Takeover.sh – Wipe and reinstall a running Linux system via SSH without reboot - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/marcan/takeover.sh <comment><USER2> Pretty cool, although I'm pretty sure I would never use something like this.

What has saved my skin on a number of occasions is the ability to boot remote servers into rescue mode and chroot into the broken system. That way you can use package managers, all your diagnostic tools, and everything else the boot image doesn't provide.

Basically you just mount the different partitions and then chroot just swaps /proc /sys /dev of the rescue image with the real ones, and BAM you're back in business.

For details see threads like: [http://superuser.com/questions/111152/whats- the-proper-way-t...](http://superuser.com/questions/111152/whats-the-proper- way-to-prepare-chroot-to-recover-a-broken-linux-installation)

I know that for many of you this isn't rocket surgery, but for those who don't know you have to google for "chroot" when you boot into a rescue image and discover you can't do anything, you might just remember this post.

<comment><USER3> Haha yes, this is the default install procedure for Gentoo! :D

<comment><USER4> Something like this has been my default way of installing Linux for years - and I've installed Debian, Ubuntu (with debootstrap), Gentoo and Arch this way. Typically I just create another partition to my LVM volume group, chroot and install over there and then reboot without removing the old OS install and I run the install procedure from the old OS (instead of booting from a Live CD / usb stick).

I do this because I know it works and there's no guesswork involved in what the OS installer does. They aren't really intended for installing beside another system and the default partitioning options aren't always that great (RAID, LVM, crypto, etc).

Basically you only need 3 things to run Linux: kernel, initramfs and rootfs.

<comment><USER5> You really only need two (kernel and initrd/initramfs), at least to get into a basic running state. This requires building your own initrd, of course, but it's pretty common in non-graphical Linux installers (Slackware's install media still does this, IIRC).

I _think_ it's even possible to embed the initrd in the kernel binary itself, but I've never really investigated that.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's a fun exercise to build a tiny Linux install that's fully on the initrd. Not that you'd want to have that kind of system in daily use outside of special applications.

> I think it's even possible to embed the initrd in the kernel binary itself, > but I've never really investigated that.

Yes, the kernel config has an option to embed the initrd in the kernel image. I'm not sure if there are any advantages to this.

<comment><USER6> I use the initramfs method to put an small ssh server in that I can use to unlock full disk encrypted headless boxen, so I could see initrd in the kernel being used in a similar way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone interested in adding this to their toolkit, I would suggest reading this StackOverflow answer: [http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/227318/189858](http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/227318/189858)

In short, the answer details how to switch your running system to use an in- memory only root filesystem, without restarting. This allows installing a new OS, resizing the OS disks, etc.

It's a risky operation, but the linked answer covers many pitfalls that you might run into - I recently used it to shrink the root partition on a remote server, very much appreciated the detail.

<comment><USER8> I've been using this procedure to remotely replace operating systems for years. The most common scenario is a VPS provider that doesn't give you the choice of OS you want.

Infact, I will be using it later today, to replace a Debian system with Gentoo, no less. The README in OPs link is spot-on here (the last few paragraphs).

<comment><USER9> This is exactly what I thought when I saw this post. I really want to use Void Linux on a provider, but no one supports it (except for those who allow custom images like Linode). It'd be great to be able to provision a standard Ubuntu or CentOS box and then replace it with the OS I actually want to run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another nice trick of this family (with reboots, or without with using systemd-nspawn) lies with clever btrfs usage. Long story short:

* use btrfs, and create your main root filesystem as a btrfs partition _subvolume_ and another btrfs subvolume for snapshots (also a sub of master btrfs partition)

* to start any experiment (e.g. installing whole gnome and 500 different packages you MIGHT WANT TO REVERT in the future) create before the risky operation snapshot (btrfs subvolume snapshot / /.snapshots/yournameofsnap) of current filesystem

* experiment in any way :)

* switch between old root (snapshot you created) or the new one with (btrfs subvoulme set-default)

* delete any of them (btrfs subvolume delete)

btrfs copy-on-write allows all of these commands to happen instantly without (almost) any actual copying. Also booting from both volumes is possible without any additional steps as long as master btrfs partition is the one to be booted from UEFI.

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Btrfs](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Btrfs)

<comment><USER11> Congratulations, you've reinvented ZFS Boot Environments :)

<comment><USER12> Only to a very high level. btrfs snapshots are writable, but share blocks, so you can boot directly from a snapshot. It's a better system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This sounds similar to the more cleverly named FreeBSD Depenguinator project which could be written over top of a remote Linux server replacing it with FreeBSD, without console.

If you have remote console access, a similar thing can be done for OpenBSD by dd(1)'ing a miniroot ramdisk install image.

</comment><comment><USER14> Seeing if I understand what this is doing: this keeps running the same Linux kernel and kernel modules, but swaps out absolutely everything else up to and including the init system - is that right?

<comment><USER15> More precisely, what it does is start a new init system on a pseudofilesystem, starts an sshd chrooted to that new system, and lets you then login there, where you can then, if you want, umount the original root fs, wipe it, install a new os, then reboot the system.

<comment><USER14> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guess this could be really useful for installing distributions that are not available at some VPS providers.

<comment><USER17> Another trick to do that is to use the VPS's rescue mode, download qemu, and start it with the remote desktop / VNC console. Then, do the install from there. Poor man's IPMI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of Debian Takeover from more than 10 years ago :-)

[https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTakeover](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTakeover)

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://github.com/elitak/nixos-infect](https://github.com/elitak/nixos- infect) is similar but doesn't require to pivot root.

</comment><comment><USER20> FYI, there's vps2arch that does the same thing with a different approach: [https://github.com/drizzt/vps2arch](https://github.com/drizzt/vps2arch)

 _Edit_ : it doesn't really do the same thing. vps2arch could be implemented on top of takeover.sh for better reliability.

</comment><comment><USER21> Somebody correct if I am wrong, but this script somehow allows the session to live in the RAM. Once the OS is running directly from the RAM, the hard drive can be wiped and a new OS can be installed. The system is then booted to run off of the hard drive.

<comment><USER22> I feel like this is, on one hand, an amazing thing to be able to do because it removes the necessity to have IPMI to remotely re-install a system.

On the other hand, this seems like it would be an incredibly easy thing to screw up and potentially leave yourself with a corrupted or unbootable system.

<comment><USER23> Hence the advice to only do this on machines where you have physical access, or at least can trigger a PXE boot via IPMI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is conceptually similar to the chroot installation method, which has been a documented, if not entirely standard, method on Debian for quite some time.

[https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apds03.html.en](https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apds03.html.en)

[https://wiki.debian.org/chroot](https://wiki.debian.org/chroot)

<comment><USER5> It's also a common installation method for the more "advanced" distros. The "SAG Trifecta" (Slackware/Arch/Gentoo) uses a lot of chrooting in its installation procedures.

What's interesting about takeover.sh, though, is that it goes a step further and causes the chrooted system to actually replace an existing OS without a reboot and (theoretically) without involving additional boot media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if this would help me switch from Ubuntu Desktop to Ubuntu Server on my laptop that has a broken screen.

<comment><USER26> you can always connect an external screen and go from there

<comment><USER25> I can connect HDMI and can get into UBUNTU, but I cannot get into BIOS to tell it to boot from USB. If I could get that figured out- I think HDMI will activate on the boot of the ISO, but Im not sure. I even tried VGA to a monitor, but that dont show me bios either. Dont wake up till Ubuntu starts to boot.

<comment><USER27> Can you physically disconnect the hard drive? Maybe you'll get lucky and USB will be next in the boot order. Contrary to popular belief, you can USUALLY plug the hard drive back in while the system is running from USB without any problems.

<comment><USER25> oh. You may be onto something. I am pretty sure USB is boot option 2, but if not it would be my disc drive- but I can make that work too. It's a Lenova (maybe acer) laptop with some wierd tool it seems to open it up. I can try to figure it out though. I just want to use it as an inhome server so it dont need to look pretty.

<comment><USER27> Keep in mind, you might get a kernel panic when you try to hot-plug the drive back in. It's not guaranteed to work, but it's worth a try.

If that doesn't work (kernel panic or whatever) you can disconnect the drive and connect it via a SATA-to-USB adapter in which case hot plugging should definitely work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Holy shit, that's really cool.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wish I had known about this hack before today, even if it is just experimental at this point.

</comment><comment><USER30> removed. No delete on HN comments? interesting

<comment><USER31> I think you meant to comment on the GitLab postmortem thread.

<comment><USER30> oops, yeah..</comment></comment></comment>


The Plant Encyclopedia: The Global Guide to Cultivated Plants - <AUTHOR> http://jugad2.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-plant-encyclopedia-global-guide-to.html <comment><AUTHOR> There is also The Encyclopedia of Life which I saw a while ago. It's scope is more broad, and IIRC, it is more oriented toward professional botanists, whereas The Plant Encyclopedia is suitable for laymen too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting site. Saw it today via a search for some plants. Apart from info about plants, the site is interesting because of the tech it uses - <USER2> like MediaWiki (that powers Wikipedia) but with some changes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Note to HN readers: I've deleted the post from my blog, because, though this did not happen initially (when I wrote the post), a day later the link to the site was not resolving correctly and I was getting a warning message from my browser.

