Ask YC: Profit: $25/user. Customers: satisfied. Competitors: none. Target market: huge. But... - <AUTHOR> My startup's service:
http://www.inquickersmyrna.com/
Customers love the service, and they say it's worth the price of $25 per use.
The bad news: Right now we're only serving about 1-2 customers per day.
My goal is to move the site from 1-2 users per day to 10-15 users per day; I think if we could pass 10 users per day, it would be easy to persuade other hospitals and urgent care centers to participate, and it's all downhill from there.
How would you raise consumer awareness for a service like this? I've tried a few things (mostly offline), but none successful so far.
(If you're still reading: So far I'm the only person working on this business. I'm looking for a person with strong ui + graphic design, seo/sem, and/or copywriting skills to work with -- initially as a contractor, eventually as a co-founder. Interested? E-mail me.) <comment><USER2> Hmm. Interesting idea, but I see several extremely big problems.

First, you're relying on patients to triage themselves and determine if their condition is life-threatening. You do not emphasize that the service is for CLEARLY non-life-threatening problems. It should have a huge banner that lists some symptoms and says to call 911 or drive to the ER immediately. Maybe there should be a system for a triage nurse to monitor the "symptoms" of the people who sign up and call them if he/she thinks it's serious.

Second, if someone signs up and doesn't think their illness is life- threatening and then dies, you/your company can be potentially liable for that. I have a feeling insuring yourself against that will be expensive.

Third, the brand is really horrible and the site isn't exactly easy to navigate. But you mentioned you need a UI designer (I emailed you), so at least you seem to recognize that.

Fourth, I would not pay 25 dollars for this service. Maybe you can work out a deal with the hospital to pull this fee out of the flat ER cost. That would be awesome and you'd have tons and tons of people use the system, especially if it's well advertised at the hospital.

The idea is cool and for major trauma centers in metropolitan areas where the wait can be greater than 7-10 hours, it could be extremely valuable.

</comment><comment><USER3> i dont think marketing to end users is the way to go. like someone said, no one cares about an emergency until they are in one.

market to hospitals. get integrated into their website. when someone calls their ER, make sure the nurse tells them to register on the website.

i think going white label is your best bet.

but yea, this is probably the best "Ask YC about my idea" i've seen since i've joined. you're not selling ER software. you're selling software that helps people wait in line.

think of other markets that could use these tools, and then sell it to them as well.

<comment><USER4> I moonlight as an ER nurse as I finish my Software engineering degree next summer. I've worked in ER/Critical care for 15 years, and I've worked at over 25 hospitals as a contract nurse, and while your idea sounds good on paper, it's a medical/legal nightmare.

How fast you see a doctor in to an ER is not about being on a wait list. It's about how sick you are. If you're close to dying you get in right away. If you're not, we see you as soon as possible. Even then, it's not first-come first serve. And, if you're not here, you're not on the list, and there are no reservations.

And, I can't tell you how many people _think_ they don't have something life- threatening and end up dead. And, there are many people who think that their illness is life threatening and it's not.

All it takes is for you to place one person on a wait list who ends up dead, and you're having a number of long talks with a law-firm. I'm not trying to be a hater, or flame you. I'm the last one to discourage an entrepreneur, but I'm really concerned someone will end up dead, and you'll have a _big_ mess on your hands.

Please, rethink your business idea.

<comment><USER5> haha, iamelgringo, you beat me to bring up these comments. let me add on a bit to what you've already said.

hospitals are not just run as businesses, but they also need to serve the public. as such, you also have ethical and social concerns. there are a several substantial problems with your idea:

-promotes inequality of care based on money. this will likely turn out to be a huge legal issue.

-the decision of something being life threatening should not be determined by patients, but by health professionals.

-substantial change to hospital behavior. the act of creating and incorporating reservations to the ER system will likely be a shock that hospital administrators will not appreciate. (just look at how long it took for doctors to move from beepers to PDA's and cell phones, and also look at the adoption of electronic medical records which is still less than 18% of all doctors) making hospital staff jump through new hoops will increase the resistance of using your technology.

please do not take these comments the wrong way. your idea could work, if you tweaked the business model around hospital constraints, and nothing specific is popping up right now. perhaps other areas where waiting in line is a pain that people will pay for?

<comment><USER6> Try to sell this service to government agencies where usually the wait times are ridiculous. Personally I would feel weird registering online for a visit to the ER. I'm either sick enough and I want to go there NOW or I'm not that sick and I can just see my regular physician when he has time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > How would you raise consumer awareness for a service like this?

I'm not sure that "diluting" your message in the press will be very efficient. I may be wrong but I guess people don't really care about emergencies unless they need it.

I would instead spend a day (or a few days) in the emergency waiting room (or ask a doctor there) to see if there are "typical" cases of non-life threatening emergencies. Then I would directly bring the information to those people (e.g. skaters).

edit: your domain name really sucks. There's no way someone will remember this or even type this with a broken hand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. I've done some limited research, and it seems that this site would appeal very well to people who have some type of infection that has worsened over a period of days. I've spent some dollars on adwords for "fever" and related terms, but that hasn't been terribly effective so far.

Right now I'm working on a plan to market the service to schools, hotels, amusement parks, retirement centers, sporting arenas -- basically any place large numbers of people are gathered. It seems promising so far (fingers crossed, nose to the grindstone :P)

Thanks for the input.

<comment><USER8> It might be also useful for parents with small kids. If you got a 104F fever on Saturday night you just take some pills and sleep over next day to see how it goes. If your kid get 104F you don't want to wait for your pediatrician to open their office on Monday. (Or, if your kids put a pill in his nose and it won't come out at 9pm; that happened to us).

If you can put your brochure in the "packet" the new parents receive from pediatricians or hospitals, that might help.

<comment><USER9> Seconded.

Don't remember the last time I went to the ER for myself. With 2 boys in the house (now 3 and 5) we had a stretch of 3 visits to the ER in one year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a great idea.

The way I see it, there are a couple ways to work with it.

1) You've found a size hospital that it works well for and you get resistance when trying to go to bigger hospitals? The forget the large hospitals and find hospitals that match this one's profile around the country. Interesting niche.

2) Use the technology and apply it to any place that you have to wait in line (for a table at a restaurant, public golf courses, etc...)

What else am I missing?

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Lines are a waste if you look at them from an economics point of view - people willing to wait for something would almost always be willing to pay more to have it right away. but businesses are throwing that opportunity away because they don't have the technology to fix it or they don't see the problem. It is cool to see someone solve the problem with software.

I wish I owned a grocery store, because I think it would be a neat experiment to post a different markup rate for each cash register, and see what would happen. For example, one cash register charges the advertised price (+0%), another +5%, another +10% up to 40%. At certain times the +0% line would be the obvious choice, but what would happen in the rush hours?

<comment><USER12> I have no data, but let me make some off-the-cuff predictions about your plan to create "premium" supermarket checkouts:

Customers who understand your novel scheme will tend to queue up in the line which has the lowest prices, because people do not consciously understand what their time is worth.

Then other customers will see the long line at the discount aisle and subconsciously decide to leave your store without buying, because the lines are too long.

Or perhaps, instead of abandoning their attempt to buy anything, frustrated customers will notice an apparently empty checkout line with a cashier standing there. They'll approach that line, and be told that that it's a "premium lane" which will cost them an extra 5%. Then they will become enraged. Nobody wants to pay extra for a service that they're accustomed to get for free. And when they're told that they can always stand in the long, less expensive line, they will continue to be enraged at the sight of one or more cashiers standing around idle in the premium lane, waiting for premium customers, when those lazy cashiers _could_ be helping out in the discount aisles! What do we pay those bums minimum wage for, anyway?

Inevitably, unless you are on-site breathing down their necks, your cashiers will give in to popular pressure and go to work in the discount lanes. At which point the premium lanes will have no cashiers, and nobody will use them.

Of course, if grocery stores were more like emergency rooms -- scarce, high- margin businesses which routinely force you to wait two to _eighteen_ hours for service -- things might be different.

For info on shopper behavior from a guy who actually _does_ have data, I recommend Paco Underhill's _Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping_.

UPDATE: I have the answer! You could invent a scheme where customers who want to avoid waiting in line can trade their own labor for a shorter wait -- by scanning and bagging _their own groceries_ at an automated kiosk. Suddenly, via a series of psychological tricks, your idea works well. I should patent this amazingly original variation of your idea. :)

<comment><USER13> So re-label it as a discount line. People who are willing to shop at odd hours or are willing to wait during peak times can save 5-10%. Meanwhile mark the rest of your stuff up 5-10%.

Not sure whether people pay enough attention to their grocery bills to tell a 5% increase, but I hear grocery store margins are terrible (like 2-3%) so maybe they would. It's tough to tell without some data.

Good idea though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting comments!

I thought I'd post again, because I wasn't so clear the first time. Let's try again.

1) You DO have competition. Almost nobody has NO competition. Competition #1 would be "do nothing". There are other competitors.

2) This has probably been done before -- many times in many venues. You should find out where and why it did/didn't work out.

