Show HN: Rmf. Diacap. Stig. Scap. CCI. Poam. Rar. Crosswalk - <AUTHOR> https://cyber.trackr.live Clicking RMF will show you all the RMF controls NIST published. The colored buttons at the top of this page filter what controls show up in the table at the bottom. In the table at the bottom, clicking the 'blue' control button will show you the details for the specific control you selected. In the details view, you will also see buttons for other related RMF controls, DIACAP controls and CCI Items. Those are all clickable to present the referenced information. <comment><USER2> Huh? What do all those abbreviations mean

<comment><AUTHOR> Rmf. Risk management framework.

Diacap. DoD Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation process.

Stig. Security technical implementation guideline.

Scap. Security content automation protocol.

These are all DoD Cyber processes. Anyone who knows the acronyms will know the purpose of the site.</comment></comment>


Anatomy of a Hack assembly program - <AUTHOR> https://onatm.dev/2019/04/05/anatomy-of-a-hack-assembly-program-part-1/ <comment><USER2> Oh man, this made me remember how much I loved this course. I highly recommend the Coursera version to anyone who didnt come from CS and wants to truly understand how a bunch of on and off switches become a computer.

That reminds me I should probably take part two... (Although once you write a compiler its easier to see the road ahead than when you've only got a NAND gate).</comment>


Facebook's New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-new-message-to-whatsapp-make-money-1533139325 <comment><USER4> Whatsapp had a great business model: $1 a year. With their current 1.5 billion users, that's nothing to sneeze at. It doesn't cost them $100M a month to provide the service.

I wish more companies were like Craigslist - happy to make an great profit and a lasting business by providing basic information services for a reasonable price. Instead, a bunch of MBAs want to rule the world by focusing on growth at all costs, so they can then turn around and squeeze their locked in users for every dime possible.

<comment><USER5> Ok, I agree that some MBAs can be full of it but can we already stop this MBA hate on HN? I feel like lots of people here think that if you build something then customers will surely come. I've got a huge surprise for you. You will have to sell your product and some of the MBA's are really great at that. In B2B a single sale can make or break your company when you're low on cash.

You do your job and let them do theirs. You code, talk to users, ship, and iterate. They handle sales, operations, marketing, and maybe fundraising. These other things can be done by a technical founder but they are not fun. There is a reason why some companies hire COOs so that CEOs can focus on their job.

Finally, it's not MBAs who decided to focus on growth at all costs. It's the nature of the game. Either you get to the top or your competitors will do that. So don't hate the player, hate the game.

<comment><USER6> > Finally, it's not MBAs who decided to focus on growth at all costs. It's the > nature of the game. Either you get to the top or your competitors will do > that. So don't hate the player, hate the game.

Well, I do think it is fair to make a strong connection between the whole concept of maximizing shareholder value being the ultimate corporate goal and MBAs and their education. If the ultimate corporate goal would be maximizing customer value instead, the whole social media landscape would look very different.

And the funniest thing is that nobody has ever been able to explain me why maximizing long term shareholder value would be a better goal than e.g. maximizing long term customer value. I mean, in order to maximize long term shareholder value, you need to pay your taxes and competitive prices to other factors of production like labour and debt holders and your supply chain. There is no rocket science there. And if your goal was to maximize customer value instead, _of course_ you would need to pay competitive rates to equity holders, otherwise you could not run the company and maximize the customer value.

The corporation is an independent legal entity. The whole idea that the stakeholders who get their moneys last in case of bankruptcy and risk only the money they have invested (others are risking their careers, homes, businesses etc) are designated as "owners" of this entity is _really_ weird once you start thinking about it.

<comment><USER7> Very good observations. And indeed, the whole notion that maximising shareholder value is _the_ goal to pursue stems, I think, from a naive "economism", as James Kwak called it in his excellent book _Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality_ [1], namely the following train of thought:

The whole point of society is to maximise utility. We can't do interpersonal utility comparison, so we're satisfied with a Pareto optimum (where you can't improve anyone's situation without making someone else worse off). By the two main theorems of welfare economics, Pareto optima are basically equivalent (under the "usual" assumptions) to market equilibria. Thus, free market.

Next, there's the agent/principal problem: the principals (owners=shareholders) of a company delegate the actual running of it to agents (managers), and now the problem of value alignment arises - the managers could be tempted to maximise their own utility (empire building etc., or even beneficial things such as employee health insurance) instead of that of the owners. And the theory suggests that the solution is maximising shareholder value, because then the owners can themselves decide how to allocate the proceeds (eg into voluntarily providing employee health insurance) as to maximise utility.

[As an aside, btw, the theoretical case for free trade rests on an Economics 101 argument (comparative advantage), but is predicated on redistribution (free trade creates efficiency gains such that even after compensating losers you still retain a surplus, therefore it's better). However, the funny thing is that the (eg libertarian) figures promoting free trade frequently conveniently forget about that part of the argument.]

And of course the whole pareto optimum/market equilibrium/maximising shareholder value argument is based on assumptions that just don't hold; the world is more complicated than Econ 101, and very often more careful empirical examinations of the evidence support much more progressive/liberal policies than Economism suggests. (That's also the gist of Kwak's book, IIRC.)

TLDR: Growth at all costs is not necessarily the nature of the game, it's contingently so because of flawed policies and flawed economics: the oh-so- rational, yet so limited Econ 101 view that MBA students are typically subjected to.

[1] [https://economism.net/](https://economism.net/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Remember when WhatsApp required a subscription? One of the first changes made by Facebook after purchasing WhatsApp was to make it available for free. And now they're complaining they can't milk it enough? Oh dear.

I know that a percentage of WhatsApp users would stop using the app if they started requiring a payment again –because apparently paying $1 per year for using an application on your $999 phone is outrageous, but I wonder why can't they just make it an option again as an alternative to ads.

<comment><USER9> You are completely mistaken if you think adding a subscription-only would not reduce usage of WhatsApp by 10x at least. I am an Indian (WhatsApp's biggest market by far), and know for a fact that hardly 1% of people using it right now in India would be able/willing to set up a payment system AND willing to pay $1 for it (which is not as inexpensive as you think) when there are so many free alternatives. And then it immediately loses its value as a messaging platform (since if my relatives/friends are off it due to forced subscription, what will I do on WhatsApp even though I am ok paying $1). #networkEffect

So adding forced subscription is a definite death sentence for WhatsApp. Also remember that _even if_ everyone of the 1B people did pay $1 for the service, it will still be impossible for FB to recoup $19B it purchased WhatsApp for.

On the other hand, I would love a "Ad-free" mode for people who are willing to pay (like YT Premium), and ads to support other 99.xx%.

<comment><USER10> If you can't charge people even $1 for your product, then I would argue that you might as well close up now. As others pointed out, ads won't work either, because if you can't afford to pay $1 for WhatsApp, then I'm not going to be able to profit from showing you ads.

Ads aren't magical things you can slap on a product to make it profitable. For ads to work you need an audience that technically could pay for you product, but who opts not to. You need to understand that Google isn't a create example of ads working, they are the exception. Facebook sort of works, but the US (and to a minor extend the EU) audience subsidies the rest of the user base.

Your right in that the $1, even at $1 per year, Facebook wouldn't be able to recoup the purchase price of WhatsApp. They won't be able to anyway, WhatsApp was never worth $19B. Facebook vastly overpay for the company. The WhatsApp purchase should be seen solely as a way of removing a company that "stole" screen time from Facebook, and now they're looking for an excuse to shut it down and roll the users into Facebook Messenger.

<comment><USER11> "if you can't charge people even $1 for your product...."

Only folks aren't always just paying $1. He's describing folks needing to set up a freaking payment system for a small amount of money - and that some folks aren't going to be able to do _that_ and others aren't going to be willing. That's even before you get into the actual payment of $1. And this is before even considering there are other free apps that will work. There is a limit to the inconvenience folks will go through for your product if there are simpler alternatives, and being blind to this sort of thing could kill your company.

It also doesn't mean that folks cannot profit from ads. It isn't like all ads require you to pay through the internet - On my phone, I've gotten ads from a local coffee shop chain. I liken this sort of ad a cable tv ad. It might not get folks clicking on a website, but it might get folks in your store.

<comment><USER12> I don't understand all this talk of "setting up a freaking payment system" like it's some huge technical hurdle? Do the vast majority of people not get WhatsApp through the Play Store / App Store? Isn't adding a debit / credit card or purchasing a topup card for these trivial?

All this is besides the fact that we're talking about making the subscription model an _option_ in addition to the ad-supported model, not forcing a subscription on everyone. I don't think a single person in this thread has suggested that apart from the people using is as a straw man.

<comment><USER13> You have to know WhatsApp's user base to understand this. Here in germany it's the de-facto standard communication platform. Everyone and their mother uses WhatsApp - and I mean that literally: Lots of old, non-tech-savvy folks use the service - the kind that even see creating an account as a barrier big enough to not use the service. I still think using the phone number as account was a genius move that enabled wide-spread adoption. Anyway, my mother and her peers don't have a Paypal account, no credit card (this is germany after all, credit cards can't be expected), certainly don't have a payment method attached to their Apple ID or Google Account (You'd be surprised how many people only use free apps). Yet all of them use Whatsapp happily and quite frictionlessly.

These folks are very wary of subscriptions, regarding them as potential scams or traps and while I'm sure Whatsapp would be successful even with a recurring price tag, I'm confident the service would be nowhere near as ubiquitous as it currently is.