Not sure of the reason, since it worked the day before. Maybe their certificate expired.</comment></comment>


Vint – A new message broadcast app - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vintapp.co/post/86307225914/vint-launch

<comment><USER2> I'm not terribly interested in reading what people have paid a buck to say. What would be much more interesting is an app that allowed anyone to say anything for free, and then filtered all those posts down to 20 posts _for each user_. So each user gets a different 20 posts, and (assuming a user posts only once a day) each user's post is seen by 20 people.

That'd be an interesting way of solving the "firehose" problem on sites like Twitter. Then, perhaps, you add on Pandora-like "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" features so that the service can pick better posts for you.

<comment><USER3> This would solve the "firehose" problem, but it would also make the "filter bubble" problem more worse.

1\. People get much crap, because it's hyped by media.

2\. People get much crap, because they like it.

The first thing leads to dumb opinions to be stuffed into peoples brains and the second leads to a feedback loop, which makes the first effect even stronger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I to understand that this is like Twitter's Promoted Tweets without any other functionality? Because Promoted Tweets are really the best part of Twitter?

<comment><AUTHOR> No it is not. We don't allow any type of advertisements in Vint. There are 4 rules that you have to follow to publish in Vint: * No offensive content. * No adult content. * No advertisements. * English only (We are currently implementing other languages)

Thanks for your feedback.

<comment><USER5> > No offensive content

Fuck that noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So how many days will it take for everyone to tell their message, if there are 20 message slots per day?

<comment><USER7> What do you mean?

<comment><USER8> The whole purpose behind Vint is to presumably have thousands of people reading what is posted. Hypothetically, if there are 20,000 Vint users and they all want to post something, it'll take almost 3 years to give everyone their say.

<comment><AUTHOR> If EVERYONE wants to say something, yes. But we doubt that will happen.

<comment><USER9> What if you get more users, like 50.000, you still have 20.000 users (40% of the user base, which seems reasonable) and it will still take 3 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> If that does happen (and we hope it will) we are planning on having different streams for different subjects or locations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks like it's the same as The List Serve:

[http://thelistserve.com/](http://thelistserve.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The difference is that in Vint you have the chance to post your message to a selected date, and you don't have to win the chance to post in a lottery. Here anyone can post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like the copy on your website is a bunch of hot air considering that you only show messages from people that pay to post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Glenda, What do you mean when you say "the copy on your web site"?

<comment><USER11> I mean the text you wrote makes it sound like you want all kinds of people around the world to be able to communicate about issues that are important to them.

But in reality you are more interested in promoting posts from people who are willing to pay a dollar.

<comment><USER7> Every post costs a dollar. There is no promotion to any post, every post is the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love the idea of having a platform where I can say something and potentially be heard (twitter), but if I have to pay 0.99$ everytime I say something, I want to know how many people are going to see it..

Are you going to post how many daily active users you have on a regular interval?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we are working on a daily analytics email for the poster of the message.

<comment><USER12> Great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ok, there is an error in this everybody-should-have-their-voice mentality.

We should be valuing what people who knows about something has to say about this subject, not what anyone willing to talk has to say about it.

How to know who knows? Well...

<comment><AUTHOR> We think that everyone has the right to speak their minds. Vint is the place to share your opinions or stories on any subject. Before Vint if you were not a massive brand or have no power, there wasn't a method to reach a wide audience.

<comment><USER14> I agree that people have the right to speak their minds, but why cap it at 20 "messages" per day? Is this backed up by any psychological research or did the team set it up arbitrarily?

I'm thinking if I want to really use the app, I'd like to personally control how many messages or views I'm bombarded with. Perhaps I want to hear something every waking hour of the day (so ~18 messages). But maybe some days I would like much less or much more. Why should Vint control my ingestion of messages?

<comment><USER14> "But the real reason for the limit in the messages is to maximize the audience"

Can you explain this further? Do you mean to say that if you bumped up the number of messages to 40, you will not be maximizing the audience because there are too many messages? Are you curating these paid messages manually?

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly right. If we increase the number of messages per day, less people will read each message. We do curate each message manually. (It's only twenty of them)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's already something called Vint. [https://www.joinvint.com](https://www.joinvint.com) Will be confusing.

<comment><USER7> That app is no longer working. At least the links in their website don't</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Huge security hole for Mac OS X? Or am I missing something... - <AUTHOR>

Isn't this a huge security hole for Macs?
http://www.rit.edu/its/services/desktop_support/mac/xforcenewadminacccount.html
Strikes me as a way of implementing the first run steps that I never would have chosen as being terribly easy to uncover and exploit... also it feels sloppy for leaving files lying around.
Not to mention this is easily discoverable through Google...
A few minutes thought leads me to a multitude of more secure solutions, and I find it hard to believe the Apple programmers are really so lazy/naive as to do this without knowing it would be fine... <comment><USER2> You can do something comparable to this with just about any OS if you have physical access to the box (as booting into single user mode requires on OS X) and the BIOS has no password protection.

E.g., Boot from a flash drive that can mount NTFS. Now you have full access to your Windows file system.

Encryption is the only solution here (a BIOS password doesn't stop someone with physical access from removing your disk), and OS X supports that as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Once you're in single-user mode, there are lots of ways to do this sort of thing. Deleting that file and rebooting is convenient, but actually fairly roundabout: there are more direct methods of adding an account that don't require another reboot.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> formatting seemed to go wrong there..

[http://www.rit.edu/its/services/desktop_support/mac/xforcene...](http://www.rit.edu/its/services/desktop_support/mac/xforcenewadminacccount.html)</comment>


Tephen Hawking unveils 'life changing' new voice technology in London - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11267687/Stephen-Hawking-unveils-life-changing-new-voice-technology-in-London.html

<comment><USER2> "Stephen Hawking"</comment>


One of the best pieces of advice [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTWiRiMg_sA <comment><AUTHOR> Which is yours?</comment>


Apple Approved Malware: malicious code now notarized? - <AUTHOR> https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x4E.html <comment><USER2> Notarization is moving the problem to a different place, but not fixing the problem.

Imagine we take our city - Anycity, USA, where only good, trustworthy, and honest folk live, and we simultaneously decide to replace door locks with neighborhood locks.. then the city likes the idea and sponsors us to replace neighborhood locks with town locks - locks on the few roads leading in and out of town.

Now you start the see the problem. Yes we need walls, yes we need fences, and bigger walls, and bigger fences, and the city needs more authority, and then more authority. And we have to put much more trust in the city, but they really need it in order to keep us good and honest citizens safe.

By the way, what happens if a "bad guy" from Thosepeople, USA gets in disguised in a Minivan?

This is not a one-to-one analogy I know, but again, I hope it points out the innate problem with Notarization. It just moves that one problem to Apple's lap. Meanwhile creating several more innate problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Notarization is a basic, automated check. I don't think Apple ever pretended it was going to be a waterproof test for malware.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ouch.

The verification aspect was one of the core arguments that Apple brought forward to argue that the app store would be a consumer benefit and not a monopolistic extortion scheme, as Epic had claimed. But now it looks like unrelated teams are poking holes into Apple's defense from all directions.

Plus, as the article correctly states, the resulting illusion of safety might be even more dangerous than a user who is aware of the need to be careful with stuff downloaded from the internet.

<comment><USER5> It's interesting that you think this because it actually demonstrates the opposite: that Apple's control over iOS is very valuable and has many benefits to customers. Not because human app reviewers are infallible, but because a purely technical approach is simply not good enough.

<comment><USER4> Yet Apple is presenting the purely technical approach as good enough, thereby creating the illusion of safety when there is none.

<comment><USER5> That's definitely not true. The only reason notarization exists is to maintain the Mac's open app ecosystem while having some improved level of security over the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this seems like a really interesting read but hot dog the formatting is such garbage that i can't follow it. why so many different font sizes!?</comment>


Beyond ad blocking – the biggest boycott in human history - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/?utm_content=buffer56cc9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> Tracking, it's been argued, is good because it allows more relevant ads to be served. I've been giving Google huge amounts of data about me and my life for almost 20 years and the ads are still terrible. I spend thousands of dollars every year at Amazon and their recommendation engine doesn't do much better.

How much more do advertisers need to know about me before ads served online are significantly more relevant than the ads I see in People magazine at the doctor's office?

At this point, I'm super skeptical about the ad business. Advertisements don't really bother me that much, but I'm becoming less comfortable with being tracked. I would love to see a study that compares the costs of tracking with the added value of tracking and see who pays those costs and who benefits from the value.

<comment><USER3> Google benefits, the costs are negligible compared to the revenue they get. Its the entire business model.

The problem for content creators is I can't think of much written content that i'm willing to pay a subscription fee for. I doubt I am alone in this.

<comment><USER2> > the costs are negligible

The costs are not negligible. Tracking scripts use a lot of bandwidth and (on mobile) battery power.

<comment><USER4> Exactly, just because the cost is distributed doesn't mean it's not being paid in one form or another.

If ad networks actually had to pay the cost, say $10/GB of traffic they served to mobile devices, ads would be lighter and far less spammy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This feels reminiscent of the arguments over piracy and content distribution media. Back before spotify and netflix and itunes, pirating music was just the way of life. People made moral arguments one way or the other and they both had credibility. Now that we have essentially moved away from that model, I've noticed discussion about piracy drastically fall off many discussion forums.