3) I hear you say you want to generalize to all kinds of things: doctors, grocery stores, banks, etc. Take a pill on some of that. If this has been tried before and failed, then you're going to need to grow organically inside one vertical -- then spin out. Waiting in line at an ER is just a different problem (both business and technical) than waiting in line at a car wash or something. Learn how to sell into one market well, first. Dreams are grandeur are probably a little premature. Mind your knitting.

Hope that helps some.

<comment><USER2> "Do nothing" is not called a competitor, it's called a barrier of entry.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a distinction between competitors and alternatives; "do nothing" is the latter. I'm not foolish enough to think there are no alternatives, but I do believe there are no competitors to my service right now.

<comment><USER14> Look, I'm not trying to argue with you. I've been in a spot with ideas that didn't have competitors too. First thing I was told was that there's always competition.

Now you can look at it as alternatives, but if you are competing with these other alternatives in the mind of the prospect, guess what? They're your competitors. Alternatives that people have to doing your thing is called your competition, even though it might not have a logo and an office.

You can split hairs and try to call it something else, but that's the way I was taught. And I don't think splitting hairs will help much. You are in competition with the status quo, with inertia, with the tried-and-true. Your main goal is to get people to try something new. As far as I know this is a well-established piece of sales and marketing knowledge.

[http://ezinearticles.com/?Sell-More,-Make-More-by-Knowing- Yo...](http://ezinearticles.com/?Sell-More,-Make-More-by-Knowing-Your- Competition&id=393169)

<http://www.businessknowhow.com/marketing/knowcomp.htm>

[http://opinionatedmarketers.blogspot.com/2006/12/other- day-f...](http://opinionatedmarketers.blogspot.com/2006/12/other-day-friend- and-i-were-discussing.html)

I think you've got a good idea. Good luck with the implementation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I'm starting to see a lot of business-related terms that mean different things to different people in different fields (for instance, "securities" means "bonds" to a tax accountant, but "stocks+bonds+etc" to a financier). I'll certainly be careful with such distinctions when talking with investors, clients, etc.

Thanks for the input.

<comment><USER14> Yeah it's a biz term.

Perhaps non-intuitive, but the point is that you have to figure out how you are getting customers, whether that is changing their mind from "option X" to your service, or changing their mind from "doing nothing" to your service.

Some businesses don't bother to do that work, instead just saying "I have no competition" -- I'm sure you know that you don't want to go there.

As a side note, I'm really curious as to why I was down-modded up above there. I was simply trying to share stuff I know. Don't know why it would tick anybody off. People are welcome to have different opinions, and I'd like to hear about them instead of getting down-modded. If I'm wrong, I want to know about it! (That's kinda the point of commenting to begin with)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Get an add for it on the automated answering machine at the hospital, clinic, and or local physician offices.

i think the best way to do this is, via negotiations with ppo groups, hmo groups, and insurance companies. I could see someone like Allstate being interested in this, in regards to their current ad campaign about safe driving. Insurance is a really competitive market place, and I could see this as a feature add on sell, for a monthly fee. say 10$ a month to auto fill your paperwork, when you arrive in the emergency room.

you also need to consider that information is so often filled in wrong, and it makes the billing process hell for doctors and hospitals. if you could validate someones payment options before they arrived, then the hospital/ doctor might pay for that service just to get more accurate billing info.

medical health care billing is a dirty business and doctors get paid less than 1/2 the time. increase their payment percentage and they will jump at it.

when someone calls in, they will be given the option to fill in the data on the web via a website.

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't find anything about it online, but going from the word of my adviser while I was studying in China, there was a woman there who did something similar to this and is now very wealthy. IIRC, she paid people to wait around in lobbies and sell their spots when they got called, so people could bypass the rest of the line. What you are doing, I would say, is more ethical because instead of skipping the line a customer is just reserving a spot. I wish I could find some news article about this, but I have nothing. Either my adviser was lying to me or my web search skills are diminishing. Anyway, good luck, I think it's a good service.

Go after the big city hospitals where there tends to be a really long wait time, like Chicago, New York, and LA. Also, try to work in text message notifications for 15 minutes before the scheduled time.

<comment><USER17> They have that for housing in China too. Usually when a new building of condos is for sale, only the first 100 (or however many there are) customers can buy it, so a few days before they open the office, a lot of people would line up and sell their spots to real potential condo buyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is an absolutely brilliant idea, and I'd certainly use it if it were offered at a hospital near me and I needed it. (I hope I don't, for obvious reasons.)

I'd try two things to raise awareness. One is a local news story, as mentioned elsewhere on this thread. The other is to work with the emergency room staff at the offering hospital - I'd imagine they appreciate something like this too, since it means fewer frustrated patients when they finally do see them. Have flyers available for emergency room visitors - they'll be frustrated from the long wait time, which is the perfect time to offer them a solution. Put up posters around the waiting room. Try and get on the offering hospital's website.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right -- the ER staff love the service, because patients are in a noticably better mood when they haven't been cooling their heels in the waiting room for 3 hours.

The hospital's web site has a link to us on its front page, but this hospital hasn't invested much in developing their web presence. I'd like our next partner hospital to be one that has a stronger, more high-visibility web site.

If we could get on the first page of google for "<metro> hospitals" or "<metro> emergency room" that would be huge, I'd think. (But again, it's a local service, so getting link-fu is difficult right now)

<comment><USER18> Flyers & posters. Have the triage staff hand out a flyer along with the visit forms. It's the kind of thing that people will take note of and use later, and they may even tell their friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a lot of potential for really clever marketing. I'm thinking something like bus billboards that read "Hit by a bus?" :-)

I'd definitely use this if it were available in my area.

</comment><comment><USER20> >How would you raise consumer awareness for a service like this? I've tried a few things (mostly offline), but none successful so far.

This is the kind of thing with huge mainstream appeal which means you need to market to the mainstream. PR is the best, do you know any reporters at local newspapers? If you raise some money or have some money, you can also buy advertisements in newspapers or magazines or hire a true PR firm to get you press hits.

</comment><comment><USER21> Market the damn thing! Buy advertising! I'd definitely use this service, but there's no way I'd know to go looking for it.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a great service. I do not have much advices as I do not know about your industry but I can clearly see the value. Too bad I just moved from Smyrna ( I lived on Paces Ferry & Cumberland) or I would use it. Good luck, It's always nice to see startups from the ATL

</comment><comment><USER14> I like it. Keep bootstrapping.

I wonder about scaling past that first hospital, though. Kind of a catch-22 situation -- the hospital has to be small enough to not care about having part of its records online yet large enough to support a growing business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. We've had to do some interesting data gymnastics to satisfy the lawyers at our first hospital, and the bigger hospitals we've talked with seem even more concerned.

I think it needs to be a compelling service from a financial perspective in order to get the hospital's legal and financial departments to approve. If we were able to move 10-15 patients per day to a partner hospital, it could be adding $1 million/yr in profit to the hospital, easily. Hence the need for volume before we can partner with more hospitals.

Thanks for the comments.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps do a little thinking about who your customers are. Just guessing, but I would think they are people with a) not a immediately threatening problem, but one they want to see a doc about, b) have $25 or a credit card or something and are willing to use it to prevent waiting around, and c) are internet savvy.

So I'd go looking for a hospital that has a lot of these folks that use their ER and see if you can't set up a partnership based on the work you are currently doing with this hospital. Better yet, get a list of 50 such hospitals and work your way down :) With a high-enough density target market, you can move to things like radio, doorhangers, or newspaper ads. The interesting question is whether or not to use SEO, because of the geographical limitations.

Neat idea. I was just talking with a guy a couple of weeks ago about this exact thing, except for doctor's offices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Competitors: none" won't last.

This seems like a situation where raising tons of funding and scaling like hell is your best move. Settle questions of legality in different cities/states now, before you have competition.

</comment><comment><USER24> rev split with hospitals + terminal in the waiting room. Get biz dev and sign up hospitals. I'm sure that someone is saying this already in the comments, but don't have time to read all.

Find the person in the hospital that is having pain (figurative), whoever deals with the ER scheduling. Start by giving offering the hospital 15-25 %

</comment><comment><USER25> It is a unique story, try pitching it to the local news, worst they can do is say no.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, I'll give that a whirl.

PG and others tend to talk a lot about how PR firms and offline marketing are irrelevant to online startups -- I think this may be one particular instance where that's not true. In a way, this is a very web1.0 idea, but hey, it's something people seem to want, so I'm running with it.

Thanks for the thoughts.

