difficult to get in to the rental market for some people.

<comment><USER29> They might require as much as 6 moths (i.e. pay your rent in advance) if you cannot prove you have a (good?) job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Best comment I read from the article..

"That middle bit there, as you put it; "....it's depressing how easily you get used to the slugs, the dampness, the cold and the filth"....... _that 's_ what is counted on. This separation of living standards, it's manufactured. Yes there are some random elements mixed in, but by and large everything is engineered to be this way. Government, banks, housing moguls....they know they have people over a barrell, they know people just have to get on. They also know that if they keep it this way for long enough, not so awful as to make people revolt but awful enough to serve their greed, people will get used to it. It will become expected. Then people will feel lucky for having the things that should be standard for everyone, not one person excluded. You are indeed lucky, good Sir, but you feel that way because of what you've been put through. They made the System, and the System has made you this way because that serves a purpose. That purpose is to keep the rich rich, the poor poor and to make everyone believe that that's precisely the way it should be."

<comment><USER31> That sounds an awful lot like a conspiracy theory.

How about: someone has a boat, and the government lets them moor cheaply in central London. They make money renting it, out of natural human self interest.

<comment><USER30> I'm just sharing someone else's comment. The idea that the rich like to get richer and make the poor, poorer is pretty commonly thought.

<comment><USER31> Yes, but being common doesn't make it sensible or worth sharing here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Another interesting related article in The Guardian: [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-em...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-empty- properties-enough-house-homeless-continent-twice)

</comment><comment><USER33> I think the thing this article fails to mention is the perfectly adequate Public Transport system there is around London. I would think the number of jobs where you physically have to live in London would be very small. For everyone else there is Tube/Train/Bus/Coaches.

Complaining you have no money because you chose to live in Central London is like complaining you've got no money for food because you spent all your salary on payments on a Ferrari.

</comment><comment><USER34> This seems a rather odd article, there are many useful sites (particularly in London) that enable you to search for properties in a much smarter way these days, check out the tools on www.findproperly.com , find spare rooms on www.spareroom.com or even act as a property caretaker on www.guardiansoflondon.com

</comment><comment><USER35> There's no denying that London's an expensive city but there are plenty of options available for those on a budget: [http://www.gumtree.com/flatshare- offered/london](http://www.gumtree.com/flatshare-offered/london)

<comment><USER36> The cheapest on the first page is £300/month - about 25% more than the £230/month mentioned in the article. The second cheapest is £360/month - almost 50% more. If you're trying to demonstrate that there are alternative cheap places to rent, I'd say you failed.

And all of those rentals will require at least a month's rent up front, which is the main point that the article was addressing - _starting_ out renting is beyond the pocket of many people.

<comment><USER37> Filtering for <£60, there are still a few rooms in that site, some of which are "no deposit"; e.g. [http://www.gumtree.com/p/flats-houses/very-cheap- short-term-...](http://www.gumtree.com/p/flats-houses/very-cheap-short-term- share-rooms-no-deposit/1049970881)

I wouldn't enjoy living there, but it seems better than the boat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I stayed in a hostel for £5 each day (3-4 years ago) while in London. Wouldn't that plus a locked container somewhere be cheaper? Surely beats a car or a boat

<comment><USER39> 5 quid sounds unbelievably cheap for a hostel in London. Unless they have some special rule for not letting people stay longer than few days, they would be swamped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This article reads like the background of a William Gibson novel (VL).

Scary the future isn't brighter. Or maybe the interlopes are getting darker ?

</comment><comment><USER41> Anyone know Sam Forbes?! firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER42> Thanks for sharing! I salute you for having survived this!

</comment><comment><USER43> While they're in parliament, MPs can expense mortgage payments on a second home.

This isn't entirely unreasonable - it means you can be elected even if you're not already rich enough to own a second home in London as well as your home in your constituency.

But it does have the unfortunate side-effect that rising London house prices put cash in MPs pockets.

What we need is to do away with expense payments and instead give MPs a per diem, based on today's expenses and rising with CPI. That way, keeping a lid on housing, transport and council tax prices will be in their interests.

<comment><USER7> MPs get paid over £60,000 per year. If they cannot live on that they need to think about the nurses, teachers, etc who get paid less.

They don't need a second house in London. They do need London accommodation. It is bizarre that millionaire MPs get paid public money in the form of expenses on top of their wages to buy a second home in London.

<comment><USER43> I can understand expecting MPs to live in their constituency, and also that they need some London accommodation. If you're proposing it could work like a university halls of residence, I agree with that. My thinking with a per diem is any change would need MPs support, and they'd go for a per diem more easily than a cut in their benefits, however deserved it may be.