Now the same thing is happening with advertising and ad blocking. Both sides have reasonable arguments, and the discussion really doesn't seem to be getting anywhere at all. "Ads pay for your free content!" "This content is so full of other garbage it isn't even consumable in the first place!" etc, etc. The google service to pay for ad space was interesting, I am curious if that will translate to the new "spotify" of the music industry. People might be more willing to pay monthly subscriptions for high quality, ad-free content. I most likely would be.

However, the most disappointing thing from that article is the search history for "do not track." That is why I run an ad-blocker. The amount of web tracking that happens is super creepy and ethically grey at best. I don't want to be a part of that system, and if running a script blocker does that, that supersedes any ethical qualms I have with blocking ads.

<comment><USER6> I think you have something here. Piracy was a problem due to high cost and poor availability of content. Now there are multiple paid-for content aggregators that will serve music and video on most devices at reasonable prices, worldwide.

So it sounds like what we need are text content aggregators that work. What we need is easy syndication: RSS _with money_. But people have been trying to build paywalled text aggregator sites since Compuserve and not really succeeded.

Maybe the people paying should be the link-discussion sites. Reddit lets you give "gold" to users, but not to the websites hosting submitted links ...

<comment><USER7> The problem is what is trying to be sold, not the medium it is distributed in. News can't be copyrighted and is willingly distributed for free. Most news is actually cheap to produce as well.

So the problem is that a previously lucrative business (news) is no longer lucrative at all, and in fact that are many people who will give it away for free just for fun.

Unfortunately for those in the business of news I don't think there's a "fix" for this, it's just the onward march of progress.

<comment><USER6> News article text absolutely can be copyrighted. It's just the parts that are pure reported speech or excerpts from someone else's press release that can't.

News is also fairly worthless without comment, analysis and context.

<comment><USER7> Those are not monetarily valuable things though; plenty of people will write about the news for free.

Investigative reporting is the exception in that it's difficult and can be expensive to produce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author says that we, as consumers, need to "engage" advertisers because they have power (to do what?), and because we all have a stake in each other's success. He offers this explanation:

 _The only way engagement will work is through tools that are ours, and we control: tools that give us scale — like a handshake gives us scale. What engages us with the Washington Post should also engage us with Verge and Huffpo. What engages us with Mercedes should also engage us with a Ford dealer or a shoe store._

Does anyone know what he is talking about here? I re-read the article 2 or 3 times and skimmed the linked article in an attempt to figure out what part scale plays in a handshake. If anything, a handshake is _anti-scale_ because its a personal gesture that you can only do with one other person at a time. But the author says that engagement should scale across all verticals (automakers, shoe stores) and all brands (Huffington Post, Verge). Seems like an inherent contradiction. Am I parsing his meaning/terminology incorrectly?

Also, why do a plurality of smart people involved in the ad industry keep pushing for us, the consumers, to "help marketers think past abuse and coercion"?

Advertisers have had plenty of time to think and reflect upon their business model. They have chosen to disrespect us, violate our privacy, and chase short-term profits at the expense of long-term customer satisfaction. Now they are receiving their just desserts because people _hate_ they way they have been treated. The sites that host these ads are also guilty by proxy because they know exactly what they are doing.

What is there to talk about/negotiate in this situation?

<comment><USER9> _What is there to talk about /negotiate in this situation?_

Nothing; we're being conned. They know what they want, they know nobody else wants that, so they disingenuously play to human nature. By stating that they should be engaged with directly, they attempt to make blocking seem like an unreasonable rejection of working with them. They have no interest in cooperating, so it's just manipulative.

It's the same exact hustle we've seen with whistleblowers (and protesters) time and time again for ages. Some blowhard says that they're for reform, and support the concept of whistleblowing in general. But in this one specific case, the whistle-blowing just wasn't done _right_ , and there are certainly more-effective routes to that reform, with less collaterally damage that should have been used instead.

Nah, that's just someone that exists to make sure the status quo doesn't change. Sorta related, about the NSA/ATT relationship: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7325100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7325100)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I suspect that the problem is that advertising is chasing increasingly fewer fixed dollars. Consequently, it has had to get more and more aggressive to have any impact.

Most people are spending at their limits. They have fixed budgets on which to spend things. So, to change their behavior, you have to apply a _huge_ bat to get to even the 0.1% you can actually change.

Unfortunately, that offends the 99.9%.

There is a reason why advertisers target new mothers the most. It's the _single_ time when people's habits get completely disrupted and can be rearranged.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it's kind of specious to claim that the reason ad blocking software is more common now is because websites started ignoring Do Not Track.

Most people who use the internet don't know anything about this. It probably just took a while for there to be enough 'friends good with computers' who knew about ad blocking and installed the plugins for their family and friends. That kind of knowledge takes a bit to penetrate.

Once people see it works they keep using it because a web without ads is objectively better for the individual user (ignoring what might happen if ad revenue was no longer viable to fund the free services everyone uses).

</comment><comment><USER12> from: [http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html) " 12\. Fix advertising. Advertising could be made much better if it tried to please its audience, instead of treating them like victims who deserve x amount of abuse in return for whatever free site they're getting. It doesn't work anyway; audiences learn to tune out boring ads, no matter how loud they shout.

What we have now is basically print and TV advertising translated to the web. The right answer will probably look very different. It might not even seem like advertising, by current standards. So the way to approach this problem is probably to start over from scratch: to think what the goal of advertising is, and ask how to do that using the new ingredients technology gives us. Probably the new answers exist already, in some early form that will only later be recognized as the replacement for traditional advertising "

The problem is that advertising business started abusing users too much and we just have enough.

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem if we did have old-style print advertising embedded in web pages, it usually followed the same visual style as the articles.

Before the web, I used to buy computer magazines as much for the ads as for the supposed "real" content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a strange note of entitlement that seems to pop up whenever discussions about ad blocking arise.

It smacks of the piracy argument, "if producers didn't make it so difficult to consume the content, I wouldn't pirate it." The argument isn't about whether or not it's theft, so much as whether or not consumers agree with the method and constraints on the intersection between distribution and consumption.

In the case of 'free' content on the web: site 'owners' create and serve content, often via paid servers with labor overhead in the form of creation, curation, programming infrastructure/support, sysadmins, and so forth. The server sits in one or more datacenters, waiting for requests.

Let's use the house metaphor: say I create a website, www.thisismyhouse.com and you like the content, so you visit my (open) house. My house has certain conventions, social compacts, if you will. You don't enter without some sense that there are obligations on both sides: if I am an irritating host, you don't stay and eat my food, you leave. If you are an irritating guest, you are escorted out. At no time in the physical world is there a situation where you can use technology to mute the host while still eating the food (aside from <insert dated in-laws joke here> ).

"Oho!" someone exclaims, "I spent fuel and time" (internet bandwidth) "to visit your house! This cost me (unit of value) too!" So we agree that both sides have a monetary/value stake in this transaction.

But there are rules, folks. The content isn't free and never was. Just because you can line up at the buffet and filter out the environment until it meets your requirements through technology doesn't mean that you have an ongoing right to keep visiting (consuming).

Free content sites are like trialware: you visit, decide if you like it, then pay if you keep using it, and the price is set by the author (ads, subscriptions, you name it). If you don't like the price, you don't get to keep eating your fill.

I'm not a fan of ads, but I accept them as by and large the price of admission to the content I like. There are plenty of ways to get around tracking without fully blocking ads, so that doesn't really concern me).

If the ads are just too much, I go elsewhere. How complicated is that?

</comment><comment><USER15> I strongly agree that adtech has overstepped bounds in a number of ways, but articles like this seem more interested in claiming the moral high ground for ad blockers, equating them with consumer activism. However, ad blockers are clearly not a boycott - websites are still being "dealt with" (i.e. content is being consumed) to use the definition language, they are just not being paid.

Disclaimer/Context: I was the Product Manager for Ad Products at Vox Media for 2+ years

<comment><USER16> I actually think ad blockers have the moral high(er) ground, but it is weird to call it a boycott.

<comment><USER17> It's the boycott of a business model, more than of the companies who use it.

<comment><USER16> I mean, I get that... but that's not what "boycott" means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To put things into perspective: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en- US#q=how%20to%20b...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en- US#q=how%20to%20block%20ads%2C%20retargeting%2C%20justin%20bieber&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4)

yes, interest in ad blocking is growing, but these search term graphs don't show that it has arrived at the scale of the general public yet.

<comment><USER19> Your perspective is skewed. Try this [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=adblock%2C%20justin%...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=adblock%2C%20justin%20bieber&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT-2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "You seem to have adblocking enabled. Please deposit 0.05 mBTC to the address bellow to white-list this device."

It's not really a war, it's a negotiation.

<comment><USER6> People seem even less willing to cross paywalls than they do to accept ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Users realize they can fight sensory pollution - advertiser outrage ensues... The arms race rages on !

</comment><comment><USER22> I agree and I like the way this author words the "fight". It has always baffled me how an entire industry can build up around the trust system because in the end that's what the majority of online advertisement is. You send me data, my screen chooses what to display.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of the time when everyone (myself included) felt entitled to free MP3's, and then got pissed when the record companies disagreed.