<comment><USER26> "Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month. And they were worth it. PR is the news equivalent of search engine optimization; instead of buying ads, which readers ignore, you get yourself inserted directly into the stories."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great"

\- Twain</comment>


Ask HN: The real story behind your first startup? - <AUTHOR>

Hi.
I know this might seem close to stupid, but I would like to submit one of my ideas to YC this year, and I would like to know from others that have been there how is it like? What do you do when you get the email that says your good to go? (if you are not in USA - we need to plan our trip some time before in order to get flight tickets) I have read on YC that you can stay there in the YC campus (or what was the name), do you have to pay anything for accommodation? We have a limited budged that's way we would like to know what kinds of expenses we should take in consideration? We are 2 members, if this helps in any way.
I am asking this in order for us to have this little things (that usually can become frustrating) out of our way so that we can focus on the real issue, the project.
Thank you very much <comment><USER2> Not exactly sure how the title relates to the questions asked in your post, but this pretty much explains everything you need to know about YC: <http://ycombinator.com/about.html>

Travel expenses for the YC interviews are reimbursed up to $600/team. If you are accepted, you are expected to make your own living arrangements and cover all of your living expenses (rent, bills, food, etc) for the 3-month stint in CA, though this is typically what the YC seed money is for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for your reply. I would like to know if possible, how much would that be / month? I can find the rent, but I have no clue about the bills and any other expenses that might be involved. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So no one here has a startup ? :)</comment>


Our workstations in 2019 to look at in 2040 - <AUTHOR> https://www.are.na/elliott-cost/our-workstations <comment><USER2> Does everyone have a MacBook? I'd say most people in the world probably use a Dell Windows laptop or HP.</comment>


There Was a Time before Mathematica (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/06/there-was-a-time-before-mathematica/ <comment><USER2> Reduce, Axiom and Macsyma or the inferior "Maxima" anyway are still around and open source. Reduce and Axiom seem to have lost all open source momentum, which is a bloody shame as they were extremely interesting and powerful tools. I used Reduce in my own research, and remember finding it more powerful than contemporary Maple or Mathematica on certain classes of integrals.

I guess there are a number of others: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open- source_software_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open- source_software_for_mathematics)

One missing from this list is Yacas, which was very impressive as it was basically a one man project written in the same way Wolfram wrote his thing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacas)

Three that should not be forgotten:

1) Maple predated Mathematica, and was, as I recall easier to use. I think it survives as a standalone and as a Matlab package. It would be an interesting HBS case study why Maple doesn't have Wolfram's success or brand recognition. Wolfram is a weird guy (as others point out), but somehow was more successful than the humble Canadians.

2) Mathcad: in the early 90s, a lot of people used this instead of Mathematica or Maple because it was cheaper and it had a nice jupyter notebook like UI that didn't require you to learn a whole language

3) Derive: this one I really miss (it also predated Mathematica). It had a UI which was vastly better than Mathcad or any of Mathematica's later attempts at efficiency. You could crank out integrals or perturbation series on miniscule hardware; I ran it on my 186 HP100LX. And I believe it was internally based on a lisp engine, which gave lie to Wolfram's engineering choice that C/C++ was needed to make a tight CAS. This lives on somehow in TI calculators, but I'd actually consider buying a tablet or "smart phone" if there was a version of it for modern hardware.

FWIIW Wolfram is again worth a HBS study, as they're really the only first generation of "AI" company that survived and thrived. Computer algebra systems were considered AI back in the day, and the more general expert system shells were considered a viable path to strong AI (hint; it didn't work out) in the same way that "Deep Learning" is now (hint: it probably won't either).

<comment><USER3> Derive was based on muLISP

[http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/other#muLI...](http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/other#muLISP_)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for confirmation: I knew the same company made muLisp, but it wasn't totally obvious if that's what it was under the hood looking at the Derive install.

That was an amazing little lisp in that case, and what a treasure lost to calculator guts. Not that open source lisp community has covered itself in glory (aka Axiom, Reduce and so on fading into bitrot), but that's something I'd love to screw around with.

<comment><USER3> There is a fork of Axiom called FriCAS ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriCAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriCAS) ) which should easily run on some current CL implementations.

REDUCE still sees regular updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> notice that today you can still "apt install maxima" and it is a perfectly fine computer algebra system (the continuation of the Macsyma mentioned in the article)

<comment><USER5> _And_ it works in the terminal (there's GUI too)

        (%i48) integrate(2^x,x);
                                               x
                                              2
        (%o48)                              </comment></comment><comment>
                                            log(2)

<comment><USER6> So does Mathematica [http://support.wolfram.com/kb/12414](http://support.wolfram.com/kb/12414)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat to see the history. I've heard there is more to the matter (think I've read a blog post before) on his issues with Macsyma and Lisp in general.

Anyone who runs Mathematica knows it is a pretty big system now. Lots of C and Java I believe.

</comment><comment><USER8> In my opinion mathematical software should be free, as a core of any science. Imagine Wolfram Software tomorrow dissolved and there are tons and tons of mathematical code for it. What we are supposed to do? And it is not a general purpose software, it requires a tremendous experience in the domain to be able to rebuild required piece. Just wasting of time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do you know if anyone was ever able to decrypt the SMP source code mentioned as a challenge in the article?

<comment><USER10> I was just wondering about that as I read it... though the source code wasn't for SMP, it was for the program he'd used to encrypt the SMP source.

Apparently it's "a version of crypt(1) with some parameters changed"... the question of course is which parameters... and of course, what the key is...

With the algorithm and key unknown, it'd be a pretty hard problem to solve.

EDIT: Looks like there are three crypt(1) variants.

\- An exact implementation of the M-209 from V6 UNIX: [https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi- bin/utree.pl?file=V6/usr/source/...](https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi- bin/utree.pl?file=V6/usr/source/s1/crypt.c)

\- A single-rotor Enigma-style machine from V7 UNIX: [https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi- bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd...](https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi- bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd/crypt.c)

\- A slight variation on the Enigma implementation: [https://sourceforge.net/p/schillix-on/schillix- on/ci/default...](https://sourceforge.net/p/schillix-on/schillix- on/ci/default/tree/usr/src/cmd/crypt/crypt.c)

The M209 seems to be alphanumeric-only, and as the "source code" is binary, that'd rule it out.

Chances are, it's a butchered version of the Enigma algorithm.

Practically you'd need some known plaintext to recover the keystream. Even so, that wouldn't translate to the SMP source code unless you could find a weakness in the keystream generator.

The incoming password is hashed-and-salted by crypt(3) - so however long the password is, the "real" key will be 13 printable ASCII characters long (and the first two will be the salt).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me, or is almost every text written by Stephen Wolfram plagued by excessive, almost neurotic self-praise?

> Perhaps the first faint glimmering of an orientation toward something like > Mathematica came when I was about 6 years old

> Looking back at its documentation, SMP was quite an impressive system, > especially given that I was only 20 years old when I started designing it.

> My physics papers started containing all sorts of amazing formulas.

> I was 20 years old, and I'd just gotten my PhD in physics.

> I wrote lots of code for SMP myself (about 1000 lines/day). I did the > design. And I wrote most of the documentation. I'd never managed a large > project before. But somehow that part never seemed very difficult.

> [...]

I get that he is almost certainly a highly intelligent and gifted individual who has achieved a lot in his life, but humbleness seems to be a quality he is seriously lacking. Even if he tries to be humble, it just comes over as coquettish.

<comment><USER12> This has already gone meta-meta, in that there is a thread in every comment section on a post by Stephen Wolfram that complains about his self-obsession, and also one that complains about the complaints.

Basically, there is an HN gentlemen's agreement to collectively ignore Wolfram's self-praise, so that discussions about the worthwhile nuggets of insight in his blog posts are not drowned out.

<comment><USER13> That strikes me as a bad idea.

Silence = implicit approval. Don't implicitly approve Wolfram's narcissism. Just don't.

<comment><USER14> I'm going to have to vehemently push back on this. I don't think you can declare what does and does not constitute "implicit approval" for other people. You can't just impose a crusade on other people.

Am I approving of Wolfram'a narcissism if I read an article of his but don't make a comment discussing his narcissism? What if I upvote an article but don't comment about it? What if I comment, but _not_ about his narcissism? Where's the line?

Where does my obligation begin and end? If I choose to abstain from commenting on someone's narcissism, does that mean I have to boycott their work? Do I have to boycott talking about their work with other people?

If you don't respond to this comment of mine, am I to read your silence as implicit agreement? If not, why is that idea any less flippant than yours?

I'm not going to conspicuously trot out a meme about Wolfram's narcissism every time he comes up. It doesn't add any new information to the discussion, whereas _he_ frequently writes interesting things. It also won't make Wolfram any less narcissistic, it will just be obsessive and futile. He's not harming anyone.

To give an example, what you're suggesting is the reason why (for the most part) the only people who find Stallman bearable are people who share his ideology. If you have a pet crusade you launch whenever a topic comes up, you'll quickly find your comments marginalized by everyone who frankly doesn't care about it as much as you. It's just not a productive use of time and doesn't effect the change you think it will. It's a poor hill to die on.

<comment><USER13> Whether silence _should_ mean tacit approval and whether it _does_ mean tacit approval are two entirely different questions. I'd argue that it shouldn't but it does.

Mentioning and disapproving of Wolfram's narcissism is hardly akin to dying on a hill, and nobody is even asking you to do it, but Phemist is asking people to not actively disapprove of Wolfram's narcissism and I find that odd.

<comment><USER15> > Whether silence should mean tacit approval and whether it does mean tacit > approval are two entirely different questions. I'd argue that it shouldn't > but it does.

