Weev threatens prosecutors with info from Ashley Madison leaks - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/weev-threatens-prosecutors-with-info-from-ashley-madison-leaks/ <comment><USER2> So, the threat is that Weev is going to take public information and make it... public?

Basically, the threat unpacks to "I'm going to use the fact that I'm newsworthy to make already-public information more public by putting it in the news." To which I would suggest that our clickbait-driven, eyeball-obsessed media should find it ethical to decline to participate in such shenanigans. Though my phrasing should suggest what I consider the odds of that to be. They really shouldn't even have run this, and, well, they did, didn't they?

<comment><USER3> It's public, but I myself have not gone through the records searching for people.

This dude is hella salty. If we wanted to make change he should try to change legislation.

<comment><USER4> Legislation has done a real shitty job ensuring liberty. Where did CFAA reform go? Did Aaron Swartz killing himself change anything? That was the best effort legislation was going to get, because Aaron was rich and well-connected and the bill had a bunch of lobbyists and PACs he worked with or were friends of his family pushing for it.

It went nowhere.

Legislation will not work. Only violence will.

<comment><USER5> But violence just makes it easier for the other side to vilify your side and completely disregard your original point.

The story becomes 'people who think x are violent terrorists' and all of a sudden no one wants to admit they think x, or even discuss x from a rational standpoint. Everyone will just remember the violence.

<comment><USER4> Sure, if you're the loser. Obviously such violent efforts need to destroy the current state and create a new one, or they're completely pointless.

Perhaps not, though. Bill Ayers still ended up in a position of powerful political influence and mainstream academic acceptance even after he and his associates in the Weather Underground committed a number of terrorist bombings. If your ideological clique ends up in a position of significant state influence, you'll be forgiven your crimes, even if the state is not replaced in its totality.

<comment><USER6> OK, free clue: You're the loser. So be careful about starting violence thinking that you're going to win and change everything.

In a bit more detail: You're the loser with 99% probability. The only way you're going to win is by having an amazing plan, or getting amazingly lucky, or most likely some of both.

That leaves two options: You lose and get crushed, or you don't make any change and it's irrelevant. For the rest of the world, it's better that you be in the second category, because you cause less damage that way.

And, in fact, I think you are in the second category. You're talking big about "destroy[ing] the current state and creat[ing] a new one", about how "only violence will [work]." And what's your violence? You're publicizing the Ashley Madison info of people who you're mad at. Pathetic.

But, in fact, I prefer pathetic big-talker do-nothings in this area, because they cause a smaller body count.

<comment><USER4> Now is the time for rhetoric. The future may perhaps become time for other strategies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One the one hand, it's pretty clear that "Weev"'s reaction is emotional, ethically questionable, and not an effective way to build sympathy toward reform.

But on the other hand maybe that's too much to ask of a man who was imprisoned for 3 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> He wasn't exactly the most ethically-upright, sympathetic person before his imprisonment, either.

Before the whole hacking charges thing happened, he was mostly known for being a vocal misogynist and antisemite. He has a history of doxxing women, too (even to the point of posting Kathy Sierra's _social security number_ online).

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what character has to do with anything. I think the real story here is how emotions (both by Weev and prosecutors) interfere with our ability to give all equal justice.</comment></comment></comment>


WeWork Isn't Worth $47B Anymore, but Its Rent Bill Is - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/wework-isn-t-worth-47-billion-anymore-but-its-rent-bill-is <comment><USER2> "As part of Neumann's settlement, he's said to get to name two members of an expanded board of directors for WeWork. He will become a board observer and, through that pair of appointments, contribute to steering the company."

Okay, I am not understanding this completely. The media has been pointing the finger at Neumann for weeks now as the cause of the company's problems, but a settlement includes allowing him to influence company decisions? Is it because the company feels it's for their benefit or is there something else to it?</comment>


Cyber Extortion Is No Way to Get Rich - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-25/cyber-extortion-is-no-way-to-get-rich <comment><USER2> Well, some people are still getting rich</comment>


Why Is Airport Food So Expensive? - <AUTHOR> https://thehustle.co/airport-food-expensive/ <comment><USER2> It's a good analysis, bit I can think of Kuala Lampur's KLIA airport T2 (low cost terminal) as a major exception.

Burger King at the airport, for example, has the exact same prices as the city, and they actively encourage people to spend little money.

There is free water, a reasonably priced airport hotel, and even free showers at international gates. There are plenty of free seating (so you don't have to go to a cafe), free WiFi throughout the airport, and a few convenience stores scattered around.

It's not that the flight tickets are expensive either. The airport tax is less than $5, and tickets are super low cost for all Air Asia destinations.

The high rent, airport cut, human costs, etc can make things more expensive, but don't forget the stores charging 2x the price just because they can. What are you gonna do? Go back through immigration and security again? I dont think so.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting, any idea why/how KLIA T2 is able to do this? I would think that the increased rent and security prices alone would force the businesses there to increase the cost by something, even if it just covered the costs

<comment><USER2> I think the majority of the cost savings are because it's a dedicated low-cost terminal. They have a lounge, but the airport isn't as "luxurious" to the rich.

It's Air Asia's main airport, and Air Asia is quite good at managing costs. Their flights are shorter (only in south east Asia, with just a few connections to China, India, Korea, Sri Lanka, and Nepal), so there is no need for a bigger airport hotel.</comment></comment></comment>


Adrian and Jacob retiring as Django BDFLs - <AUTHOR> http://www.holovaty.com/writing/bdfls-retiring/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for all of your hard work, Adrian & Jacob.

</comment><comment><USER3> Heres Jacob's comments as well - [http://jacobian.org/writing/retiring-as- bdfls/](http://jacobian.org/writing/retiring-as-bdfls/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think a project that is to continue to be relevant for the long-term needs a vision, and that that comes from a leader. Once the leader is gone, the vision doesn't develop. At some point the original vision will no longer fit the changing circumstances around the project, and either a new leader and a new vision will emerge or the project will fade away (or both, if the new vision doesn't work).

On the other hand, if at some point the original vision is accepted by the mainstream, the project will be successful and popular for a while, the more so if it ceases to move on and develop its vision. Then at some point the project will fade away as the Next Big Thing arrives.

It's not always possible for a project born of one vision to adapt to a new reality - even if the leaders can foresee it perfectly - without starting afresh.

Given that, and that the skills and personality needed to "maintain" a mainstream project are different to those needed to develop and make concrete a vision, it's good that creators move on.

To me, Adrian and Jacob moving on is a sign of Django's settling into the mainstream. It'll stick around for a while, and then it will fade away. The Next Big Thing is on its way.

To Adrian and Jacob - I hope you enjoy your new ventures; and thanks.

</comment><comment><USER5> Since no one else asked, does this pose any threat for the future of Django?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, no threat at all. Read the second-to-last paragraph of my post.

-Adrian

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thankyou for your hand in creating something I use every day

Jacobs post: [http://jacobian.org/writing/retiring-as- bdfls/](http://jacobian.org/writing/retiring-as-bdfls/)

<comment><USER7> I guess if you're self-appointed, you can also be self-un-appointed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Adrian & Jacob built a great framework, but more importantly they helped oversee the building of an awesome community and ecosystem over the last 8-9 years. Thank you both!

<comment><USER9> Indeed, but I think we've come to learn that frameworks and communities don't exist in vaccums and are probably one and the same, especially speaking as someone who had to start learning it from scratch and ask people for a lot of help.

It is so easy to get turned away from learning a framework, if the most visible people in the community are assholes.

All in all, a nice reminder that programming and developer communities like Django are about something much bigger than slinging code and reducing performance bottlenecks - nations unto themselves. I think that'll be the biggest legacy and impact people like Jacob in particular will leave us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How can a BDFL retire? I thought it's For Life?

<comment><USER11> Now you mention it, let's make sure both are safe and don't attempt anything foolish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> BDFHoweverLongWeFeelLikeIt

<comment><USER13> I don't think this is something to criticise really. For life really does mean as long as they can do it and have an interest in doing it. Sometimes it's really hard to let go, even if you're not involved with the project as much as you'd like to. I'm impressed when people can make that kind of decision before the lack of leadership/interest causes some issues.