A boycott is when you abstain from transacting. Ad blockers are not a boycott, they're just a legal way of stealing someone else's work.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting conclusions, but they seem to be inevitable:

One is that ad blockers will evolve to valving systems for accepting advertising's wheat while rejecting its chaff. (I explain the difference in the first post in this series. And, sez AdExchanger, 71% of Ad-Block Users Would Consider Whitelisting Sites That Don't Suck.)

The other is that we'll help marketers think past abuse and coercion as ways to get what they want out of customers. After that happens, they'll realize that —

1\. Free customers are far more valuable than captive ones 2\. Genuine relationships are worth far more than the kind that is coerced 3\. Volunteered (and truly relevant) personal data is worth far more than the kind that is involuntarily fracked 4\. Expressions of real intent by customers are worth far more than guesswork fed by fracked data

<comment><USER21> > accepting advertising's wheat while rejecting its chaff

What makes you believe that users see any value in ads ?

<comment><USER24> I see value in ads when they target me specifically and alert me to some product or product alternative that I didn't know about before the ad. But that is a very small sliver of ads. There's a blog I follow that doesn't use ads but rather product recommendations with Amazon affiliate links. This type of advertising is pretty valuable to me and when/if I want to purchase the product, I use the affiliate link to do so to "pay" the blog author for the high quality content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Since we're running full steam ahead in correlation, I'll throw in that around 2012 was when Facebook started displaying ads.

</comment><comment><USER26> War on Ads will end just like the War On Terror, War On Drugs, War on Cancer and all other similar wars - there will be more of X, in this case Ads. To win that war we would need to change ourselves, and that's not going to happen. When I tell people that I have no cable, and Netflix/Amazon Prime is enough for my entertainment needs they are quickly to point out that I can't see the newest shows, or movies. My answer is always the same - it's entertainment - an activity that is just a small part of my life, not something that defines it.. Yet people act like they are losing part of themselves when they can't watch their favorite shows, or sporting events. That's why online streaming has so much problem acquiring new shows - cable networks know that some people are just too attached to their mindless entertainment, and will never give it up. A similar situation can be observed with the web and ads. People just want their fix of entertainment even if it means that they are being tracked, hacked and used. And it's never going to change.</comment>


Sega and NeuroSky To Make Mind-Controlled Toys - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/12/sega-and-neuros.html

<comment><USER2> This related tech is also very cool: <http://www.think-a-move.com/>

Voice based control, tongue based control, and eventually thought based control.</comment>


JavaScript Things I Wish I Knew Much Earlier In My Career - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/20/seven-javascript-things-i-wish-i-knew-much-earlier-in-my-career/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm just a douchebag, but isn't all that stuff in the "Javascript: The Definitive Guide" book? Read it once (at least the part that's focused on the language itself, not DOM) and you know it.

<comment><USER3> Also on the web, in a billion places. I'm always wary of people who are tweeking over Math.max - how could you not know that exists?

<comment><USER4> The article gently suggests the importance of learning all you can about the math and string libraries. It's not meant to imply that the author discovered them only yesterday.

" _One thing that amazed me is how much easier my life got once I read up thoroughly on the math and string functions of JavaScript. You can use these to avoid a lot of looping and conditions._ "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The excellence of this article has caused me to reevaluate my attitude towards Smashing Magazine. I formerly knew it as a source for "50 Sweet Free Wordpress Themes" writeups and thus I largely avoided the place.

Really a good article, especially for a developer like myself who doesn't do all that much JavaScript.

<comment><USER5> I'm really torn on my feelings about this article, it's mostly great, but the example of anonymous functions grates with me. I think it's a flawed example as it takes readable code and turns it into an unmaintainable mess, when the natural solution would be to use an object in the first place.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Just use proper objects and start internal member names with an underscore. Yeah, you cannot trust idiots not to misuse the internals, but they'll do worse with returning objects that close over function-local variables.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a problem that these things were surprises to him late in his career. Judging from the comments in this thread, even amongst a technical crowd there is still a relative lack of understanding about JavaScript. What can we as an industry be doing to make sure that more people are learning their tools properly and not reinventing wheels?

<comment><USER8> A list of everything we should know.

<comment><USER7> One need only throw a stone at Amazon.com and hit several dozen books that are essentially just that. Obviously, the existence of that sort of information isn't enough. Something more needs to be done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> good tips, if any of them are new, get "Javascript the good parts", it's an awesome book, and not too long

<comment><USER4> For prospective buyers who are still on the fence there's a handy 1000-word review comparing and contrasting _The Good Parts_ with the _Definitive Guide_ recommended above:

[http://jmesnil.net/weblog/wp- content/uploads/2009/09/RzRcw.j...](http://jmesnil.net/weblog/wp- content/uploads/2009/09/RzRcw.jpg)

<comment><USER10> I just bought both. The Good Parts to wet my appetite for JavaScript and the Definitive Guide to have a (hopefully) complete language reference.

<comment><USER11> Just an FYI, in case it wasn't a typo: you mean _whet_ , not _wet_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In they article, they mention ternary notation. I personally wish that people didn't use it. While it's great for saving (a little) time, it really muddles the readability of the program IMHO. Its far too easy to simply skip over it as a simple assignment operation.

There are a lot of gems in this article though (aside from that).

<comment><USER4> I agree. I've never used ternary notation regularly so it always takes me out of the flow when I'm trying to decipher someone else's source.

<comment><USER13> I cringe when I see a simple if-else, which does nothing but assign a value to a variable depending on the condition. That is the best use case for a ternary operator, in my opinion.

However, I have noticed that I tend to use them liberally, and have since reverted back to if-else when there is something more than "simple" going on in the condition or post-condition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The sorting approach to extracting the maximum element seems inefficient, especially as they mention Math.max as the next example. This seems to work, too:

Math.max.apply(Math,[3,5,1,7,9]);

<comment><USER15> I was just typing a similar comment when I saw yours. In general, learning how to use "apply" is a very useful technique for someone coming up to speed in Javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> the most important (and non obvious) one in this I think is delegated events, they are invaluable when working with dynamically generated content.

I was always confused at why mouseover / out events bubble in the insane way they do, now I am glad for the behaviour (I just wish enter / leave came sooner)

</comment><comment><USER17> My favorite surprise of JavaScript of all time: It has no integer type.

</comment><comment><USER18> Crockford didn't create JSON any more than Al Gore created the Internet. He coined the term and evangelized the use of JSON as a data format.

<comment><USER19> Yes, he did. JSON is absolutely positively NOT "whatever Javascript eval will accept as input and return a data structure for". It is a rigidly-defined subset of that, and the rigid definition of it is one of its significant advantages over several competing formats. Crockford created the rigid specification and JSON is the better for someone with experience having created it. Someone of lesser experience might have specified it less rigidly and lost much of the advantage thereby.

(YAML died on fuzziness in the specification mistakenly perceived as virtue. "YAML's not dead!" Compared to JSON, it is, and thank goodness.)

Incidentally, if you aren't using it strictly, you're losing some of the advantages yourself. If your parser accepts single-quoted strings, or even worse if your serializer generates them (ick!), just as one example, you're in some trouble, even if it all works _for you_ right now.

<comment><USER20> It wasn't just fuzziness, it was outright whimsy in the YAML spec. Interpreting the string "Yes" (and "on") to actually mean a boolean true is one of the dumbest things I've seen in any specification, anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm starting a new project as soon as my current one is finished based on php + javascript. Can anyone suggest good books and/or websites for those two to get started as I never really worked with either of them?

Edit: Apart from the two already mentioned in this thread. (Javascript the definitive guide and javascript the good parts)

<comment><USER22> For PHP: PHP and MySQL Web Development, 4th Edition by Welling and Thomson. Learn about PDO and parameterized queries and such from the online docs; the book treats security poorly. The Web Application Hacker's Handbook would probably be a nice third book if you're feeling indulgent.

For JS: JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition by Flanagan. Until Secrets of the JS Ninja (or the Rhino book's 6th edition) comes out, then get those.

Out of curiosity, what have you worked with previously?

<comment><USER21> I haven't had much of real world experience until recently. I learned coding in school. We started with C then C++ and later C#(.NET) and Java (often in junction with MySQL & Oracle for which we had an extra class also). In between I remember a bit of the ancient arts of COBOL and CICS. I got into Obj-C when I switched to Mac and tried to get my feet wet with something on my own. Though I created nothing in particular with it.

It's just recently that I started working on a real project (C#) and it's been fun so far and I'm eager to finish it and get onto the next thing.

Thank you for the sources!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "One of the most annoying things about JavaScript is that it has no scope for variables. Any variable, function, array or object you define that is not inside another function is global..."

One sentence explaining that JS doesn't have variable scope proceeded by a sentence explaining that it actually does have scope? JS absolutely does have scoping rules. The follow up to this sentence (the section labeled "Anonymous Functions And The Module Pattern") seems to be ignorant of the presence of prototypes (in a prototype-based language!) and uses a needlessly complex and confusing way of explaining how to expose functions. What's wrong with the prototype?

<comment><USER24> Re: scope, I think the author was mainly complaining that Javascript's scoping rules tend to err on the side of global visibility, rather than following the typical approach of scoping variables as narrowly as possible. Certainly it _has_ scoping rules, it's just that they're unusually global for a language with Algol style syntax, and that makes it a common gotcha for people coming to JS from other places.