The origin of paying MPs was in the Chartist movement [1] - back when MPs were unpaid, no-one who relied on a salary to feed their family could get into parliament; only rich landowners who didn't have to work for their income could afford to be MPs. The intent of paying MPs is to allow working class and middle class people to stand for election.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism)</comment></comment></comment>


How Autocosmos.com Uses Azure Search - <AUTHOR> http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/autocosmos-finds-azure-search-as-a-service/

<comment><USER2> has anybody ever tried/evaluated boht AWS Cloud search [https://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/) and Azure Search? AWS seems a lot cheaper.

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm Evan an Engineer on Azure Search. I'm not aware of any published in depth comparison of the two services. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you'd like to give the service a try. We have a free tier that allows you to load up to 10k documents. If you do give it a try, please feel free to reach out to me at username at company.com.</comment></comment>


Oxford Undergrad CS Admission Interview Problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/admissions/ugrad/Sample_interview_problems <comment><USER2> I really like those questions - they seem very tricky until you think of some way to do it in a smaller subset or try to figure out the solution by doing the actual actions in your head. I think they're very different from the typical hiring interview logic puzzles you'd see in the companies, but I can't really express the difference...

Then again, I can't really figure out (an optimal) solution to the second one... [spoiler alert] Since you cannot know more about the function than the value itself, is there a better option than dividing the range into 3 equal segments, choosing the one with maximum and recursing? That would give 1/3^5 accuracy. On some values generated in a natural way, you could introduce bias to the segment-selection based on the values you get - but then you could prepare some data which would actually lower the accuracy that way...

<comment><USER3> I don't really see what you mean ("3 segments" suggests asking for f(1/3) and f(2/3) to me, but that's not enough data to know anything). I'll type what I thought, which may be the same thing.

If a < b < c, f(a) <= f(b) and f(b) >= f(c) then a <= m <= c; choosing e.g. 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 [EDIT: was 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, which is not optimal - see reply by jacobolus] allows you to find out in which 1/2 [EDIT: was 1/3] of the range you should look with three measurements.

You could recurse on the above, e.g. by measuring 1/4 + 1/8 and 1/4 + 3/8 if 1/4 <= m <= 3/4 [EDIT: match above corrections.]

Another interesting trick is measuring 1/2 + epsilon, which (almost) bisects the range with only two measurements. [EDIT^2: removed "(with negligible probability of m being in [1/2, 1/2 + epsilon] - we just hope that doesn't happen, so this doesn't work for adversarial input!). [EDIT: this actually works pretty well for non-adversarial input.]"].

[EDIT^2: I should've paid a bit more attention when writing this, thanks for the (many) corrections jacobolus!]

<comment><USER4> Measuring 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3 does not tell you which 1/3 of the range you should look. There are 3 cases to consider:

1\. f(1/3) is the biggest. In this case you learn that m is between 0 and 1/2.

2\. f(1/2) is the biggest. In this case you learn that m is between 1/3 and 2/3.

3\. f(2/3) is biggest. You learn that m is between 1/2 and 1.

* * *

Edit: as for measuring 1/2 + epsilon, it's no worse for "adversarial input". You just need to remember that your first pair of measurements tell you that either 0 ≤ m ≤ .5+ε or else .5 ≤ m ≤ 1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also relevant is the pre-interview aptitude test:

<http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/csatox/images/d/d4/Test10.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER6> Could some kind UKer(s) please explain to this American exactly how Oxford, Cambridge, and the UK university system works? I'm familiar with what A levels are, and that you supposedly apply to a particular college at each of Oxford and Cambridge, but then I hear about university-wide "departments", and I put that in my American-style mental model. Googling hasn't helped me, but perhaps I'm being unimaginative in search terms.

<comment><USER7> Only some UK universities have a collegiate system (Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, St. Andrews(?)). Most do not (I believe) and I imagine are roughly similar to US universities. At collegiate universities there is a split between what a college is responsible for, and what the university is responsible for. Lectures are university-wide, exams also are (you get your degree from the university not the college), departments belong to the university (so if the Enlgish department needs a new building then the university pays for that). All students (and staff) are affiliated to a college (you choose which college to apply to when you apply to the university, and the college decides whether to admit you). The college is responsible for their students accommodation needs, will usually provide a dining option, common room etc. The college provides teaching (so you go to the same lectures as everyone else, but your small group teaching, feedback on work etc. is organised by the college). I think those are the main distinctions.