<comment><USER14> Okay. But not so long ago people had to pay for WhatsApp, no? Has the user base grown tremendously since it became free (i.e. because it became free)? One of the points made earlier is that before being bought by Facebook WhatsApp was a profitable operation. If that was the case then there is clearly an argument for having a relatively low cost subscription based offering...

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure if they actually ever enforced their payment/subscription. I certainly haven't been charged, but I was a user before that started if I remember correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/technology/whatsapp- fa...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/technology/whatsapp-facebook-jan- koum.html)

 _" Mr. Koum had grown increasingly concerned about Facebook's position on user data in recent years. Mr. Koum was perturbed by the amount of information that Facebook collected on people and had wanted stronger protections for that data ... he felt the company's board simply paid lip service to privacy and security concerns he raised ... Mr. Koum was tired from fighting back against pressure from the board throughout 2017 to allow advertisements on WhatsApp ... There had been a certain level of pride within WhatsApp's team over the dedication to privacy and the departure of their co-founder had left many wondering whether Facebook would now open WhatsApp to tracking user data and, eventually, to ads on its service."_

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google- amp/news/wh...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google- amp/news/whatsapp-founders-may-have-left-1-3-billion-behind-in-their-facebook- breakup/)

 _" WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton reportedly left $1.3 billion behind by leaving Facebook ... The major divide was over monetizing the messaging app, which has 1.5 billion users. Koum and Acton had been resistant to adopting Facebook's widely lucrative targeted advertising model."_

</comment><comment><USER16> Is monetizing through ads the only way to go? Is FB org trapped on its modus operandis (innovator's dilemma)?

What about payments (charging a small fee for transactions) on their platform? The number of people already making business transactions on WhatsApp platform is huge, specially in Brazil [1]. A big bank in Brazil has already tried to grab this market by creating a keyboard with wire transfer integration [2].

This model is very similar to what WeChat has done in China.

[1] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/whatsapp-is-the-main- digital-c...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/whatsapp-is-the-main-digital- channel-for-brazilian-smes/) [2] [https://medium.com/@leandroscosta/bank- ita%C3%BA-launch-a-ke...](https://medium.com/@leandroscosta/bank-ita%C3%BA- launch-a-keyboard-to-keep-you-in-the-conversation-while-you-transfer-your- money-34b6828d8edb)

<comment><USER17> Square, a company with many years headstart, trades at a high multiple, and has many more integration points into commerce than WhatsApp does currently, trades at a market cap of $27 billion.

Given that Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, trying a low probability strategy of trying to compete for market share where the _best case_ scenario is $27 billion in value seems foolish.

<comment><USER18> Square and Whatsapp are basically not comparable business entities.

<comment><USER17> If WhatsApp decided to move to payments, it is the closest analog.

<comment><USER18> No, square is fundamentally geared towards long-tail consumer retail, not peer-to-peer payments, and it's very credit card oriented. They still would not even be comparable.

<comment><USER17> What is the Cash app then?

<comment><USER19> An okay alternative to Venmo.

The UI is definitely worse (IMO) and they've done a piss poor job at tying users to identities more than using phone numbers. Nobody I know uses Cash App except in exceptional cases. I have to double and triple check usernames to make sure I'm not sending money to the wrong person.

The Cash app is a pretty small percentage of Square's revenue. Square isn't much more than a credit card processor for small businesses IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They had a business model: you provide a service to your customers and your customers pay for it. As the service is awesome, customers stay. That's why for instance in Spain, it has been the de facto messaging standard for 7-8 years. People paid for it if they had to, even for the 3-year pack. They use WhatsApp for everything, it literally has replaced calls. If there are ads now this might change, as that will alienate everybody. They might consider Telegram (that'd be my bet). WhatsApp is considered standard functionality of your phone here, you'd change your mobile provider if they start playing ads in the middle of a call.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Messaging service WhatsApp, which has a user base of roughly 1.5 billion, is set to start showing ads in its Status feature next year"

Well, monetize through ads is something expected in any free platform that does not belong to a non-profit organization. It's just a matter of time and implementation. Here in Mexico WhatsApp is huge, even as a default B2C channel for a lot of small businesses.

<comment><USER22> > Well, monetize through ads is something expected in any free platform that > does not belong to a non-profit organization.

You could also, you know, charge money for the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is nothing I would like more than Facebook to sell WhatsApp, so I'm at least a bit more out of their claws or, alternately, for WhatsApp to be ruined and all my friends go to some other messaging app. I've been a long user of WA and really love it, but I'm not a fan of FB, although I do have an account, but rarely use it for messaging.

<comment><USER24> I can't agree more here. So far Whatsapp and Instagram hasn't been interfered with too much by Facebook, aside from FB completely turning off Instagram API and forcing everyone to upgrade to the IG Graph API way ahead of the deprecation schedule.

API support for Instagram DMs is also something that's been long requested for, but ever since FB bought Instagram, there hasn't been any work on the API side. Sometimes I wonder if Instagram would have been better off as its own platform free from the crutches of Facebook.

While I'm hoping that it'll stay that way, it's only a matter of time before core Facebook starts to go the way of Myspace and they realize that IG/Whatsapp is the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They should try to apply the fortnite strategy, and charge for cosmetic features such as premium emoticons, and profile photos

<comment><USER17> Engagement is not nearly the same. There are 1.5 billion WhatsApp users, but how many would actually convert. I'd find it hard to see numbers higher than the low single digits.

<comment> white-flame Low single digit percent of 1.5 billion is still tens of millions. Certainly you can make money with that size of a willingly paying customer base.

<comment><USER17> Ok, but if you're kicking off those that are unwilling to pay, you're automatically decreasing the value of your app every time you try to charge people. You can make money — for a time. If the purpose people joined in the first place "I can connect with all the people I know" changes, then you start seeing the growth move in a very negative direction

<comment><USER26> Why would you kick off those unwilling to pay? GP mentions charging for cosmetic, not for the core product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As long as they don't start showing ads in my contact / messages list, that's fine. As soon as that starts to happen I'm gone -- that's why I left FB Messenger. Or at least give me some way to pay to turn that off.

<comment><USER28> That is exactly what they will do. The status tab will probable show ads first, then the chats tab. Also, expect bulk messaging from business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> TBH I prefer ads. As a small business owner, online ads have allowed me to grow my extremely niche business without spending a large bundle of funding, and I'm sure it's helped countless more small businesses compete against the big box stores that can afford to do their own advertising. From a user perspective, the product can be given out for free, which for social media is a must, unless we want to start seeing classest messaging platforms excluding people in countries who can't even afford 1 dollar or make digital payments. If I was going to let ads bother me I'd be much more upset about someone owning my search engine, phone, email, personal documents, cloud storage, etc... who could cross references those sources to build an accurate picture of my identity, rather than someone just owning my social media accounts where I'm just about as fake as necessary to make my grandma think I'm still going to church.

</comment><comment><USER30> I remember interviewing WhatsApp once. First thing I asked was how much does Facebook determine what comes down in terms of priority. The reply was "There might be some things but we are our own entity. It really hasn't affected us at all!"

Few weeks later it was announced WhatsApp CEO quits due to privacy disagreements. lol

</comment><comment><USER31> Shit, I just convinced my parents to use WhatsApp instead of SMS. Time to start looking for an alternative. What's Telegram's business model? (yes, a good UI is a requirement and no, Signal isn't there yet).

<comment><USER32> Telegram just raising $1.7B in a crypto sale, which means it is the largest chat app not owned by a major corp or government. Plus familiar interface to Whatsapp, they won't even know you switched them.

<comment><USER33> If you are ok with your traffic routed being to russia (and recently, Iran), not having default encryption on 1on1 chats and no encryption whatsoever on group chats - sure, choose Telegram.

Not even counting the ICO, which is suspect in itself.

<comment><USER34> > If you are ok with your traffic routed being to russia (and recently, Iran)

Where does that come from? Because from what I gather it's precisely the opposite: Telegram users in Russia and Iran are leveraging proxies (sometimes run by volunteers) to get around their nations filtering.

When you're using someone else's platform it all comes down to trust, and I'd rather trust an expat Russian that left his home country on grounds of being coerced into handing over user private information to his then nation's surveillance strike force and refused to bow down on that same nation's attempt to subvert his new platform then blocking half of the Internet's servers, than an app claiming to be end-to-end encrypted under the helm of a company that has time and time again been caught red-handed invading everyone's privacy and lying barefaced about it and whose monetisation and privacy strategy is denounced by the very founders of said chat app to the point of dropping everything on the floor and leaving said company.

<comment><USER33> well: [https://bgpstream.com/event/144057](https://bgpstream.com/event/144057)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I am more than happy to pay for a subscription to Whatsapp. I have a scattered family and it's a great way for us to stay in touch. As one of the more technically-minded family members, switching to a different service does not bother me but we've got 3 generations on our Whatsapp family groups and its ease of use and familiarity gives it inertia.

Not bothered by the idea of a relatively affluent westerner (me) paying more than those in less well off parts - already do for a lot of goods and services.

Facebook's data hoover and business model aside, are subscriptions, in themselves, unworkable for Whatsapp?

<comment><USER17> Pay what though? $1 a year? $10 a year? $100?

They have to find a way to justify the $19 billion purchase price. Almost all charging schemes are only going to get certain fraction of people to convert, and they need to be finding ways to reach similar $20 per user revenue numbers like the Facebook main app has in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Almost everybody I know has at least 2 messaging apps installed on their phone.

What's to stop people start migrating to Signal/Telegram/Viber/Keybase/etc.. once WhatsApp starts displaying ads?