 _What's wrong with the prototype?_

Nothing too bad, I suppose.

Making things private is a little bit cleaner when you use the anonymous function/module method. By default, none of the methods are visible unless you explicitly expose them, whereas with a normal Javascript object you end up jumping through hoops to make private class methods actually be private - those hoops pretty much match what you do with the module pattern anyways, so...

More importantly, the "needlessly complex and confusing" way of exposing functions (I don't necessarily disagree that it departs from "write what you mean", but I don't know that it's either too complex or confusing, it's a pretty simple pattern and often results in shorter code than prototyping would, esp. with private functions and data) is used just about everywhere when you work with other people's Javascript libraries. So it's a good thing to be familiar with it, as you're going to be looking at it almost every time you open up the source for any modern JS library.

<comment><USER23> Regarding your (and my) last point, I mean confusing in the sense that if you are returning some object with (as in his example, differently named) references to internal functions, it only makes it more difficult to track down code later. Worse for the coder, worse for the maintainer, and unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article itself is quite useful, but a warning on the _sort_ tutorial he links to (<http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/arraysort.shtml>). Contrary to what it says, you cannot reliably shuffle a list by doing:

      myarray.sort(function() {return 0.5 - Math.random()})

This just makes every comparison return a random value, which may or may not produce particularly random results, depending on the sort algorithm. It's exactly the bug that bit Microsoft in their not-very-random browser shuffle screen.

</comment><comment><USER26> Ah, how clear. A Car is a generic object (clearly an English object given the spelling of its attribute names), with untyped attributes.

The thing I wish the JavaScript community knew much earlier in their careers was actual software engineering knowledge, such as Object-oriented, or at least typed, languages.

var car = new Object(); car.colour = 'red'; car.wheels = 4; car.hubcaps = 'spinning'; car.age = 4;

<comment><USER27> Dynamic weak typing is probably JavaScript's greatest strength, not a weakness. Grokking this, you can also begin to see reasons why schemaless databases can be of great utility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think you didn't learn Javascript but you picked from from the streets and that is why you didn't know what you mentioned.

<comment><USER29> As Crockford comments, it's remarkably easy to get by in JavaScript without ever actually sitting down to learn the language. There's a lot of weird and funky JS out there written by e.g. Java programmers who only use a very small subset of the language's features - no closures, no object literals, and so on.

I second the recommendation of JavaScript: The Good Parts - it's a great book :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Even if a bit newbish as other comments said, I found the article really well explained and I'm sure it helped lots of people. Good explanation, good code examples, great tips and great recommendation. Even thought I haven't learn that much in the article, I wish more article would be written like this :)

</comment><comment><USER31> >"Associative arrays" is a confusing name for objects.

And don't forget the `hasOwnProperty` test when iterating over the keys.

<comment><USER32> _"Associative arrays" is a confusing name for objects_

That line makes me think the author doesn't know what an associate array is.

<comment><USER33> JavaScript doesn't make the same distinctions between numerically indexed arrays, string-indexed associative arrays and objects that you would see in most other languages. This explains a lot of the perceived oddities of JavaScript to programmers coming from backgrounds working with other programming languages, e.g., why calling sort() on an array of numbers doesn't do what you might expect and why the for-each loop in JavaScript iterates over indices rather than values.

<comment><USER34> The same is true of Lua, except it recognizes when you have consecutive integer keys and implements it as an actual array.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just for the record, the concept of the reptilian mind isn't from Godin. It's an old philosophical thing.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Browser-Specific Code Is A Waste Of Time. Use Libraries!"

The author has clearly not had to use contentEditable :)

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a nice list. Thanks. Also check out these Javascript gotchas that can save you time [http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/javascript-gotchas- listed...](http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/javascript-gotchas-listed-to- help-avoid-mistakes/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Uh, his handler could do with a closure.

</comment><comment><USER39> YAWN! n00bz, you really bore me here.

</comment><comment><USER40> He says: "I've been writing JavaScript code for much longer than I care to remember." And he didn't know about "var direction = x < 200 ? 1 : -1;" ? Really?

<comment><USER41> "Here are some of the "aha!" moments I've had in the past"

He doesn't say how long ago in the past.</comment></comment>


Weird Ruby: Positive and Negative Strings - <AUTHOR> https://metaredux.com/posts/2019/05/10/weird-ruby-positive-and-negative-strings.html <comment><USER2> Mutable strings was a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER3> The more general takeaway from this is that you can redefine (some of) Ruby's unary operators. Their naming is unfortunately less consistent than Python's dunder-methods, but each of these work: `+@` for `+`, `-@` for `-`, `~` for `~`.

Edit: Removed incorrect information.

<comment><USER4> 'to_a' and * are not at all the same, and neither are 'to_proc' and '&'

unary * is the splat operator. While it tries to coerce arguments to an array, consider that this:

      x,y,z = *(1..3),42

gives x=1,y=2,z=3, while:

      x,y,z = (1..3).to_a, 42

      gives x=[1,2,3], y=42, z= nil

'&' meanwhile _passes a Proc_ as the anonymous block to a method. E.g.:

      def foo; yield; end
      pr = proc { puts "here" }
      foo(&pr) # is equivalent to foo { puts "here" }

It too will _try_ to coerce arguments to a proc by calling '#to_proc' on objects that responds to it, but 'to_proc' just returns a Proc (or should), it does not in itself convert a Proc to a default block. 'to_proc' has other uses - proc's can be passed around in all kinds of other situations too.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I misremembered. Ruby does indeed complain when either `to_proc` or `to_a` don't return the expected types.</comment></comment></comment>


Why 2014 is the year you change - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/31/why-2014-is-the-year-you-change

<comment><USER2> Is this typical of altucher? This is one of the most poorly written articles/posts I've ever read.</comment>


Send and receive money with Gmail - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/mail/answer/3141103?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en <comment><USER3> Interesting to see this get traction here today, this article is for the web version which has been around for awhile.

But we did just (in March) launch this for Android: [https://blog.google/products/gmail/send-and-request-money- in...](https://blog.google/products/gmail/send-and-request-money-in-your- gmail-app-android/) & [https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/14/you-can-now-send-and- reque...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/14/you-can-now-send-and-request- money-in-gmail-on-android/)

<comment><USER4> No money transfers for me. My account is now considered for "business" regardless of me considering my personal account as "personal":

"Wallet can't be used: This could be because Google Wallet isn't supported in your country or because you're using a business account. To see your purchases from Google Play and other products, go to the payments center."

I've unintentionally "poisoned" my personal Gmail account by adding Android Developer capabilities to it. An unexpected negative side-effect.

Google has under-designed its Account concept asserting an account is entirely for business if it's merely associated with an Android Marketplace capability.

Google should really support multiple roles for an account. At the least, caution users when adding Android Developer Marketplace capabilities to Gmail accounts about the new limitations this choice will impose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As anyone with experience in payments will tell you, this is the easy part (and should explain why Google hasn't expanded the coverage in the four years they have been offering this).

The reason that payments systems are all either expensive or inconvenient (usually both) is that the regulatory systems that underpin the international movement of money are very complicated, and are different in each country.

Getting payments to users in the US and UK is relatively easy; you'll need a business entity in each country and you'll also need to register with the regulators in each country (e.g. as a MSB in the USA, requiring a $1m bond in some states). Note the phrase "relative"; this is not something that a couple kids from Stanford can disrupt, you need expensive lawyers and banking contacts. You can run all of that from your office in Mountain View though.

You'll also need to comply with various "know your customer" regulations; the US government will not be happy if you wire money to O. Bin Laden, or anyone else on the OFAC watchlist. And even if you're sending money to a "gmail UK" email address, you will need some way of proving that you're not sending money to countries that have sanctions/restrictions on capital flows like Iran and North Korea.

That's the easy part. If you actually try to make a serious international play, then you'll need a sizable team in each region that you want to do business in. The Eurozone is relatively easy to cover, but your regulatory requirements in South American countries will probably require one or two people per country (that's to keep your bank relationships warm, and to keep up with all of the paperwork that's required to operate a money transmitter business).

This is why Paypal charges merchant fees of 4.4% _plus forex fee_ to receive money from an arbitrary country in the world. This system is hugely complex, and very resistant to change, due to the serious consequences of making a regulatory error.

<comment><USER6> Is PayPal being subjected to those laws? After all they are not a bank.

<comment><USER7> Only in the US. In the EU, they're registered as a Luxembourg-based bank.

[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20070515005225/en/PayP...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20070515005225/en/PayPal- Expands-European-Growth-Bank-Charter-European)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder why banks in the US don't just give all of their customers an IBAN and let them transfer money for free or very cheap. They could even give companies those IBANs and let them receive bill payments that way. But I guess that would be too easy and also too European.

<comment><USER5> If you're asking about making transfers electronically inside the US, that already exists -- the system is called ACH. You use your bank's routing number and your account number. It's not as widely adopted for things like bill payments, since the US banking system is quite antiquated (they still use checks for many payments).

If you're asking about international payments between US and EU banks, currently you do that using the SWIFT network (i.e. wires). It's $25-30 a pop. And there are significant regulatory and technical barriers to getting this cost down (see the EU's SEPA program for a regional version, and that's with a bunch of countries that have already normalized their financial regulations).