Same reaction as to the pope stepping down - it's much better for the community if you don't keep a position where you can't do much work.

<comment><USER12> If I was criticizing anything, it is the absurdity of such a title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You keep on using that acronym. I do not think it means what you think it means.

<comment><USER15> I do not think you know what "acronym" means.

<comment><USER16> A lost battle I'm afraid. Acronym in common usage now means both pronounceable (NASA, SCUBA) and spelled-out (NSA, MPAA).

You gotta let these things go, sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thank you for Django. We still of course, hope to see you at future DjangoCons' :D

> (But please, no more Django Pony. It's stupid.)

Hear, hear!

<comment><USER18> The Pony logo was awesome. I wish it would've stuck more to be honest.

<comment><USER19> I don't have a problem with the pony either, but there is another community that uses the pony, and the Django folks would rather not associate with.

<comment><USER18> What other community are you talking about? The only one that comes to mind is the My Little Pony one.

<comment><USER20> There's something on the fringe of MLP fandom that is often used to discredit MLP fandom. It is really something that ought not to be brought up here, but since I think someone will, I'll try to make an oblique reference to it: Rule 34.

For mainstream fans it's really quite simple. Some extremely talented adults made a children's show. People of all ages enjoy and appreciate their work.

<comment><USER21> If it exists, there is porn of it. If that's the argument against it, you can't have a logo, or icon or image of anything, ever.

ANYTHING. EVER.

Besides rule 34 ponies isn't what is leveled against the fandom. It's the 'fact' that they're all pedophiles. Pedophiles that apparently want to broadcast this fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's an interesting political science-ish question posed by this:

Is it best to have a king first then later transition to democracy?

It would seem that kings followed later by parliament has been a very successful model for django.

I don't know how far this generalizes.

<comment><USER23> > Is it best to have a king

Yes.

Seriously, on the historical timescale of kingdoms, democracy is a very young concept. It's only really after WWII that democracy got promoted to this almost utopian ideal that we know it as today. It's not a all given that it's the "best" way to run a society - as Churchill famously noted, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms".

To dial the abstraction a little back, it's a well known mode for software projects to die, when they cease being a labour of love of a small dedicated team with clear purpose and direction and starts trying to be all things to all people through "democracy"/"design by committee". Of course, plenty of projects have survived and flourished too.

<comment><USER24> In an interview from Lee Kwan Yew, he suggests that it would be better for democracy if people with children between the ages of 35 and 60 had two votes. One of the common criticisms of democracy is that it promotes short-term thinking because pandering to the people is always popular. Giving extra political power to the portion of the population with the incentive to think long-term might counteract that.

It seemed like this model was a hypothetical, and not something he thought politically possible. But he is very skeptical of the one-person one-vote model, which to be fair has crashed and burned in many places it has been tried outside of its region of origin. Yew thinks China converting to a Democracy would set back its economic development by a hundred years.

<comment><USER25> Why that specific group? Why not the wealthy? Or the poor? Or women? Or landowners? This sounds like a terrible idea, along the lines of the government subsidizing home ownership the way it does in the US. The only version of this that I've seen that I actually liked was the idea that to declare war a referendum was necessary (can easily and quickly be orchestrated nowadays) and that the people that vote Yes are the first to be drafted. Naturally, only the people eligible to vote are the ones eligible to serve. I think almost everyone can agree that war is bad, while I doubt that we can all agree that choosing to be between 35 and 60 and have kids is the most ideal state of being for the country/economy/the world.

<comment><USER26> The reason why that specific group was chosen is that they represent non- voting citizens. There are 73 million Americans too young to vote. They are subject to laws and pay sales taxes, but have no representation in the government. The proposal isn't a "reward" for being a good breeder, but an attempt at rectifying that almost a quarter of the population has no electoral power. I believe that the age range was mostly chosen to ensure that these are parents of children who are not of voting age, but I think it would be easier to allocate one vote to each social security number and let parents proxy vote for their children. Honestly, I'm not sure that this is a good idea, I'm not sure that it's any worse than just denying representation to a segment of the population.

My other concern is your policy on referendum for war. I'm opposed to war and would vote no on pretty much any referendum. However, I also have cerebral palsy and am completely ineligible to serve. Do I not deserve a say in our foreign policy? Also, the US has gone through its past few wars without instituting a draft. My more bellicose relations would be able to vote for this war without any serious fear of being drafted.

<comment><USER25> I think the much bigger problem than the minors not being able to vote would be the problem of apathy. 3/4 of American voters don't vote for whatever reason. Of the 1/4 that do, most don't know foreign policy from a strongly worded statement about Christian values. The reality is that voters are much easier to influence than they imagine and elections are not won on the fundamentals of the party but on the way that the team spins the personality of the candidate.

Now, as for the referendum thing... It's not my idea, I'm paraphrasing an idea that is twice as old as I am. I think it can be tuned and refined. The idea behind it is that war should be declared only when a majority of the country's draft-age people are willing to lay down their lives for the cause. What we have now is that a few hundred people get to decide to send a small minority that is the military into harm's way based on any reason they want. Making people more directly responsible for declaring war is a good idea.

You are right in that we have not had draft for the past few conflicts. Also remember that the United States has not declared war since WWII [1]. The rest of these conflicts were not wars but "military engagements". And the military probably does not want to get an influx of draftees who have no idea what they are doing either. They are going to be much more likely to die in the conflict due to lack of training, etc.

All that aside, I think the idea here is more valuable than implementation. The idea that if you decide to do something so major as to declare war on a foreign country, you should feel the consequences more immediately. Perhaps if you vote yes, and the majority wins, then your taxes are raised to pay for this war. Or maybe if you vote to raise taxes, then your are raised by double of what you voted for one year (not for/against raising taxes, just using it as an example of a major change).

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


Ask HN: How much does "the idea" matter in a startup? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> None, zero, zilch, because it's highly unlikely that you were the first to think of it and that it will remian the same as it was at inception.

Ideas evolve with the company and it's execution that matters most.

<comment><USER3> If that were the case, most companies (organizations) would not go to great lengths to protect their IP (e.g., via patents and trade secrets).

<comment><USER2> Patents are not for ideas, you can only patent processes, which one could define as the execution of the idea

<comment><USER3> "... you can only patent processes ..." \-- This is not true, as far as I know. Patents are about invention / innovation (not necessarily in a process- focused format). For example, see [https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting- started/general-inform...](https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting- started/general-information-concerning-patents#heading-4). Many, if not the most, patents are essentially about idea or a coherent set of ideas, which sometimes is/are "wrapped" into a process-focused legalese of a varied "thickness".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When you say "idea" these things rarely thrive in a vacuum. What is really key is 1) What is the problem being addressed? 2) Why is our approach unique, effective, more profitable etc. So I would say it is very important to be very clear about these. Execution is a given, if you don't execute well you won't compete and you won't provide a great solution.

</comment><comment><USER5> The idea doesn't really matter, so long as the customer stays the same. The concept that keeping the same customer and approach to distribution and changing the proudct is a pivot is strange. Basically every B2B company I've met chooses a customer and a price point and fills in the details with the right product. That or random luck discovery (or both).

</comment><comment><USER6> A "startup" typically implies hyper-growth. That means raising money, hiring, and motivating the team to execute quickly, all of which is easier with the right vision/idea.

If you were a VC or a prospective employee deciding between many companies wouldn't the "idea" be the first filter you use ?</comment>


Understanding Growth, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/3/20/dbuidkmm60m63enun84oqs07mktdwq <comment><USER2> Let's put it like it is: Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.

We can not infinitely polute air, water, soil. We can not infinitely extract all crude materials from the Earth. We can not infinitely exploit most of the others.

What IS infinite is human imagination and ingenuity: We CAN innovate and (at least) greatly mitigate our impact on our Home. Thus the importance of education.

<comment><USER3> True, but the counterpoint would be that we don't need to stay on this planet. It is at least possible that we can sustain growth until we are multi- planetary.