Given that the colleges are different, this can mean it's important to choose the right one for you. For example, at Cambridge, Trinity College has an illustrious history in mathematics, and attracts excellent staff, so if you're accepted there then you might end up being taught one-on-two by a world renowned mathematician (Fields Medal winning Timothy Gowers for example). Other colleges with less of a reputation might have more trouble attracting the same type of staff. (this isn't to say that being an expert in your field makes you an excellent teacher of course...)

<comment><USER6> OK, this really helps; thanks! Let's say that you really wanted to study CS at Oxford; if you pick the wrong college to apply to, are you shut out from the university entirely? Or can you apply to multiple colleges at the same university at once?

<comment><USER7> Nope, you can only apply to one college at either Oxford or Cambridge per year (you can't apply to both universities, which probably makes sense as almost everyone who applied to one would probably apply to the other). There is a clearing system I think where if the college you apply to doesn't want you then other colleges can look at your application and choose to interview you, but I think that's fairly rare.

<comment><USER8> Whilst you're discouraged at all levels from applying to both Ox and Cam, I don't think it's true that you can't. But you're correct about the second interviews (at other colleges). This was actually pretty standard (for Biochem, at Oxford) when I applied and you went for the alternative interview (at a college you're assigned to, you don't get a second choice) before the first has made any sort of decision on you. There is a second safety net, whereby you can be 'pooled' (which is basically what you describe); if you don't have a college preference from the outset, you can apply directly to the pool (again, this is Oxford, not necessarily Cambridge)

<comment><USER5> You can't, UCAS won't accept your application. There are a few exceptions where you are allowed to apply for both, but in general you can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a bit of background, you're not required to have any programming knowledge when applying although most candidates will have done D&D Maths which covers topics like graph and bin packing algorithms.

<comment><USER9> One more thing to keep in mind: Cambridge and Oxford interviews are more about thought process than actual solutions. I've seen candidates with correct answers not get in while peers who never found an adequate solution make it.

Interesting questions, though.

<comment><USER5> I should hope that's true of interviews everywhere.

It's worth noting as well that Oxford is by far the most theoretical of all the CS departments in the UK.

<comment><USER10> As a student at Cambridge, I doubt Oxford is "far" more theoretical. The London Universities like Imperial are also notable for focusing on theory over practice.

I think they assume we can learn practical skills on-the-fly and they are not as beneficial as a solid theoretical grounding.

These Oxford interview questions are more difficult than I expected, especially under Oxbridge interview conditions. Like mentioned above, they want to see how you think over what you already know.

<comment><USER5> Generally all the top-tier universities are more theoretical than the lower tier universities.

Historically Oxford has been much more focused on the rigorous underpinning of CS by Mathematics than other universities, although in recent years they've been cutting down on this and moving closer to the CS syllabus offered by other top-tier universities.

Here's the course list for first year at Oxford:

      • Functional Programming
      • Design & Analysis of Algorithms
      • Imperative Programming I
      • Imperative Programming II
      • Digital Systems
      • Discrete Mathematics
      • Logic and Proof
      • Linear Algebra
      • Calculus
      • Probability

Unless you do CS with Mathematics at Cambridge, you'll probably be doing a much less mathematically intensive course.

<comment><USER10> In the first year all of us do Computer Science (2 papers), Mathematics (1 paper), and a science subject (1 paper, I did Physics). It is predominantly theoretical (something I found hard to cope with):

1st year: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0809/part1a-cst.html>

2nd year: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/0910/part1b.html>

3rd year: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1011/part2.html>

Although I think there is far too much content to learn thoroughly in three years, it does provide a broad understanding of what there is to know. Does Oxford have online course material, I'd be interested to take a look? I expect the universities overlap a lot but there might be some worthwhile additions.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps "theoretical" is the wrong word, what I meant is that Oxford courses tend to take a more formal & mathematical approach to topics than other universities.

<comment><USER11> As someone who studied computer science at Cambridge, I can assure you that Cambridge teaches at a very formal and mathematical level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I suspect the Oxford\Cambridge undergrad interviews have less to do with assessing technical competency and more to do with providing admissions with a reason to discriminate against state-educated kids. The amount of Oxbridge intake come from private schools is disproportionately high to be due to exam results alone, and is better explained by an ingrained negative view of those with a state education or old boys networks.

I've seen this in action, exceptional state school students turned down from Oxford, and utter buffoons (but with the correct background and accent) being accepted.

<comment><USER5> There's no statistical evidence showing this is the case. Students from high performing schools are disproportionately likely to apply to Oxbridge, but adjusting for academic performance there's no indication that Oxbridge discriminates.