Silence can also mean dismissal. Wolfram is hardly at a level of cultural influence where he is rallying up support for a narcissistic lifestyle.

In the course many years we moved from an honour culture where tolerance was a weakness and misbehaviour was something to strongly react to toward a dignity culture where we try to lead by example and where (in polite conversation) criticism needs to be more nuanced.

Moreover by that logic I am silently approving of many things all the time, when talking about Obama and medicare I often omit drone bombing as a topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There was a time after Mathematica too, and for most people it was very similar to the time before Mathematica.

<comment><USER17> I Mathematica heavily using in any field?

<comment><USER18> Anecdotally, I've used Mathematica a bit for prototyping ideas over the years for various computational model prototyping purposes. I rarely see anyone else using Mathematica though, I often too wonder who their typical customer is (outside of educational institutions which its a good fit for).

I find it's great for prototyping certain types of ideas (more abstract/mathematical in nature) because there's a wide range of useful and complex functions that allow you to piece together ideas quickly, iterate/change, and test them. It's quite powerful in that respect.

Sometimes I have an idea and don't want to dig around dozens of libraries, dependency chains, etc. to piece some proof-of-concept test together, nor do I want to attempt to implement everything needed from scratch because that could require a large time investment (and fail conceptually).

Some similar efficient prototyping workflows can now be accomplished in Python using Jupyter/JupyterHUB, at least for me.

Any of my successful prototyped ideas immediately left the Mathematica ecosystem to be implemented using other technology stacks.</comment></comment></comment>


Scalding at Etsy - <AUTHOR> http://mcfunley.com/scalding-at-etsy

<comment><USER2> I was the one at Adtuitive who chose Cascading.JRuby. It was a pre-existing DSL on top of Cascading. It needed some work, but it was a pretty nice concise way to generate Cascading jobs. However, with half a dozen to a dozen people hacking features into it over time at Etsy, and with no real design coordination, things got pretty out of hand. There were a couple of fundamental problems:

1\. Type system mismatch. Ruby is dynamic and not type checked; Java is static and type checked; Cascading is somewhere in between and unfortunately doesn't seem to use Java's type system as well as it could.

2\. User-defined functions in strings. For some reason Cascading lets you write user-defined functions as strings and compiles them dynamically during job execution. This was _the_ way to write user-defined code in Cascading.JRuby.

Cascading requires a compilation step, yet since you're writing Ruby code, you get get none of the benefits of static type checking. It was standard to discover a type issue only after kicking off a job on, oh, 10 EC2 machines, only to have it fail because of a type mismatch. And user code embedded in strings would regularly fail to compile – which you again wouldn't discover until after your job was running.

Each of these were bad individually, together, they were a fucking nightmare. The interaction between the code in strings and the type system was the worst of all possible worlds. No type checking, yet incredibly brittle, finicky and incomprehensible type errors at run time. I will never forget when one of my friends at Etsy was learning Cascading.JRuby and he couldn't get a type cast to work. I happened to know what would work: a triple cast. You had to cast the value to the type you wanted, not once, not twice, but THREE times.

Scalding fixes both problems since it is statically typed and lets you write real user-defined functions instead of stuffing them in strings. To me, the main moral is never, ever design an API that involves writing code in strings. It's just bound to be a disaster. Also, if you're going to have a compilation step anyway, you might as well get some static checking for obvious problems like type errors as part of the bargain.

<comment><AUTHOR> One other unforced error with c.j was having almost every function take a dictionary of args instead of a sane argument list. That left "grep the codebase" and "read the entire function definition and god help you if it passes on the argument dict" as the two horrible options for figuring out how to even call most of the functions.

But we probably could have erected a blast shield around that mess if only we could have written functions and aggregators in ruby.

<comment><USER3> Yeah that right there was our biggest error I think. We should have had a "compilation pass" that used JRuby's ruby parser to do program transformation on the original source, extracting the inline operator code and doing "something" with it to generate fast JVM bytecode (probably using something like Mirah) and then transforming the call site into something that would use this. It would have been a few months of nightmarish debugging but would have also provided the leverage we needed to do data flow-level type checking/annotation as well, in addition to not having to write our UDFs in another language.

I think the thing to remember with the c.j stuff is at the time Cascading's Java API was pretty much state of the art, and we had to shore up a lot of what was in c.j in order to get to a viable DSL. And at that point, it was a huge leap forward from a readability standpoint. (Cascading's API had the same shortcomings as our c.j API wrt types etc, fwiw)

<comment><USER2> At that point you're just implementing a crappy statically type language inside of a Ruby DSL. Using a real statically typed JVM language that's more expressive than Java – i.e. Scala – would be much better. So, that's basically Scalding. Of course, Scalding wasn't even close to existing when we chose Cascading.JRuby, so yeah.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I'm just talking counterfactually. At the time there were no solid cascading DSLs whatsoever, cascalog wasn't even around for another 2 years or so iirc. Cascading itself was the new hotness vs writing raw map reduce, so c.j was kind of on the edge of what was out there. The decision to keep UDFs outside of Ruby was made at the outset (out of concern for performance, and being icing on the cake, etc.) and not really revisited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to get in a plug for my personal favourite Scala / Hadoop productivity framework, Scoobi.[0] If you're already familiar with Scala, Scoobi has the more familiar and intuitive API, and it leverages the type system to provide stronger guarantees before the code is even run. (For example, if Cascading / Scalding don't know how to serialize your data you'll get a runtime error; in Scoobi, it complains at compile-time. This is _really_ useful when your compile / deploy / run / error loop may take several minutes...) I've also run into a few bugs in Scalding, while I've found Scoobi to be much more solid.

OTOH, Scalding has the edge in terms of community size and ecosystem. I haven't found this to be a big issue -- shimming an existing Hadoop input / output to work with either project is quite simple -- but YMMV.

[0] [https://github.com/NICTA/scoobi](https://github.com/NICTA/scoobi)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, for those same reasons I much prefer using Scalding's typed API [1], which feels very similar to Scoobi. The tuple API shown in these slides is great for places like Etsy that already have a large investment in Cascading, but otherwise you're better off getting the added type safety and similarity to the standard Scala API.

[1] [https://github.com/twitter/scalding/wiki/Type-safe-api- refer...](https://github.com/twitter/scalding/wiki/Type-safe-api-reference)

<comment><USER4> I'm familiar with the typed API, but it still doesn't quite bring me as far as Scoobi does. I recognize your name from the Scalding code, so I'll say that this is meant as helpful criticism and not a complaint.*

\- There a couple types for datasets in the Scalding API: TypedPipe, and KeyedList and subclasses. Scoobi subsumes both of these under DList; thanks to the usual Scala wizardry, this has all the methods to operate on key-value pairs without loss of typesafety. This isn't a huge deal, but it removes the tiny pains of constantly converting back and forth between the two. \- Scoobi's _other_ abstraction, DObject, represents a single value. These are usually created by aggregations or as a way to expose the distributed cache, and have all the operations you'd expect when joining them together or with full datasets. You can emulate this in Cascading / Scalding, but it's a bit less explicit and more error-prone. \- There's no equivalent to the compile- time check for serialization in Scalding, AFAICT. \- Scoobi has less opinions about the job runner itself... there are some helpers for setting up the job, but all features are available as a library. For some reason, I found the two harder to separate in Scalding? \- IIRC, Scalding did job setup by mutating a Cascading object that was available implicitly in the Job. In Scoobi, you build up an immutable datastructure describing the computation and hand that to the compiler. This suits my sense of aesthetics better, I suppose...

* Also, thanks to you guys for Algebird! That's a really fantastic little project, and I use it all the time.

<comment><USER6> Quick point:

1) Scalding has a DObject like type: ValuePipe[+T]. 2) The reason you must explicitly call .group to go to a keyed type is that is costly to do a shuffle, this makes it clear to people when they do trigger a shuffle. If you don't like that, make an implicit def from TypedPipe[(K, V)] to Grouped[K, V] 3) You can easily use scalding as a library, but most examples use our default runner. We use it as a library in summingbird. But you are right, a nice doc to help people see what to do might help people (hint: set up an implicit FlowDef and Mode, do your scalding code, then call a method to run the FlowDef).

<comment><USER4> 1) Ah, the ValuePipe is (relatively) new; thanks for the pointer. 2) You have to explicitly `.group` in Scoobi as well; it transforms a DList[(K,V)] to a DList[(K, Iterable[V])] or similar. You _don 't_ have to call `.toTypedPype` to get map and friends, though, since it's just a DList. 3) I've actually written this exact integration, so I'm glad it's the approved method! The global, mutable Mode made me nervous, IIRC.

<comment><USER6> The global Mode is gone in 0.9.0. And there is an implicit from Grouped to TypedPipe, so you don't need to call .toTypedPipe (that directly seems less likely to cause problems, especially given we have mapValues and filter on Grouped, so we should avoid needlessly leaving the Grouped representation).

<comment><USER4> Neat! It looks like things are changing fast; I'll have to do another read- through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Totally read this as scaling at Etsy. Still interesting though. And somewhat accurate.

