Show HN: 24/7 Rails Support and Maintenance - <AUTHOR> http://weare.ninja/

<comment><USER2> Do you have many other people working with you on this?

Even with just a couple sites I could see this leading to burn out very quickly with a small team unless you have daytime coverage across all timezones.

Your fees are also way too low for what amounts to 24/7 on-call service. You should be in the $XXXX range. Maybe high $XXX if you add some more limitations(like a larger response window).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm alone on this atm. I was going to be on call until I go crazy and then hire other people.

Perhaps you're right about the pricing. I'm just not sure how many fixes people want a month yet.

<comment><USER2> Don't do that. You'll end up dropping the ball on your clients and losing them.

The idea is pretty sound you just need to charge more and find a few people to spread the load across.

One other problem I see is trust. You'll need a lot more about yourselves up there and why I should trust you with my companies software/data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the feedback.

Any idea on where else I can post/advertise this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Front-end isn't tableless lol

<comment><AUTHOR> I bought this theme off themeforest to try to save as much time as possible. Turns out it had this crazy generator that was missing closing tags and had tables everywhere :(.

<comment><USER3> btw awesome and fearless service ^-^</comment></comment></comment>


JPMorgan Chase gives fintechs data access deal deadline - <AUTHOR> https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/35292/jpmorgan-chase-gives-fintechs-data-access-deal-deadline <comment><AUTHOR> Why is this so hard? But also, why doesn't JPMC implement webhooks? Webhooks will solve half the problem.</comment>


Ask HN: Which is the best netbook for HNers? - <AUTHOR>

Taking the following post one level lower:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1824563
Do you think that somebody could do "light" development with a netbook? Which one are you using or recommending? <comment><USER2> The new baby Air seems like a perfect candidate. If very light dev, you could even terminal into your main dev machine from your iPad and work that way (maybe you just want to code a quick bug fix)

</comment><comment><USER3> If "light" = quick bug fix while on the road, then yes. I've done that and a bit of sysadmin from my G1 Android by SSHing over 3G. I use ConnectBot for SSH. I even keep a tiny cheatsheet of the htop commands folded in my wallet.

I have a friend who uses a netbook for dev work while travelling and a Mac at home. From observing him first-hand at my home, he didn't seem too happy with the cramped keyboard and the slow machine, but it certainly works for basic stuff on the road.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes.

I have an Aspire One (Acer).

I wouldn't use it exclusively at home, but it is fine for using on a bus or a train and cheap enough that I don't worry about people stealing it.

I use a simple text editor + the command line --- I don't know if it would run a heavyweight IDE. But it is happy running e.g. a web server.

It would be nice to have a faster SSD --- the one it has seems slower than a HDD. That's the only part I am tempted to upgrade.</comment>


American's opinions on open government data - <AUTHOR> http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/21/open-government-data/

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think most Americans realize when they view the weather that they're using open data.

When you compare these numbers to Congressional approval they look much better.</comment>


Lessig Ends Presidential Campaign - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/Lessig2016/videos/vb.832686670149581/909929802425267/?type=2&theater <comment><USER2> I supported Lessig's presidential campaign monetarily, even though I never thought he had a snowball's chance and also didn't think that his model of affecting change was fully thought through. As entrepreneurs, I think many of us can sympathize with the idea of knowing that there is a huge, massive problem that needs to be fixed, without necessarily having the solution fully formed.

It would have been so easy for Lessig to coast on the reputation of his extraordinary work with Creative Commons [0] and his professorship at Harvard. Instead, he (IMHO correctly) identified one of the greatest challenges of our time, political corruption. His first proposed solution, the MAYDAY PACn [1] (A SuperPAC to end SuperPACs), was a brilliant idea and an abject failure. So was his second, which was this presidential campaign. It is incorrect to say that he never had a chance, since you can see how close he was in polling [2] to qualifying for the debate, and getting into the debate would have had a huge impact on awareness of his ideas and potential solutions.

I do complain that he had fallen for the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency [3], instead of understanding the complexity required for real change. But, I give him huge props for trying both of these approaches, and I can't wait to see what his third attempt to take on political corruption will be.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_PAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday_PAC) [2] [http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-d...](http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national- democratic- primary#!maxpct=60&mindate=2015-09-01&smoothing=less&showpoints=yes&estimate=custom&selected=Biden,Clinton,Lessig,Sanders) [3] [http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern- theor...](http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5732208/the-green-lantern-theory-of- the-presidency-explained)

<comment><USER3> Serious question: given that he didn't have a snowball's chance, why did you give him money, as opposed to giving money to some other change agent that _does_ have a chance?

<comment><USER4> Sometimes its about sending a message. After all, its not a horse race; you don't win any prize by backing the winner.

<comment><USER3> Is that why you supported Lessig?

<comment><USER4> That's why I support {whomever}. Marginally my vote/money is worth more by supporting an outlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With all the critical "I-told-you-sos", this seems like a good time to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

<comment><USER6> God, how I hate this quote. It's TR justifying his own worst qualities -- his impetuousity, his willingness to wade into things without thinking them through. Two years after he made that speech ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic)) he would wade into the 1912 Presidential election, where his major accomplishment was splitting the Republican vote and therefore handing the election to the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

Action, by itself, is not always the best thing. Sometimes action is wasted, or even counterproductive. Georges Danton called for " _l 'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!_" and ended up getting his head cut off. Then at the turn of the 20th century the French generals picked up his slogan again and marched a generation to death by machine-gun.

Lessig is actually a good example of this; his quixotic campaign has cost him a lot of goodwill among people who agree with him on the issues and should be his core supporters. He's going to have to spend some time over the next few years rebuilding bridges that would still be standing if he hadn't himself burned them. What a waste.

<comment><USER7> Luckily for humanity, we have people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, and an adventurous can-do sensibility drives us all onward.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately for humanity, we have other people who are willing to take action that others would find ill-advised because they are, in fact, ill- advised. Risk aversion does not make for incredible discoveries, but has the virtue of mitigating disaster. And an adventurous can-do sensibility drives people onwards in all directions, including off cliffs.

Ralph Nader is also a pretty compelling guy, on paper. In practice, he turns out to be the reason we invaded Iraq.

<comment><USER8> I also think Lessig's campaign was an absurdity.

But blaming Ralph Nader for the invasion of Iraq is far _far_ below your usual standard Thomas. Even singling out Nader as an explanation for Bush's election is pretty weak sauce.

You might first blame everyone in the Bush Administration who didn't resign, everyone in Congress who voted to authorize Bush's actions, foreign heads of state who went along and everyone at the UN who took the Americans WMD claims at face value, the entirety of the mainstream US media including especially the New York Times, the previous several Republican presidents who set the stage in the Middle East, US and international oil companies, the Saudis, etc.

Or if we're just talking about the Bush/Gore election, how about blaming the Supreme Court who decided the election 5:4, Gore who gave up instead of fighting more about it, all the local officials around the country who supported efforts to disenfranchise voters, whoever designed that "butterfly ballot", all the people in aggregate who voted for Bush or any of the above members of Congress, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in congress who were such opportunistic spineless SOBs that folks on the left spent years thoroughly fed up with them, whoever was running Gore's ineffective grassroots campaign/GOTV efforts and did a terrible job of convincing anyone that he'd be at all different than Clinton, etc.