Pretty much everyone applying to Oxbridge is applying with top grades, plenty of exceptional candidates from both state and private sector schools get rejected.

If you want to understand the real issues in social mobility I suggest reading the Milburn report which I think is one of the best reports I've ever seen a government produce: [http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/migratedd/pub...](http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/migratedd/publications/p/panel- fair-access-to-professions-final-report-21july09.pdf)

<comment><USER13> I didn't see that claim supported by that report. Did I miss it?

<comment><USER5> For the particular point that private school isn't the difference see this report:

[http://www.suttontrust.com/research/applications-offers- and-...](http://www.suttontrust.com/research/applications-offers-and- admissions-to-research-led-universities/BIS_ST_report.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [SPOILER for 4 - "Monkey beans"]

The answer is not probabilistic (that is, the last bean is either white with 100% probability, or black with 100% probability). This took me a while to figure out.

<comment><USER14> I'm confused at the first hurdle

What if the money picks out 2 white beans at the start?

"If they are the same he puts a black bean back in the urn"

<comment><USER15> I think the sentence's grammar is awkward. That pile next to the monkey has both black and white beans in it.

<comment><USER14> Ah I see, this is what confused me, there's no stipulation as to what beans are sitting next to him in a pile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looking at these questions just makes me feel stupid. ...and that kids is why I never went to Oxford.

Glad they're keeping standards high in those places mind.

<comment><USER16> > Looking at these questions just makes me feel stupid

"Stupid is as stupid does."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> All Discrete math, which it turns out is pretty useful for computer programmers

</comment><comment><USER17> For the first problem, "1. Tidy boxes":

(1) For each color, put all the cubes of that color in their own pile. So, get 10 piles, and in each pile all the cubes have the same color.

(2) Arrange these piles in ascending order from left to right on the number of cubes in each pile. So, a color with the fewest cubes is on the left, and a color with the most cubes is on the right.

(3) If the pile on the left has 10 cubes, then pack each pile in its own box, and we are done.

(4) Else take cubes from the pile on the right and put them on the pile on the left until the pile on the left has 10 cubes.

(5) Go to step (2)

This problem and solution generalize immediately to, for positive integers m and n, n colors, n boxes, and (m)(n) cubes.

Or, if we have n factories where each factory produces cubes of just one color and have n warehouses each of which needs m cubes, and the total number of cubes produced is (m)(n), then it is possible to ship the cubes from the factories to the warehouses so that each warehouse gets cubes of at most two colors. So, there is connection with the 'transportation problem'.

That problem is a special case of least cost capacitated network flows which is a linear programming problem with some special properties. In particular if all the capacities are integers and have an initial flow with all integers, then the simplex algorithm will find a least cost solution with integer flows. So, here is a way to integer linear programming for no extra effort. The general case of integer linear programming is in NP-complete. The simple algorithm on such networks is closely related to spanning trees.

</comment><comment><USER17> For the problem 4. Monkey Beans:

At each move, the number of beans in the urn falls by 1. So, after

23 + 34 - 1 = 56

moves, the number of beans in the urn will be 1.

At each move, the number of white beans in the urn either stays the same or falls by 2. Since the initial number of white beans is 23 and odd, as long as there are any white beans in the urn, the number is odd. Since the number of beans in the urn falls to 1, the number of white beans must fall to 1.

Suppose there is 1 white bean in the urn: If there are no black beans in the urn, then we are done and the last bean is white.

Else we keep playing and observe that at each play the number of white beans in the urn remains 1. That is, there is no way to remove the last white bean from the urn. So, in all cases, the last bean in the urn is white.</comment>


Yahoo wins motion to declassify court documents in PRISM case - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57593871-93/yahoo-wins-motion-to-declassify-court-documents-in-prism-case/ <comment><USER2> I'm switching back to Firefox and exploring Yahoo equivalents to google products? Hell must be getting pretty cold right about now.

<comment><USER3> Yahoo still doesn't use HTTPS by default, for email or search.

Not using HTTPS is huge, gift-wrapped present to the NSA. It also means that the NSA can get Yahoo users' communications without even having to bother Yahoo, as they can get it with the assistance of backbone networks. Lower legal compliance costs for Yahoo, and the NSA gets what they need.

Seriously, Yahoo is awful on privacy and security. Don't reward them with your business.

<comment><USER4> Hm, I think the HTTPS thing is overblown for sites that are hosted in the US. Almost no large sites do HTTPS termination on the actual app servers; it would be the simplest thing in the world to put the collection device behind the HTTPS endpoint.