<comment><USER4> Destroying earth and leaving a mess behind is not the output of an "intelligent" species.

<comment><USER5> It's a Darwinian bottleneck.

Evolution selects for immediate survival. Because intelligence is expensive, competitive species evolve enough intelligence to compete with each other. But the extra intelligence needed to guarantee successful long-term management of an entire planetary ecosystem is at the far end of the bell curve, and most individuals won't be capable of it. Likewise for effective off-world colonisation.

So you get a race between the self-destructive effects of short-sighted individual intelligence pursuing the usual goals of fighting, fucking, and accumulating resources, and the amplification effects of whatever collective intelligence mechanisms a species can evolve.

At the moment we're not doing so well with the latter. It's going to take a phase change to move collective intelligence up to a level where the likely default is long term survival.

<comment><USER6> Why do you assume that individual intelligence's are necessarily short-sighted in that sense? The existence of cultures as ongoing traditions of making indicates that individual intelligences are capable of participating in long- term, multigenerational endeavors....

<comment><USER7> Cultures, ongoing traditions, religion etc... can be seen as a way to pass on wisdom/intelligence via affirmation to the next generations. Empirically, you could say our ancestors have internalised the notion that individual intelligence isn't enough to persist knowledge at civilisation timescales and implemented mechanisms that would overwise be superfluous (eg, recounting of legends that tell of danger, flood myths, some religious codes).

This is pushing the argument a bit, but it stands to reason that this pattern of information preserval could indicate the necessity even for an 'advanced' civilisation with forward thinking individuals to reinforce diffusion/acquisition of knowledge of little short term value but high absolute value to survival/evolution

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We can draw some nice parallels with the startup economy, especially when contrasting manic-depressive growth (unicorns on steroids) versus stable steady growth (boostrapped business). I would argue that there is some good middle ground where you take just enough debt/leverage to grow, but don't indulge in it to the point where it becomes mania and sinks you when the macroscopic environment turns sour.

</comment><comment><USER9> The concept of 'antifragility' really seems to be popping up a lot in the media I consume via HN. I can't tell if antifragility is trendy, or really a novel, valuable idea of systems analysis that, until recently, hadn't converged upon a single descriptor.. Likely parts of both!

<comment><USER10> I have been "doing" antifragillity long before I read about it in Talebs book.

I neither consider it trendy nor novel but simply a way to understand the world and thus how to deal with it.

<comment><USER9> Great! Could you share non-Taleb resources for me to peruse? I like his stuff, but I'm sure you'll understand my aversion to monoculture, even with Taleb as the demagogue, haha.

<comment><USER10> I can offer you me :) I really wasn't aware of it until Taleb wrote about it. It just always felt natural to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Google Rediscovered the 19th Century - <AUTHOR> https://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/07/22/how-google-rediscovered-the-19th-century/ <comment><USER2> An exciting new (old) world is opened up. Interesting that much of this happens as a right of copyright expiration.</comment>


SeatGeek Launches iPhone App - <AUTHOR> http://seatgeek.com/mobile

<comment><USER2> Very well designed indeed. Since so many people are raving about the design, is it really that important to launch an app with very good design or is that something you can iterate on? I am always interested to see the comparison on app performance (in terms of downloads, on-boarding and retaining users) when launched with super slick design and mediocre design which becomes better with each iteration. If anyone have anything to share please help me out! From my experience I see people tend to talk more about apps that are rich in design and tend to use them often too. And obviously design is one huge element that slows down shipping. I also hear people talk about getting the MVP right (with design and all) but hardly see any app that only does MVP. The apps that I and my friends use are quite complete and still tend to add more features with every update. I find this whole idea confusing where people talk about something (MVP, sticking to one thing, etc.) but I see something else (Very polished design, does a couple of things integrated together, other bells and whistles) winning in the market.

<comment><USER3> Something which is functional but lacking polish trumps something that is extremely polished but doesn't do much.

Putting it another way, which Minimum Viable Date would you choose?

      1. Cute and sociable. Smells nice, good conversationalist.
         Date involves picking up two packages of cup-a-soup from
         7-11 and sitting on the curb outside.

      2. Heroin addicted, hasn't showered in a week. Withdrawn
         from conversation. Date involves dinner and wine at a Michelin-
         starred restaurant followed by a limo picking you up and taking
         you to a sold-out concert where you're in the front row and you
         have backstage passes after.

Make sure you understand which is the feature and which is the polish. The feature in the above two examples is the _person_. That's what the date is really about. The polish is where you go and what you do with the person.

This is what Apple got wrong with their maps app. Its appearance is what you'd expect from Apple. It's really polished and likely went through their rigorous pixel-perfect prototyping [0]. But the underlying feature that people expect is accurate mapping. Having a map which is never wrong but looks like an Etch- a-Sketch would be preferable to a highly polished map which gets you stranded in the Australian Outback.

That said, you want to find the right balance. If you're providing the app to existing customers, they're probably looking for the functionality and can deal with a lack of polish. If you're using the app as a marketing tool to attract customers, be sure to make it look good but they may not sign up if the functionality isn't there.

[0] [http://intenseminimalism.com/2011/apple-design-myths-a- summa...](http://intenseminimalism.com/2011/apple-design-myths-a-summary/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get why SeatGeek hasn't gained more traction over the years. I've never found a ticket service that is so useful with such great UI/UX. Not to mention their seating charts blow everything else out of the water.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious...why the decision not to support login?

<comment><USER6> We decided to just focus on the search and map experience and nail it, rather than add a whole lot of features at a lesser quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just tried it. Top notch. Head and shoulders above the Ticketmaster app, which I use quite frequently. (Or at least I used to.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice work guys! App looks great, will be an awesome tool for future ticket purchases.

</comment><comment><USER9> Design done right. Also, very useful for fans like myself.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a shame that a search for seatgeek on the iPhone results in the usual no listings. Maybe in a day or two it will work, but I really hope Apple get their search indexing latency sorted out soon.

<comment><USER11> Really? In the app store? I searched for and found it no problem. But I'm still on iOS 5...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very nice. I just used it to buy some basketball tickets, and it was a very smooth experience.

I'm not sure how or if to address this, but after ordering I got to a receipt page, and the confirmation took a few minutes to arrive. I found myself wishing I could save the confirmation page, in case I needed to refer back to it.

That said, it was easy for me to find the game I was interested in, easy for me to find tickets, and checking out went better than expected given that I was on a mobile device. Thanks.

<comment><USER13> You could take a screenshot of the receipt page, if you are worried about receiving the receipt via email or whatnot.

<comment><USER12> I wound up taking two screenshots, one showing the top, one showing the bottom. It kinda worked, but it was the only kludgy part of the experience.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Automated emails for no-code makers - <AUTHOR> http://palabra.io <comment><AUTHOR> What's up hackers. This is a project I've been working on for like a month. Short version would be Zapier + Mailgun + Notion. We basically help non- technical founders and makers send automated emails easily and do the heavy lifting for them. Alternatives like customer.io are extremely powerful but sometimes hard to use when you don't have a technical background. Also making workflows using decision trees can get tricky. We have a trello-like interface (just move cards around to send automated emails) and 50+ emails written for you for the most popular cases (like welcoming a user to a newsletter). Would love to hear your thoughts!</comment>


Webkit begins work on service workers - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=317095&action=prettypatch <comment><USER2> Good move. Next, PWA.</comment>


On 'On Android Compatibility' - <AUTHOR> http://blog.morrildl.net/2010/06/on-on-android-compatibility.html <comment><USER2> The Tom Gibara blog post he links to makes a few very good points, including:

 _I'm addressing developers here when I ask: Are you really serious providing LOTS of users with a rewarding experience of your application?

Because if you are, then you have to be ready to accommodate them, and they're pretty a variable bunch. I don't want to get preachy, but not everyone speaks or reads English. Some people can't read at all. Many people have weak eyesight and some are completely blind or deaf for that matter. I could go on, but my actual point is this:

Not every possible user's needs can be met by the same mobile phone. The user variability that application developers attempt to handle via good UI design, accessibility, and internationalization, extends outside of the software domain and into the hardware.