<comment><USER37> I think you are an outlier in that regard. Almost nobody I know is using any other messaging app instead of WhatsApp, and I just graduated out of University so my social circle consists of a lot of fresh engineering grads. It is hard for me to convince even my batchmates to install signal. I think people don't want to install anything else as none of their contacts are on any other platform.

<comment><USER38> Everybody has a certain messaging app on their phone: it's called SMS. Add one more, that's already two.

<comment><USER39> Are there good apps that support "chat room" style activities? Google Messages falls over when you try to send out mass messages. I'd like to see a sms app that allows one to have mass messaging - it's the only reason I keep WhatsApp around - coordinating with a group of friends.

<comment><USER34> Do Telegram groups, supergroups, or channels fit the bill?

[https://telegram.org/faq#q-what-39s-the-difference- between-g...](https://telegram.org/faq#q-what-39s-the-difference-between- groups-supergroups-and-channel)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> [http://archive.is/nRt3x](http://archive.is/nRt3x)

<comment><USER41> [https://app.pagedash.com/p/ba7ed211-4563-4a5b-b410-b084f7e5a...](https://app.pagedash.com/p/ba7ed211-4563-4a5b-b410-b084f7e5a9df/7lNftPCeupNLZamzYgzb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Make it a money remmitance platform and allow one billion people to send a trillion dollars a year charging just one percent in fees (ten billions in revenue) while providing merchants with extra apps and features for a premium.

A couple of days ago I was ordering a pizza by phone and they told me they had a whatsapp channel to take orders so I thought paying using whatsapp would be perfect. No need for annoying ads or invasive data collection.

<comment><USER43>
      > No need for annoying ads or invasive data collection.

But they've already built infrastructure to do all this surveillance, the incremental cost is minimal. It's just too tempting to pass up on the low- hanging fruit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Only if big companies stop trying to make the world a better place and leave companies like WhatsApp alone. WhatsApp was a small company making good enough money by respecting it's users. Then Facebook had to come and destroy everything isn't?

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't remember any new feature I liked since Facebook took over. Perhaps some stuff in the group chats that I liked but that's it. So if there's some kind of momentum for another messaging app I'll jump ship early.

<comment><USER46> In India, they recently launched payments within Whatsapp which is a major breakthrough IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Well, too late, they've bought it now. WhatsApp is just Facebook itself.

</comment><comment><USER48> Everyone knew this day would come the moment they announced the purchase

</comment><comment><USER49> Aside from Signal and Telegram, is there any worthy alternative?

<comment><USER50> I compared them all at one time. Encrypted by default was a must, the rest were excluded.

Signal - <USER3>

Telegram - Not encrypted by default, and controversial encryption

Wire - Really liked Wire, but it had a bug of not doing push notifications correctly. Many missed messages until opening the app manually and seeing them.

Viber - No real complaint with Viber I guess, I don't quite remember why I didn't like it.

LINE - This is what I settled on. Nice interface, customizable, same encryption as WhatsApp/Signal/etc, voice and video also encrypted E2E, everything worked flawlessly. I wish more Americans used it.

In the end, LINE was the winner. That said, if Wire were to fix the issues I had with them, I would choose it instead. I really like the fact that you can use multiple devices with Wire, which is the only one that let's you do that.

<comment><USER51> >Signal - <USER3>

Come now. Signal has group chats, document sharing, built-in GIF searching (GIPHY), disappearing messages, encrypted calling (video and/or voice), oh and the most important feature: text messaging.

<comment><USER26> Sounds awesome.

Who pays for it? (Honest question, I burned myself on WhatsApp.)

<comment><USER26> To answer my own question: it seems it is based on donations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Relevant post from earlier this year:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whatsapp- fou...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whatsapp-founder- plans-to-leave-after-broad-clashes-with-parent- facebook/2018/04/30/49448dd2-4ca9-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER53> Related blog post from WhatsApp: [https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000648/Growing- our-Tools-for-Bus...](https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000648/Growing-our-Tools- for-Business)

</comment><comment><USER54> I would pay for some extra features. From the top of my head:

\- several accounts (phone numbers) managed in a single WhatsApp installation

\- auto-forward messages from one number to another

\- integration with other services (gmail, gdrive, ...)

\- api, to scratch my itches

</comment><comment><USER55> Next up: nonlinear timeline!

</comment><comment><USER56> I'd be happy to pay for premium feature, like extra privacy controls and no ads

edit: clarifying, I'd love to be able to not let people know when I'm online

<comment><USER57> AFAIK You can hide your online status/last seen for the price of not being able to see other people's

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I wonder if that is why they opened up their API to Twilio. Twilio can now pay Whatsapp whatever it has to pay the carriers to send/receive SMS.

<comment><USER59> Given how little Twilio charges per messsage, this can not be a serious money maker for Whatsapp.

<comment><USER58> While the revenue from Twilio itself is insignificant at Facebook scale, it could be a sign that they will open up more to partnerships around the worlds without having to include advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> They could always try charging 1 USD/year for the service /s

</comment><comment><USER61> Great news! Now this madness will stop. Suffer, WhatsApp users!

</comment><comment><USER62> If they want to charge for it they better make it easier than it is currently to migrate over chats from iOS to Android and vice versa.

iOS to Android was okay, still had to pay ~$10 for it. Going from Android to iOS was very difficult so I lost a lot of my chats.

</comment><comment><USER63> Is there a link without a paywall ?

<comment><USER64> [https://outline.com/8C7BNH](https://outline.com/8C7BNH)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Time to disable Whatsapp. It keeps draining my battery as it is.</comment>


Atlassian is Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlassian.com/software/statuspage <comment> david-giesberg David from the Atlassian SRE team here. AWS Direct Connect is experiencing an outage in their US East Region: [https://status.aws.amazon.com](https://status.aws.amazon.com), which is causing connectivity issues for most Atlassian products and services. We're working hard to get everything back up and running. Please check [http://status.atlassian.com](http://status.atlassian.com) for the latest updates. We're posting regularly and will continue to provide updates there.

<comment><USER2> Will there be a postmortem blog post or some other summary about this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://status.aws.amazon.com/rss/directconnect-us- east-1.rs...](https://status.aws.amazon.com/rss/directconnect-us-east-1.rss)

We are investigating increased packet loss possibly impacting some AWS Direct Connect customers in the US-EAST-1 Region.

<comment><USER4> _" investigating increased pocket loss"_ is a nice way to put it.

it's been 100% packet loss here all day :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Currently returning a 500 error at 14.49 UTC.

Affecting hosted JIRA and Confluence.

Status page: [https://status.atlassian.com/](https://status.atlassian.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> And it's back. 16:00 UTC

<comment><AUTHOR> Down again 16:15UTC

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We're having problems pushing to repositories (git over ssh). Currently blocking after the following

        Counting objects: 24, done.
        Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
        Compressing objects: 100% (22/22), done.
        Writing objects: 100% (24/24), 2.87 KiB | 2.87 MiB/s, done.
        Total 24 (delta 16), reused 0 (delta 0)

Status page shows no issues. How reliable...

<comment><USER6> [https://status.bitbucket.org/](https://status.bitbucket.org/) shows:

All HTTP-based services unresponsive Subscribe Investigating - We're seeing high response times on all HTTP-based services, and are investigating now. Mar 2, 14:49 UTC

<comment><USER5> When I wrote the comment there were no such notice. Also SSH has shown operational all along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://support.atlassian.com/](https://support.atlassian.com/) is still available in case you want to raise a case, everything else seems down.

</comment><comment><USER7> Our Jira Cloud instance is still up, for now, so it might be isolated to one DC.

</comment><comment><USER8> our jira cloud instance remains down at 17:37 UTC

<comment><USER8> ...and we're back online at 18:33 UTC.

from AWS:

> The root cause of this issue was network reconvergence following the loss of > power at a network facility. Connectivity to instances and services within > the Region was not impacted by the event. The issue has been resolved and > the service is operating normally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is becoming a common thing for bitbucket? Think I will be switching to GitHub.</comment>


FBI Says QAnon, Internet Conspiracy Theorists Are National Security Threats - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/kz4e8n/fbi-says-qanon-internet-conspiracy-theorists-are-national-security-threats <comment><USER3> There's a certain amount of irony here given the FBI's history (I'm thinking of COINTELPRO).

I support conspiracy theorists. I think they are canaries in the coal mine of free speech. Right now we seem to be wrestling with the fear that someone can write something online, someone else can read it, buy a gun, and go do something illegal. While I find this worrying, I think any cure would be worse than the disease.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that conspiracy theory and moral panics are not victimless crimes. I grew up with an ultrarightwing christian conspiracy theorist who claimed my mother was a witch that was satanically ritual abusing me and my brother and "sacrificing" us to Satan. He also believed she was a serial killer running a daycare scheme that allowed her to mass slaughter children in the name of Satan. I was basically coerced into confessing this shit by the church when I was in kindergarten because I was caught by the playground attendant looking up girls skirts. My mother always wore jeans so I didn't understand the concept of a dress so I was picking up their skirts because I didn't understand the purpose of the garment. But the play ground attendant assumed it was sign that I was being sexually abused. My dad came to pick me up took me to the church shrink who basically coached me to say a bunch of really fucked up shit about my mother. She ended up loosing any custody of me and was not allowed to even be in the same room as me without police supervision until I was 18. She had to register as a sex offender.

Don't believe me? Read this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex- abuse_hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria)

I am an adult survivor of this abuse. So when you tell me that you support conspiracy theorists it makes me sick. Fuck them, they ruined me and my mother's life. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to undo the indoctrination and brain washing I basically went through? And its not like these are your run of the mill conspiracy theorists that believe in aliens and JFK grassy knole shit. This ruins lives. When I see people like QAnon who front ideas like Pizza Gate and Alex Jones claiming Sandy Hook was a false flag and ruining the lives of people that lost their kids with death threats. Fuck them. And if you support them, fuck you too.