Why bother trying to piece together data flows over a bunch of disparate backbone networks when you can just hook up a collector at the wellspring? I'd sure they'd be delighted to be able to tick off that whole company as "done", and set the verizon taps etc to ignore anything to them, secure in the knowledge they were getting it all elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> You're thinking about it incorrectly. While termination at a load balancer is common, at least then you're in the company's network by the time your data is being transmitted in the clear.

It's far different for traffic to be plaintext from a load balancer backend, switch, to server interface than over X number of hops.

<comment><USER4> > you're in the company's network

Yes, of course. What's incorrect?

I'm just saying that if you have unlimited ability to make secret tapping demands from whoever you want, you might as well make it easy for yourself and just go straight to the source.

<comment><USER5> >you might as well make it easy for yourself and just go straight to the source.

I feel as if I'm not fully understanding you. Are you saying that because you expect your traffic to be read by a government agency, you might as well let any/everyone see your data?

<comment><USER4> Sorry. I am evidently not explaining myself well.

I am saying that people seem to be putting a lot of trust into HTTPS to shield them from NSA monitoring. If I was the NSA, and could just tap whatever I wanted, I'd obviously set up my tap on the _other side_ of the encrypted tunnel.

And let's not exaggerate. Only a very few organisations would have any ability to read your data even if sent unencrypted, barring of course wifi. It's simply not true that "any/everyone" can see your data if you're on a private LAN at home.

That being said, of course I prefer HTTPS. I just have no illusions that it's going to stop someone who can just waltz into the DC holding an NSL. There's no security from someone with physical access to the network.

<comment><USER6> I think NSA is cognizant of the fact that they could lose the FISA authorization to collect from endpoints at the internet services sometime soon, while they're more likely to retain access to the backbones.

It's bass ackward, since access to the trunk lines lets you read everything. However, most people don't understand what internet backbones are. They do know what PRISM, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google are.

As such, I can see HTTPS providing some limited security from dragnet surveillance, but it certainly wouldn't help if you caught their attention. Remember, NSA can straight up break weak encryption, and SSL/TLS is probably in that category.

<comment><USER7> I think the ability to break SSL would be a major trump card that wouldn't be shown that easily - can you cite any sources?

<comment><USER6> First, FBI cracked 512-bit disk encryption in a recent case, seemingly with NSA help, so it seems they've got some pretty powerful brute forcing capabilities. SSL is generally only 256-bit. [http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/fbi-cracks- encrypte...](http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/fbi-cracks-encrypted- hard-disk-mere-weeks/2013-05-31)

Second, since some sites don't use Diffie Hellman key exchange (which provides for perfect forward secrecy), they don't even need to work that hard. They can just grab the keys in transit.

Third, with a MITM attack, you can just drop in a box that makes SSL connections on both ends transparently. Therefore neither endpoint knows the encryption is being routed through a third malicious point. See e.g. [http://www.zdnet.com/how-the-nsa-and-your-boss-can- intercept...](http://www.zdnet.com/how-the-nsa-and-your-boss-can-intercept- and-break-ssl-7000016573/)

None of this proves definitively that the NSA can do this, but it does mean that if you have something to hide you'd be foolish to rely purely upon SSL.

<comment><USER4> Some very doubtful assertions here.

> FBI cracked 512-bit disk encryption in a recent case

Very hard to believe that they brute-forced 512-bit AES. More likely they guessed, or otherwise located, the key, or found some implementation flaw in the software/device.

> don't even need to work that hard. They can just grab the keys in transit.

If and only if they have the private key. Which, I concede, they may well be able to get.

> Third, with a MITM attack, you can just drop in a box that makes SSL > connections on both ends transparently

No you can not, not without installing a cert on every single user's machine. This would have been noticed if it was going on.

I admit that now I think about it, putting taps on DC data connections and simply requiring sites or the DC to provide any and all private keys would be substantially less invasive/visible than actually putting taps into the building, and with basically the same effectiveness (except for the PFS thing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's good, but it's not US Constitution good. None of the companies involved should obey the law in this matter, and they should adhere to their moral responsibilities and reveal everything they know.

Plus, I doubt locking up the CEO's of the worlds largest tech companies would work out well for any government.

<comment><USER9> If they were arrested, they wouldn't be arrested for "failure to comply with national security requirements" or whatever. They would more likely be arrested for insider trading or something equally plausible.