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately many banks seem to put up arbitrary hurdles to performing ACH transfers, or obscure the fact that they are available. Certainly I've had this issue with Wells Fargo, US Bank, and BoA.

I assume this is because a number of them use "free, easy transfers between our customers" as a selling point, which would vanish quickly if it were easy to do between anybody. Sometimes it seems like we're even sliding backwards -- for example Chase used to have a fairly nice person-to-person payment system, but they recently locked it down to people with their own Chase account.

<comment><USER10> One problem is that ACH transfers are inherently quite insecure and the banks don't want to be held liable for fraud. It's in the bank's best interest to make transfers difficult and to check the source and destination identities pretty thoroughly.

Sarah Jeong wrote about her experience with ACH fraud here, where her bank account was emptied when someone found her account and routing numbers: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-i-hate- securi...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-i-hate-security- computers-and-the-entire-modern-banking-system)

<comment><USER11> This is why I use separate accounts for different things. Bill pay is a separate account. Direct deposit is a separate account. I have an account I _only_ use for writing paper checks (rare these days).

It's a pain in the ass, but a long time ago an employer errantly clawed back a full month of payroll direct deposits from me instead of another employee. The bank couldn't/wouldn't help, and the company's payroll was handled by a third party who was not helpful at all.

<comment><USER12> How do you move money among the accounts? I like the idea of using multiple bank accounts as financial firewalls for my money, but it seems difficult or expensive to move the funds, especially if the accounts are not all at the same institution.

<comment><USER11> ACH transfers (aka bill pay in some banks), most regular payments out of account X also have a corresponding transfer ~5 days prior from a main cash account to account X.

It's not flawless, but it is insulation against ACH fraud, both electronic and forged checks/e-checks (I've been hit by both before).

It also makes it nearly impossible to use most budgeting softwares out there, aside from battle-tested Excel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> After reading a horror story of Facebook completely locking out someone's account for allegedly doing Marketplace fraud, I'm extremely dubious of services adding financial stuff into their existing offering. Imagine being accused of fraud and losing all access to your GMail information.

<comment><USER14> Google already has a history of that with AdSense, I believe. I think HN has seen stories of total Google lockout over AdSense disputes.

<comment><USER15> I don't think so... I managed to get banned twice from AdSense and I still use all the other google services with the accounts that got banned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would love a credible competitor to Paypal.

Google's branding, though, is confusing and may hold this back.

There's Google Wallet, Android Pay, and now this. This is probably related to one of the previously mentioned ideas, but it isn't mentioned on the page.

<comment><USER17> Trying it out, seems like it's powered by Google Wallet, so there should be at least some convergence, hopefully?

<comment><USER16> Yes, it's mostly a market messaging thing. Like when they killed Google checkout and said "some" functionality went to Google Wallet.

They really need a more consistent brand and message if they want the general public using these things.

Oh, and they are also shutting down the somewhat related "trusted stores" program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this feature has been around since 2013: [https://commerce.googleblog.com/2013/05/send-money-to- friend...](https://commerce.googleblog.com/2013/05/send-money-to-friends-with- gmail-and.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> I love this idea, it can be even bigger than Paypal. Three suggestions:

First, make it a mobile app as a simplified gmail with just the recipient, the amount and a memo. That's it. In version two add the pic, avatar or whatever people use.

Second, open a new wave of email accounts since all gmail accounts are already taken so people can start using their names or businesses as email accounts again. Perhaps GoMail? And start from day one with two factor authentication so squatters don't start their party.

Third, create Merchant accounts and apps so business owners can track thousands of payments a day with tools for money management.

This was my dream solution for the mobile payment need but now that Google is going to do it I'll leave it to them.

<comment><USER19> I firmly believe they have a winner, specially for the small and informal businesses, all they need is to deliver simplicity and security. The pay by email is not as important as the pay by mobile but it can be used to leverage market penetration. Later on add NFC to the mobile app to have a total winner.

Now, imagine this mobile app used to pay a taxi driver, a street vendor, a handyman, any and all informal activities that are hard to pay by credit card. Trillions a year.

Make it simple, Google, simpler than the suits can ever think of, or I'll be forced to make it with my own bare hands. All this time I've been waiting for a giant to bring mobile payment to the masses just to see Apple fall short and nobody else stepping to the plate.

Your time to shine, Google.

<comment><USER20> Please make your own, so that Google has less of a stranglehold on everything.

<comment><USER19> Already did it for the latinamerican market, but haven't launched it and probably never will. Banking is not hard, it's just too regulated for the mere mortal.

[http://fonpago.com](http://fonpago.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can you send and receive money for "non personal use"? E.g., I tried paying some small test consultant fees from my company using Facebook's "send/receive money", and they quickly told me I was violating their terms of usage. I can't tell either way from this Gmail page. Just curious (not that I would actually use things this way, but zero fees can be nice for small transactions).

</comment><comment><USER22> I have been using this feature for a year+. It is an easy way to pay back family members who don't know what Venmo is, but have a gmail account.

</comment><comment><USER23> Google should send $10 to maybe a few million or so people to jump start this service

<comment><USER24> I can take the burden of distribution for them just send me $10mil and I promise to grow an economy via Gmail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Would love to see two things: a) Feature limited on two factor authorization. b) Support for Euro, Germany.

<comment><USER26> c) Support for direct debit instead of having to use PayPal when one doesn't own a credit card

<comment><USER27> I believe this works fine with credit/debit cards. I thought all debit cards were credit/debit these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is going to make gmail accounts a huge target for thieves. Now they don't even have to do the reset password step on your bank login.

<comment><USER29> To be honest, I think email accounts (especially the main ones) have always been a huge target to thieves, since many services still use it as the primary password reset/two-factor authentication method. In that sense, not much has changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I suggest adding a "in US or UK" to the title.

</comment><comment><USER31> So now Google will tell advertisers how much you are willing to pay for products too. Paving the way for omnipresent Amazon(tm) price adjustment based on user history.

</comment><comment><USER32> This should totally have support for crypto-currencies. Google should add support for ERC-20 compatible tokens.

</comment><comment><USER33> I was almost expecting this to be a late April's Fool...

I guess it's a way to get more people to sign up for a Google account - <USER2> can "send to any email" \- but that's not really accurate as you need a Google account to send/receive funds. It's not surprising of course, anyone technically inclined would realize this is a wrapper around:you can now place money in escrow with Google and let people know via email. Just like you could probably "send [money] via carrier pigeon" with PayPal...

<comment><USER34> "I was almost expecting this to be a late April's Fool..."

I did, too. The date was the first thing I checked. Well, I guess we can email money around on our insecure devices now. So, with Apple Pay and Gmail Money, we might finally develop something along the lines of WeChat in China where many people are constantly just using mobile to pay each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> For those of you interested in Financial Technology and money transfer. Check out the UPI system in India. It's basically an API for banks. It's designed in a way that start ups can approach it. Each user can pick up an ID, say zuron7@bankname and transact with it.

[0] [https://indiastack.org/upi/](https://indiastack.org/upi/)

</comment><comment><USER36> Here's the list of things you're prohibited from using it for:

[https://support.google.com/payments/merchant/answer/75724?vi...](https://support.google.com/payments/merchant/answer/75724?visit_id=1-636291834113321106-107927709&payments_to_biz=&rd=1)

<comment><USER16> "Travel packages and offers" is the odd man out on there. I wonder what the issue is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It seems this has been available since 2013.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is amazing! But I only see payment settings for US and UK users, can users from other countries use the service?

<comment><USER39> no

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Only available in the US and UK, correct?

<comment><USER41> Yes. It's still not possible to email money to an arbitrary country in 2017.

Unless you use a currency like bitcoin of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Interesting that they use the word "Computer" instead of "Desktop" for non- mobile devices.

<comment><USER43> What word would you use for the class of machines that are desktops and laptops? It's a real, if not very important, question that I've never found a good answer for.

<comment><USER42> Lol, I always on the lookout for an answer to this as well. I use Browsers vs Mobile Browsers vs Desktop Apps vs Mobile Apps if I want to be precise. But, yeah, it's usually confusing.

<comment><USER44> At work I ask "Are you using your phone or your computer?" It's generally non- techie people that will get confused and might consider their tablet a "computer", but that is pretty rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is EEE.

</comment><comment><USER46> Uh, no thanks.</comment>


Lessons From My Nightmares – surreal short film about anxiety created by ML - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu4m9_3HcHY <comment><AUTHOR> Note that it uses (only) images created by machine learning which are then edited together in After Effects. I don't think we're at the point yet where ML could spit out a completed video. I still thought it was cool.

I also found this part interesting, "This film was made as a part of the Runway Flash Residency. Runway ML is a machine learning application designed for creatives."

I like the idea of using "advanced" technology in a way that makes it easy for artists to use. Kind of like what the Arduino did to microcontrolers.</comment>


Show HN: Metro – a Kickstarter-style platform for crowdsourcing data - <AUTHOR> https://metro.exchange/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, we're Rory and Conor - two undergrads in Dublin. Metro lets you write your own data-collection plugins which others can install to donate/sell data to your project. The DataSources are dynamically plugged into our Chrome Extension when you press "enable DataSource" on a Metro project's page.

Metro is just 3 months old and we just opened the site for public signups this morning, but hopefully it works okay and you can do some useful stuff with it. We're full-time students and learning as we go, so keep an open mind (and let us know!) if you find any bugs or problems.