If you want further reading I recommend reading Satan's Silence

<comment><USER5> You're making the same class of mistake made by people who support (for instance) the death penalty against criminals in group X because their loved one was a victim of one of those criminals.

I empathize with you and understand that your experience must have been very difficult. That said, there are fundamental freedoms that must be defended even when the group in question is distasteful. Freedom to speak your mind -- and possibly propagate dumb conspiracies -- is one of them.

<comment><USER6> Freedom to speak your mind, when it directly leads to the infringement of others' rights, is not a fundamental right. I have no right to say "Hey, so- and-so is a cheat, don't do business with them," however strongly I believe it, when they're not. I have no right to say "You should rob a bank, and I'll teach you how." I have no right to say "This herb will cure your disease" merely because I believe it, if nobody has convinced the government to also believe it. Heck, I don't even have the right to repeat your comment, except in specific ways and circumstances.

It is true that fundamental rights must be preserved even when used distastefully. But the fundamental right of freedom of speech is not a right to say whatever whenever, and it is not at all clear to me that propagating dumb conspiracies in a way that leads to violence is within the line. (Nor propagating smart conspiracies—since it's not the conspiracy itself that makes it questionable here.)

<comment><USER7> Your idea of the limitations of our right to free speech seems to depend on a referee; otherwise, it seems that you are conflating the idea of 'rights' with 'legality'.

> I have no right to say "Hey, so-and-so is a cheat, don't do business with > them," however strongly I believe it, when they're not.

Who gets to say they are or are not a cheat? Spreading false rumours is reprehensible, but within your right to speak freely: just like the so-called cheat has the right to sue the rumour-maker for defamation.

> I have no right to say "You should rob a bank, and I'll teach you how."

It's illegal to encourage/enable illegal actions, but you have the right to do illegal things - just like you have the right to bear the consequences of your illegal actions.

> I have no right to say "This herb will cure your disease" merely because I > believe it, if nobody has convinced the government to also believe it.

What if the herb (or cutting-edge treatment developed in some other country) works beautifully in another country, but the FDA in the US doesn't recognize it yet? You've set up the US government as the referee who gets to decide when we are allowed to have our right to free speech.

> I don't even have the right to repeat your comment, except in specific ways > and circumstances.

You have the right to repeat the comment however you like - but you also have the right to be sued under copyright and defamation laws.

> fundamental rights must be preserved even when used distastefully

They are also, as recognized in the US declaration of independence, unalienable: the government _has no say_ in whether we get to have them.

> not at all clear to me that propagating dumb conspiracies in a way that > leads to violence is within the line...since it's not the conspiracy itself > that makes it questionable here

As you point out; someone theorizes about a Bad Person, someone reads that conspiracy stuff online, and decides to 'do something' about it, and tries to shoot that Bad Person. In the US Code, inciting to commit a crime looks like this: "whoever...solicits, commands, induces, or otherwise endeavors to persuade such other person to engage in such conduct".

So what exactly do you mean by "in a way that leads to violence"? Because what the US code describes is vastly different from "theorizing about the existence of a conspiracy", however 'out there' the conspiracy is. And in at least the example of the pizzagate shooter, he persuaded himself of his actions - <USER2> conspiracy just made him think that a Very Bad Thing was happening there. And there is nothing wrong with theorizing about the existence of a conspiracy of people doing Bad Things.

<comment><USER6> If you define "right" as "you have the ability to do X and face legal consequences for having done it," then I an absolutely in favor of the right of free speech of the Pizzagate folks to get themselves arrested. So, great, we all believe in free speech for everyone.

What word would you like to use for "the ability to do X without legal consequence from the government"? Because that seems like a more interesting discussion.

<comment><USER8> >If you define "right" as "you have the ability to do X and face legal consequences for having done it,"

This is a completely useless definition, as it means literally everyone has a right to everything. E.g. I have a "right" to murder you and then face the legal consequences for doing so.

<comment><USER6> (Yes, that's my point.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article lists specifically 5 conspiracy theories: QAnon, Pizzagate, some kind of "Zionist Occupation Government" theory, Sandy Hook "Crisis Actor", and New World Order theory. Some of these I've never heard of.

I'm concerned what this will do to squash legitimate criticisms and questions. Recall, Pizzagate accused Epstein and his associates of pedophilia (and described his airplane as well). If the FBI considers accusing epstien and his associates of pedophilia a national security threat, we are in trouble.

<comment><USER9> If anything this stuff helps real crooks like Epstein by muddying the water and making the whole subject area look silly. I sometimes wonder if some of it is intentional. Seems like a great way to cover things up in an age where actually keeping secrets is hard.

I know if I were running a human trafficking, prostitution, and blackmail operation and wanted to cover it up I'd start by spreading wild theories and false accusations about elite Satanic cartoon villain cults doing exactly what I'm doing. That way the whole topic would get an aura of crankiness and reputable media would stay away.

Disinformation is like radar chaff. You just blow out a lot of noise and nobody knows where the signal is. The real secrets might leak but it doesn't matter because they just merge and blend in with all the bullshit.

A grassroots explanation for this stuff is more likely of course, if only for Ockham's razor reasons. My point is that no good is accomplished by spreading nonsense.

<comment><USER10> ah yes. I personally like to refer to this as a stargate theory. for example, if the gov actually had a piece of alien technology capable of opening a wormhole to other planets, perhaps the best way to cover it up would indeed be to create a public tv show about it. That way, anyone who tried to argue for its veracity would immediately be considered a borderline lunatic.

<comment><USER9> I know a few people who are into UFO stuff and think that's exactly what was done to cover up evidence of alien presence. They also think a lot of the more common conspiracy-type mythology and fringe stuff in the UFO circuit is nonsense put out there to make the topic look silly.

It would definitely work.

<comment><USER11> Well, Stargate SG-1 specifically had the US Air Force fully on-board as consultants and even occasional guest appearances by genuine Air Force brass.

So...maybe there really _is_ something under Cheyenne Mountain? ^_^

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One field office in Arizona wrote a single report...

Am I missing something? How does one field off speak for the entirety of the FBI? If this was coming from the director of the FBI it would have a bit more grit.

</comment><comment><USER13> Reply All has done good episodes on this ([https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8homa/122-the- qanon...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8homa/122-the-qanon-code)) and PizzaGate ([https://gimletmedia.com/amp/shows/reply- all/emhwl5](https://gimletmedia.com/amp/shows/reply-all/emhwl5)) for anyone who wants a high level summary.

</comment><comment><USER14> These comments, or even the article at this point, need to be purged. This article is related to HN but most of these comments aren't. The content of these comments belongs on Reddit or Twitter. They are snarky, one liners, flame-baity, etc.

<comment><USER15> I complained about this as well --- there's an anti-pattern on HN where almost anyone can come up with something to say about the FBI, or a joke about QAnon, but comparatively few will have anything germane to say, with the inevitable result of trash-fire threads.

But HN is also doing a good job on this particular thread of flagging those comments, which you should do as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're morbidly curious about QAnon conspiracies, but can't stomach actually digging in yourself, these guys do a pretty entertaining job of covering whatever the current conspiracy is.

[https://twitter.com/QanonAnonymous](https://twitter.com/QanonAnonymous)

</comment><comment><USER17> Politics isn't just what politicians do anymore than voting is all that citizens do.

'In 2013, Surkov was characterized by The Economist[1] as the engineer of "a system of make-believe", "a land of imitation political parties, stage-managed media and fake social movements".'[2]

[1] [https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21577421-what- departur...](https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21577421-what-departure- vladislav-surkov-means-government-ideologues-exit)

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

</comment><comment><USER18> Blogspam of [https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories- ter...](https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories- terrorism-160000507.html)

(But I expect this will disappear into flag-oblivion shortly anyway)

</comment><comment><USER19> The danger is, as the article mentions, conspiracy theories range from relatively benign to actively harmful and dangerous. They've become more and more weaponized as a way of finding villains, outlets for violence, anger etc which then results in innocent people being murdered. Or, in the case of one incident, someone killing a mob boss and putting his entire extended family at risk.

Which, I mean, this is all related to the tech industry as a whole because Youtube, Twitter, Facebook etc all feed into the cycle of extremism because it increases engagement. It's hard to ignore the profound shift as a result of content not only being easily accessible but also targeted directly at various groups of people and monetized. I've already had to talk with my parents because they've fallen into the trap of following or believing Facebook posts which perpetuate falsified information. It's only going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

<comment><USER20> It's not only worse, though. The internet has also made it much easier to access and spread true information. Without the internet, there could be no WikiLeaks. Let's not forget, as well, that the most objectively harmful "fake news" in recent American history was not perpetrated by random Facebook posts, but by the major news outlets themselves, and even heavily pushed by the New York Times - the disinformation campaign surrounding Iraqi WMD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mods, could you change the url/title to that of the original source at Yahoo?

[https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories- ter...](https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories- terrorism-160000507.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> sounds like the FBI considers them a threat...

<comment><USER23> Or maybe just the agency's Phoenix bureau.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was under the impression that QAnon was a documented fabrication - that it was a deliberate hoax concocted on 8chan (or somewhere similar) for the "lulz," with the message trail to prove it.