<comment><USER9> When a team wins in football, don't you only count the final field goal that decided the game? Or do the other 60 minutes count too?

Gore lost his home state but Nader cost him the election. Gore wanted a partial recount in Florida (when a full recount would have been in his favor) but Nader cost him the election.

Curse those Green party voters for not falling in line!

<comment><USER3> Nader sapped support from Gore throughout the entire election.

Again, the problem isn't that it's wrong to run for President. The issue is that if you _know_ you're pulling support in a close election, _and_ you have no chance of winning, then it becomes legitimate to ask whether the point you're trying to make by running is worth the cost.

<comment><USER10> Our electoral system is broken in that it doesn't allow voters to reasonably express preferences which aren't one of the two mainstream options because of this spoiler effect. I'm not sure what the correct answer is, to complain about how "both parties are terrible" and vote for the mainstream party anyway and get more of the same and know that it will never change or to vote how you actually feel knowing that the system is rigged against allowing you to do that. I can't really fault someone for doing either.

<comment><USER3> I agree that our system is broken, but that's not news, and when you take actions within that system that cause harm, you remain culpable for the harm; you can't just appeal to a different electoral system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can someone give me a rundown of how anyone expected anything different to come out of this? Polling at 0% isn't exactly fixed by a televised debate. Sanders is competing with Hillary on a fairly close scale and yet a lot of people still say he has no chance (though I definitely think he does at this point, but I'm not a US citizen so...), so what could possibly happen with Lessig?

<comment><USER12> Lessig never wanted to be president; he wanted a podium. But you can't say that. If he indicated he wasn't serious about being president in any way, they never would have let him on stage.

That being said, I think it's shameful he hasn't endorsed Sanders. Lessig acts like he's the only one working on it. Whether or not you like Sanders, he is the only viable candidate whose core issue is overturning Citizens United. I realize Sanders is less known for that and more known for democratic socialism, which is probably Lessig's hesitation. However, it always bothered me how little Lessig acknowledged the only candidate on either side with any chance of initiating campaign finance reform. If he really cared about campaign finance reform, he'd be out stumping for Sanders rather than this "running for president" publicity stunt.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3icikb/we_are_larry_l...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3icikb/we_are_larry_lessig_presidential_candidate_maybe/cuf6dzn)

His Reddit answer boils down to "Bernie's plan won't work but I won't say why. My plan will work but I won't say way."

<comment><USER13> >Lessig never wanted to be president; he wanted a podium. But you can't say that. If he indicated he wasn't serious about being president in any way, they never would have let him on stage.

I guess that's the difference between the Democratic party debates and the Republican party debates. I know that sounds like a troll, but it's not. The GOP primary debates had 17 people running, the Democratic primary had 5 (not counting Lessig). No one seriously thinks that Lindsey Graham is going to be the nominee, nor did anyone think that he could be the nominee when he ran. He's a single issue candidate (national security) and his agenda is make sure this issue is discussed during the primaries. The same thing with Santorum and Huckabee ("traditional values"). It's not a new phenomenon. Back in 1988, Pat Robertson ran with a "Christian conservative" agenda, but no one seriously thought that he was going to be president. His role was to highlight the power of the conservative evangelical Christians in the Republican party, thus causing the eventual nominee to (and the party as a whole) to pay attention to their issues. There's nothing with this tactic, and it may even be effective. But it seems like it's more prominent on the national stage in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.

<comment><USER14> As much as I hate to defend Lindsey Graham, I honestly think he's running for the VP slot. He would make an appealing VP for the Republican base -- hawkish on defense and a veteran of senate dealmaking.

<comment><USER13> That is one of the analyses I've heard. The other is that he's playing a bit of a coach, making the eventual nominee hone his foreign policy prior to the general.

The only reason why I chose Lindsey Graham for my example, was that he's stuck in JV debates, and had I could articulate a reason for his candidacy -- as opposed to Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, or George Pataki. I honestly can't figure out why their staying the race, except for perhaps for personal marketing reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> He hasn't ended his Presidential campaign. He's ended his bid for the Democratic nomination. David Weigel at WaPo asked him if he would run (pointlessly) as an independent; Lessig would (unsurprisingly) not rule that out. Note that he is still taking donations.

<comment><USER15> I really, really hope he doesn't. That will destroy any goodwill I ever held towards him.

My only consolation is that his campaign is such an abject failure that it probably can't even function as a spoiler.

<comment><USER16> Why? He's not going to get any noticeable amount of votes and won't cause any damage to another candidate.

<comment><USER17> It has only been 15 years since Ralph Nader got W elected for two terms and cost us about $10 trillion in stupid wars and bad economic decisions, and just about destroyed the US economy to boot.

Do you _already_ need yet another new lesson on why Lessig running as an independent could easily be disastrous? Really?

<comment><USER18> The person Lessig would theoretically be Nadering, you do realize that as a Senator she voted on the wrong side of all of those bad things you're pointing out, right?

<comment><USER3> There are probably very few people on this thread who would pick Hillary Clinton as their dream candidate, but there's also very few people here who think that she wouldn't be a million times better than President Cruz.

<comment><USER18> Based on the actual voting record, on the most serious issues, she's about on par with the worst president of the modern era. Cruz and Trump would be worse, sure, but not by "a million times", more like 2x.

Four years of letting Republicans remind everyone how terrible they are at governing for a chance to be rid of Clinton for good and take back Congress and the White House in 2020? Maybe worth it.

<comment><USER17> You seem to be deeply confused. Hillary casting a pro forma vote for something does not equate in any way with initiating the thing in question.

Deep down, you know this, of course. You know it's blatantly silly for you to say that Hillary Clinton is "on par" with W. But somehow your filter just failed to kick in.

<comment><USER19> I agree that she is on par with Bush, honestly. She's been central to an administration that has conducted just as much war and added just as much debt as Bush's.

And I would also pick Trump over her, if only out of sheer morbid curiosity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm conflicted or perhaps uninformed about what could be the real solution for reducing corruption in politics.

I am against corporations spending large sums of money to influence politics because in the long term the rights of individuals, particularly groups of individuals who do not have a lot of money, erode. This weakens our founding fathers' protections against tyranny of the majority.

I'm also very pro free speech on the individual level. And I feel if I ran my own company I would want to be able to advertise and even lobby for policies in which I believe.

Yet sometimes wealth comes from being at the right place at the right time, or wealth grows on wealth. And, in the interest of advancing society, I am not okay with our representatives being elected based on who threw them the most money. It's supposed to be one person one vote, not one dollar one vote.

Still, _even without the super PACs_ , won't corporations simply find another way to spend money to influence politics? Is this how it worked before 2010? Do we benefit from the the current system by being able to actually track the donations?

Does anyone know in detail the solution Sanders or others have in mind?

<comment><USER3> Sanders supports a Constitutional amendment to allow Congress to regulate campaign finance; in other words, Sanders would support the first Constitutional amendment in the history of the US to deliberately abridge the First Amendment, and would do so to regulate _political speech_.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for your reply. So presumably this would bring us back to the state of things from 1971 with the entrance of the Federal Election Campaign Act, including the limitation on spending money on media?