<comment><USER8> It's nothing, I read this as "Soldering is easy" and then spent about 5 seconds trying to understand why the material is something different from what I expected. Probably should sleep more.

<comment><USER9> Is anyone aware of psychological research into why some people are prone to this type of error?

This is a problem I have and often find bemusing but sometimes alarming. At least a few times a week I encounter text that I initially grossly misread by automatically inserting my own words instead of what was actually written.

I am inclined to think it may have something to do with doing a lot complicated programming. Basically after years of programming and having to deal with detail, you survive by being good at applying triage to problems, ie knowing what to ignore and what to pay attention to. Perhaps misreading text is your brain attempting to apply this type of triage.

<comment><USER10> I don't think it's likely to have anything to do with 'some people' or any kinds of tasks you perform. It's probably more to do with word shapes [1], which are probably at least part of how you read.

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


Java to Golang made things 10x slower - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/rob_pike/status/878412416127606784 <comment><USER2> As it was said in the twitter thread, there was lots of bandwagon in the thread. Real world results show that Java is faster in most cases.

[http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=java&lang2=go)

<comment><AUTHOR> Those benchmarks are fairly flawed and not written in idiomatic go from what I understand [1]. Though I suppose anecdotes are what they are

1\. [https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/golang/comm...](https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/5kv2xx/why_is_golangs_performance_worse_than_javas_in/)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps you don't understand [1].</comment></comment></comment>


Gmvault: Backup and restore your Gmail account - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault <comment><USER2> I have been using this for years and it's great software. One tip, store each different email account in it's own "database" my crontab looks like this:

        #Email backup
        0 0,6,12,18 * * * /usr/local/bin/gmvault sync -d /XXXXXXX/email-backup/joshstrange --resume email@example.com >> ~/mail-backup-logs/joshstrange.com.log 2>&1
        0 1,7,13,19 * * * /usr/local/bin/gmvault sync -d /XXXXXXX/email-backup/otheremail --resume firstname.lastname@example.com >> ~/mail-backup-logs/otheremail.com.log 2>&1
        ....

I sync it all locally to my house then back it up to Dropbox as well. The reason to store them in different datebases is you cannot "filter" them out when restoring so if they all go to the same DB if you restore you are restoring ALL your email across all accounts to one new account.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your advice, that's handy to know.

What's the database format it uses, sqlite3? (I tried looking on the repo but couldn't any obvious reference)

<comment><USER4> if you want to try something that downloads Gmail via imap and indexes it into an sqlite3 db (with FTS5 fulltext of from/to/cc/bcc/subject/body fields) and extracts attachments to filesystem, take a look at a recent project of mine:

[https://github.com/good-3g-apps/email/tree/master/imap- impor...](https://github.com/good-3g-apps/email/tree/master/imap-importer)

It also saves the raw .eml files to disk. No support for labels (yet), but it does properly link up threads in the db using `References` from the parsed headers (setting both MPTT and adjacency-list fields)

It's WIP, so contributions welcome :)

<comment><USER4> FWIW regarding speed, i was able to download, index & extract my entire INBOX + Sent Items (14k emails, 3.5GB total) in < 10min on a fast connection. the limiting factor by far was connection/imap speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm interested to know what the pros and cons are of this utility vs using the Google takeout functionality? I like the idea of this project but I don't know what it would gain me over Google's native export? Is it the restoration that's missing from Google's service?

[https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout)

<comment><USER6> My coworker and I both tried this yesterday, and today we both received an email with this error message: "Sorry, we encountered a problem when creating your Google data archive."

<comment><USER7> Took out my Google data a few times, now amounting 1.4GB never had this issue. Let's hope it's only a temporary slipup.

btw, the data is pretty exhaustive, even for non major Google applications or more recently added features (Maps Location History).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> After yesterday's post[1], I've setup a cron job to regularly backup Gmail/Google Drive.

I'm using Gmvault for Gmail (emails and chats), pretty effortless and with enough features for me, especially the export to maildir.

And rclone[2] for Google Drive, in "create a local mirror" mode (sync).

Any other tools to backup your Google life?

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12972554) [2] - [http://rclone.org/](http://rclone.org/)

<comment><USER9> I am _actively_ trying to get off of dropbox. I really want a similar native application experience that syncs to-and-from S3. Not a cron job using the s3 cli, not something that only works on osx/windows/etc... So far owncloud enterprise is the only polished looking solution I've found, but thats a bit overkill...

<comment><USER10> You are looking for Syncany: [https://www.syncany.org/](https://www.syncany.org/)

But really, you may not need S3 at all and just sync between your devices with Syncthing: [https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

Shameless plug: Syncthing is in official Debian repositories! [https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/syncthing](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/syncthing)

<comment><USER11> How have you found syncthing perf? When I tried it a while back the perf was horrible. It ate CPU and was pretty slow, even though I was just testing with 2 machines on my local network.

<comment><USER10> This was improved recently with 14.0.7:

\- [https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/releases/tag/v0.14.7](https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/releases/tag/v0.14.7)

Also, It will improve further with File System Notifications (from what I understand?):

\- [https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/2807](https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/pull/2807)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> WARNING/fun fact: it doesn't download all emails properly. Last time I tried it, it seemed that when the Gmail server randomly closed a connection (or maybe some other time, but I think it was in these instances), the program would just keep whatever partial results it had and then move on to the next email. Which meant I had a lot of partial emails on my drive (only a small fraction of all the emails, but still), and no way to detect them.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have been using both GYB ([https://github.com/jay0lee/got-your- back](https://github.com/jay0lee/got-your-back)) and mbsync ([http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html](http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html)) for this. How is gmvault better/different?

<comment><USER14> I've been using gmvault for only one feature: ability to fetch e-mails that match a certain filter.

<comment><USER15> GYB does that, too: [https://github.com/jay0lee/got-your-back/wiki#selective- back...](https://github.com/jay0lee/got-your-back/wiki#selective-backups-with- gmail-searching)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Given how easy and carelessly Google can close your account and ruin your digital life, I guess periodic backups of your cloud accounts will soon be considered a good practice.

<comment><USER17> _> I guess periodic backups of your cloud accounts will soon be considered a good practice._

It has been good practice for a couple of decades. Of course, getting people to follow good practices is another matter....

<comment><USER18> In this case, it's not as good as a normal backup. To my knowledge, Google Docs/Sheets/etc. is exported in other file formats (MS Word format, PDF format, etc), not their internal file format. So it's not a real backup, just an export.

<comment><USER17> Good point. And we have no way of knowing what Google's internal format looks like...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Data is only half the problem. The other is that email address has become the "primary key" for everything. Banking websites, random forums, everything. It's sometimes impossible to change it because it's the "primary key" for identity on that website. And email addresses are not portable like phone numbers.

<comment><USER20> Email addresses are portable to any webmail, mail server or other email infrastructure provider if you have your own domain and then forward to the service of your choice. This way you can use Gmail if you like or maintain your own full email stack, or anything in between, while still addressing your mail to something you control.

<comment><USER21> but do you really control your domain? if somebody hacks into your registrar or forges your signature or something and transfers it to themselves, they would get your email, and it might be very difficult for you to get it back. Or maybe I am being too paranoid about this and it's less likely that your domain gets taken from you compared to your mail provider deciding to terminate you.

You can also do something like using fastmail, where you don't control your domain, but being a paying customer you do have somebody to call if there are issues

<comment><USER22> I find the attack itself technically plausible, but where's the motivation? Why would someone go to the effort just to get some random personal domain? Sounds a little far-fetched, and I've never heard it happening to a personal domain of a non-VIP. Meanwhile, we know that Gmail accounts get terminated regularly, and appealing is hard-to-impossible.

<comment><USER23> Cryptocurrency mostly (based on public disclosures), but sometimes other digital assets like twitter handles or game currency. Sometimes domain names themselves are the asset.

As is now well known, mobile numbers are often also hijacked to subvert weak 2fa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Since Gmail supports imap and pop3, one could simply use any proven email client to backup the emails. I don't think a special tool that or may not work is needed for this.

<comment><USER25> Which "proven email client" do you recommend? There's an Import/Export extension for Thunderbird, one of the last standing desktop mail apps, but it's not good at handling huge, multi-thousand message exports.

gmvault is purpose-built and quite simple. I've used it before with success. It backs up your whole mailbox in one command. Why should we fiddle with a desktop mail client?

<comment> pi-rat fetchmail, getmail and offlineimap are all "proven email clients" that work great for this.

<comment><USER26> +1 on offlineimap. Those of us that may be a little strange in the head and prefer using mail clients like mutt will often use it to handle background imap syncing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The 'restore' feature looks nice. But would it be of any value if Google decides to close your account? That is, can I take my backup emails from Gmail and 'restore' it to email@example.com in order to migrate all those emails over?

<comment><USER28> Good question, I wonder if anyone's tried this before. It would be invaluable if that were the case.