<comment><USER16> You might be thinking about this [https://news.artnet.com/opinion/q-anon- hoax-1329983](https://news.artnet.com/opinion/q-anon-hoax-1329983)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> China was served opium by its opponents and I guess the US is being served spiralling destructive conspiracy theories.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems like there isn't much the government can do about influencers spouting off dangerous rhetoric causing ignorant followers to do harm. Could the FBI actually arrest these people for inciting extremism or are they protected by free speech?

</comment><comment><USER27> not all that tangential: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szk7XXEb_sQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szk7XXEb_sQ)

</comment><comment><USER28> Really makes you hope this doesn't just make them dial it up to 11 in response..

</comment><comment><USER29> The FBI announcing this now, given there is an American President obsessed with internet conspiracy theories and theorists, to the extent that he invites QAnon supporters to the Whitehouse, does perhaps feel a smidgen like shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted. And as others have noted here, the QAnon nonsense itself is just malarkey in the first place. The only ultimate point of QAnon is that of a collaborative joke to reel in media and idiots. Is all quite strange really. Is an online hive acting as a farcical Rasputin on modern US power structures, for the most part as a practical joke.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you had or know anyone who has had Lasik surgery? - <AUTHOR>

I wear glasses and have pretty bad eye sight (-8). I am considering Lasik surgery (in NYC). My research indicates that the procedure is pretty solid but everytime I read about isolated cases that did not work out, it freaks me out. Also the pricing seems to be all over the place - from $399 to $3000 per eye - which also gives me pause. A mature procedure should not have such variations in pricing right? So would appreciate any feedback on this.
1. What has been your experience with lasik?
2. How much did you pay for it?
3. Any doctor recommendations in NYC?
TIA <comment><USER2> I had received Excimer Laser surgery in Istanbul about 3 years ago. It was a private hospital and most of the people who went there were european (German & British mostly). I paid about €1000 for both eyes and the surgery took about 5 mins per eye. There was lots of itching and tears after the surgery for 1 day but no pain.

I don't know the rates in US but that hospital is famous for Medical Tourism (good service, low rates) maybe you can check it out: <http://www.lasikinturkey.com/en/index.asp>

Btw my eyes are okay now, still have perfect sight.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had it done in 1997 and paid $2500 per eye. It was rather uncomfortable to have done, but that only lasted for a few minutes. The next day I had 20/15 vision.

It has completely changed my life (for the better). I don't have any after- effects (that I know about). I can read, see far away, drive at night, and have written software for a living for the past 13 years.

Don't forget that most people who have a great experience don't write about it on the Internet, only the people with bad experiences do. That means that there's a selection bias on the stories that you read online.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had LASIK done about 3 years ago (was 28 or so at the time) and it was the best thing I ever did.

I didn't have terrible eye sight but had trouble seeing stuff in the distance, especially at night. Was supposed to wear glasses and contacts but rarely did.

I paid $4500 for the procedure, at a very nice and highly reputable place.

Was done in New Mexico, not NY though so no recco's here.

Get it though, you'll love it.

<comment><USER4> I should add that I slept for 24 hours (they give you pills) then flew to Vegas the day after and partied hard for 3 days straight.

Just add drops, but no pain and not much discomfort at all.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Melondream IPv4 - <AUTHOR> http://driftwheeler.com/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> Third and final time posting here.

Our decision to use IPv6 cost us more than 70% of our potential users. For example, the Amazon App Store will fail to validate an app that requires IPv6 connectivity.

Melondream now uses UDP over IPv4. The previous IPv6 client is no longer compatible with the server.

If you were among the hundreds of Hacker News users who tried to connect but failed, we invite you to download the new client and try again.

If you succeeded to connect before, and plan to connect again, you must download the new client. All users must download the new client.

If you're interested in the structure of unsupervised neural network feature spaces-- which points are near which points-- you will enjoy Melondream. If you're also interested in the nude female form, well, don't delay... :)

Use server ID "soft1"</comment>


Freakonomics: Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin? - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/do-we-need-a-37-cent-coin/ <comment><USER2> Interesting post (I love Steven Levitt) but there's a _great_ lesson for developers here: Efficiency is only one consideration. What about _usability?_ Do you really want to wait in line at McDonald's or Starbucks while someone (maybe a high school dropout) counts on his fingers to make change in 71 & 37 cent coins? The overhead here (an extra coin in your pocket) is well worth the added convenience. Aggregated over the whole economy, those extra seconds would literally be worth billions of dollars a year..

<comment><USER3> How about a lesson for lateral thinking? I'd still prefer to do _without_ the coins and go for a all-virtual, all-plastic system. Efficiency _and_ Usability.

<comment><USER4> Dropping hard currency raises the bar to entry and kills a lot of low end business. No more street vendors, cash only local business, friendly card games or bets, informal services, or convenient tips. It would also give the plastic channel immense power over businesses. You might not use cash very often, but dropping it altogether would not be a good idea.

<comment><USER3> I have serious doubt about "killing a lot of low end business". I'd imagine that we'd start seeing lots of alternate, local currencies. Card games and bets would probably have other medium of exchange (poker chips) or in-kind value (a 12-pack of beer).

<comment><USER5> Probably. Hell, we could all just start using Euros (or whatever) for cash, and then exchange our Euros for plastic-only US dollars at changing booths (which would suddenly become a lot more common).

This, of course, doesn't make life any easier for anyone, except the jerks who already use cards for everything (aka the jerks I always get stuck behind in line while I wait for their little receipt to print and get signed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee once recommended eliminating the 1-cent penny -- by having the government declare pennies by fiat to be the new 5-cent nickel:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/business/01scenes.html>

It's quite a neat idea, getting rid of the current seignorage loss and inefficiency of 1-cent pennies, without incurring the wrath of the penny materials lobby -- or even worse, voters with giant penny jars.

Given the reasoning here, perhaps pennies should become 3-cent pieces.

Rebasing small coins to be worth more isn't quite dropping cash from helicopters, but it should still have a mildly stimulative and redistributive effect. Something for everyone!

<comment><USER7> I love this idea. Not so much because of its efficiency, but because it'll make so many people say "Wait, you can _do_ that?". Too many people haven't internalized what having a fiat currency really means. Having the government flex its muscle in this manner would be a fantastic civics lesson.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure it would really succeed. For a long time after the change many people would still refuse to accept a penny as 5 cents. Vending machines, toll booths and the like would all also have to be reworked.

<comment><USER7> Vending machine manufacturers are used to this, I suspect. They go through it every time the design of the currency changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are many different (and perhaps more practical) criteria than average coins per transaction. For instance, I don't like a lot of coins in my pocket at once. And, I always want to get _rid_ of coins when I use them! So, what are the least number of coins I can carry to guarantee that I come back with at _most_ the number of coins I started with (after change is given)?

On the other hand, sometimes I _only_ carry coins to get rid of them! With the current system, I need to carry nine coins to guarantee exact change -- what system maximally reduces this?

</comment><comment><USER10> "Do you know what this country needs today? A seven-cent nickel. Yessiree, we've been using the five-cent nickel in this country since 1492. Now, why not give the seven-cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we could have an eight-cent nickel. Think what that would mean. You could go to a newsstand, buy a three-cent newspaper and get the same nickel back again. One nickel carefully used would last a family a lifetime!"

\- Groucho Marx, "Animal Crackers."

</comment><comment><USER11> That's all fine and dandy in theoretical world, but I'd dispute that the probability of a transaction resulting in value v is uniform. I'd guess that there's some fairly prominent banding due to psychogical pricing at or just under 'round' figures.

<comment><USER12> Exactly - in the real world you only need 99c and 1c coins.

<comment><USER13> In the real world they charge sales tax.

<comment><USER12> That's a perculiarly American problem - everybody else factors tax into the sticker price.

It's only America that seems to add it at the register. I assume it's to take advantage the famously high level of math education among Americans who can easily add 4.5% state and 1.8% city sales tax to a coffee in their head.

<comment><USER13> For an article in an American paper about the American currency, I don't think the problem is that peculiar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > 2\. Probability of a transaction resulting in value v is uniform from > [0,99].

Totally false:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law>

Benford's law, also called the first-digit law, states that in lists of numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way.

<comment><USER15> Benford's law is about the first digit of the number, it has nothing to do with the current problem. The pennies are the two last digits.

However, IMO the assumption you quoted is indeed false but due to other reason:

In real life, prices are not uniformly distributed because usually they are rounded to multiple of 5 cents or commonly they are .99 or .89 or s.th. like that.

I am wondering what happens if we put non-uniform prior on the probability of the pennies.

Another flaw in this research is forgeting that we often are getting change back. So maybe problem is to find combination not only to give exactly money, but giving and receiving change back. For example:

Using 1,5,10,20,50 you can make exact 4c only by 1,1,1,1, (4 coins). But getting change you can do 5, -1 (2 coins).

<comment><USER16> while i agree with the premise that the prices aren't uniformly distributed, i think its less of an issue than people think.

there are undoubtedly uneven humps that favor certain areas. but i think that the actual result of real life retail transactions is a more level curve than you would expect due to things like multiple, varied item purchases and the possible inclusion of various types of sales tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On the subject of coin usability, I'd say one requirement is that any coin denomination should divide cleanly into 100. Surprising that they left that out.

<comment><USER18> I completely agree. What do you do when you have 3 37-cent coins?

Theoretically, it wouldn't change much for the end-user if s/he was always trying to use the coins they already have (which probably doesn't happen that much). But for banks, stores and everything else, it would be a mess, because there's no easy way to put the coins in rolls of "easy" values of a round number of dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> An alternative definition of efficiency is total number of coins you need to carry in your pocket to cover a single transaction of 1..99 cents. Interestingly all the good 4-coin solutions in the article, including (1, 3, 11, 37) as well as our current (1, 5, 10, 25), require a total of 10 coins.