It sounds tricky. The most powerful thing about free speech is the right to say whatever you want about your government. But given the apparent level of corruption, maybe it's time to limit corporations' ability to make political speech. Is that what he's proposing?

I read this on publicintegrity.org,

> It wasn't until 1971 that Congress got serious and passed the Federal > Election Campaign Act, which required the full reporting of campaign > contributions and expenditures. It limited spending on media advertisements. > But that portion of the law was ruled unconstitutional — and that actually > opened the door for the Citizens United decision.

<comment><USER3> Sanders' amendment essentially says that nothing in the First Amendment can be construed to limit Congress's ability to protect the integrity of elections, and (this is explicit in the amendment and without precedent anywhere else in the Constitution) from the wealthy.

He delegates to Congress the details on how to use that new power to suppress the First Amendment.

<comment><USER21> I do normally agree with your posts but this seems ... distressingly principled, if you like :)

If we adhere to the idea that "money is speech" (Buckley v Valeo) and resist all attempts at suppressing speech, how do we avoid an eventual slide into plutocracy when upwards of 90% of all elections these days are won by the candidate who spends the most money?

<comment><USER3> I don't know what I think about campaign finance reform. On the one hand I have the obvious concerns about money buying influence. On the other hand, money tried _real real hard_ to buy the 2012 election and failed comically.

Meanwhile, the free speech issues involved in regulating campaign spending, while admittedly very inconvenient for all of us, are real, and no appeal to plutocracy extinguishes them.

Certainly: the approach Sanders seems to take to this problem, of _literally amending the Constitution to neuter to First Amendment_ and then delegating to Congress --- yes, this Congress --- an unlimited power to regulate political speech, is not OK with me.

There are lots of reforms I want to see happen at the federal level. Sentencing reform, accountability for prosecutors, financial markets regulation, health care, school funding, health care, drug decriminalization, and health care are all I think good targets for top down federal regulation. Campaign finance, I think, might be a better thing for states to grapple with first.

<comment><USER22> You're right that there isn't a lot of evidence about whether money influences elections. But ultimately it doesn't matter whether money influences elections. What is more important is whether elected officials believe money is influential in elections, and I think this is trivially true.

What are your fears if "The Democracy is for People Amendment" passed? Are you worried that the congress would limit political spending too much? Or are you worried that the amendment doesn't specifically separate political spending from political speech well enough?

<comment><USER3> It doesn't separate political spending from political speech _at all_.

<comment><USER22> I read this as specifically giving congress the authority to set limits on raising and spending money. I don't see any language granting them to ability to restrict political speech.

SECTION 1.To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.

[0] - [https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint- re...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-joint- resolution/19/text)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This link doesn't work for me (completely blank page) and his Facebook page doesn't say anything about him dropping out.

(For those curious: from the US, using Chrome, no ad or privacy block - Facebook is outputting 21 lines of HTML and then nothing. Looks like PHP is just dying for some reason)

<comment><AUTHOR> It still works for me.

The tl;dw is that the Democrats changed their debate qualification threshold from polling at 1+% < 6 weeks before the debate to polling at 1+% > 6 weeks before the debate. This means Lessig went from probably-in-the-next-debate to definitely-not. He figured if the Democrats are actively changing their rules to disqualify him, his effort is probably best spent on things other than running for a primary that doesn't want to include him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nobody in this thread seems to be talking about the strange change of rules by the Democrats. Why did this change in rules come about? As I understand it was a retroactive change? Very odd.

<comment><USER25> Um... Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the DNC, was the co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign. It's no secret she wants Hillary to win the nomination.

It's actually a pretty fucked up system. The rules for qualification into the debates are decided by Wasserman Schultz and her alone, so the "rules" end up being in practice "will this make Hillary Clinton look good or bad?". Lessig's inclusion ran the risk of making Hillary look bad - by calling her out on her corporate donors - so he was excluded. Clearly this is not how we should have public debates about the future of our country.

For what it's worth, Wasserman Schultz is already under fire for restricting the Democrats to only 6 national debates. Almost every other executive in the party thought this was a bad move since it gives the Republicans significantly more airtime, but remember the rules are decided by Hillary Clinton's campaign co-chair.

Also Trump just called her out, which is pretty funny. [http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-takes-aim-at-highly- neu...](http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-takes-aim-at-highly-neurotic- debbie-wasserman-schultz-shes-a-terrible-person/)

I don't think she's going to keep her job.

<comment><USER26> What's interesting is that even Hillary is now complaining about the minimal debate schedule. It's denying Democrats a chance to make their case, not just to undecided Democratic primary voters, but to the nation in general. It rings even more true after the superb first debate, which made Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Martin O'Malley all look really great (and with Webb and Chaffee both dropped out, future debates will be even better).

I think some of the poor decision-making for the restricted debate schedule was a reaction to 2008, when Democrats had 25 debates. It was distracting and exhausting. We're seeing it in comparison here, where the Republicans have far more candidates and a much busier debate schedule, which is winning them a lot of attention outside of Republican circles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As much as I love Lawrence Lessig, I'm glad for this. "Celebrity single-issue candidate" is a poor role for him, a terrible waste of his talents. He deserves better, and the Democratic Party would do well to recognize him for it. An explicit, high profile advisory role for either Bernie or Hillary (or whoever wins the nomination) would be fantastic. Maybe even a Cabinet seat.

But president? What's that supposed to accomplish? If you can't break out of the nerd ghetto, it's not relevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> My biggest concern is that the only official job of the President is to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Lessig is a fantastic policy wonk, but a single-issue candidate has no business leading the military, even though that was effectively the job he was going out for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Honestly, his plan never made sense.

Even if he somehow won the election, he still would not have the power to change congress (or the Citizen's United ruling) one bit.

<comment><USER28> That's true of Sanders, too.

<comment><USER29> Except that Sanders has street cred.

You know, his entire life has been in politics, and Dems don't want a naive semi-outsider this time (for some Obama has been a let-down).

<comment><USER28> He may not be naive, but he's still a semi-outsider, isn't he? I mean, technically, he's not even a Democrat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Lessig's actions in the past several years have been a major disappointment. I admired his work in pushing the copyright case (Eldred v. Ashcroft) all the way to the Supreme Court. Even though he lost, that at least got the issue into the media a little bit, something no one else has managed; that's something that could have been built upon.

But instead of building on that and (for example) working with tech indistries to lobby for more sensible copyright legislation, he decided to go after a far more enormous and difficult task of somehow reforming the entire election system, something which I have to wonder if he even has any particular qualifications or experience to do. Then he decided that the way to accomplish that was to run for President, which is generally taken by the media and most people who follow politics as the sign of a crank. And now that's evaporated, as one would have expected, and we're back where we started. No Presidency, certainly no election law reform, and the same old awful copyright laws getting worse all the time.

<comment><USER31> He tried lobbying for sensible copyright legislation. The problem was campaign finance. Hence the pivot.

<comment><USER30> That's like pivoting from "I was unable to climb this mountain" to "I'll tear down this mountain with my bare hands." He switched from something achievable that he was qualified for to something immensely more difficult that he had no experience in. What's the result of that been?