<comment><USER10> Don't think current administration would risk that, republican controlled house is looking for any shred of a scandal to have hearings, they are itching to impeach Obama. More than likely you'll see the executive branch would do any business(advertising etc) with yahoo and military would do some knee jerk reaction like ban armed serviced personnel from viewing yahoo properties similarly to what they did with the Guardian. Its easier and safer to cut the money streams. Luckily for Yahoo it isn't much, unlike Microsoft or Att who have more to lose in terms of government contracts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "The Government shall conduct a declassification review of this Court's > Memorandum Opinion of [Yahoo's case] and the legal briefs submitted by the > parties to this Court," the ruling read.

What I don't get here: it was told many times that FISA court only hears one side, namely government. Here though Yahoo seems to be named a party in the Court. Has rules change? o_O

<comment><USER12> You have to understand that contrary to the single story the news presents, the FISA court is actually responsible for hearing a bunch of types of things.

There are three categories, and i haven't read hard enough (an don't have time to right now) to distinguish all the use cases.

You have 50 USC 1803, which is a one-sided deal currently (and what you hear most about)

You also have 50 USC 1861f, which a party can challenge.

You also have 50 USC 1881a, which a party can challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> At least they stopped getting Chinese dissidents locked up [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo)!

<comment><USER11> In USA Yahoo complies with US laws.

In China Yahoo complies with Chinese laws.

Dura lex sed lex.

<comment><USER14> All of these services could provide convenient key exchange, web-of-trust, secure email and storage, and secure communications services with ephemeral keys. They might have to charge money to do so, but they could all raise the cost of surveillance by orders of magnitude, if not make it impractical, and remain within US law. If they wanted to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Working link: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57593871-93/yahoo-wins- moti...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57593871-93/yahoo-wins-motion-to- declassify-court-documents-in-prism-case/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Hmm, it doesn't say they get to declassify, only that the classification must be reviewed, and then the document published with any properly classified information redacted.

Expect a letter of all black lines.

</comment><comment><USER17> Question:

> _Yahoo has previously denied the allegations regarding participation in the > program, calling them "categorically false."_

That's what they say, but doesn't this just show that while they fought it, they _did_ participate because they lost the fight?[1]

I'm not aiming to say "liar, liar, pants on fire" since they were probably required to say that (if my reading is accurate). I'm just wondering if they _were_ required to say that, as this is _nearly_ evidence of it, which would cast even more doubt on the other companies' denials.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for- users-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-earns- company-special-recognition) (thanks, cmwelsh!) in particular this quote:

> _Ultimately, the Court of Review ruled against Yahoo, upholding the > constitutionality of the Protect America Act and ordering Yahoo to turn over > the user data the government requested._

Though they can't say what was turned over.

<comment><USER18> > I'm not aiming to say "liar, liar, pants on fire" since they were probably > required to say that

Can a court really order a person to lie, though?

<comment><USER19> This particular court? Yes. It's required by the law.

<comment><USER20> Except it isn't: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589012-38/nsa- surveillan...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589012-38/nsa-surveillance- retrospective-at-t-verizon-never-denied-it/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The leaked slide says that Yahoo was assimilated into PRISM on 3/12/2008\. I assume that must be some time after the secret court decision.

<comment><USER22> >...Yahoo was assimilated into PRISM...

Resistance is futile.

Big box data center in the emptiness of Uta desert where the online "you" \- your private photos and intimate chirps ...err ... tweets - will be stored for posterity and peered over again and again by lifeless Big Data program ... Not of course that it hasn't been happening for the last 10 years in Mountain View or in Palo Alto/Menlo Park :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow. First they lie and deny, now this.

What does this mean for Google and the others participating in the program? I'd love to read some explanations from Page, Yonatan Zunger, Matt Cutts and friends. These guys were swearing up and down that Google had no involvement.

<comment><USER24> > I'd love to read some explanations from Page, Yonatan Zunger, Matt Cutts and > friends. These guys were swearing up and down that Google had no > involvement.

They swore they didn't allow the NSA to access their servers. All we know that they do is comply with lawful requests for users data. There was no lying involved.

<comment><USER23> No, not quite.

> Google had no involvement in the PRISM program and the first we heard of it > was when Greenwald's article hit the press. -Yonatan Zunger

I'd say that's a pretty big lie right there.

<comment><USER20> Where's the lie? PRISM is the name of an NSA _software package_ used to collate data the agency receives under a well-known section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

But because of poor reporting and unintentional errors, the name of a software program used to analyze data has become transmorgrified into (1) a "government program" that companies (2) "participate in" that gives the NSA (3) "direct access" to their servers. Not one of those three assertions is true.