There are 12 other 4-coin solutions, (1, 3, 9, 25) being the most reasonable looking, that only require a total of 9 coins.

</comment><comment><USER20> According to Wikipedia (I haven't bothered to check the math), a ternary currency system would maximize the likelihood that a customer would get exact change.

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

So I think we should eliminate the penny; issue three-cent, nine-cent, and twenty-seven-cent coins; and redefine the dollar to equal eighty-one cents.

</comment><comment><USER21> How about a coin that is worth 1/3000th of a US dollar? That's what we have in Russia :) Yes, it is as useless as it sounds.

By the way, the real price distributions are far from uniform. You mostly encounter .99, .49, etc.

Also, in Russia some retail chains do not deal with pennies - the prices are mostly with pennies, but at checkout any pennies in the _total sum_ are chopped off automatically.

</comment><comment><USER22> An older but more thorough analysis may be found here:

<http://discovermagazine.com/2003/oct/featscienceof>

</comment><comment><USER23> Ignoring the extreme inconvenience, this might be an interesting way to tackle our nation's (U.S.) problem of students with poor performance in mathematics.

</comment><comment><USER24> 10-cent coin. Dollar coin. Banknotes for $5+. Done.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why only restrict to 4 coins? Why do pennies have to be removed? Why not just add the 3 cent coin to the mix?

1,3,5,10,25.</comment>


Google Backed OnDeck Capital Offers Cash Advances that Grow Exponentially  - <AUTHOR> https://www.fundastic.com/posts/15-the-renewal-trap-beware-of-the-mca-refinance

<comment><USER2> High interest rates like these are hyperbolic, not exponential. They may be predatory and they may run afoul of regulations, but that doesn't mean they grow exponentially.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are in the sense that when you carry a loan balance and refinance it, the balance will be multiplied twice from the original advance. If you refinance it again, it will be multiplied three times. I call this exponential.</comment></comment>


Dr Anthony Fauci barred from speaking publicly about coronavirus with o approval - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-anthony-fauci-trump-admin-stops-discussion-2020-2 <comment><USER2> I'm getting flashbacks to the Reagan administration stiff-arming C. Everett Koop's efforts to get them to pay attention to AIDS.

</comment><comment><USER3> I assumed this was a doctor working in China when I read the title. It's actually the Trump administration.</comment>


A Paper Predicting the End of Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/08/shawn-rosenberg-democracy-228045 <comment><USER2> "...Thus we are left with the inescapable conclusion that democracy became the dominant political form of the modern world not through human choice but because of an objective fact, namely, the association of democracy, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, with economic and technological success."

\--Theodore Kaczynski, "Technological Slavery", Revised and Expanded Edition, p. 297

The naive view is that we "chose" democracy because it was a freer and more humane system. That's a total farce. On the contrary, modern democracy arose out of a process of natural selection because it was the social arrangement most conducive to technological and economic success given the environment. As the world environment changes (due to technology) there very well may be other social arrangements that will out-compete and replace democracy because they will be technologically and economically stronger.

</comment><comment><USER3> The irony is that it never occurs to our elites that perhaps they are incompetent. No, the narrative is always that the ignorant masses are going to burn the house down, despite the heroic efforts of the educated, level-headed elite. Newsflash: preventing the masses from burning the house down is the primary job of the elite. When a fire nevertheless starts, that means that it's time for the elites to be replaced by those who can prevent fires.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is obvious that we do not live in an actual democracy.

Consider this:

Do you actually get to vote on anything?

Do you get to vote on major national issues? Did you get a referendum on any issue, e.g. Gay marriage? Iraq?

Do you get to vote on local issues that affect you? Did you ever get a choice on where the new community center would be built?

Do you get to vote at work? Did you ever get to vote on an acquisition, a new corporate direction, a new office layout, or anything important?

We cast only a handful of ballots throughout our entire lives, and we rarely get a direct choice on any issue - we only vote for a candidate that has already been selected by the élite.

We can have direct democracy now thanks to technology. Citizens and workers should be empowered by technology to vote daily on issues that affect them at work, locally, and federally.

Yes, the system is broken. I, myself, have cast four ballots in my life. I've had nearly no say in anything that has happened in my adult life, and ergo I'm certain that our collective voting history is not the root cause of our problems. Nor are the élite themselves the cause - the fault in our system is of course systemic and material.

We are living in late capitalism, and the contradictions within western liberal countries are beginning to tear them apart. The dialectical materialist (Marxist) analysis of our system is becoming more correct as we move forward in the 21st century.

<comment><USER5> I've daydreamed about tech-enabled direct democracy with arbitrary proxy voting for a while now. I'd love something like:

* anyone can choose to make their votes public

* anyone can "give their votes" to anyone else, provided that person makes their votes public

Then you can have rules like:

* Nominate Al Gore to be my proxy for all votes tagged with #environment

* Nominate my friend Scott to be my proxy for all votes tagged with #taxes

* Everything else I'll vote myself using the mobile app

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wasn't there a point in the guidelines about refraining from sensational titles?

</comment><comment><USER7> Actual paper: [https://www.academia.edu/38564962/Democracy_Devouring_Itself...](https://www.academia.edu/38564962/Democracy_Devouring_Itself_The_Rise_of_the_Incompetent_Citizen_and_the_Appeal_of_Populism.docx)

</comment><comment><USER8> "political psychologists"

The term is more adequate than it looks.

Psychologists that do politics.

Now that it's pretty clear that psychology is as much fraud as marxism why those people are still in the public arena puzzles me.

<comment><USER9> because they say things like "Human brains aren't built for self-rule, says Shawn Rosenberg. That's more evident than ever." :'). popular with the rich / power greedy westerners :D meanwhile ±85% of earths population disagrees while they take care of themselves as they have for centuries or longer.. but i suppose they don't tweet so they don't count for science! :D</comment></comment>


Promises and Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://lisper.in/promises/ <comment><USER2> _Debugging is a bit of a challenge with promises._

Indeed, and that is why I am personally not really that bullish on promises, at least not how they are currently implemented. When you're debugging you want access to the implicit state-machine that the promise statement constructed, but at least in JS such state is hidden away in the `then()` function.

A good compromise (which I'm currently exploring in JS) is to make the state- machine navigable from the root, giving you the ability to examine it and mutate it explicitly during a debug session.

<comment><AUTHOR> > A good compromise (which I'm currently exploring in JS) is to make the > state-machine navigable from the root, giving you the ability to examine it > and mutate it explicitly during a debug session.

You might also want to check out the JS library q, which has support for stack traces that span async jumps if a promise errors out [https://github.com/kriskowal/q#long-stack- traces](https://github.com/kriskowal/q#long-stack-traces)

<comment><USER3> I would not recommend new projects to use Q when Bluebird exists. The latter is better in every way - perf, features and tracking the ES6 Promise API more closely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I had not heard about Bluebird before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congratulations, you have almost invented Monads! 8)

<comment><USER5> I have been told, albeit not part of the core, Haskell is not the first to the party and they most certainly have been monadic CL libs.

[http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-monad-macros/monad- macros....](http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-monad-macros/monad-macros.htm)

There are some people in the CL community who mention why CL users might not appreciate monads like those in other languages and/or programming styles/disciplines.

(Original) [http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/monad.html](http://marijnhaverbeke.nl/monad.html)

(HN Discussion) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7651175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7651175)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't async/wait solves the same problem in a more elegant way?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this some sort of contorted version of Greenspun's tenth rule?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I would welcome and feedback or suggestions for the post.

<comment><USER8> Re footnote 4: the Alexandria library has a function 'parse-body' that will be helpful.

Also: I'm not sure it's a good idea to give these macros the same names as the CL builtins. This will require users to do 'shadowing-import' if they want to use them without the package prefix, and then when they want to reference the builtins (in performance-sensitive code, perhaps) they'll have to use an explicit 'cl:'. At the very least, I'd suggest exporting a second set of names also, which are prefixed with "p-" or some such, so people can import them without shadowing.

<comment><USER9> Package PCL for old people means 'Portable Common LOOPS', the first CLOS implementation... ;-)</comment></comment></comment>


The Terrible Secret (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.corememory.io/tom-bombadil.html <comment><USER2> I always assumed that Tom Bombadil was a kind of ur-hobbit; a jolly being largely immune to the hostile magic swirling around him and capable of opposing it at points but temperamentally disinclined to truly rule.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you actually want to understand why Tom Bombadil is in the story, read Christopher Tolkien series on the creation of the Lord of the Rings.

It was originally envisioned as a sequel to the Hobbit with a slightly more grown up audience. When JRR wrote it, he hadn't even settled on Sauron as the bad guy. He vaguely thought the bad guy would be Treebeard! He got Frodo and co. all the way to Rivendell before he connected his other story (the Silmarillion) to the LOR story.

Bombadil was left in, in my mind, because he had to explain how four hapless hobbits could throw the black riders off the trail and still escape from the forest. And he didn't really have any editorial constraints until the movies came along.

Sure, you can invent some just-so-story to explain him but the truth is that the tale evolved in the decades it took to write and so it has vestigial parts.

</comment><comment><USER4> Millennialist bunk, get off my lawn! ;^)

Really, Tom is old... older than the elves, and he (like the willow and the huron) are tired of having these whipper-snappers come by and ask them to save them from danger and do their -chores- adventures for them. Old men just wanna have fun... and the gold ring ain't their bag (or problem).