Most of the concerns that developers flag-up as being aspects of fragmentation are simply the realities of addressing the needs of these users, large numbers of them. Some users will be poorer than others; they can't all afford the newest/best handsets. Some need larger screens for their bad eyesight. Perhaps their motor skills are poor and they prefer a real keyboard. etc._</comment>


The EU Cookie Law - <AUTHOR> http://theeucookielaw.com

<comment><USER2> We had this in Sweden for a while. Absolutely no one cares, and i have never seen anyone asking for permission except on some government websites. Example, government: <http://regeringen.se/> and police: <http://polisen.se/> who have this huge cookie dialog over the whole page. In fact i think they store a cookie before i answer even. Crazy laws, made by politicians who don't understand how the web works.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree - completely crazy laws and shows how out of touch the politicians are.

Part of me thinks that I should ignore it for most of my sites, but there are some that I could imagine being big enough to be potential targets should they start enforcing it.</comment></comment>


Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/12/02/elon-musk-carbon-tax-paris/ <comment><USER2> Not that I disagree (in fact I strongly agree), but is Musk really the person we should be taking this from? It's a bit like taking investment advice from your bank, meseems. Not necessarily a bad idea, but you might want to hear with people who don't have an active interest in the placement of your money first.

<comment><USER3> Aren't there significant carbon emissions released during the production of a Tesla car and its components?

<comment><USER4> After accounting for emissions during manufacturing, even if you powered an electric car with coal power only, carbon emissions of an electric car are roughly a 25-30 MPG car equivalent.

However, those numbers get much better as the electric power generation mix improves (at both the car factory and your garage). In California, now, an electric car is about equivalent to a 70 MPG car.

Note that significant efforts are underway to reduce the carbon-intensiveness of our electricity generation, so these numbers will get better over time.

[http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars- green](http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars-green)

<comment><USER5> I think it's a bootstrapping issue. What does one do first when they want an entirely new power ecosystem? I would argue it's wiser to start with the sexy public facing segment on the demand side (awesome looking electric sports cars) and have the public start this exact conversation and demand the infrastructure changes. Because it seems like a pretty steep climb for one to try to make this huge change simply by supply side first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not just a carbon tax, but a system of well thought out taxes that cover the negative externalities of _every_ part of pollution so that the market can efficiently allocate investments. For example, most people don't know that coal causes more radiation damage to humans than nuclear. Why is this? Because coal gets released right into the atmosphere, while spent fuel rods get stored away from human contact.

I know that there are political realities that prevent all of the taxes that should be in effect from coming into effect, but those political realities can change once the issue is reframed. Every dollar of pollution tax could, for example, be directed at lowering the income tax rate. This can make the proposal much more tenable to voters and the more right wing side of the intelligentsia that pushes for changes in government policy.

<comment><USER7> > _well thought out taxes that cover the negative externalities of every part > of pollution so that the market can efficiently allocate investments_

But it's not "the market" that decides how electricity is produced in a country, right? It's the government.

<comment><USER8> Good point

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used to think that carbon taxes were the way to go, but I have seen how effective the fossil fuel industry is at creating FUD. When you consider an effective carbon tax makes all their assets worthless it is not surprising that they will do whatever it takes to block anything other than a nominal carbon tax.

There really is only one way to get past the fossil fuel industry and that is to buy them out. Given the benefit from stopping global warming is spread over the whole community it is actually fairer if we did this rather than push a disproportionally share onto the owners of fossil fuel. Lets get serious and just pay off Exxon and their buddies.

<comment><USER10> This is a point which gets overlooked pretty often.

It's the same as the value of taxi medallions in the Uber debate. Allowing Uber to operate in a city where technically only medallion owners were supposed to drive is actually really shitty to the owners of those medallions. You open it up, suddenly tell them that their investment is worthless because of a change in regulations. It's really unfair to them. Perhaps the way to quiet the medallion owners would be to pay them like 25% or 50% of what they were worth earlier in compromise bill allowing Uber in. They don't feel so slighted, everyone else gets Uber. That's win-win.

How it would work in this case: pass a compromise bill which involves paying these companies some amount of cash so their shareholders won't feel so slighted. They will give up their fight against carbon taxes, and we avert global catastrophe.

<comment><USER11> It's not "really shitty" to the owners of the medallions, the risk of a loss of the artificial monopoly should have been baked into the price from the start.

That the prices got as high as they did indicates the confidence the owners had over the stability of their political situation, which I have no sympathy for.

<comment><USER10> In that case, then the medallions _also_ include the value of owners being able to maintain their monopoly through lobbying efforts.

Whether or not you have any sympathy for them, striking a deal is the best solution.

(Other question: do you have any sympathy for poor people who are hurt a bit by a carbon tax? Elsewhere in this discussion people are arguing against the tax because it hurts the poor. I think it would be a bit weird to be sympathetic to poor people who are hurt a little by a policy decision, but unsympathetic to slightly less poor people who are hurt a lot by a policy decision.)

<comment><USER11> I don't have sympathy for losses sustained via poor investment decisions. I have lost a small fortune in my life because of mistakes I've made, and I don't want or deserve sympathy for any of it. Losing is part of playing the game.

Poor people just trying to get by (and this included me at many points in my life) are who we should be saving our empathy for. Not wannabe businessmen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another thing that would help is to stop subsidizing the fossil-fuel industry! The IMF estimates that about $5.3 trillion is spent annually subsidizing fossil fuel energy. [http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW070215...](http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW070215A.htm)

<comment><USER9> This is certainly the low hanging fruit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A phased-in revenue-neutral carbon tax of $30/ton would increase electricity rates in (most of) the US by < 10%. And could lower income taxes (or if not revenue neutral) reduce the debt. What's not to like?

<comment><USER14> If it's revenue neutral and lowering income taxes, where would the big `victims' be?

<comment><USER15> The answer used to be "aluminum smelters" (aluminum, aka "frozen electricity").

Interestingly, the aluminum smelters in the mountains behind Portland closed down when the datacenters moved in and bought all the cheap hydro electricity they used to use.

My guess is that a tax increase on electricity will hit the Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft and other "cloud businesses" pretty hard...

<comment><USER16> Aluminium smelters in Germany are actually getting a big subsidy. They're varying their electricity usage based upon the output of Germany's solar/wind farms and getting paid a hefty sum to do so (possibly too much).

This is having a negative impact on other smelters across the world.

Effectively they're doing the same job we were always told batteries would do.

<comment><USER17> If they're paying a fair amount for electricity, it's not a subsidy. And it's probably not a minute-timescale change like batteries. Energy storage and batteries are quite different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Carbon tax in Australia. All extra expenses were passed along down the chain to the consumer. We got rid of the tax. Prices stayed the same. _sigh_

Implementation and/or regulation is key.

<comment><USER16> >Carbon tax in Australia. All extra expenses were passed along down the chain to the consumer. We got rid of the tax. Prices stayed the same.

In general if a corporate think tank said something happened or something is going to happen and it impinges upon their profits, there's a better than even chance they're lying through their teeth.

See also: minimum wage, regulation of the financial sector, anything to do with debt, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Carbon tax becomes a peculiar piece of legislation when viewed from Pirate Party's perspective (not necessarily that I agree with it, no _ad hominem_ please). According to Rick Falkvinge [1] legislation must:

      * Be targeted at a problem
      * Solve the problem
      * Not create other problems in best case, worse problems in worst case
      * Be evidence based

Carbon emission is considered a problem because it contributes to climate change. For carbon tax to be considered targeting a problem we must accept that climate change is a problem.

Does it solve a problem? At least not directly. Taxes on tobacco and alcohol do not eliminate consumption, prohibition in US created a Mafia, jail-time for drug possession does not eliminate consumption, we have hard evidence confirming that.

Such tax hinders accessibility, though. Since at least transportation is fossil fuel dependant, more or less everything (commodities including: food, public transportation) will get more expensive, thus less accessible.

Do we have hard evidence (numbers, not general economic speculation) that x level carbon tax will lower carbon emissions by y?