<comment><USER23> You seem to be spinning it the same way the participating companies were.

<comment><USER20> I reached these conclusions as a result of my own reporting: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57593538-38/](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57593538-38/) [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/)

I note you didn't actually allege I'm wrong. If you have evidence my representations are incorrect -- and this is HN, after all -- kindly say so directly.

<comment><USER23> All three points you made seem to be irrelevant.

1) NSA is a government agency and PRISM is a blanket-term for the surveillance state in effect by the US Government. There are many other programs and names.

2) These companies certainly do participate in them under order by the US Government (FISA court).

3) The term "direct access" is quite silly to argue on since the NSA is slurping up any data possible through as many means necessary.

So when Google, Yahoo, Apple, Facebook, etc said they didn't participate in the program and NSA didn't have direct access, they were lying.

<comment><USER20> An alternative explanation is, of course, that you haven't researched the topic.

1) You are incorrect to say "PRISM is a blanket-term for the surveillance state in effect by the US Government." You may wish to think it is, but wishful thinking does not mean it's true. Accuracy matters.

2) The Internet companies do not "participate" in PRISM, which is a software utility. That's like saying I "participate" in Excel or Chrome. They do turn over data when compelled to through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other laws. If an ambulance following you turns on its lights to tell you to pull over, you're compelled to do so -- it doesn't mean you're "participating" in a medical emergency.

3) You're right that the NSA would like to slurp up data through as many means as it can. That doesn't mean it is. Put another way, the fact that I would like to have Bill Gates' bank account does not mean I actually do.

If you possess actual evidence that Internet companies "participate" in PRISM, as opposed to being compelled by law and legal threats, and if you have evidence that the NSA has "direct access" to the Internet companies' servers, kindly share it. Otherwise I'm not sure what your point is, except to argue for the sake of arguing.

<comment><USER23> Ah, I get it. You're still riding this wave: [https://plus.google.com/+EricSchmidt/posts/XfgQ1PXzM5g](https://plus.google.com/+EricSchmidt/posts/XfgQ1PXzM5g)

It's a non-denial denial and Eric Schmidt is the last person I'd trust to be truthful on the matter. Deny doing something you weren't actually accused of doing, but that sounds enough like it, so that you don't have to deny doing the thing you actually did.

"Nope! Not Direct!"

SFTP, virtualized access, automated access - it's all the same but as long as they can find something to deny, they'll run with it. Accuracy matters when you need to spin the lie.

You're talking about arguing for the sake of arguing but that's exactly what you're doing. You can play cheerleader and spin the lies the PR masters put out and I'll continue to read the leaked documents for the truth.

<comment><USER20> If you somehow claim that doing independent reporting (and reaching independent conclusions) is "spinning," then my attempts at having a reasonable conversation are futile. I will note, once again, that you haven't refuted a single claim I made about the three main errors in reporting on this topic.

<comment><USER23> I will note, once again, I already did but you're choosing to ignore them since you can't seem to shake away from the "direct access" fallacy because Schmidt told you otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So wait, if PRISM is merely the process by which NSA et al request data on individual suspects which are then reviewed and fulfilled with human involvement (as the denials by Google etc purport)... why did Yahoo see fit to challenge their involvement?

<comment><USER26> Yahoo didn't challenge their involvement in PRISM according to these court documents. They instead challenged FISA orders. PRISM is not mentioned anywhere. The shitty CNET article is conflating the two, but they are not the same.

So no, Yahoo has not contradicted themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> .. "redacts any properly classified information" ..

Who gets to decide what is property classified information? They can redact the document in such a way that it carry only vacuous material and thus passively aggressively refuse even if they are compelled.

</comment><comment><USER28> This proves nothing, since PRISM likely isn't the only program run by the NSA.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd love to switch to ymail, if it didn't suck so bad. I just read, that Y! will be /reassigning/ email adresses that have not been used (no login) for a year.

</comment><comment><USER30> yay!

yahoo, the internet giant whose products gather data from evuhreybaddy, is on our side!

now all our problems are solved and we can sleep at night

oh wait...