<comment><USER29> I have opted to have 3 gmail accounts with various names; 1 outlook, 1 yahoo account. Every email sent to my gmail is forwarded > outlook > yahoo. I use 2 other gmail accounts for newsletters and etc. I am sure at least 1 company will remain free to access data! BTW thanks for the thunderbird tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My backup of Gmail is to use Mail.app via IMAP + download all attachments.

I then have a backup of my computer -> 1\. Time Machine + 2\. Arq->S3/Glacier

Given that this keeps mail locally in a constantly readible format (offline, copied in mbox)... is there something missing in my basic solution that this cli utility adds?

<comment><USER31> Or any IMAP client that saves messages locally.

I guess this utility benefits people who only use gmail's web interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Here's one I wrote: [https://github.com/abjennings/gmail- backup](https://github.com/abjennings/gmail-backup)

Not as full featured (can't restore), but it's just a 77-line Python script. You could audit it yourself to make sure it doesn't upload your creds to another server.

</comment><comment><USER33> Please don't forget to encrypt your backups in case your local drive gets stolen or your cloud backup service is hacked.

</comment><comment><USER34> doesn't [http://www.google.com/takeout](http://www.google.com/takeout) include gmail?

<comment><USER35> Yep! And much more. But gmvault does also restore emails to an account, interestingly.

I am (slowly) working on a project to pull some statistics from Takeout's mbox file for Mail. Also want to play around with the Location History, Chrome data and Hangouts exports.

<comment><USER36> That would be very useful. I'd like to use takeout incrementally - and have some tools to use those backups at any time (like you describe).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Since yesterday I have a few Google Takeout zip files in my backup ( [https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout) ). I've used gmvault in the past, but this looks superior from the outside. Haven't delved into the data I'll admit.

<comment><USER35> I am working on digging around this data right now, actually. Some details on my website (see profile) and I will post on HN about it at some point when I get things further along (also want to look at Location History and Chrome data exports).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why should I use this over an email client like Thunderbird?

<comment><USER39> Do you use IMAP? Do emails get fully downloaded in IMAP?

<comment><USER40> You can set it up like that, yes. (I'm not sure what the default is, since I haven't created a new Thunderbird profile in years)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have used this in the past to backup email accounts of resigned employees so we continue to stay well within the maximum number of active accounts for our free Google Apps.

It generally works fine and it allows you to restore the emails to a different account name. (I sometimes temporarily restore an account to search for old emails). It seems to have some issues with restoring accounts with a lot of large emails (large or multiple attachments) especially those that have reached the 15GB quota.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Handle all Gmail IMAP hiccups.

It's sad that after all these years, google still hasn't gotten around to properly implementing IMAP.

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it considered safe to leave your oauth ID and Secret public in open source projects?

</comment><comment><USER44> I have been using Spanning backup for several years now. It backs up our Gmail, documents , calendars, contacts, sites It is one of those set-it-and- forget-it type services. The company is acquired by EMC now. The service costs us around $35/year/email account; for us it is small price for peace of mind. I wrote a review of them few years back - [http://reviewofweb.com/gmail/backupify-vs- spanning/](http://reviewofweb.com/gmail/backupify-vs-spanning/)

</comment><comment><USER45> I have been planning to switch to mutt, this tool will also come in handy.

Are there similar tools for MS Outlook or Protonmail or if it is possible to modify gmvault to work with either one?

</comment><comment><USER46> I use Thunderbird Portable to backup our Google Apps/GSuite email accounts. Open once a week - Bob's your uncle.

</comment><comment><USER47> Does it work on Raspberry Pi?

I have an always on PI server as git server. I wouldn't mind put this on as one more cron job on it.

<comment><USER22> It's written in Python, so it should work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Seems legit. In the past I have used Imapsync to transfer hundreds of email accounts out of gmail / google apps. [https://imapsync.lamiral.info/](https://imapsync.lamiral.info/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Best timing for posting this.

Even before this I've been looking to get a bit independent from Google, atm I'm trying to get Camlistore to replicate my data over various places. (I wish it had some erasure encoding)

</comment><comment><USER50> Are there similar tools for google docs documents? drive files? contacts?

<comment><USER51> For drive: [https://github.com/prasmussen/gdrive](https://github.com/prasmussen/gdrive)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> A lazy alternative is to forward all incoming email to a yahoo account. I've been doing this for years and it's come in handy on the rare occasions when Gmail is unavailable.

</comment><comment><USER53> Does this only backup attachments and images as well as text? I can't seem to find any reference to this on the site.

EDIT: Ok it appears gmvault encodes attachments into the eml default, cool.

<comment><USER54> I just searched this thread, the site, and github...Here's the best I've found...apparently it supports saving attachments...

[https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/73](https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/73) >> Users asked about attachments. Put somewhere in the doc that they are saved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I was trying to push some people off my Google Apps accounts since google won't allow you to "split" some users off the account. Wish I would have seen this then!

</comment><comment><USER56> Offtopic: I have Gsuite (free) for my company (<50), is it possible to backup all the emails of my users without knowing their passwords (with XOauth tokens?).

</comment><comment><USER57> Cool, but I'm going to have to do a source code review before I trust any new tool with my Gmail messages.

</comment><comment><USER58> No Python 3 support (at least under Anaconda), but interested when its supported.

<comment><USER59> Why does this matter? Just set up a virtualenv. I've been using this to backup my gmail account for years.

<comment><USER58> Excellent idea, never occurred to me. -1 for snark, +2 for coming to my aid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> How does this persist/restore filters?

</comment><comment><USER61> Ironically using some of these buggy tools can be an effective and swift way to get your account locked out or at least rate limited by anti-abuse systems. Read the code and make sure they are using official APIs and are coded sanely.

<comment><USER51> They are. The first thing gmvault does is have you authenticate with oauth. From there it's just using the gmail apis / imap to download the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I use mutt setup according to Steve Losh's advice "The Homely Mutt" to achieve this with great success.

</comment><comment><USER63> Yes, we need to backup our emails before google delete our accounts. Googles operations start to remains me of obamas administration, where nobody can actually say anything out of template..</comment>


Twenty Eight Feet: life on a little wooden boat - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/94842405

<comment><USER2> Reminded me of Teresa Carey and "Sailing Simplicity", [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsV1VAPzjzc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsV1VAPzjzc). She has also given a TED talk previously. I feel like I'm being pitched for an authentic experience but led into the gift shop. I guess everybody has to have a hustle but in both these "personal life transformative experiences" I see polished, affluent, hipster packaged products. Otherwise the sailing looks fun in both videos.</comment>


Has Capitalism Reached a Turning Point? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/09/26/has-capitalism-reached-a-turning-point/ <comment><USER2> I have long believed that capitalism is fundamentally flawed. It is a system that was designed when the world seemed endless. There were always new lands to discover (and exploit) and new markets to conquer. Capitalism is based on the idea that growth is always possible. Your investments will, on average, provide a return through increased value.

But, we now know that the Earth is essentially a closed system. There is a finite amount of energy available. What happens when a system based on constant growth runs out of room to grow?</comment>


Faking your death - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-you-think-can-fake-your-own-death-elizabeth-greenwood <comment><USER2> Reminds me of a DefCon speaker that talked about exploiting a bunch of websites to order death and birth certificates. Really eye opening, and potentially devastating if it's done to you.

Edit: [https://youtu.be/9FdHq3WfJgs](https://youtu.be/9FdHq3WfJgs)

<comment><USER3> I haven't watched it yet, but most defcon social engineering talks take advantage of this innate thing in human nature that just assumes you're authentic. Probably because it's infinitesimally rare that someone is trying to run a con. Can be quite sobering, but at the same time, it's nice to know most people try to help others (even at the haste of security).

<comment><USER4> Well, you should have watched it first because your comment isn't relevant.

The talk is about exploiting terrible digital security, not social engineering.

<comment><USER5> Your comment is overly aggressive and rude - it has no place in a community like this.

<comment><USER6> Not sure if you caught this, but swalsh's comment starts with:

      "I haven't watched it yet..."

TheDong's not saying "RTFA" nor is he aggressive and rude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fun article. The idea of faking your death has probably occurred to a lot of people in military service.

It sure did in my case--it only took two days of basic training to make clear that signing up for the US Air Force was the worst mistake of a heretofore untroubled life. It's gratifying to see my proposed method (an untimely hiking accident) so highly praised.

Just out of curiosity for anybody who has gone through this exercise what method(s) did you consider? Extra points for originality.

<comment><USER8> Funny you mention two days of basic training being your worst mistake.

My biggest problem with basic was keeping myself from laughing out loud at the various antics. Once I was able to control that urge, it was pretty straightforward. I saw it, essentially, as six weeks of necessary bullshit that allowed me to get to the next level.

My term in the USAF as a 3C0X2 (computer programmer) was fantastically beneficial. I'd already been programming for over a decade when I went in. But the installation I landed at allowed me to really learn in a lot of new directions.

Having said that, I know a lot of folks that had a far less productive time. But it's still a pretty good way to bootstrap a life independent from family, in my opinion at least. The money from the GI bill is very valuable, plus, with some measure of self control, single Airmen can save up a ton of money, since the USAF pays in full for food, housing and medical.