And, you know. Even if Citizens United is overturned (hooray! It'll once again be illegal to make a movie critical of Hillary Clinton during an election! Joyous day!) Lessig's contribution to that is zero; that's going wherever it's going with or without him. It would have been better for all of us if he'd stuck with copyright where he could have made a difference.

<comment><USER31> It's more like "I was unable to climb this mountain because I couldn't breathe" to "Let's pack oxygen tanks".

<comment><USER30> No, I like my simile better.

Nothing and nobody will stop you from bringing oxygen tanks on your climb, and learning to use them is relatively straightforward. Changing the system of campaign finance in the United States, on the other hand, requires navigating dozens of immensely complex special interests, will be opposed by one or both major parties, and we haven't even gotten to what the courts might say yet. It's _hard_.

<comment><USER31> Sounds like Lesterland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The Democrats plan for victory is to appear less crazy to moderate voters than the Republicans. That's their biggest advantage right now. It's why they don't like Bernie Sanders and it's why they've constricted their debate schedule so much. They want to sit on the sidelines and let the Republican candidates make fools of themselves during primary season.

Putting Lessig into the debate runs contrary to that plan. Besides, the "two polls have me at 1% and every other poll has me at 0%" argument isn't exactly a convincing case for inclusion.

<comment><USER33> Meeting the rules for inclusion that were known by all parties (and were in fact used for the first debate) should have been all that was needed for Lessig's inclusion.

This last-minute change of the rules to specifically exclude Lessig after it seemed he was going to meet the requirements is a disgrace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> That was inevitable. It's a shame, too - he's not wrong, he's just underfunded and naive.

<comment><USER35> We need naive people, or nothing would ever change. Maybe Lessig will be long dead before Citizens United is overturned, but his work could still pave the way for the people who overturn it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This election cycle is making it clear that the democratic party leadership believes in "the ends justify the means". They want a democrat to win the presidency, so they don't want anyone to detract from Hillary and are making things harder for everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER37> Good cause but wrong candidate. Also hard to ask people to vote for you when you say you will quit after getting elected.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wish someone here knew Larry personally. Under the constitution, there is hardly any way to accomplish his reforms. However, you can accomplish an even more revolutionary change and benefit for the American people, by slowly phasing in public polling at the federal level. This is something the executive branch _is_ able to do under the consitution.

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212)

</comment><comment><USER39> I think he chose the wrong party to begin with. He should push the Pirate Party in US: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party)

</comment><comment><USER40> "The Democratic Party has required candidates receive at least 1 percent in three major national polls in the six weeks leading up to the debate in order to get a spot on the stage. But Lessig said the rules were changed last week, which would require those three polls to come prior to the six-week mark."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494192)

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm not a citizen of the U.S. so maybe I'm missing something. Why is he not just switching to the Republican party? What's this nonsense about his ideals being more in line with the democrats? I thought the Republicans were all about the founding fathers and making sure the United States are not ruled by the old-rich?

<comment><USER42> Lessig is a member of the liberal elite. He's a Harvard professor with multiple advanced degrees, writes books and gives speeches with big words in them for academic audiences, advocates pro-consumer anti-business IP policy, and endorsed Obama.

That is emphatically _not_ a recipe for being taken seriously by the Republican party. A successful Republican candidate is the kind of guy a redneck feels he could have a beer with, bonding over frothing hatred for Obama, who is definitely a Muslim and probably not an American. Higher education is a bed of liberal snakes, waiting to corrupt our youth and rob them of their good Christian family values. Science is to be distrusted, if not outright rejected. Job creators are the true American heroes and should be given as much power as possible and taxed as little as possible: they've earned it, through superior intellect and hard work. If anyone needs to be disenfranchised in political discourse, it's not the rich, it's the welfare queens and the unions.

You have a point: there are many similarities between Lessig's views and idealized conservatism, particularly libertarianism. But the mainstream Republican base is going to hate him _personally_ , and after that, nothing else matters.

<comment><USER43> And yet the second place Republican candidate is an extremely well educated and successful neurosurgeon? Sounds like rednecks aren't the ones with frothing hatered

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Spoken like an academic.

He was never a serious contender. His angle was as an independent agitator.

Ralph Nader was never a chance, but he changed America based on his campaign tactics (which I personally disagreed with - he split the Democratic vote).

Lessig needs a dose of 'junkyard dog'.

This setback could have been the fillip a better, more aggressive candidate would welcome.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's a pity on how he started the campaign by saying he would resign after day 1.

Looking at the public's interest in 'outsiders' this political season (Carson, Trump, Fiorina) and the lack of any real opposition towards Hillary outside of Bernie, Lessig actually did have a chance of getting his voice heard.

</comment><comment><USER46> I find it odd the role that would be 'secretary of technology' in the cabinet is distributed across many places. someone like Lessig would be a good fit in a role like that.

</comment><comment><USER47> As much I see, just to few people in the world today have the interest and the capabilities to uphold the democracies of this world.

This is the plain reason, corporations and big pockets can convert the democracies of the world into support organizations for profits.

I see it in my country also. The big corporations more and more often make contracts with the government which nobody in the government understand and where in the aftermath the country was shortchanged in one or the other way and they don't come out of these contracts, where profits is guaranteed even when the people lose.

TTIP and the like are also a great, global way to destroy public control of the countries. Instead, profits will be guaranteed.</comment>


Rally Against Mass Surveillance Livestream [video] - <AUTHOR> https://rally.stopwatching.us <comment><USER2> Let's see who's watching us on stopwatching.us:

      dig MX stopwatching.us | grep -c google.com
      >>> 6

      curl https://rally.stopwatching.us/ |grep -c 'google.*\.com'
      >>> 6

      curl https://rally.stopwatching.us/ |grep -c facebook.com
      >>> 1

      curl https://rally.stopwatching.us/ |grep -c youtube.com
      >>> 0
      curl https://rally.stopwatching.us/ |grep -c youtube-nocookie.com
      >>> 1
      hey, at least someone /thought/ about it

      curl https://rally.stopwatching.us/ |grep -c typekit.net
      >>> 1

      curl https://rally.stopwatching.us/ |grep -c twitter.com
      >>> 5

      curl https://rally.stopwatching.us/ |grep -c cloudflare.com
      >>> 3

The list goes on...

EDIT: I should note that these could be harmless <a...> links, but most aren't, and I'm too lazy to update the regexes and rerun. You get the point though.

<comment><USER3> Seriously.

Why does every website come with 10thousand f#cking scripts loaded in the background? I hate this. Host your own goddamn js, fonts and whatnot.

<comment><USER4> Most arguments for CDNs are based in speed. The only one from that list that would make sense to host yourself would be the video from YouTube.

<comment><USER2> Quite the opposite. The video -- because it's huge compared to JS, CSS, etc. -- /does/ make sense to host on YouTube. The /player/ does not belong embedded in the page though. Take a screenshot, host that on your own crummy web server, and link to YouTube, ideally with a notice to the effect of "Clicking this link will share your information with YouTube..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm ecstatic for the awareness this rally brings, but I just find it odd that the site itself has plenty of tracking beacons which directly report visits back to companies complicit in what they're protesting against.