The feature you might like best is Open Data projects, which are projects which give every contributor access to all of the data.

</comment><comment><USER2> Layout is broken on mobile

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah unfortunately we aren't UX experts (this is the first website I've made actually) and we've been focused on building the backend and desktop site, so we haven't made the website responsive yet.</comment></comment>


Maxis Insider: SimCity Servers Not Necessary - <AUTHOR> http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/12/simcity-server-not-necessary <comment><USER2> "With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team."

I'm going to point a finger and say that this is clearly untrue, and very easy to disprove just from basic network monitoring over 5 minutes of playing the game. I would immediately fire a systems architect that designed a single player game to compute significant calculations on our expensive [buzz word] cloud servers. Unless we use different definitions of the word _significant_...

It's a little ridiculous to suggest that?... plus, for zero benefit (above DRM), it would have a non-negligible affect on their bottom line if they are computing time cycles for SimCity on their own servers...

Anonymous source or not, conjecturally, it's hard to not agree with what the insider has said.

<comment><USER3> It's clear that the quoted text was a lie from the start.

There's nothing you could do in an EC2 instance that I couldn't do on my quad core i7 at many times the speed and a fraction of the cost. Even if you matched users one-for-one with large EC2 instances, you'd be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour (and that many don't exist).

<comment><USER4> While I agree that this is likely not truthful, I do wonder if part of the strategy of offloading more work to the cloud be to make an easier transition to allowing mobile clients (iOS/Android) where local processing capacity is more of an issue, or to platform-neutral approaches, or to a "take your city anywhere" play model? (I doubt this is the case because unless they have a motivation to keep it secret, it would make for a much better explanation for why they'd want to keep state in the cloud, given the trends towards more mobile gaming.)

<comment><USER5> EA's claim struck me as really odd too; this just isn't the way that games are made [yet?] and if they did manage to get something like they claimed running, there would be much more interesting technical aspects of it that they probably would have done press releases for. In this day and age, standing up a system like that is still a major accomplishment, and the details of how they got around things like processing power and network bandwidth on consumer connections would be really interesting to the tech community.

TL;DR easily-verifiable claim by EA that stunk from the beginning proven wrong by anyone who knows how to use Wireshark

Que even worse consumer backlash at EA.

<comment><USER6> Forget Wireshark, the article implies that some of the critics tried the good old fashioned "yank the Internet cord and see how long it takes to break" method and got 20 minutes of playability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing I don't understand about all this is why they were unable to new servers online. After everything hit the fan, they announced they were working on it and had gotten two new servers up the day before.

Two servers?

It just seems unbelievable to me that the backend was designed in a way that it couldn't be scaled out any faster than that. Since each region is a discrete unit, you'd think they should be able to move them between servers.

Was it all intertwined? Did the regions, stats, achievements, and DRM all run out of the same database? Were they not separate services?

They had to know this game would be popular, they've been pushing it for months (to great effect). It's a major property and the first release in about a decade.

Then there is EA. Even if Maxis couldn't figure this out (and I doubt that), EA has online experience. They're the publisher for Mass Effect, Madden, Fifa, NCAA, and more. They should have the resources, the people, and the experience to have prevented this.

If you completely ignore the DRM or the seemingly unimportant always-online requirement, it this whole thing still seems botched. There were multiple groups who should have known better and prevented this. My understanding is that they got some warning signs during the beta.

I would kill for a postmortem blog or article on Gamasutra explaining why they couldn't scale out faster; to know what decision was the lynchpin that held them back.

<comment><USER8> Each game "Server" for SimCity is actually an Amazon EC2 cluster of servers, with 1 central master DB server. Even when the servers were "full" on game launch, all of the EC2 servers were responding to requests normally - it was the cluster's master DB server that was slow. All of the "servers" are actually in the UK Amazon EC2.

This brings us to the scalability problems and why regions/cities are not shared to all servers. The database is the bottleneck, so sharing regions between servers would only worsen performance.

<comment><USER9> That makes it even more baffling why they couldn't bring up more servers.

If it's all just a chef/puppet based infrastructure in EC2, you should be maybe 20-30 minutes away from pumping out a new 'server'. One is as easy as ten, at that point.

<comment><USER10> We're talking about EA here. You need to include the latency required to go through enough bureaucracy layers to approve the expenditure of funds on another cluster.

<comment><USER11> Not to say that there isn't bureaucracy in a company their size, but the launch of a game this size is a really big deal. There's a tremendous of PR, and they're getting scathed. Polygon downgraded their review of 9.5 down to 4.0 because of the server issues. I think if they could cut a decent size check to fix the issues, they would. The problem is likely in engineering, like a database that isn't scaling.

<comment><USER10> > The problem is likely in engineering, like a database that isn't scaling.

If it were that simple, just cut the number of users per cluster and throw 10 more up.

> I think if they could cut a decent size check to fix the issues

Doubtful within the context of a quick fix, but it is likely the root issue. See above simple solution that takes 30 minutes to roll out. EA is not a company run by engineers, its not a company run by people that understand anything about engineering. What sounds like a simple solution to us that can easily be implemented by throwing money at it and reaping the customer goodwill is completely foreign to a company like that. You may as well be speaking Klingon when you make the recommendation to just throw new clusters at it.

<comment><USER11> I've met enough people who worked at EA to know they have competent engineers and managers -- they are not completely inept. When hundreds of millions of dollars are suddenly at risk, you have a clear channel straight to the CEO to get the resources that you need.

I'm giving EA the benefit of the doubt that they ruled out 30-minute fixes. I can't see how any of us can really speculate as to how long it should take to fix when we don't really know any details. For example, if it was a database bottleneck, would you commit to walking in and fixing it in 30 minutes? Or even 30 hours? I think you'd want to know the details, because the scope can easily be off by 1-2 orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER12> > I've met enough people who worked at EA to know they have competent > engineers and managers -- they are not completely inept.

Nope, nope, nope. Nobody in their right mind will believe you that. If they fabricate such a game launch then they are complete morons. You simply can not claim that they are competent after that clusterf __k.

Under "competent" I understand "Having sufficient skill, knowledge, ability, or qualifications." (definition from wiktionary). Their engineers clearly have neither the skill nor ability to fix the problems in timely manner. Nor did (or do) they have enough knowledge how the servers behave under such high load, otherwise they'd fix it before the launch. And if the problems were known, then the managers failed to delay the launch. A company which knowingly releases such a game is not run by competent people.

<comment><USER13> I believe it. All it takes is one higher up executive to pick a launch date and mandate that it happens, damn the torpedoes. This says nothing about the competence of the engineers and their managers in the trenches.

I mean, you could question their willingness to work at the company. But, working on the latest sim city sounds like a fun project and people like paychecks.

<comment><USER14> Bingo! As a former EA senior engineer, my money is on someone in EA marketing setting the dates and forcing an 80-hour week crunch time for the duration of this title's production. They probably even brought in "experts" who ignored foundation code and slammed in their own logic "'cause it works" and now they have a clusterfuck of logic no one understands. Been there, been screwed by their managers, and left for good. EA can rot in hell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A friend of mine put it this way: let people run disconnected, offline, and in the UI show a big glass dome over their city cutting them off Simpsons Movie style[1]. Over time, gas, food, and water run out, necessitating a reconnection.

[1] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kPUGLt1DWQ>

</comment><comment><USER16> In respect to the graphics, it looks awesome and I was expecting to be just as great as previous iterations. I actually wanted to play the game until I found out it was social multiplayer with cloud-based saves.

That just killed it. I have since bought a copy of SimCity 4 and plan to be quite happy with it for another decade or so.

<comment><USER17> > That just killed it.

Really? Not the terrible launch?

This says nothing about the game, only your preference of playing single player games over multiplayer games. There are plenty of great games out there with 'social multiplayer' or 'cloud-based saves'. These are not problems that drive away players.

<comment><USER18> Ostensibly they are, if they are the root of EA's issues. I don't complain about the servers being down because I don't play games that require servers' constant attention like that. If they were any other than 'social multiplayer' then they would be a real-time strategy game, and oddly while those games tend to sink or swim on the balance, playability, and fun of their multiplayer side, I too generally prefer to play single player on those games as well as I would tend to get my ass handed to me by Koreans.

I would rather play Starcraft today than buy SC2. OK so that is stretching, but I haven't tried the new StarCraft, and it's mostly because of this DRM situation.

<comment><USER18> OK. Today I went out and tried Jurassic Park Builder which is basically Sim City Lite for Android.

I am frustrated because I can't start a new game without destroying my current progress. I took a slow route, spent all of my coins trying to evolve my Triceratops too soon, and now I can't use it to progress faster. But this is only the first day.

It's not as bad as Vector, that makes it clear I won't be able to complete the game without a purchase. They could be lying. It might be worth the bling just to own the special tricks. Meanwhile I have come up with some great ideas for how to use the bitcoin in new and exciting ways. I'm drunk!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure how fun "a limited single-player game without all the nifty region stuff" would be, considering how small each city is. A lot of the fun is playing at the region level.

<comment><USER20> Don't worry.

I'm sure Sim City "Megatropolis" DLC is soon coming that doubles the default city size. Only $19.95 or whatever they think people will pay.