[1]: [http://falkvinge.net/pirate-wheel/principles/quality- legisla...](http://falkvinge.net/pirate-wheel/principles/quality-legislation/)

<comment><USER10> You don't have to reduce carbon emissions to zero to solve global warming, you just have to discourage emissions to some degree. That is exactly what a carbon tax does. It directly solves the problem.

Revenue-neutral tax is the key to dismissing the point about accessibility. You can take the tax revenue and mostly give it to poor people who are hurt the most by the tax.

</comment></comment><comment> walsh-cloonagh Spending is a lot easier than taxing.

A country could just offer to buy a increasing amount of zero emission electricity and sell it on the free market until electricity was no longer generated from sources that yielded carbon.

The same approach could work for battery cells that could be used in cars until non-electric vehicles were no longer competitive.

This could be funded by that country's current (probably) progressive tax system.

This doesn't cover air, sea, heating and agriculture emissions. But a carbon tax may not be an adequate incentive to develop electric aircraft or cargo vessels in any case.

<comment><USER10> what?

<comment><USER20> The parent is arguing for extreme subsidization to alter the market for electricity and vehicles (etc).

They effectively want the government to spend a lot of money to bankrupt the fossil fuels industry and fossil fuel vehicles, with subsidies toward the generation of renewables and producing electric vehicles.

They're wrong that spending is easier however. Republicans control Congress and the US made a massive mistake in taking on ~$15 trillion in new public debt between 2000 and 2015. Simply put, the US doesn't have vast excess spending room (which means it would require tax increases or new taxes). It would cost trillions over a few decades to pull off the parent's plan.

<comment><USER10> I agree that a subsidy is infeasible policy. But it wouldn't be effective even if it were feasible to pull off.

Suppose the government gives out free Priuses. Well, then people are going to drive more. Even though some people may be driving more fuel efficient cars, it's not clear that total carbon emissions decrease.

Suppose the government provides free solar cells for everyone. Then people will use a lot more electricity. But solar cells require some carbon emissions to produce, and since people use so much more electricity overall, it's not clear whether carbon emissions decrease or increase.

Either way it's just a totally goofy thought experiment, since a carbon tax is exactly the right answer, and this subsidy idea is so misguided that it could possibly even _increase_ carbon emissions

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The question is who will pay that tax? In Musk vision governments should lower other taxes (which one?) and introduce carbon tax.

I am afraid that the devil is in the details and it may turn out that this tax will be paid mostly by car owners (rising delivery costs, so food prices would grow) or people in rural areas who use coal heaters. The poor will suffer most in such case.

I am also afraid that governments wouldn't do anything else to lower carbon emission - doing that would be stupid, they get more money thanks to large carbon emission.

I think it is time to figure out honestly, without any eco/anti-eco bullshit what it the best (clear, cheap and practical) way to produce energy.

I suspect this will never be done, as eco people would have to admit that nuclear energy is a viable option to go (I don't believe we can base modern economy on energy sources that depend on weather). Anti-eco people would have to admit that fresh air is something more important than coal mine owners interest (and coal mine workers interest too).

I really regret nuclear energy had such a bad press and, as a result, there weren't any significant innovation in that area (in particular how to reuse nuclear wastes).

<comment><USER10> Well, lower taxes on poor people. Increase welfare, subsidize public transportation and other things that help transfer money to people who are hurt by the tax.

"Figure out the best way to produce energy" is not something we can figure out posting on HN, or even in a presidential debate. It is a complex and very uncertain question, but since it is a question of innovation, it is the kind of question that markets are very good at answering. A carbon tax directs the market toward finding out the solution efficiently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> You cannot just introduce tax and hope for best when the whole tax system and tax recovery is a joke that hurts mainly SMBs. Its not like big corporations will pay them anyway.

If you want to introduce a tax on something so intangible as emissions, you would need to build easy to track and easy to use tax system.

<comment><USER10> ??

You just tax sales of oil, natural gas, etc. and a few other specific activities, like raising livestock, it's super easy

If Congress can implement something as complex as the Dodd-Frank act, I'm sure it can measure and tax something as basic as carbon emissions

<comment><USER23> If only a few countries introduces/enforces this tax it will simply drive the huge carbon emitters to move their emissions to other countries. The only people that will be hurt are those that are too small to move.

<comment><USER10> Yes, and that's why 160+ world leaders are gathering in Paris to take steps toward a global carbon emissions agreement

<comment><USER22> US and China are unlikely to go with it or they will end up playing the rules. The same as it is now.

Also - you are right, taxing will work. Its not like corporations and huge manufacturers will play the system and avoid paying taxes or getting them back through loopholes.

Only ones affected will be mostly SMBs and regular folks - as always.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Or a new battery that holds twice the power, charges twice as fast and costs half as much. Yeah, or that.

</comment><comment><USER25> In my opinion a carbon tax is also interesting for oil and gas companies. As the carbon tax would enable them to compete on technologies that minimize the carbon output of their machines. It would enable them to differentiate from each other.

</comment><comment><USER26> how would another tax benefit the current economy? How would this tax be spent?

</comment><comment><USER27> When it comes to carbon reduction using tax, tradable, caps or any other instrument that tries to use the price system to alter consumption levels… I think you need a very sober economic estimate of efficiency and cost. A tax is not very different economically from other price increases in carbon fuels. These prices vary a lot over time. We also already have fairly variable taxes between countries on the use of carbon fuels for (eg) cars.

Here's oil: [http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/crude-oil- brent.aspx?timeframe...](http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/crude-oil- brent.aspx?timeframe=10y)

The price varies a lot. Consumption does not vary that much or that fast. This is called price inelasticity of demand. Demand does not drop much for incremental increases in price. This means that to decrease consumption we'd need a very high carbon tax. In Europe, petrol has been taxed heavily for a long time and prices are higher than in the US. The long term effect has been somewhat smaller cars, not a completely different transportation market.

There are also the realpolitik problems. When the public is concerned about something (say water), it's not impossible to convince the public (consumers) to bear a burden. But, entrenched economic interest are harder to sway or wrangle. This leads to weird regulation. An area where water use is distributed 15/35/50 between households/industry/agriculture will successfully enact water restrictions of some sort on _households,_ the minor participant. There are equivalents in energy.

I'm not saying do nothing, but I am saying be smart. Some plans are winers from a public debate perspective but do not solve the problem. I am against a plan that acts a a regressive tax affecting the middle and lower classes harshly unless it is going to have a big impact.

If a household with $4,000 annual fuel costs (heating and transport) is to pay $7,000, the overall expected result better be big steps towards carbon goals. I have a hard time seeing this happen.

Lets do a back of the envelope: take that $5.3 trillion externality at face value. Lets assume the world's 2 billion top consumers pay the majority of it. Call it 4 trillion, $2k each, $8k for a family of 4. How much of a reduction will we see? 10%? 25%?

I'm not completely down on the idea. Elon Musk suggests lowering taxes elsewhere, being revenue neutral. This is a realistic politics problem again. Lets say we can do that though, globally. Reduce bottom level income tax and value added taxes by this much, people would be less harmed. Still, transport & heating make up a large part of poorer people's income so it's hard to think of a way this would not be regressive. I'm sure it is theoretically possible, but very hard.

At the end of this ramble, I'm not sure where I am. I'd like to see a realistic estimate of actual reductions in emissions. This is too big a deal not to fix the problem.

<comment><USER28> The best solution I've seen is a "fee and dividend" system, where a carbon fee is collected and the proceeds are rebated in equal amounts to every legal resident of the nation.

This means that, when gas prices go up, a lower-class person whose carbon footprint is exactly that of the average citizen will be reimbursed for the extra gas money by exactly the right amount. And the tax ends up being not regressive.

Compare the carbon footprint of a well-to-do businessman who flies coast-to- coast on a monthly basis with that of a working-class guy who drives ten miles a day and heats his house with oil. The former is greater then the latter by several times. The working-class guy contributes a relatively small share to global warming, but bears an equal share of the public cost induced by the changing climate. Under the fee-and-dividend system, every man reimburses the public for the cost that he is imposing on them through his CO2 emissions, and is reimbursed by everyone else for the cost they impose on him.