[http://i.imgur.com/SePrtYk.png](http://i.imgur.com/SePrtYk.png)

The tracking beacons on all the sponsor companies' sites also confuse me.

<comment><USER6> Chairman Meow was the first to figure this out: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign)

<comment><USER7> Chairman Meow is someone else

[http://www.vivachairmanmeow.com/](http://www.vivachairmanmeow.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really proud to be a part of this.

Also, a group of HN users (taskforce.is) built the StopWatching website. Big shoutout to Thomas Davis and Beau Gunderson for a load of hard work on the site.

<comment><USER8> Better quality livestream on C-SPAN: [http://www.c-span.org/Events/Group- Holds-Rally-Against-Mass-...](http://www.c-span.org/Events/Group-Holds-Rally- Against-Mass-Surveillance/10737442319-1/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My non-trolling question is: why should I care about suspicionless surveillance? I really want to have a solid list of reasons (preferably in single sentences to force clarity). So far, in this debate, I haven't been bothered at all by the surveillance discoveries.

<comment><USER10> If you want a single sentence, I've heard a quote recently (I'm not sure of the source), but here it is:

If knowledge is power then the corollary is necessarily that privacy is freedom.

We can unpack that some, because it turns out that it's supported by evidence. Studies have shown that people who know they are under surveillance change their behavior. They don't challenge the status quo or participate in creative destruction because they fear being punished for it.

In general, mass surveillance is a tool for the few to control the many. It allows government officials to destroy popular movements by detecting and disrupting them early in their evolution before they gain enough political power to stand on their own. Governments engaging in this sort of political espionage is a historical fact.

Take the analogy of the federal government issuing every member of the NYPD a Humvee and a machine gun, in case they have to fight Taliban insurgents on the streets of New York. Doing so is hugely objectionable, not because we like the Taliban, but because the number of Taliban in New York is small and the number of innocent civilians is large, so the innocent civilians become by far the largest category of individuals who end up eating one of those bullets.

That's the problem with mass surveillance. Government surveillance is a tool of destruction. The reason the NSA is engaged in this surveillance isn't so that they can send you a reminder when you forget to pick up your kid from soccer practice, it's so that they know where to send soldiers to destroy the enemy. But when 99.99% of the people under surveillance are upstanding citizens, what you have is a powerful weapon which we leave sitting around idle just waiting for corruption to take root and redefine who the enemy is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would like to salute the people who are willingly putting themselves on all kinds of lists by being here. I would be there as well if it were practical for me.

</comment><comment><USER12> So how's the turnout? Couldn't really figure it out from the livestream.

<comment><USER8> We don't have an official estimate yet, but our guesses are between 2,500 on the low side and 4,000 on the high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm glad there is public awareness and debate on the issue, but I find it troubling that there is severe lack of contribution to the debate (can we even call it that at this point?) from the NSA's part. I think it's in error to assume that there is nothing positive the NSA gets from this in terms of protecting the country, or maybe more specifically that the NSA has a vested interest in knowing the mundane details of the average citizen's life.

I'm as curious as the next person about how what they do is constitutional under the 4th amendment. I'm as against the idea of a police state, and am concerned about the direction of this country in a post-9/11 world as those at the protest. But there's two sides to every issue (often more), and on this one all we get is a bunch of awful PR that has to be walked back. I don't think it's a 100% useless and/or nefarious operation.

Is there nothing positive the NSA/US Government can tell us about these tactics that wont compromise their mission?

<comment><USER14> >Is there nothing positive the NSA/US Government can tell us about these tactics that wont compromise their mission?

They probably think that they can just stay silent and the public outrage will quietly sizzle out.

It's certainly looking like that stance will be justified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> a live video stream, global, for a demo against being watched.

i am posting my entire life on the internet for anyone to see, how dare you look at me.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like the logo of the t-shirts.

</comment><comment><USER17> Some food for thought about who is organizing this rally: [http://www.salon.com/2013/10/21/dont_ally_with_libertarians_...](http://www.salon.com/2013/10/21/dont_ally_with_libertarians_ideologues_co_opt_an_anti_nsa_rally/)

It's a difficult topic, of course. Opponents of libertarians are quick to point out that the libertarian agenda leads into quite the dystopia. In particular, on the topic of surveillance, it seems fairly clear that at least the hardcore libertarians (in the direction of anarcho-capitalists and the like) are actually _happy_ with surveillance - as long as it is done by private companies and not by the state.

Now these groups are co-opting or even running this campaign which is ostensibly against mass surveillance. That seems something right out of the libertarian propaganda playbook (for a recent collection of quotes out of this playbook, see here: [https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/lying-to- liberals/](https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/lying-to-liberals/)).

On the other hand, protesting mass surveillance is still a worthy cause. I am not a USian myself, and I can't really tell where I would land on this issue (support stopwatching.us or not) if I were, but it's an important issue to think about.

<comment><USER11> What we really need is a political movement based only on a very few things that we can all agree on. Leave economics, morals, guns, abortion, and everything else completely out of the story and focus on one or two core issues. Like upholding and strengthening the Bill of Rights.

<comment><USER18> Guns are clearly part of the Bill of Rights, and the SC had ruled the same of abortion.</comment></comment></comment>


Good news – mass testing can work (Covid-19) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/scientists-say-mass-tests-in-italian-town-have-halted-covid-19 <comment><USER2> "A study in Vò, which saw Italy's first death, points to the danger of asymptomatic carriers"

Imagine what's happening in NYC now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah... It's very very bad</comment></comment>


Gartner Identifies Top Ten Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/2008/05/28/gartner-identifies-top-ten-disruptive-technologies-for-2008-to-2012/ <comment><USER2> "User Interface." How insightful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Social software, semantics, mashups... that's so 2005 :) Maybe they can sum everything into one word ... Google!

</comment><comment><USER4> Top Ten New BS catchphrases to look for over and over again with amorphous meanings. Nice.</comment>


The loneliness of Elizabeth Bishop - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenation.com/article/hiding-in-plain-sight/ <comment><USER2> A fascinating profile of a poet with whose work I was not familiar. Thanks for posting it!

If you were also unfamiliar with Bishop and would like to read some of her works, the Poetry Foundation has a bunch of her poems online here: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/elizabeth- bishop](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/elizabeth-bishop)

<comment><USER3> Her poem 'One Art' is a famous villanelle but a couple years ago I came across 'Filling Station' and really liked it.

One Art: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one- art](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art)

Filling Station: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52193/filling- station](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52193/filling-station)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> " _Alcohol could saturate the pain, but never take it away._ "

Saturate?

<comment><USER5> Inventive language.

Alcohol is a liquid. To wet completely is to saturate. Implication is over-use of alcohol. Poetic licence. Tried to overcome the pain with alcohol. Avoids cliché. But yes, non-standard use certainly. Don't get too hung up on it.

I've always liked _The Fish_ [https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the- fish/](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-fish/)

Particluarly, "

       I looked into his eyes
       which were far larger than mine
       but shallower, and yellowed,
       the irises backed and packed
       with tarnished tinfoil
       seen through the lenses
       of old scratched isinglass.