<comment><USER9> I did compulsory service, and the most important lessons for me from it are:

1) You get (well, are forced) to mingle and cooperate with people outside your "circle" and bubble (of course this is truer for compulsory service).

2) You are in place where no one treats you like a "unique snowflake".

3) You get to do all the shit people usually have their parents, mothers, cleaning services, etc do for them, even more so than when merely living alone, because there you are forced to do it, and to do it for 100s of people.

<comment><USER8> Yes, this is all well stated.

In basic training, I ended up being very close to a lot of different people that I would have otherwise never come in contact with, to that level.

And in my opinion, this is a very healthy thing.

One thing I'd like to share that cracks me up, all these years later. Pardon the forthcoming ramble.

I had been handling guns from a pretty early age, but I was still looking forward to training on the M-16.

Well, at least in the early 90s, there is exactly one (1) day of weapons training in USAF basic training.

In the morning, we got on a bus and went to the ass-end of Lackland AFB where the gun ranges were. We then received our weapons, with no ammo in sight, and 'trained' on them in several hours of classes.

Note, this classroom was just a classroom, with desks, with the normal classroom density. And so 50 young men and women were sitting at desks with M-16s. And, on various cadences, we all held them up, put the clip in, simulated chambering a round, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

But we had to aim...kind of up and to our left. Because we were never suppose to point the weapon at another person we didn't mean to shoot, loaded or otherwise.

It was an absolutely absurd scene.

Many of my class-mates were openly afraid of handling these weapons, and it showed.

After lunch we marched, weapons slung, over to the firing range. We were to each fire sixty rounds that day. The first thirty were warmup/practice. The second 30 were for qualification. We each lay supine with the weapon on sandbags. Only then were each of us handed three rounds each, which we pushed into the clip. And then we fired those three rounds.

The young lady next to me was terrified of guns, and had never touched one. I noticed that she was closing her eyes before each shot.

After we fired our 30 rounds into the targets, our final scores were calculated. My target had 30 holes tightly grouped in the middle. But there was another hole, off all by itself, right on the edge of the target.

Somehow I managed to score 31 out of 30 that day, though it was recorded as 30.

The young lady next to me repeated 'gun day' twice more, with different flights (groups), before she qualified.

Sorry for the ramble!

The real punch line came when I asked my training instructor, later on, why we bothered with only a single day of weapon training.

He laughed out loud and said something like, fuck if I know. Think about it, Diederich. What do you think would be going on if Airmen were forced to actually use their weapons against an enemy. The war would already be over!

Indeed! The USAF: where the best chance of direct enemy contact comes from becoming one of the few tens of thousands of officers who actually venture into enemy territory on occasion. The 'grunts', the enlisted, no way.

<comment><USER10> > The 'grunts', the enlisted, no way.

This was less the case in the past fifteen years, where USAF personnel in certain career fields were often pressed into Army roles. Particularly in convoy and military police operations, the Army had overextended itself and needed the other branches to fill in the gaps of trained personnel.

For most airmen, it can be years before you're even considered for deployment. Less than a year into my enlistment as a Security Forces airman, I was sent to be a prison guard ("detainee operations") at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. There were Army and Navy personnel, but most of their guards were troops put into a role outside of their usual training...a couple years prior such non- police "augmentee" soldiers without proper use-of-force training were involved in the torture incident in the prison at Abu Ghraib.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I was aware of this, but didn't mention it.

During Desert Storm, one of my computer programmer co-workers got yanked to a nearby base where he received a two week crash-course on being an airforce cop, so that the actual airforce cops could deploy to Saudi Arabia.

An 'airforce cop' is basically the same thing as a civilian cop. They drive around on base in police-looking cars, hand out speeding tickets and handle the occasional drunk and disorderly.

He had some pretty funny stories about how many strange situations he found himself in, given his abject lack of directly relevant training.

Fortunately, the goings on in nearly all USAF bases are exceedingly lawful, so his situations were always funny and WTF instead of dangerous.

<comment><USER10> > Fortunately, the goings on in nearly all USAF bases are exceedingly lawful, > so his situations were always funny and WTF instead of dangerous.

That was my experience doing state-side law enforcement at a Space Command base - night shift was especially fun for the weird calls, like complainants worried about "satellites orbiting San Bernardino County" and the "glowing red airship" suspiciously near some antenna arrays with the usual air collision beacons. The usual response was to refer them to public affairs as our office was strictly limited to a terrestrial jurisdiction.

Definitely more lighthearted than being downrange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A variant of this that I heard used to be a problem in India: have _someone else_ declared dead. It can be remarkably hard to fix the problems created in a bureaucracy when that happens.

[http://newsok.com/article/3044137](http://newsok.com/article/3044137)

<comment><USER12> This came up in Ohio, with the judge ruling a man dead despite his _appearing in court_ to contest to decision.

[http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/10/10/jud...](http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/10/10/judge- tells-ohio-man-hes-still-legally-dead.html)

<comment><USER13> To misquote Babbage, "I cannot comprehend the confusion of mind that would bring someone to such a decision" .....

edit: oh. The guy went to court to specifically undo a ruling that was over 10 years old, that would have caused his ex-wife to owe the government a lot of "unfairly claimed" benefits. I'm less confused now.

<comment><USER14> A good rule of thumb is: if you ever see something in the media that cannot possibly be true, it really _isn 't true_ \- it's just the media doing above- average fact twisting on the story.

<comment><USER15> But it actually is true in this case.

<comment><USER16> Even if actually true, the context explains the entire difference between what was said and what was expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nommm-nommm >A group of private investigators hired by Dateline NBC located McDermott when they noticed a centralized cluster of IP addresses originating near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, all clicking onto a site dedicated to tracing his whereabouts.

Protip, use a VPN/Tor and incognito mode preferably on someone else's Wifi with a burner laptop you bought from Craigslist with cash while Googling your crimes. I've heard of murder/kidnapping suspects being found out this way as well.

... or really, just resist the urge to Google your crimes.

<comment><USER17> It seems that Google searches do not aid in identifying murderers but once they have been identified Google searches certainly seem to help convict them.

<comment> nommm-nommm It's not a murder but...

[http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/02/20/the-long- ar...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/02/20/the-long-arm-of-the- google/)

>The cerebral Gundlach also gave investigators a tip for solving the crime. He says that while he was at home in his family room, it dawned on him that thieves would do a Google search using his grandmother's name to find out more about the paintings and how much they might be worth... Gundlach told the authorities that they should check the Internet to see who might have googled the name Helen Fuchs. He says exactly two such searches were executed: one by him and one by the thieves.

That's just from a quick Google. I've heard of criminals becoming suspects from Googling crimes before they become public, it's not that hard to identify an early or frequent Googler in most cases especially if they are logged in.

<comment><USER18> MSN maps and dialup RADIUS logs put a murderer in prison at one point. It turned out nobody else had printed a map of the area the body was hidden.[0]

[0] [http://murderpedia.org/male.T/t/travis- maury.htm](http://murderpedia.org/male.T/t/travis-maury.htm)

<comment> nommm-nommm Really interesting story thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER18> thanks. I worked on the MSN/UUNET RADIUS implementation in the late 90s, so that particular capture has stuck with me

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> THe DefCon talk on this two years ago was pretty good.

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2966130/cybercrime- hack...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2966130/cybercrime-hacking/def- con-how-to-virtually-kill-someone-or-cash-in-on-fake-babies.html)

Video of this talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs)

<comment><USER20> I didn't see that one, but I saw his "How to overthrow a government" this year:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1lhGqNCZlA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1lhGqNCZlA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've wanted to fake my death in Facebook for some time. A kind of blaze of glory.

It seems remarkably simple, all I needed to do is to get an obituary in a local paper, and fill in this form [https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/234739086860192](https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/234739086860192). How hard can that be right?

Unfortunately my wife put a stop to it soon as I told her.

<comment><USER22> It's actually easier than you'd think. A friend and his high school buddies decided to prank one of their friends by all writing on his all saying how sorry they were to hear about his dad, he was a great man, RIP, etc. Other people saw those and jumped on the bandwagon, writing their own condolences. It was a sick but very successful prank.

<comment> nommm-nommm For a morbid prank I always thought it would be "funny" to put a dead man's switch on my facebook account so that if I died I'd start posting again after a few months.

It's only funny in the abstract though, I wouldn't want to hurt friends/family in real life.

<comment><USER23> My friends and family expect jerkface but technically nuanced shenanigans from me. If I didn't start posting on the Facebook and twitter after I died my friends and family might think I faked it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Cached, for those without a linkedin account:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy- ab&...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy- ab&tbs=li%3A1&q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fpulse%2Fso-you-think- can-fake-your-own-death-elizabeth- greenwood&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fpulse%2Fso-you-think- can-fake-your-own-death-elizabeth- greenwood&gs_l=serp.3...29517.30313.0.305126.96.36.199.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....1...1c.1.64.psy- ab..6.0.0.zQcsOh9zzjo&pbx=1)

</comment><comment><USER25> I was going to link to Elizabeth Greenwood's fascinating book, then I clicked on the link and saw this was written by her! Fascinating subject from a great writer. There's a This American Life episode about it, where she talks about this. Very interesting stuff. I can't seem to find the episode or I'd link it :-(

</comment><comment><USER26> " "Ninety-nine percent of faked deaths are water accidents. In most drownings, the body is recovered. So why was this body not recovered?" "

I had exactly this question when they mentioned that Osama was killed and his body thrown to the ocean. OK it's not a drowning, but why was it thrown to the ocean?