Because of this I argue that a carbon fee and dividend is the right policy from a social justice perspective, and should be enacted _even_ if it is not going to be sufficient to push us as a society off of fossil fuels.

Google "carbon fee and dividend" or see this ([http://www.skepticalscience.com/CCL-pushing-for-US-fee- and-d...](http://www.skepticalscience.com/CCL-pushing-for-US-fee-and- dividend.html)) for more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Elon might want to investigate the issue he's talking about: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQqPQ0i_fl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQqPQ0i_fl0)

>> _Don 't you hate when Fox News and the other MSM spin-meisters use simple tricks to skew and misrepresent data and statistics? How about when the World Meteorological Organization does it? Or NASA? Or the Journal of Climate? Or GISS? Join James for today's thought for the day as he shows you some of the grade school level parlour tricks the global warming alarmists use to misrepresent their data and bamboozle the public._

<comment><USER29> His quibble with the bar graphs there doesn't make a lot of sense given that a Y-axis starting at 0 degrees is just as arbitrary as starting it at 13.4 degrees.

<comment><USER7> The point was that starting the Y-axis "suitably high" makes it look like the relative differences in the values are greater than they actually are.

In this case, it was done to make "climate change" look like a _vastly_ bigger problem than it actually is.

It wasn't just "his quibble" \- it's a very real problem with the way the (actual non-)issue is presented to the masses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> also can be read as "Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate Sales of My Extremely Expensive Vehicles"

</comment><comment><USER31> Yeah I was a big fan of Elon Musk, and then he says this. Ugh. Tax never solved anything except letting politicians take your money for their own uses. He's fallen for it.

<comment><USER10> Are you joking? It is harder to find a tighter consensus among experts than the conclusion that a tax is the best policy to curb carbon emissions.

[http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/03/12-taxing...](http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/03/12-taxing- carbon-gale)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Would this mean my company would charge me for using the break room microwave?

<comment><USER33> Yes, I'm sure it does.

In practice though, I'm sure it will just get added to the electricity bill your employer sends you every month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am worried. Even if we switch to other forms of energy, aren't we heating up the planet? Or do we expect it all to be radiated faster to space over time?

[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist- meets-...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets- physicist/)

<comment><USER10> Oh god, that article, classic /r/badeconomics

No, we don't have to worry about heating up the planet from our energy use, the only major factor is the degree to which the atmosphere traps heat

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't think will ever work. There are countries where taxes are way higher than US. For example in Italy [1] we are around 50% (including VAT and local taxes) and other than decreasing the productivity of companies it never had a "mind" impact. In fact Italy is one of the countries with most cars (per citizen) and that invest less/nothing in alternative energies.

[1] [https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools- and-...](https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/tax-tools-and- resources/tax-rates-online/corporate-tax-rates-table.html)

<comment><USER36> That's just a generic across the board tax you are talking about and linking to isn't it? Rather than a specific incentive/disincentive in one area (carbon emissions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _> "This approach already occurs, Musk said, citing how taxes are higher on cigarettes and alcohol than fruits and vegetables"_

This is a good point, but generally discouraging the use of cigarettes or alcohol through taxation only effects people who consume those products. If you raise the tax on carbon, that cost could be passed on by businesses in unexpected ways. If the cost of me shipping vegetables across the country goes up by 2%, I'm just going to increase what I charge for shipping by at least 2% and the cost could well be passed on directly to consumers. Eventually I might be outcompeted by someone who has a fleet of electric trucks. Maybe, at some point. But until that happens, people could end up paying slightly more than they do now for essentials.

Maybe this effect is covered in the policy details or by the term "revenue neutral". Either way a carbon tax is probably a good idea, but the chain of cause and effect isn't so clear.

<comment><USER38> It's absolutely covered by "revenue neutral".

We tax things, but then distribute the tax revenue among the citizenry. The cost absolutely will get passed on, but that is accounted for in the end when you receive a check for ~1/300,000,000th of the net tax paid. The increased cost of essentials would be a total wash, as presumably everyone is paying roughly the same -- except to the extent that by pricing the externality, there might be space to undercut the market with a non-polluting option where one didn't exist before, encouraging R&D.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I need to buy a new office chair,  any tips/recommendations? - <AUTHOR> My office chair just broke so I need to get a new one. Does anyone have any chairs that they recommend, or tips for selecting? There's such a lot of chairs out there and I want to be sure to pick well since I'll spend such a large portion of my life sitting in the damn thing! <comment><USER2> My best advice is to spend some time sitting in a variety of chairs.

I needed a chair 15 years ago when the Aeron was the hot thing. I tried one out and didn't like it. After testing half-a-dozen different chairs I ended up with a Steelcase Leap. I'm still using it today and it's held up really well. After about 12 years daily use the gas cylinder finally failed. It was still under warranty so a service person came to my office and replaced it for free.

</comment><comment><USER3> A few months ago I purchased used Steelcase Leap v2[0] and am happy with it. It offers lots of customization and my back never hurts me after a long day. I wouldn't be happy if I had to pay the full price (~$1000?) as I tried some other chairs in the past such as Spinalis[1] and my mind was blown away.

I don't know exactly the reason I felt so good on Spinalis as it was several years ago. But I do know it was "different" than any other chair I tried (haven't tried many).

Hope it helps.

[0]: [http://store.steelcase.com/seating/office- chairs/leap](http://store.steelcase.com/seating/office-chairs/leap)

[1]: [http://www.spinalischairs.co.uk/](http://www.spinalischairs.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you can afford it, the aeron or leap are amazing. Many people make the mistake of sittin in a coworkers or trying it and a store and saying they don't like it. It takes lots of adjustment to get it just right for your body so make sure to spend sometime in a showroom.

I've had the aeron for over a year and I absolutely love it

</comment><comment><USER5> Get an inflatable ball chair; alternate with standing. Office chairs cultivate poor posture, and should be avoided.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow I hadn't considered that, I remember those from years ago but had forgotten all about them! Cheers I'll definitely look into them

<comment><USER6> you can use an exercise ball part of the day, I'm 6'1" and use a 75cm one . . . you can pick one up at Target.

Ikea has some decent chairs, go in and test them out. The one I liked best was one of their least expensive ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't get a chair, get a standing desk. Has worked wonders for my back the last two years. I do have a bar-stool that I use at times.

<comment><USER8> But what about knees?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Herman Miller.</comment>


Etcd 2.2 - <AUTHOR> https://coreos.com/blog/etcd-2.2/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone at this point have a good comparison between etcd and Consul?

The v3 API of ectd seems more powerful because it supports multi-key transactions but isn't there yet.

Other than that I always had a slight feeling that Consul might be a bit more stable/reliable but I have no hard facts.

<comment><USER3> On the stability/reliability of etcd the team is very confident in how it behaves. Here is how we build that confidence:

\- We have a functional testing cluster that is constantly simulating various types of failures. You can find some information on that here: [https://coreos.com/blog/new-functional-testing-in- etcd/](https://coreos.com/blog/new-functional-testing-in-etcd/)

\- The team is works to ensure the raft library that we use (and that we now share with cockroachdb) has unit tests that handle all of the edge cases described in the raft paper. See this paper as an example: [https://github.com/coreos/etcd/blob/master/raft/raft_paper_t...](https://github.com/coreos/etcd/blob/master/raft/raft_paper_test.go#L49)

\- We have been running etcd in production for 1.5 years for a bootstrapping service called discovery.etcd.io and have focused on how to handle higher and higher read/write loads there. For example see the improvements we made in etcd 2.1 with async snapshots: [https://twitter.com/BrandonPhilips/status/639843455141740544](https://twitter.com/BrandonPhilips/status/639843455141740544)

\- We have also focused on clear guides on how to operate etcd. All of this testing and performance work is of no use if people can't operate the system correctly: [https://coreos.com/etcd/docs/latest/](https://coreos.com/etcd/docs/latest/)

Of course if you have particular issues that you have encountered we would love to help: [https://github.com/coreos/etcd#contact](https://github.com/coreos/etcd#contact)

<comment><USER4> Fantastic reply, thanks for this Brandon. I know that Kyle Kingsbury aka "aphyr, destroyer of distributed systems" broke etcd and at the time (before you wrote a new raft library), consul faired quite a bit better than consul.