    "</comment></comment>


Under the Hood of the Amazon EC2 Container Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2015/07/under-the-hood-of-the-amazon-ec2-container-service.html <comment><USER2> We've been using EC2 Container Service for a few months now and at first glance it appears great but we've ran into quite a few problems using it:

\- You can only bind 1 port and 1 ELB to a service. This means, for example, if you have nginx listening on port 80 and 443 you need to manually configure the ELB and can't take advantage of automatically generated port numbers on the host (So you basically can only have 1 HTTP(s) server on a host)

\- There is no way to cleanly decommission a host from a cluster. Say if you want to reboot or replace a server in the cluster you can't tell ECS to drain connections from the ELB and move the containers off the host

\- Unable to specify rules for which hosts services should run on. For example you can't say that the service needs to make sure it has instances in X AZs or don't run multiple instances of the same service on the same host.

\- No easy way to implement any kind of service discovery, you have to roll this yourself or set up loads of internal ELBs as a sort of service discovery.

\- Worst of all the ecs-agent is very buggy. It has releases where it just keeps crashing [1] and leaving untracked running containers just hanging around to an issue where they released a new version with a newer docker library that changed how it handled certain parameters causing our entire cluster to fail until they hot fixed it with a change to how their API sent data to the client.

We're currently looking at alternatives for our docker infrastructure.

[1]: [https://github.com/aws/amazon-ecs- agent/issues/156](https://github.com/aws/amazon-ecs-agent/issues/156)

<comment><USER3> This is shameless self promotion but check out rancher.com. It's open source and allows you to spin up a container service like GKE or ECS but cloud independent.

<comment><USER4> +1 for Rancher. As a in-house container management platform it's extremely simple to get setup and makes managing container stacks effortless.

Combined with Watchtower it's a potent container solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been doing a lot of playing with Google Container Engine (hosted Kubernetes) on Google Cloud, and have been very impressed so far. Can anyone who has worked with both offer some thoughts on how the two compare?

I don't know if Amazon's Container Service has substantial parts that have been open sourced, but I've been super happy with how Kubernetes is being developed in the open. It's also nice that it runs just about everywhere (in theory). It's pretty rough to set up manually right now, but I assume that will improve with time.

<comment><USER6> +1 for Google Cloud (GCE). Google is really putting in effort into the platform. Seems like they are pushing updates to the web interface often, and really improving UX/UI.

<comment><USER5> Agreed on all counts. The only thing that is frustrating is that I haven't found a great way to keep up with changes aside from manually visiting their GCE release notes page.

<comment><USER7> What would be ideal for you here? I can't guarantee anything (I'm an engineer on GCE, but not even really customer facing unless you count the PCI devices exposed to your VM), but if it's something simple like getting an e-mail with release notes as they're posted, I can suggest it up to the folks who handle those sorts of comms.

<comment><USER8> I'd say some form of alert when you login of changes that you can read more up on, link to examples or video etc beyond release notes.

Could see when last logged into and with that be able to pull changes that are new from that time and now.

That way, you have the information alerted at a point the user will not miss and from there they are aware to read up more or not if they like.

Email's are nice, but be shame not to have that information more tailored at point of interaction. That way if a user login say 6 months later they would be advised of changes since last logged in, compared to going thru how many emails that build up and end up getting filtered into some folder hardly viewed.

But the ability to view changes from a point outside the release cycle of changes allows somebody to glean what is new for them and if case of some feature tried and then withdrawn during there last login then no need for them to even read about it as moot to them. Sadly many release notes gear towards having read all the previous, even ones that later get superseded.

This also avails the ability to alert to changes when the user approaches those options and if some subset they do not use then they won't need to read upon those changes as a priority. But that is another angle of approaching how changes are communicated to a user.

<comment><USER7> I love this idea :)

I'll track down some Cloud Console product folks and ask if it's feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So this Amazon EC2 Container Service Agent[1] is the AWS's own equivalent of Google Cloud Platform's Kubernetes? (Granted, Kubernetes is platform agnostic.)

[1]:[https://github.com/aws/amazon-ecs-agent](https://github.com/aws/amazon- ecs-agent)

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks a lot like Mesos. But of course they will never admit that. Amazon and open source, a long history.

<comment><USER11> It's more shared state than mesos, a strict 2 layer system, which is why the comparisons to kube are more common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was already posted to HN about a month ago... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9917339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9917339)</comment>


When Equal Access Means Zero Access for All - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/when-equal-access-means-zero-access-for-all/ <comment><USER2> Ghu, I've heard these arguments for so long: "it's too expensive to put a ramp in here" "we'll lose too many dorm rooms if we put an elevator in", "we can't afford to stay in business if we have to stop poisoning our employees / the neighbors"

These laws always grandfather in existing practice. UCB had plenty of time to know about it. It's unfortunate they didn't (I don't believe it was malicious) but it's fairer that we take a stand. And for chrissakes this is _Berkeley_ the people most likely to agree with my statement!

And the fact is we all benefit long term from these changes. I didn't really care much about ramps until...I broke my leg! And years of playing and listening to extremely loud music has affected my hearing. And even "normal" people benefit from things like crash bars on doors (especially with hands full of coffee trays and sandwiches).

=== ( Parenthetical because it's orthogonal to my comment: I have a few friends who love the FEE and post lots of links. It seems to be an association of selfish people -- this is one of the least problematic things I've seen from them).

</comment><comment><USER3> FEE is a fairly biased and bigoted organization, but their argument /sounds/ plausible.

It /sounds/ stupid that you should have to remove, or not publish, content just because deaf people can't read it. But the alternative is for the law to say that the ADA does not apply to deaf people. That is the /only/ way to stop this having to be pulled down.

If that exception is made then there is no longer any reason for any government organization to support deaf or hard of hearing (UCB is huge, so the cost argument that applies here, also applies to any other government organization).

Among other things, that means that the public education system would no longer need to support deaf children.

The ADA exists specifically because before the ADA existed schools did exactly that, as did universities, etc</comment>


Anonymous DDOSes Sony and PlayStation.com, PSN Goes Offline - <AUTHOR> http://vghq.net/2011/04/04/hackers-take-down-sony-and-playstation-com-psn-goes-offline/ <comment><USER2> While I agree that Sony should not be suing Geohot for the hacking of his own systems, I think this is a bad move on Anonymous' part. At this point, it has sort of turned into "Sony kept PSN up, Anonymous took it down" and that's not going to garner them much support.</comment>


CSS Comb - <AUTHOR> http://csscomb.com/

<comment><USER2> Can anyone explain to me what this does?

I gather that it reorders the CSS statements somehow, but I'm not clear about exactly how it reorders them or why this is important.

<comment><AUTHOR> See [http://csscomb.com/about/](http://csscomb.com/about/). I think the order is configurable. Sorting helps readability and it helps you find the properties easily as your eyes get tuned to where they are usually found.

<comment><USER3> I've also read ( _somewhere_ ) that consistent property order provides a performance gain for minification, although the benefits are presumably tiny.

<comment><USER4> It's likely to provide some help for compression (rather than minification), if you're gzipping your assets for transfer.

This is probably most effective if you tend to specify the same values for the properties as well, so that a run can extend from one property name through its value and to the next property name.