<comment><USER31> They must have been doing something right. They won commendation from the EFF today for their longstanding secret fight against the United States government.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for- users-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/yahoo-fight-for-users-earns- company-special-recognition)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So brave.</comment>


Computer Programmers:     Occupational Outlook Handbook::     U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm <comment><USER2> _Employment of computer programmers is projected to decline 7 percent from 2016 to 2026. Computer programming can be done from anywhere in the world, so companies sometimes hire programmers in countries where wages are lower._

Also, this lacks consideration of automation of programming itself when deep learning can listen to users and build interfaces and APIs directly and faster than any human ever could.</comment>


Ask HN: Non-English programming communities? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in studying programming communities whose dominant natural language is not English. This could mean the programming language and code is based on a non-English natural language, or that supporting text like comments, documentation, bug queues, support forums, etc. is not in English. I've found a few interesting posts [1,2] addressing this, but would love connections to communities or projects that are currently active.<p>[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-ugly-american-programmer/<p>[2] https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1483/do-people-in-non-english-speaking-countries-code-in-english <comment><USER2> I don't know the current situation, but you can try to look at:

* Ruby (not Ruby on Rails): The creator is Japanese and the main forum of the developers was/is in Japanese [https://www.ruby-lang.org/es/](https://www.ruby-lang.org/es/)

* Lua: The creators are Brazilian, I'm not sure if part of the initial development was in Portuguese. [https://www.lua.org/](https://www.lua.org/)

<comment><USER3> There's an excellent book about the software community in peripheral areas that talks about Lua's development

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/coding- places](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/coding-places)</comment></comment>


The Billion-Dollar Startup That Almost Never Was - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-billion-dollar-startup-that-almost-never-was-2011-6

<comment><USER2> Any startup that relies on the network effect to provide value is a daunting challenge. Your product can be amazing, but without the right user acquisition strategy, you'll be left spinning your wheels. Kudos to the AirBNB team for having the vision and determination not to quit.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, the article never explains what that strategy was. "Getting into YCombinator" is posited as the solution to their problems, yet "getting into YCombinator" is not a user acquisition strategy.

<comment><USER4> >the article never explains what that strategy was.

if memory serves me right it was already discussed here. Just google "airbnb craigslist spam". They admitted it themselves :

[http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/02/airbnb-admits-gaming- craig...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/02/airbnb-admits-gaming-craigslist/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The cereal fundraising story is mentioned here as evidence of desperation, which it might have been, but Fred Wilson paints the move as an indicator of a great entrepreneur: <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/airbnb.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this a story about a story, from the same day?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, where's the beef?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like most successful companies of any kind "almost never were." Is there any company that was successful right from the beginning, with no real hurdles?

<comment><USER9> Depends on what you mean by successful.

I know a small company that makes about $300-500k per person year and several smaller ones in the range of $100k per year that never had any major problems. They are not particularly interesting stories, so you'd probably never hear about them otherwise.

<comment><USER10> > _I know a small company that makes about $300-500k per person year_

I'm interested ... go on.

<comment><USER9> One basically puts public domain information online in searchable form and gets massive traffic + ad revenue. Took a while to set up, very boring, but very easy to maintain. Note that being the first mover was _very_ important, the #2 competitor for these niches gets about 20% of the traffic of the winner (and I assume 20% of the revenue).

Another one literally finds links for a particular political topic and sells the combination of links at something like $1000/month. I have no idea why they're so successful-their process consists of Googling said topic for a few hours a week and posting the links on their website-but somehow it works.

Like ThomasLangston mentioned, unsexy markets really work, because you're not competing with the best and the brightest...in fact, you're often not competing with anybody.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting that it doesn't mention the craigslist spamming. I'd wager that's far more responsible than YC. As great as YC is for many things it's not a significant source of traction for most startups.

<comment><USER12> It's mentioned through that part: "Airbnb contracted outside sales people to generate leads". This was pretty much the response from the company to the craigslist spamming story.

To be honest, while reading that line, I thought it was slightly odd because it was pretty specific (e.g. "outside" could be removed, but it clearly distances Airbnb from said sales people) and didn't necessarily bring anything to the story, especially since Airbnb has said the efforts were "largely ineffective".

The cynic in me feels that it was included specifically to add weight to the company's response about that craigslist story.</comment></comment>


Why Everyone Should Not Learn To Code – Part Deux - <AUTHOR> http://www.coderslexicon.com/why-everyone-should-not-learn-to-code-part-deux/

<comment><USER2> The "learn to code" movement has been sadly misnamed. It is _really_ a call for digital literacy (and no, I don't mean "digital" as in logic gates). When Douglass Rushkoff wrote "Program or be Programmed" he did not mean that everyone in the public has to actually write lines of code. The goal is for people to take more control and responsibility for their "digital/on- line/virtual" lives and that these are things that otherwise will be operated for the benefit or profit of others.

It is just hard to put that concept into a catchy tagline and the people who do actually program are apt to take the phrase "learn to code" literally.</comment>