Are you using his jepesen testing tool as part of your testing for failure scenarios? If not, why?

<comment><USER3> IIRC, etcd and consul failed in the same way in aphyr's post. Essentially neither had quorum read.

We don't have jepesen setup as a testing tool because it is really hard to make it a reliable false positive free system. Plus, the languages it is written in make it hard for us to hack on it.

Instead what we have done is worked hard to build a functional testing suite to find non-algorithm issues (weird exhaustion issues, behavior under real disks, etc). And then have deep, fast, deterministic tests of the core raft algorithms.

<comment><USER4> Oh the stuff you've (you as in CoreOS) done with raft golang libraries (to test and fix it) is nothing short of incredible. The future with k8s with CoreOS as the base looks really great. Please do keep it up :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like the idea of multi-key transactions because it will allow installation of configurations as a whole, rather than a series of piecemeal changes, or some sort of "write a new one piecemeal and then update the current version" manual hack.

</comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations on the new release! I actively use etcd in multiple projects, in production and am overall very happy with it. However, I've ran into some issues with the go-etcd package, namely with watches and bad behavior when a node goes away (things like a channel being spammed with updates even though no updates are taking place).

Is this something that the new go-etcd package addresses?

<comment><USER7> We publish [https://github.com/coreos/etcd/tree/master/client](https://github.com/coreos/etcd/tree/master/client) as our new client, and it is cleaner and better than go-etcd. You could try this out.

Back to the problem, I didn't notice this behavior in go-etcd before. We are more than welcome to solve it if it is a problem in new client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So excited for the v3 API. The v2 HTTP API with its traditional filesystem like structure makes getting started easy, but quickly becomes limiting. Recursive operations on directories allows for some multi-key transaction like behavior, but in an extremely limited sense.

Having native multi-key transactions in v3 will make a lot of use cases easier.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can someone explain exactly what problem etcd solves and specifically how I would use it? It seems interesting, but I can't figure out how "distributed key value store" translates directly into "service discovery", whatever that is. What exactly are the keys and values that make this work?

<comment><USER10> So one of the challenges in a containerized environment is that services start up on random ports. If I'm running a Postgres container with the default Docker networking mode, for example, the internal port of 5432 may be bound to the host port of 12345. This allows me to spin up multiple instances of Postgres on the same machine for greater service density.

However, in a distributed environment, services can spin up on different machines. The instance of Postgres my application needs could be on server1:12345 or server2:23456. But in a distributed system, you need a cross- cutting service that's available to all servers so that if my app is running on server1, it can find the right Postgres instance running on server2.

I'm not an expert on etcd, but my understanding is that the most common use case is to run etcd on each host machine. When services start up, their supervisor registers the service's hostname, port, etc with etcd's key-value store. This registration is then propagated to other etcd nodes in a consistent manner, using a consensus algorithm called Raft:

[http://thesecretlivesofdata.com/raft/](http://thesecretlivesofdata.com/raft/)

Consensus actually turns out to be one of the harder problems in a distributed system design. If I have a network partition that prevents etcd instances from seeing each other, you don't want one instance reporting incorrect or stale data. Otherwise, my application could be writing to the wrong service, causing data loss.

Etcd does consensus extremely well, and in a way that scales to support hundreds of nodes. It's one of the two distributed systems I'm aware of that have (mostly) passed Jepsen testing:

[https://aphyr.com/posts/316-call-me-maybe-etcd-and- consul](https://aphyr.com/posts/316-call-me-maybe-etcd-and-consul)

There are also alternatives like Consul and Zookeeper, but in the case of Zookeeper you have to do a lot of the heavy lifting yourself to support service discovery. There are also some well-documented caveats:

[https://tech.knewton.com/blog/2014/12/eureka-shouldnt-use- zo...](https://tech.knewton.com/blog/2014/12/eureka-shouldnt-use-zookeeper- service-discovery/)

Consul also has a pretty fair writeup (IMHO) on the tradeoffs of each solution on their website:

[https://consul.io/intro/vs/zookeeper.html](https://consul.io/intro/vs/zookeeper.html)</comment></comment>


Cambridge Analytica: 'US regulators approve $5bn Facebook fine' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48972327 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20423819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20423819)

</comment><comment><USER3> How did CA garner the information?

You could write a fairly trivial scraper to pull the public data/relative data they are discussing. So I presume it wasn't that. How could Facebook be expected to stop people doing that?

Also ridiculous over reach from the authorities especially given we know for a fact the intelligence service are doing much worse on an epic scale</comment>


5 Things That Make Your City Better Than the Valley : East Coast Blogging - <AUTHOR> http://eastcoastblogging.com/2008/09/19/5-things-that-make-your-city-better-than-the-valley/ <comment><USER2> i cannot believe this guy starts off his post touting DC

let me give you the executive summary of the DC area:

1\. EVERYONE WORKS FOR THE GOVERNMENT, and they completely don't get why you wouldn't want to also

2\. PEOPLE IN VIRGINIA ACTUALLY VOTED FOR GEORGE BUSH, and they are totally into nascar

3\. THE WEATHER SUCKS, unless you like 90% humidity

<comment><USER3> What a silly comment.

* DC includes Baltimore metro, which includes Columbia, MD, which actually _is_ a small hotbed of tech startups.

* Not everyone works for the government; some people sell to the government. Plenty of enterprise startups funded themselves with one or two SA contracts.

* People in rural VA are "totally into NASCAR", and if you want to introduce this particular emotional market inefficiency, other entrepreneurs should be happy to exploit it. Believe it or not, there are plenty of very smart red-staters.

* People in urban Virginia just brought one of the Dem's strongest new senators to office, and Virginia has a Dem governor strong enough to be on Obama's running mate short list.

* You apparently didn't even read the post, since his argument is that the crappy weather makes people more productive, and you ignored the argument instead of shooting it down.</comment></comment>


Is Linear Regression Unethical? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewgelman.com/2012/07/is-linear-regression-unethical-in-that-it-gives-more-weight-to-cases-that-are-far-from-the-average/

<comment><USER2> Any technology/math/science can be used to do good or evil. For example, people can use calculus to build bridges, grow more food, or optimize an industrial-scale chemical reaction. Or people can use calculus to figure out how to optimally flow people through a concentration camp (not sure if this actually happened, but you get the idea).

In situations concerning the lives of others, it's wrong to use statistics to decide their lives for them.

The right thing to do? Show them the statistics. Help them understand, if they ask. Leave them be to make their own choices: if they don't know enough to decide, they do know enough to choose for themselves whom they will seek advice from.

Do _that_ and there's no ethical problem whatever.

(Note: our society has been going further and further way from this ethical standard over the past century, with disastrous consequences.)</comment>


Columbus ohio might lead the way with driverless cars 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techinsider.io/columbus-ohio-might-lead-the-way-with-driverless-cars-2016-4 <comment><AUTHOR> wonder how it all works. city pays for cars google keeps all the profits. local taxis and uber drivers go out of business...city planning at it's finest. People keep wondering why productivity isn't increasing with all the tech investment...The tech companies keep slurping it up in profits and sloshing it away overseas.</comment>


Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, or Friends: Pick 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/work-sleep-family-fitness-or-friends-pick-3.html <comment><USER2> Get your exercise with friends/family. I can chat and lift weights, walk on a treadmill or do yoga at the same time easily. Not to mention that you can get a lot of callisthenics in during a 5 minute break every couple of hours at work; just wear comfortable clothes and don't be afraid to use the floor space by your desk.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. My college track coach expressed it as social, grades and running: pick 2. Sleep is a requirement or all the rest inevitably fall apart.

Personally I think fitness is not as time consuming as many people make out. I run 5 to 6 hours a week total clocking 40 to 50 miles. Granted running is probably one of the more time efficient forms of training... It's all about minimizing friction for me: run from home or work instead of driving somewhere and choosing my running time to minimize time spent in traffic. It helps a lot that my spouse is also a runner and many of my friends are so that takes care of much if the family/social part...