And don't worry about the traffic jams from bigger cities. Sim City Subway edition will comes out soon after. Only $15.95.

(yes I am very cynical and angry about this and making bitter sarcastic comments. This is a game I've wanted for a long time but is so flawed because of bad decisions)

<comment><USER21> I'll wait till I get the "Gold Edition" or whatever that includes all these expansion packs and the original game for the same price as the game costs now, a year down the road.

<comment><USER22> I think you might be waiting in vain. Unlike most other franchises, The Sims in particular seem to have an extraordinarily long half-life when it comes to DLC cost. I'd be rather surprised if Sim City was any different, given how well it's sold despite terrible PR work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Patiently waiting for the re-implemented game server and attendant crack that will let us point SimCity to our own networks.

<comment><USER5> Yep. I assume that the game has fallbacks for "failed save" and "bad data from server" that you could exploit / patch / use in a work-around here. Worst- case, you'd make a real server that accepts save game data and stores it, and maybe does some "verification" of client data packages (AKA "discard client response and return a big thumbs up in all cases"). It might be more complicated than that if they're implementing a challenge / response, but I have no idea how much effort they're going through for DRM these days when it's been shown to NEVER work.

<comment><USER24> I've done some reversing, and this is EA, so... let's say it's not going to be something that'll be cracked in a weekend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I could be wrong here, but if Bradshaw's claims were true--that a significant amount of calculation is offloaded on their servers--wouldn't the game be unplayable for people who have shitty internet connections anyway? It's easy for me to imagine SimCity making so many computations to simulate the game, but for those data to be sent back and forth from the gamer's PC to their servers? It has got to strain the player somehow.

<comment><USER26> Your local machine could be doing coarse grain calculations while their server did fine grain calculations, and periodically sync up, in the same way FPS's do (which is why you get laggy players jumping about).

But from what others have said, that doesn't seem to be the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow people must want to play this game so bad seeing the amount of aggro it's generated. Makes me want to go out and buy a copy!

<comment><USER28> I'm pretty much waiting for the "offline" release, the 100% all clear that noone is having issues, or the crack. whichever comes first.

<comment><USER29> I've been waiting for years and i'll wait until the day there is an offline mode or a patch. It's the principle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So, if it's not much engineering effort for EA to make the game single player it shouldn't be too much engineering effort for people who are not EA..

<comment><USER31> I'm pretty sure they reused lots of Sims 1-3 code, and they really have this simulation thingy figured out. Most probably some really good and generic engine, or else they could not pump out Sims extensions every other month. I have quite some respect for this, it certainly took years.

<comment><USER32> > I'm pretty sure they reused lots of Sims 1-3 code

You made this assertion elsewhere in this thread also. I don't see any reason to believe this is the case, do you have any evidence in favor of this theory? There's a huge amount of PR from them saying this is not the case, and from my minimal experience with game development it makes no sense.

<comment><USER31> The same amount of PR of them saying that you need to be online because servers manage these "massive" simulations. No, I have no evidence, would be cool if someone from Maxis explained the differences between Sims and Glassbox. What they say here [1] also applies to Sims, only on a bigger scale. I have yet to see a feature that does not somehow exist in Sims.

[1]: [http://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/7/4/3135209/simcity- reboo...](http://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/7/4/3135209/simcity-reboot- glassbox-maxis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Given that Sims 3 runs on my old Windows machine (on low graphics settings), it's not that surprising that servers are not actually needed to run SimCity. I don't know if they really use the same simulation engine, but I'd say the scale is on the same order of magnitude.

<comment><USER7> They don't. SimCity runs on a new engine called Glassbox. They've been releasing videos and articles about it for months to get people pumped up.

<comment><USER31> That's what they say, but I don't buy the marketing speak, especially now that they have been proven liars. Would you throw away all this code and start from scratch? What they describe about Glassbox was already used in Sims - agents, resources,... except multiplayer which seems to be just an occasional sync, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Anyone notice the interesting old-school-text-adventure error page? It wasn't 404 but some other 4xx page (forgot which) -- it seems to be resolved and gone now though.

</comment><comment><USER34> People are complaining as if DRM was the reason they made it like this, EA is evil, yada-yada. It isn't. It's pretty clear they had a vision for this game to be a MMO/social game from day one.

The problem stems more from their failure at scaling than not supporting an offline mode. Diablo was the same crap on launch week.

There's an apparent pressure from publishers to create always-online games, but something tells me the teams are not having the experience/schedule/man- power to create scalable architectures to back it. Massive multiplayer gaming is certainly a hard problem.

<comment><USER35> If their vision was for this game to be an MMO/social game "from day one", then they should have done a way better job sharing that vision and framing the discussion that way.

The social/multiplayer aspects of Diablo, WoW, and SC are obvious to me, which is why Blizzard's move never really concerned me _that_ much. Add on top of that the truly well done matchmaking system and I hardly think about it all. Doing things _well_ goes a long way in convincing naysayers.

However, when I think SimCity, all I can think of is single player. And the vague things I've heard about interacting with others seem really lame. Again, maybe there are some awesome multiplayer aspects, but I have not heard of them and it sounds like most people aren't that interested in them.

<comment><USER36> _they should have done a way better job sharing that vision and framing the discussion that way._

In a market where some game's design decisions for online focus and/or online passes _are_ driven by an effort to reduce piracy and the secondary sales market, it becomes very hard to convince people that any one game isn't.

Good luck selling that: "No, not in this case, our design just happened to support them by coincidence, and, oh, we're also part of EA and even though the cynics have been right about our motives in the past, we're totally not doing it this time."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Duh?

The top comment here is more elegant, but EA is clearly lying. Their "apology" was a joke and amounted to "Sorry we've had so much success, it's your fault for assaulting our servers."

</comment><comment><USER38> Although I'm not thrilled with the launch experience and DRM of SimCity, I don't think that this article adds any validity due to everything coming from an anonymous source.

<comment><USER39> He isn't anonymous to RPS - they say they know who he is, and verified he worked on the project just aren't publishing his name. That's a lot different than an "anonymous tip."

"Our source, who we have verified worked directly on the project but obviously wishes to remain anonymous, has first-hand knowledge of how the game works."

Either RPS is being duped, or it strongly adds validity to the story. RPS has a great reputation, and if they say they verified it, I think that puts the burden of proof now on EA to show that that the claim is incorrect.

<comment> mkr-hn It's possible RPS isn't known by many on HN. Gaming journalism doesn't often make its way to this place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> As usual with 'anonymous sources/insiders' it's all complete conjecture. The only people that truly know are EA/Maxis.

EDIT: Seems people disagree that this isn't complete guesswork. Yes the game runs for a while without a connection, but that doesn't prove that servers aren't necessary as the headline claims. There is no hard, undeniable evidence. It's the same story that has been rehashed since the game was released.

And since the Xbox 720 'leak' fiasco I take these 'sources' with a pinch of salt, regardless of how reputable the site is.

[http://www.gamefront.com/tech-sites-fall-for-fake- xbox-720-l...](http://www.gamefront.com/tech-sites-fall-for-fake- xbox-720-leak/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's plausible seeing as how multiple people have reported to be able to play the game while lacking internet connections for up to 20 minutes. Additionally, the methodology of the code seems to fit with several of the changes made by Maxis to improve performance (disabling cheetah speed for example).

Regardless, Maxis has stated they will respond shortly to the article. <https://twitter.com/rockpapershot/status/311618456640450561>

<comment><USER41> The main thing the article proves is that the servers aren't needed for any _real time_ calculations. What's to say the servers don't provide valuable data based on previous events in the game, data that's needed for future simulation?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Peleton worth over 20B Dollars? - <AUTHOR> Pelleton's market cap is currently at about 25 Billion Dollars.
That is about the market cap of Ford (currently 27 Billion).
Peletons revenue will be about $2B this year.
Fords revenue will be about $150B this year.
What is the market seeing as Peleton's future that it values Peleton at $25B? <comment><USER2> _What is the market seeing as Peleton 's future that it values Peleton at $25B?_

The valuation is based on the idea that they'll become the Apple of the home exercise market - aspirational, affordable-luxury products with additional services for monthly fees.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _What is the market seeing as Peleton 's future that it values Peleton at > $25B?_

The stock market doesn't care about Peleton's future in general.

It cares about Peleton stock's short/mid term future.

The valuation basically is about how desirable the stock is and how well the stock is expected to do - doesn't have to be connected with actual Peleton performance, hype will do just as well, if it raises the stock price. And indeed, it has already brought the cap to 25B, so it works!

</comment><comment><USER4> Google "Fed Put"</comment>


Rupert Murdoch Shuts Down London Paper...  - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/08/20/murdoch.paper/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it that the costs of running a paper are 2 high or is it the fact that people aren't advertising or is it the fact that people aren't reading newspapers anymore, or is it a combination of all 3?

<comment><USER2> It's a combination of everything:

a) The advertising isn't effective anymore, especially with digital alternatives. So very little value meaning less revenues. b) Their staffs are bloated beyond belief. c) By the time the paper is released the next morning, they have been scooped. d) There are costs you can not get rid of ie- big news rooms and printing dead trees.

<comment><USER3> Thelondonpaper is an afternoon/evening commuter freesheet, as is the London Lite; the Metro is the one that goes out in the morning.</comment></comment></comment>