Clustering properties with identical prefixes will provide some improvement by itself, as it can keep the 'backward distance' values used in a small consistent range, but I expect that's going to be a much smaller effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does this make a difference at all?

I've never heard arguments for CSS ordering as a performance issue.

It seems like removing CSS that doesn't do anything would be time better spent.

<comment><USER6> There's no performance issue that I'm aware of.

This is simply about coding style and an easy way to maintain it. The home page has a link to a Smashing Magazine article discussing this. In short, easy way to maintain coding style in a team environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another great tool: [http://css-tricks.com/autoprefixer/](http://css- tricks.com/autoprefixer/)

That is a postprocessor not preprocessor, meaning that it works on the actual file (just like CSS Comb)

<comment><USER8> It seems to work okay on SCSS files, although I can't say if they are officially supported or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shame it doesn't support minimal syntax preprocessors like Stylus still.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty cool that they have plugins for editors and IDEs.</comment>


China's space station 'out of control' and on crash course to Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-space-station-tiangong-1-crash-tiangong-1-out-of-control-a7319916.html <comment><USER2> Good thing, otherwise how else would Sandra Bullock get home?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmyi7GRl4Hk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmyi7GRl4Hk)</comment>


Bjarne Stroustrup: the problem with programming (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/17831/

<comment><USER2> Another interview

<http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/I_did_it_for_you_all>

</comment><comment><USER3> Bjarne Stroustrup is, indeed, the problem with programming. As you can infer from the article title.</comment>


Abstraction, Or, the Gift of Our Weak Brains - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.pivotal.io/post/abstraction-or-the-gift-of-our-weak-brains/ <comment><USER2> _" NASA computer scientists (perhaps some of the smartest, most exacting and meticulous people assembled since the Manhattan Project) write code that is so inscrutable that modern-day maintainers are forced to read the authors' mail to figure out what the hell the software was intended to do."_

The structure and quality of that code itself (e.g., its level of abstraction) may not be the main obstacle for a new developer trying to understand it. The real problem is the domain, i.e., the systems of the spacecraft that the code is controlling. Detailed information about the domain is rarely documented in the code itself, and if you haven't worked with a Voyager spacecraft before, you'd need to dig up information about that hardware and its limitations for the code to make any sense to you.

As a more mundane example, if you were writing an operating system, you wouldn't document the complete specs of the hardware inside the operating system code - you'd assume the hardware was documented in reference manuals that were available to future operating system developers. But if you didn't know anything about computer architecture and tried to understand the code for a Linux device driver, you'd find the code "inscrutable", even if it was well- written.</comment>


ESEA turned anti-cheat client into BTC miner - <AUTHOR> http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=492102 <comment><USER2> The thread is closed, which links to an explanation, which is below:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

[lpkane] - 5.1.13 at 1:46am

lol that got aggressive quickly

back towards the end of march, as btc was skyrocketing, jaguar and i were talking about how cool it would be if we could use massive amounts of gpus logged into the client to mine

we went back and forth about it, considered doing something for april fools, didn't get it done in time, and eventually elected to put some test code in the client and try it on a few admin accounts, ours included

we ran the test for a few days on our accounts, decided it wasn't worth the potential drama, and pulled the plug, or so we thought

fast forward to 48 hours ago, a fuck up in the client server results in a restart which results in a setting getting changed which enables it for all idle users, and here we are

and the results for 48 hours of your combined efforts?

<http://www.picsend.net/images/923377coin..>.

~2 btc, or roughly $280 usd at current exchange rates, not bad!

anyway, our bad, we just released a client update with the btc stuff removed, and your $280 is going into the s14 prize pot -- if you're still feeling sad, feel free to pm me and i'll attempt to buy back your love

but for the record, i told jag he shouldn't be lazy and run the miner in a separate process, rookie move

<comment><AUTHOR> And then _that_ thread was closed. And this one was opened: [http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=4...](http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=492152)

Turns out the ~$280 turned into over $3,500. And the 48 hours turned into 8 days.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. Only after several people in the first thread figured out that their antivirus software had been detecting the miner for much longer than 48 hours, and one of them contacted the pool used to confirm how much had actually been made, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't surprising in the least. Anti-cheat clients are the worst, ever scummier than anti-virus clients.

If anyone here has ever played a game that used Inca GameGuard, you know what I'm talking about. If you open a page in your web browser with a title that seems _suspicious_ to GameGuard, it can fucking REBOOT your computer without warning! And that's not the only client with such problems. From my experience, it has been a problem shared by many anti-cheat clients: they're all a bit too trigger-happy, even though they shouldn't be holding that gun in the first place. And if that wasn't bad enough, these clients are also notoriously buggy. They will corrupt the state of your kernel (they will do things like overwrite entries in your SDT/SSDT, making various system calls fail; in fact, it's very common practice for some of these tools to outright disable the use of functions like NtOpenProcess or ZwWriteVirtualMemory, and then not even bother to reallow them after the anti-cheat client exits), they will litter your Windows folder, and wreak havoc however they want.

And here's the kicker: these anti-cheat clients aren't even that effective if you know what you are doing.

<comment><USER5> ...did you just imply that anti virus programs are shady?

<comment><USER6> Isn't that common knowledge? Many antivirus programs have a worse effect on system stability/performance than the things they're supposed to prevent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From what I understand the guy who runs ESEA is pretty much saying "Yeah, we were talking about this one day and did it. Now you've caught us, so we'll be removing it and giving everyone a free month. We also made $3000 something dollars by mining with your computers, but we don't want you to be mad at us, so we won't do it again. But we totally had no problem with this earlier."

<comment><USER8> Do you have a link to that post on the forum? I don't feel like digging through 4 pages of replies to find it.

<comment><USER9> [http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=4...](http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=492152)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the times that I accessed this page I was given this error, for people who aren't using a browser capable of detecting this kind of thing (although I don't know how serious these detections really are).

Danger: Malware Ahead!

Chromium has blocked access to this page on play.esea.net.

Content from bjskosherbaskets.com, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your Mac with malware.

<comment><USER11> Is this for real? I just went to this page on a mac. Did not get any warning or any other signs. What should I look for? Finally can the mods please remove this link, if this is confirmed?

<comment><USER10> The second time I accessed it I did not get that; I imagine it is from some kind of rotated-in advertisement provider (although I don't see any ads).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It was only a matter of time before someone tried this, if I were in their position I would contemplate it too given the rise of the cost of a Bitcoin and they won't be the last to try something like this. I the day a widely used software application like uTorrent decides to remove the malware and banner ads and instead bundles in a Bitcoin miner that runs when your machine is mostly idle (like download a torrent over night).

</comment><comment><USER13> Let me provide some background on ESEA:

It's a paid service ($7/month) that lets you set up competitive matches of Counter-strike (and TF2 and LoL) with other ESEA players. It has it's own ranking system, it's own league/ladder, and anti-cheat system. It has over 20,000 subscribers. It's the most popular of such services for Counter-strike, and has been around for many years.

This incident is really serious. People have reported damaged hardware from this. Mining bitcoins can run _quite_ hot if your system is not built for it. ESEA has been known for being scummy in the past - this is a huge breach of trust and security that I can't believe so many players are overlooking it.