<comment><USER27> > OK it's not a drowning, but why was it thrown to the ocean?

Because they didn't want to create a site that could either be turned into a memorial (by sympathizers) or a target for vandalism (by people who hated him), or both.

In any case, if you're wondering whether or not bin Laden is dead, you can be pretty sure that he is. If he weren't, the best way for them to damage and discredit the US would be to post video proof-of-life. The fact that they haven't done that by now shows that they can't.

<comment><USER28> Well, unless he's just sitting in a jail cell in Gitmo.

But I agree, Occam's Razor. That being said, cremation and don't tell anyone where the ashes went.

<comment><USER27> Cremation has no (or very little) precedent in Islam, along with a more contentious history. The USG found some rather obscure (IIRC) precedent for water burial in Islam, which allowed them to argue that they were performing proper burial rights to prevent backlash.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, that worked well. There have been no Islamic terror attacks in America since then. Just crazy people who happen to be Muslim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is not it easier to move abroad? In many countries student loans are included in personal bankruptcy. And you get citizenship with passport after 5 years of residency.

<comment><USER31> Unless one renounces their US citizenship, they're still subject to IRS and US courts. Department of State also suggests that it doesn't clean the slate as far as financial burdens are concerned [https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal- considerati...](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal- considerations/us-citizenship-laws-policies/renunciation-of-citizenship.html)

"In addition, the act of renouncing U.S. citizenship does not allow persons to avoid possible prosecution for crimes which they may have committed in the United States, or escape the repayment of financial obligations, including child support payments, previously incurred in the United States or incurred as United States citizens abroad."

<comment><USER30> It is one way ticket, obviously. Student loans would not be enforceable in foreign country, after personal bankruptcy.

<comment><USER31> But if the lender sues in a US court and gets a judgement, isn't the person subject to an extradition? The lender doesn't have to sue in respective country's court.

<comment><USER32> I am not an American, nor have I ever dealt with the American court system. However, extradition is, to the best of my knowledge, only used in serious criminal cases, and not used at all to enforce a civil judgement (which suing would be).

Wikipedia also has a list of countries that the United States doesn't have an extradition treaty with. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_States). Most of those don't look like great options, but a few of them are quite nice!

<comment><USER33> Surprised to see Andorra on that list!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I recently listened to a fascinating Radiolab episode which is the interesting flip side of this. The episode was about a girl who couldn't prove she existed (from a legal standpoint).

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/invisible- girl/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/invisible-girl/)

</comment><comment><USER35> The flowchart was amusing, though perhaps a little over the top with the choices. Jokes about murder and suicide seem like they clash with the more serious tone of the article a bit.

Seriously though, this sort of thing is about as bad an idea as pretending to be dying of cancer on Facebook/a personal blog, especially when the internet makes it very easy to expose liars.

<comment><USER36> I didn't read the arrows about suicide as a joke. I read it as "if you are not desperate enough to consider suicide, then your situation is not bad enough to warrant faking your death".

Or maybe I'm just reading too much between the lines.

<comment><USER12> I got the same idea, plus an implication of "if you're not worried about morality, this is still really hard". I imagine lastingly faking your death is often harder than getting away with murder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> For most purposes, wouldn't it be easier to just _go away_ somewhere and keep on being you, just with bad credit?

<comment><USER38> This article seems to be written with the faux-goal of collecting a life insurance policy payout. This could be a substantial amount of money, depending on your circumstances.

<comment><USER39> I wonder what would happen if you just "walked away" on a hiking trip, got declared dead, and your family family got the life insurance, but you just showed back up five years later.

You never claimed to be dead. So it seems that's not illegal. If your family really thought you were dead, they didn't do anything illegal either. Could they be forced to give the money back?

I imagine the legalities of being declared "not dead after all" would be pretty difficult.

<comment><USER40> Faking your death is entirely legal, provided that is not being done with criminal intent.

But having even a $1 life insurance policy, or $1 in debt, or accessing $1 worth of a reputation-based benefit, might be enough to demonstrate that intent. Most people in the US could not fake their own death without criminal or civil consequences.

We no longer have the "move to the New World" or "move out to the frontier" reset buttons that previous generations had (nor even the "get sentenced to transportation" and "claim sanctuary" buttons).

<comment><USER12> I noticed the "this is legal" claim in the article, but surely taxes become a huge problem? Even if you're not working, you'd end up either failing to file or revealing that you're still alive.

<comment><USER41> You don't have to file Federal taxes if you make less than $10,300 per year.

<comment> nommm-nommm This isn't true, you don't have to file taxes if you make less income than the standard deduction plus one exemption which changes from year to year and also is also dependent on your age and your filing status and the threshold is different for unearned income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It was among the least-expected articles I had ever read on LI, especially in light of LI's mission to promote "professional" networking.

<comment><USER43> From the perspective of the author of that article it's certainly professional networking, because she wrote a book about it :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's much harder to do than it used to be.

It used to be you could find somebody who died, get their birth certificate, take over their social security number and you were golden.

Then they started publishing and invaliding social security numbers of dead people and it got a lot harder.

</comment><comment><USER45> Interesting how the flowchart and the article differ a fair bit.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Don't Google Yourself:

> ...

> A group of private investigators hired by Dateline NBC located McDermott > when they noticed a centralized cluster of IP addresses originating near > Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, all clicking onto a site dedicated to tracing his > whereabouts.

I.e. do google yourself; just don't click on the results. Pull the content from Google's cache, or go through an anonymizer.

<comment><USER47> So you think that if you don't click anything, Google doesn't log your query and IP? That's so endearing.

<comment><USER46> Of course it does! But note that in the above case, the investigators didn't have to get anything from Google (and Google wouldn't just hand over that info to a bunch of insurance investigators).

They got the IP addresses from their own site dedicated to that case, which was getting hits from someone searching precisely for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It's surprising to me to see how popular this article is around all of my social media right now. I knew we were all stressed out but I didn't think we would be this fascinated.

</comment><comment><USER49> flow chart [https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAjDAAAAJDEyMDMy...](https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAjDAAAAJDEyMDMyZDVhLTNlMWItNDAzMC1hNmYwLWEyNTBiMThjMTBjZA.jpg)

<comment><USER50> I'm not even sure a flow chart is worthwhile. Other than looking cool and sort of funny you might as well just have a bullet point list of requirements. It certainly would be quicker to read a list than go through the chart.

<comment><USER51> Yes, the flowchart is topologically just a long line of questions, with a small exception, which could easily be reduced to a single question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I found it hilarious the number of comments that are tirades about student loans and "personal responsibility," like it was even a significant part of the article.

<comment><USER53> The border between hilarious and disgusting is sometimes tenuous. When I read these comments by MBAs or any other type of "educated" people, I wonder what their student loans helped them with

<comment><USER52> > The border between hilarious and disgusting is sometimes tenuous

Bit of a digression but just because sometimes it causes friction, particularly amongst people who think laughter is an inappropriate response to serious situations:

I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I find the comments themselves distasteful. That the comments exist at all is quite funny to me, because they're essentially non-sequiturs. The idea that someone would read the linked article and decide this was an appropriate context for a tirade about student loans is absurd (and therefore funny) to me.

Sort of like if we were reading Einstein's biography and someone launched into a ten paragraph essay about how all children should be killed, simply because the biography starts with Einstein's childhood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> From the headline and domain, I assumed this was about faking a death to stop LinkedIn emails.

<comment><USER41> Can someone explain this to me? I have a Linkedin account, and the only time I get emails is when someone wants to connect with me. I opted out of all the other email categories, just like I do with every other site.

Do people really get emails from Linkedin after opting out of every category?

<comment><USER55> You're assuming people getting emails have LinkedIn accounts. When someone with your email signs up for LinkedIn and then lets LinkedIn access their contacts, everyone of their contacts receives and email from LinkedIn and they now have your email address to do with as they please.

<comment><USER56> Isn't that illegal in the EU?

<comment><USER57> Yes, it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> linkedin has become something very weird.

<comment><USER59> I didn't even realise that they had content (other than built-in EZ Contact Spamming). Has that always been the case?

<comment><USER58> i look at linkedin once a week or so; my "feed" has become some strange alternate universe of political nonsense masquerading as professional networking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Why do I find sites that require login/signup hubristic? I guess because we have so many alternatives? Or, do I just dislike Linkedin?

</comment><comment><USER61> <meta> Interesting to see this upvoted to the top of HN. What does it say about us? </meta>

<comment><USER62> HN enjoys the occasional humorous posts lined with neat nuggets of information?</comment></comment>