Merry and Frodo are lucky they remember their time with him any more than Gildor or Farmer Maggot (or they remember him differently). In the old days we didn't expect everyone to be nice or have transparent understandable motives... and we walked up Mt Doom both ways.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, because I remember when I first read Fellowship aged 11 or 12 I was absolutely _sure_ that Bombadil would turn out to be a bad one, beguiling and leading the Hobbits to their doom, for much the reasons outlined by the author.

I was pretty sure when they went to be in his conttage that night, they wouldn't be waking up to a happy morning. I didn;t really trust him until they got to Bree.

</comment><comment><USER6> No way, Bombadil is great. He'a immune to the powers of the one ring [1]. He'd rather sing about badgers than conquer the world. He's a reminder of weird and awesome and maybe a little scary powers in the universe that we may never understand.

Bombadil's scene is one of my favorites alongside the one where Frodo almost gives the ring to Galadriel but she resists [2]. Another meditation on power.

[1] [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/103559/did-the- rin...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/103559/did-the-ring-in-fact- affect-tom-bombadil) [2] [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/86701/when- frodo-o...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/86701/when-frodo-offers- her-the-ring-is-galadriel-really-tempted-or-just-making-a-po)

</comment><comment><USER7> That's almost as good as the Darth Jar Jar theory: [https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar_jar_binks_was_a_trained_force_user/)

<comment><USER8> That was much better than I expected, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's definitely best that Tom was left unexplained. We humans (or maybe just me personally) love being mystified by unexplained, other-worldly powers and beings.

Tom is presented as someone both powerful enough to take the ring and protect it, but also someone who'd forget about it and lose it in a swamp. He's not playing by the rules that Tolkien established for the rest of the characters in the books.

He could have power beyond comprehension, or zero power, because Tolkien just didn't know what to do with him. But it's up to the reader to make that decision.

Is he One Punch Man, or is he really just a nobody?

<comment><USER10> From Elrond's comments on him at the Council, he's basically an Earth Elemental (which would make Goldberry a Water Elemental, I suppose), a personification of the element of earth. But, I agree that it's better that JRRT left it with room for some mystery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> People don't like Bombadil? He was always my favorite part of the books

</comment><comment><USER12> Bombadil was the name of a doll in Tolkien's home. That's why he was the "oldest", because the name predates the book itself. Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil)

</comment><comment><USER13> IMO this is the most likely fan theory out there towards Tom Bombadil. Prior discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9982237)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I added a reference to the original article, which was titled "Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pffft, apart from several just wrong assertions about who knew who, and who likes what, I always assumed Tom Bomadil was just some archetype of Tolkien himself. Both fundamental to the world he built and completely apart from it.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. I find Sam from Game of Thrones to be in a similar spot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I always liked him and was surprised to learn that that he had been excluded from the films.

But I'd never thought of him as a conservationist and rescuer of animals (and flora) rejected by polite society! A Tolkeinish John Muir. How lovely!

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, I read this only a few days ago, on some kind of Tom Bombadil kick, which I think might have been triggered by a Bombadil-related question in the StackExchange sidebar.

The memeworld works in mysyerious ways.

</comment><comment><USER18> There are several inaccuracies and inconsistencies in this.

\- Elrond knew of Tom Bombadil.

\- Tom Bombadil had heard about Frodo's journey from both elves and hobbits. I.e. He was known to and communicated with both.

\- Was there not a hobbit song about him?

As to why the hobbits had little to do with Tom Bombadil...

\- A character of his power could easily have chosen to wipe the hobbits memories. Maybe this was his usual approach to hobbit intruders?

\- Another possibility it that given Hobbits extreme social taboo about adventures and their fetish for respectability it is quite possible that many hobbits had interacted with Tom Bombadil but few talked about it (e.g. Farmer Maggot).

<comment><USER19> > \- Elrond knew of Tom Bombadil.

the text does not say otherwise. But the text is correct that Elrond does not seem to have clear memories of him. From LOTR itself:

> [Elrond said,]'The Barrow-wights we know by many names; and of the Old > Forest many tales have been told: all that now remains is but an outlier of > its northern march. Time was when a squirrel could go from tree to tree from > what is now the Shire to Dunland west of Isengard. In those lands I > journeyed once, and many things wild and strange I knew. But I had forgotten > Bombadil, if indeed this is still the same that walked the woods and hills > long ago, and even then was older than the old. That was not then his name. > Iarwain Ben-adar we called him.

He is not even sure it is the same person that the hobbits are referring to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not well-disposed toward humans, elves, hobbitses and others who cut down trees means evil?

That's a bit too Manichaean for me.

</comment><comment><USER21> Tangent: where/how can I obtain the animated 1977 version of The Hobbit? I had it on vinyl, and remember watching the film. YouTube's got a random selection of scenes but not (AFAICT) the whole thing.

<comment><USER22> I assume you are looking to pirate it or in an undisclosed non-USA geography, because it's easy to find on many paid streaming systems and on dvd

<comment><USER23> Why would you assume that? I think he's just looking for a physical copy. Given what sibling comment says, I assume it was published on DVD at some point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If there was ever a clickbait title, this is it. It should be "Tom Bombadil's Terrible Secret" or "Wild Speculations about Tom Bombadil" or "Let's Geek Out About Tom Bombadil" or something like that.

(NOTE: At the time of this writing, the title is "The Terrible Secret".)

<comment><USER22> An essay is allowed to have an intriguing title. The problem is on aggregators like HN for ripping titles our of context and not providing any context but domain name.

<comment><USER24> corememory.io is not exactly a huge clue here. (And the site actually seems to be devoted to chamber music. Go figure.)

<comment><USER25> I thought from the domain and title it would be about some arcane flaw in a CPU or something.

And I always thought Tom Bombadil was the Green Man.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings.

In what universe? Every Tolkien fan I know, including myself, loves Tom Bombadil and sees his omission from the movies as their biggest shortcoming.

<comment><USER10> I think there are (and always have been) a lot of readers of LotR who don't like Bombadil. If you're in it for the epic battle scenes and the dungeon crawl and the nighttime fight with wolves and so on, then the time with Bombadil grates.

I, myself, like him just fine. But it is true that a lot of people who liked the more "swords and sorcery" aspects of LotR, did not like Bombadil. And that's a goodly portion of the people who read the books (tho' by no means all).

<comment><USER27> > If you're in it for the epic battle scenes and the dungeon crawl and the > nighttime fight with wolves and so on, then the time with Bombadil grates.

If that's what you are looking for LotR might be one of the worst fantasy books one could pick.

<comment><USER28> I agree; LotR is really a fantasy book for fans of walking places.

<comment><USER29> A good long hike in book form!

<comment><USER30> If you are into long hikes in book form, you may still catch up with Corey Olsen if you hurry: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLasMbZ4s5vIWPwDhtmXRc...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLasMbZ4s5vIWPwDhtmXRcn1s0q8qONMGz)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Aereo ruled illegal by Supreme Court; must pay copyright fees - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/aereo-ruled-illegal-by-supreme-court-must-pay-copyright-fees-7000030926/

<comment><USER2> Of course, since most consumer antennas can't reliably pick up these signals even right in the middle of a city like San Francisco, it's really the customers who are missing out on a service they can only otherwise get bundled with cable services that are costly and unwanted.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit well shoot. SCOTUS got it wrong. :( Aereo had solid arguments. I wonder what ABC paid to get this ruling.</comment>


Run C, C++, Go and Node.js programs as processes in browsers - <AUTHOR> https://browsix.org <comment><USER2> > Unmodified C, C++, Go, and Node.js programs run as processes on Web Workers

Surly they don't mean _unmodified_ binaries do they?

My guess is that programs must be compiled down to asm.js or WebAssembly, but they provide the compile-time library hooks/fake-library-headers/runt-time harnesses for those programs to _potentially_ not have source level changes _if_ they stick to the OS call supported subset.

Very cool proof of concept, if it really does work and can be generalized, it could be a killer app for the WebAssembly effort!</comment>


The Ironic Weirdness of Apple and Intel vs. Qualcomm - <AUTHOR> https://www.technewsworld.com/story/85092.html <comment><USER2> I'd read this article for irony only. It's written by Rob Enderle, the Area 51 of Tech Reporting. I realise this smacks of denying the message because of who the messenger is, but Enderle rabidly backed SCO during the whole "SCO owns Linux" litigation fiasco. For all the wrong reasons, too. I don't think you can even trust his irony.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, there's a lot in the article which will become clear(affirmed) in the next 1 year or so..</comment></comment>


Founders of SSL call game over? - <AUTHOR> http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001337.html

<comment><USER2> The operations and management chief of a two-factor authentication vendor and a contributor to the original badly flawed SSL protocol have negative things to say about the CA model. Therefore, the "founders of SSL" have called "game over".

<comment><USER3> As the saying goes, any headline posed as a question can generally be answered "no". This linkbait article sounds like no exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I bring up the link on my iPhone I get a certificate error. Given the title, was that done on purpose?

<comment><USER4> Same for me in Chrome, I was curious if that was intentional as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> CAs are one of the biggest scams of the last twenty years.</comment>


Show HN: App Shortcuts – A Simple App Launcher for Fire TV - <AUTHOR> http://appshortcuts.quiverapps.com/

<comment><USER2> quite the odd choice of not making a android version.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is an Android version but it was removed for violating terms. I'm trying to appeal the rejection.