The worst part is their response to all of this. They're playing it off like a joke and think it's no big deal. The $3600 they made came at the expense of far more than $3600 in electricity costs from the community. They lied about the whole thing, and keep changing their story as people figure out more of it. There's more discussion on this on the csgo subreddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1dgad2/esea...](http://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1dgad2/esea_client_basically_a_virus/)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is about as bad as you can get for any kind of software developer. I'd rather run an installer that tries to install a toolbar than one that secretly mines Bitcoins. At least those which bundle toolbars generally inform you and provide an opt-out.

Although IANAL, the legality of this is highly questionable, considering the recent (mis?)usage of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act, and the fact that nothing in their EULA/ToS permits this kind of use case.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'll bite. Why not sell a service to a mining pool? Many services are free anyway. I'd fork over an hour of GPU per day to see fewer the ads.

<comment><USER16> BTC mining on GPUs uses a ton of power, like quadruple-the-monthly-power-bill- in-your-apartment kind of power. If you're willing to pay the energy company and bring more harm to the environment for something, I don't feel like you're really thinking about the true cost. I'd rather just pay up-front on simple terms.

<comment><USER17> The monthly power bill in my apartment is consistently $7 / month. If it went up by a factor of 5, I'd never notice; a while ago I got fed up and paid several months in advance because it seemed so ridiculous to have a $7 bill every month.

What's a typical power bill like, and what's going on with mine?

(my power uses - lights, fridge, and one to two old computers in a 400 sq. ft. apartment in downtown SF)

<comment><USER18> Do you not have A/C or heat? Microwave? Dryer? Water heater?

My apartment is only about $110 per month but there is also a $50 gas bill. And I like to think that I live pretty minimally...

<comment><USER17> I do not have A/C, heat, a microwave, or a dryer (I'm not even allowed to install a washing machine...). I get hot water, but I imagine there's a central source of that for the whole building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> New business model for games: Free-to-play with embedded Bitcoin miner!

</comment><comment><USER20> Should change this link to an actual news item, currently it goes to their front page which of course provides no information. I know reddit's crappy but this post is actually doing a good job aggregating info as it becomes available: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1dglil/popular_compet...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1dglil/popular_competitive_gaming_league_esea_admins/)

This should probably be a really big story covered and analyzed by all the serious video game journalists... just kidding those don't exist. If we're lucky maybe Forbes will cover it or something.

</comment><comment><USER21> Mirror: <http://www.webcitation.org/6GHYnetpc> and <http://www.webcitation.org/6GHYhQL72>

<comment><USER3> Failed both times, only mirrored the splash page and not the forums.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Redirects to welcome page.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they use a cookie for the front page splash (the second load usually works afaik).

<comment><USER23> Oh, I thought they took it down! Thanks for saying this, the second try worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This subscription has been cancelled.

<comment><USER24> well, looks like word travels fast: [http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=4...](http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=492152)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Ip Man. Mac menu bar app displaying your IP - <AUTHOR> https://ipman.io <comment><USER2> Hold Alt and click the WiFi icon in menu bar to get IP address without installing additional app.

<comment><USER3> Does that give your public IP or just your local NAT'd LAN address?

<comment><AUTHOR> Public IP + ethernet/wlan depending on which one you're connected with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I was tired of getting my IP address through the terminal so I made an app to get it faster.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you Wing Chun practitioner? If you are, really good name :)

<comment><USER5> I think it is pretty good regardless

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Admittedly you've added copy+paste, but the alt-click of the wi-fi icon is still a lot more useful because of all the extra info.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. I made this app for me at first and my primary purpose was to be able to copy/paste my IP address quickly and easily, I didn't need the extra info. But that's something I could add.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> i use bitbar for this kind of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER8> Handy. Also, can it fight 10? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dope name

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anything for Windows or Linux users?

<comment><AUTHOR> No sorry only for Mac. For now at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> £2.99 to copy your IP address to the clipboard....

<comment><AUTHOR> It's handy. Some people find it useful and are willing to pay the price of a coffee to get that done quickly and easily.</comment></comment>


College Isn't Worth a Million Dollars - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/07/miller

<comment><USER2> Wait, is he saying that... correlation isn't causation!?!

Actually, I slogged through to the upteenth paragraph to find out that his point is even dumber: He just wants to substitute his own apparently arbitrary assumptions for the College Board's apparently arbitrary assumptions. "Substituting some of his own assumptions for those used by the board — including six years of tuition costs (and hence two fewer years of work), private college tuition instead of in-state public tuition, etc. — Miller calculates his own college premium."

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, just using average earnings doesn't paint the full picture. Look at both tails too. What percent of college grads live below the poverty line? College arguably gives you a better shot at the other extreme too.

</comment><comment><USER4> College isn't just about making more money afterwards. It's about meeting people you'll keep in touch with for the rest of your life, learning from interesting people that excel in their field and networking with people that you might be able to help in the future and/or might be able to help you. It's priceless IMO.

Not to mention being able to avoid the "so you don't go to college?" conversation with dates..

</comment><comment><USER5> College is worth two million dollars. The reason being is that we have two classes in America those who have graduated from college with at least a 4 year degree and those who haven't.

(With the exception of those who quit and create multi-million/billion dollar companies. With enough money everyone is equal.)

</comment><comment><USER6> "It's not just college.

It's _community_ college."</comment>


The new iMac: updated models after 1.5 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/imac/?new

<comment><USER2> I was hoping to get a full side-on view, but couldn't find one. The best I could find was on the spec page <http://www.apple.com/imac/specs/>

I would have been VERY impressed if they got the thinness they are showing in the photos for the entire device. However it looks like it is just a bevel (is that the correct term) to the edge.

It's a bit of a shame. I'd like to see them put some of the components into the base in order to get a true flat thin computer.

<comment><USER3> It is indeed just the edge, The Verge show some better pictures here: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/23/3544372/apples-new- imac-h...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/23/3544372/apples-new-imac-hands- on#3886577)

<comment><USER2> Wow, that looks more bulbous than I was thinking. I find that a very awkward and unattractive shape.

<comment><USER4> I saw it and thought the exact same thing. For all of the great design work that Apple does it is a real shame. But it occured to me that the shape is made so that the device just looks like a flat plane when viewed at an angle (and what we are looking at is the breakdown of this illusion). To me that they are trying to cheat by creating an illusion of extreme thinness instead of designing something to be really thin.

Its ugly and from a design standpoint the dishonesty of form is a really big turnoff.

<comment><USER5> In before:

This would never have happened if Steve Jobs were still with us.

\---

But yeah, I'll wait to see it but the videos made it look ugly. And they dropped optical drives and (probably) easy RAM upgrades to make it work. Now you'll need an external drive and also some big suction cups if you don't want to pay Apple's crazy RAM prices.

<comment><USER6> Suction cups were never required for third-party memory in the iMac. In fact, adding memory was so easy I've seen a secretary do it by following the basic instructions on Apple's site.

The new 27" is easily upgradeable, the 21" isn't.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


8+ Free CSS Grid learning resources for 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://designrevision.com/free-css-grid-resources-2018/ <comment><USER2> perfect, exactly what I needed !</comment>