<comment><USER2> ahh, that explains it. Thanks for the quick answer, are you also trying to get it on the Amazon market place?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Fire TV app has been in review for 4 weeks. I figured it would be easier to release the APK for now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Avoid Payroll Tax with Mailboxes, Etc? - <AUTHOR>

Hi Fellow Hackers,
I just landed a killer telecommute job and my home city enforces a ridiculous payroll tax.  This will end up costing me over $2000 per year.
However, the county directly adjacent to the county I live in does not have a payroll tax.  I'm considering getting a Mailboxes, Etc box in a nearby city without payroll taxes and using that address for payroll purposes.
First of all, does anyone out there do this and get away with it?
If so, did you change your legal address for all purposes or did you just use the mailbox address for payroll purposes?
Are there any other caveats I should be aware of? <comment><USER2> I'm not a CPA or lawyer, but am almost absolutely positive that these taxes are applied based on your residential address. Attempting to cheat (get around, avoid, evade, what have you) taxes is almost universally a Bad Idea (speaking as someone who's been audited - though came out owing nothing).

Regardless of whether they seem onerously high, communities pass payroll taxes to generate essential revenue, and people vote on / for them. In that sense, these taxes can be understood as something a community has proposed and agreed to pay. Attempting to circumvent this agreement (the law) by setting up a sham address that's nothing more than a PO box isn't just shady - it's unethical and deprives the city of revenue its residents have agreed to pay and deemed essential for municipal operations.

If I'm mistaken, feel free to correct me, but legal or not, I would still not attempt this.</comment>


Interview question for senior front-end engineer - <AUTHOR> Thoughts on the difficulty level of the following question for a senior front-end engineer candidate? Interviewer was given 15 minutes to provide the function body for

  // Contract:
  //
  // Create a function with a signature:
  //
  //    retry(fn, retryDelay, maxAttempts) -> promise
  //
  // Implementation:
  //
  //  • retry should call fn; if fn() throws an error error, wait for the retry delay to retry calling fn.
  //  • if fn() succeeds, the returned promise should resolve with the result of fn()
  //  • in fn() has been attempted maxAttempts with an error each time, returned promise should reject with the last error
  //
  function retry(fn, retryDelay, maxAttempts) {
    /* ... */
  }
 I provided some basic assertions to valid the code was working. Solution is about 12-13 lines of code.
I remember being able to solve this sight unseen within 15 minutes; I was asked this question on an on-site by a large, well-known tech company. When I tried it again pre-interview it took longer (~30 minutes). Thoughts? <comment><USER2> I would consider this as easy level (ie. solving this should be an acquired skill for a senior dev) with a couple of caveats:

\- while an interviewee could be expected to come up with a solution quickly (15 minutes seem more than reasonable), interviews are sometime stressful, people are sometime tired, etc. Some leniency should be applied to the amount of time needed to solving this or any algorihtmic problem.

\- not everybody is used to working with promises. What is considered good practice in one company is not necessarily best practice in another one. Any senior front-end dev should at least know about them and be able to pick up a quick definition of the API given by the interviewer and use it in the solution.

If it took you 30 minutes maybe it's not so good to expect interviewees to solve it in 15 ?

On "why did it take you 30 minutes?", only you knows where you spent these minutes and struggled, that is, if you even struggled..

<comment><AUTHOR> It took me 30 minutes because I'm out of interviewing practice mode, and I was pair-programming with a backend/infrastructure dev :). When I tried it alone, I did it in about 7 minutes.

Would you agree that 15 minutes is enough to get a sense of the candidate's approach, and be able to tell whether or not they'd be able to solve it given 45 minutes?

<comment><USER2> I agree that 15 minutes is enough to get a sense of the candidate approach. While I don't think only one question and its solution give enough information about a candidate, not solving this quickly is a bad sign (for a senior front- end dev).

My approach to interviewees is no panacea but I try to start low and build up in complexity from there by playing on their strength and finding where that brings the both of you (hopefully to their upper limit). It means a bit of preparation before hands based on their resume or a prior phone interview.

Some interviewees just slice through whatever you give them and others are in an uphill battle. To somehow answer you question about being able to infer if a candidate can solve a problem in a given amount of time, I believe the only way to know is to give them that time. A bit of help here and there can help move on to a different question and I've yet to see someone properly 'fake' understanding code (ie. they say they understand but not really).

I also believe that it's only by knowing what candidates are able to do and what their current limits are that I can make a good hiring decision. This is very hard to do and I often get it wrong. Comparatively, it's easy to find what a candidate can't do but it does not help you much deciding who to hire.

If a candidate fails all questions, either the questions are inadequate/wrong or they are a fraud.</comment></comment></comment>


The Mystery of Göbekli Tepe - <AUTHOR> https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/gobekli-tepe-mystery-new-chapter-in-history-robert-adam-schneiker/ <comment><USER2> To me the most interesting thing about Göbekli Tepe, among myriad interesting things, is that the sea level at the time it was built was 60 meters(!) below its present level[1], exposing vast coastal areas now drowned[2], and at the time was rising at a rate approaching a meter per generation[3].

Probably most interesting settlements between then and the Sumerian Uruk (Iraq) we know are now under at least tens of meters of seawater. We know that there are broad built-up areas under the Gulf of Cambay, off India, likely connected to a precursor of the Harappan Indus River Valley civilization we know.

Australian Aboriginal oral tradition records extremely disruptive territorial consequences of sea level rise in the Sahul region between what is now Australia and New Guinea.

Some connect that established, devastating sea level rise to oral traditions of a worldwide flood recorded in ancient mythology. Confirmation of such a connection will depend on future exploration of any drowned settlements identified.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#/media/File:Pos...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise#/media/File:Post- Glacial_Sea_Level.png) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas#Sea_level](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas#Sea_level)</comment>


Increase Landing Page Conversions - onreact-com http://www.searchenginejournal.com/increase-landing-page-conversions/12705/

<comment><AUTHOR> FFS #7 isn't even a real word. "Envoke"</comment>


Airbnb renters destroy couple's home - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbc-2.com/story/28941667/airbnb-renters-destroy-couples-home

<comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9462374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9462374)

Easily preventable by a search for "airbnb", confined to within the last week, sorted by date:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=airbnb&sort=byDate&prefix&page...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=airbnb&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Are there better ways to vet temporary renters online?

<comment><USER3> It sounds like at least a dozen people showed up. So if the four guests were banned from AirBNB, that means this group can do this 3 times before they need to get more friends to put their names on the rentals.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is one problem I have with these "sharing" platforms, there currently are very poor systems for vetting sharers. AirBnB could really do a better job of investigating the backgrounds of potential renters and restrict rental access to only the people on the original AirBnB rental agreement.

<comment><USER4> > restrict rental access to only the people on the original AirBnB rental > agreement.

How could they possibly do that? Handing over the key and doing the local "enforcement" is something the owner has to take care of (AirBnB could maybe help to find local services that do that if the owner is not available, but IMHO not much more)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Neural Information Processing Systems Videos - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/pg/nipsfoundation/videos/ <comment><USER2> Do you have to be logged in?</comment>


Ask HN: Do we need another blogging platform? - <AUTHOR> So, I have got this idea and wanted to get an opinion regarding what others might have to say.
How about a blogging platform that forces the writers to write articles/tutorials/blog-posts in bullets, aiming to summarise their thoughts in to-the-point bullets?
The reason why I wanted to make is, most of the times I see people using _thousands_ of words to say something that could be said in _a hundred_. And the platform will force you to produce to-the-point content.
Business model: Everything that medium has to offer will be for free with custom domains, email based subscriptions, analytics, SSL support in the paid tier.
What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> I thought Twitter is the platform of choice for the concise and the impatient. A consequence is all the outrage due to people misunderstanding those concise sentences.

Being a non-native English speaker, I'm aware when I'm becoming wordy, but improving sentences while retaining meaning and details takes quite some time and effort for me.

Perhaps you can consider a solution like providing paragraph improvement suggestions using automatic text summarization. That seems more constructive to me in permanently improving a writer's writing skills.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like it. Tools with a different take on a regular problem like this are always useful, and can make people more creative under new constraints. It sounds like a tool that needs to exist and one I'd love to try out.

If you haven't seen it yet, there are some kinda-similar tools out there like Little Outliner [0] that might serve as inspiration. Otherwise, as someone also running a niche-ish blogging platform (anonymous, writing-only), I'd definitely suggest getting the tool out there and tweaking it based on real feedback before worrying about what business model will fit best. Not saying those ideas won't work, just that it's a crowded space and you might need to do more to differentiate or bring people value. In case you want an idea of what the growth / revenue timeline has been like for our platform, you can see our metrics: [1].

[0] [http://littleoutliner.com](http://littleoutliner.com)

[1] [https://inside.write.as](https://inside.write.as)

</comment><comment><USER4> I both agree with your desire for to-the-point content and the status quo. [Just now, I was about to list out the pros/cons of these two and decided instead to write the main points.]

The main advantage of prose is that it expresses more than the presented facts -- the character of the writer which is then gauged to estimate the authority of the data. Also well-written pieces can be quite enjoyable to read.

So the big issue to be solved in a 'point-form' platform is credibility. This is typically done by focusing on a subject area. To work as a general platform would require many contributors in areas similar to sub-reddits. And of course discoverability, but that's general and not specific to the format.

</comment><comment><USER5> I might use it. Facebook is too cluttered. Twitter is too short. Medium has a very high bar when it comes to aesthetics, so it's a lot of effort to write something of moderate quality. WordPress is good but it's turned into a CMS.

</comment><comment><USER6> I personally think we don't need many of the stuff we have right now. Sometimes we are just making stuff more complex in order to "create" something.

</comment><comment><USER7> As long as you don't add fixed header+footer it's good.</comment>