So 6 hours out of my 112 waking hours does not seem impossible. And most people could cut that in half and stay in decent shape.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sleep, sleep, and sleep. I win.</comment>


Alien life? NASA may announce 'habitable zones' on Saturn moons tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4404840/Nasa-uncovers-alien-habitat-one-Saturn-s-moons.html?ito=social-facebook <comment><USER2> Could you not find a better source than the Daily Fail?

It has less credibility than a child's comic.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/science/saturn-cassini- mo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/science/saturn-cassini-moon- enceladus.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story- heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news)</comment></comment>


Helpdesk Software - <AUTHOR> what you look when it comes to helpdesk software? <comment><AUTHOR> elaborate your answer</comment>


The History of Unix, by Rob Pike [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2NI6t2r_Hs <comment><USER2> This was an absolute treat, and I'd love to see more talks like it.

Huge amount of personality and a long-standing relationship with every topic and person brought up. I'm happy I got to see it. I hope to personally be able to talk about modern equivalents of such amazing topics in the future.

Great voice, great topic, great personality (at least what you can ascertain from a presentation. Worth a listen/viewing.

<comment><USER3> Made me think of Brian Kernighan, another Unix guy who's still kicking and quite engaging. Googling their names together brought up the fact that the two authored a 1999 book named "The Practice of Programming", and then -$30 from my wallet for the impulse buy.

<comment><USER4> They also authored "The Unix Programming Environment".

<comment><USER5> Both are worth every penny.

They showcase delightfully a way of understanding and writing software, a kind of down-to-Earth simplicity aesthetics that is usually ditched in favor of sophistication.

I believe we're mostly past the point of favoring such philosophy (the Go programming language being maybe the most recent attempt, only partially successful at it), as it has fallen short of what the world demands from software, but it remains a very valuable influence.

<comment><USER4> >Both are worth every penny.

Totally agreed. I cut my programming teeth on UPE and the K&R C book (2nd, ANSI edition), among others. I try to model the command-line tools I write on the style shown in those two books (Kernighan is a co-author of both); being doing that for a long time. Here's an example, a tutorial I wrote for IBM developerWorks - I mentioned it in an HN thread a while ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17327807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17327807)

>They showcase delightfully a way of understanding and writing software, a kind of down-to-Earth simplicity aesthetics that is usually ditched in favor of sophistication.

True.

>I believe we're mostly past the point of favoring such philosophy (the Go programming language being maybe the most recent attempt, only partially successful at it), as it has fallen short of what the world demands from software, but it remains a very valuable influence.

Right, and The Go Programming Language book has Kernighan as a co-author too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a fantastic talk.

I think there would be a lot of value in capturing a "History of..." type series from Rob Pike (Alongside other greats).

There is one similar to what I am referring called Web of Stories where they did this with Donald Knuth.

[https://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/93](https://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/93)

</comment><comment><USER7> The first time I saw a Blit/5620 and used one, I was amazed - it was like an alternative development branch of evolutionary development that never fully developed. I might prefer living in that world where it had however.

The fact that I can get several sessions going on at once, with interactive data, is fascinating - and all over a relatively slow serial data link too.

<comment><USER8> This is a feeling you'll experience a lot looking back on the history of computing. Sadly, it appears we live in, if not the darkest timeline, certainly one of the worst.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related:

Unix History:

[https://www.levenez.com/unix/](https://www.levenez.com/unix/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Audio doesn't start until 3:42.

<comment><USER10> I opened this earlier, and it linked to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2NI6t2r_Hs&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2NI6t2r_Hs&feature=youtu.be&t=226) \-- I think a moderator may have 'fixed' it in a really silly way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great talk and quite a few photos of things I had found photos of before.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish he would revive the crabs!

<comment><USER13> I guess this is "the first screensaver?" I doubt it saved any screens, but neither do current screensavers lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Off-topic: Growing up in the late 80's and going to college in 2000's, I've always romanticized about places such as Bell Labs and Xero Parc in terms of their talent pool, innovation and revolutionary ideas. It feels like all the cool stuff happened 30-40 years ago.

What are some of the modern equivalent of such places?

I can think of Boston Dynamics.

<comment><USER15> Amazon, Alphabet, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, SpaceX, etc [1]. Just look at what companies are pumping 10's of billions of R&D dollars into. But, they are doing some very cool things at Google & some of the X bets. I suspect that's why Rob Pike is there today. Personally, SpaceX looks like they are also very much pushing the envelop technically and must be a very cool place to work [2]. By the way, this was a pretty awesome talk. Rob also helped created UTF-8 & Go [3]. Pretty amazing career.

[1] [https://www.recode.net/2018/4/9/17204004/amazon-research- dev...](https://www.recode.net/2018/4/9/17204004/amazon-research-development- rd)

[2] [https://youtu.be/u0-pfzKbh2k?t=19](https://youtu.be/u0-pfzKbh2k?t=19)

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

<comment><USER16> > Amazon, Alphabet, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, SpaceX, etc [1]. Just look at > what companies are pumping 10's of billions of R&D dollars into.

What fundamental research are they pumping money into, regardless of imminent commercial promise? What set Bell Labs apart was the level of fudnamental "Well, we have no idea where this will go, but we can afford to throw some of our monopoly money at it" environment.

<comment><USER17> Xerox Parc fits your question, but the interesting parts of Bell Labs, i.e. the ones we use today (UNIX, C, etc) wasn't any "fundamental research" either.

<comment><USER18> > but the interesting parts of Bell Labs, i.e. the ones we use today (UNIX, C, > etc) wasn't any "fundamental research" either.

What about transistors? Don't we use them today?

<comment><USER17> We do, but that's not the part of Bell Labs people usually reminisce about in a programming context or the era TFA talks about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is it me, or are there 3:42 (three minutes, forty two seconds) of silence at the start of the video?

<comment><USER20> It's a recording of a Google Hangout, which starts recording once the organizer starts the meeting. But then they waited a while for all the participants to join up.</comment></comment>


DIY Flying Hovercraft - <AUTHOR> http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-Me-Motors/Boats-marine/Motorboats/auction-274622678.htm

<comment><USER2> Interesting choice of engine, a turbo fed into a carburetor.</comment>


Hey FCC, don't lock down our routers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/09/hey-fcc-dont-lock-wi-fi-routers/ <comment><USER2> What we need is open wifi router hardware. Unfortunately, the only project I've found seems to be dead.

[http://rooter.is](http://rooter.is)</comment>


Ask HN: What's it like to build Saas business? - <AUTHOR> Recently I had discussion with my 3rd party business partner about idea to build SaaS application suite for SMB. I started digging about everything - feasibility, technical options, requirements, limitations, business models, payment models, etc.
I have found blogpost : https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start-up-you-have-to-give-it-24-months/
I am wondering what are your real world experience? How long it take to build MVP, functional product, get into green numbers? What about further customer support, bug-fixes, security, SLA? Is it worth to spend so much time and effort if i don't have huge savings to focus only on this thing? Especially if my expertise is somewhere else and don't have real-world experience with SaaS operation? (Too much questions in one paragraph) <comment><USER2> I ran two SaaS companies through sale (small-scale both times), consulted in ~20, and spend way too much time talking to other SaaSy folks. Know that you're asking a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string question, because the answers here vary _tremendously_ if you're building a small one-man operation versus building e.g. the next Salesforce.

MVP: The purpose of an MVP is collecting signals of interest that, if you had a better software product available along the forecast vector, people would pay money. MVPs can be as simple as mockups or a few sentences of description if people in your audience already trust you. If you want something which demonstrates core functionality, that can be done in a day to a few weeks.

Functional product: You can reasonably ship code people will pay for in 2~6 weeks on the short end; a lot of people spend much, much longer, either because they're doing it part time, because their product is inherently complicated (e.g. infrastructure), or because (most commonly) they waited too long to ship.

"Getting into the green": Welcome to running a business! You now have to start getting precise about ideas like "green." If you simply mean "product covers its costs", the cost of running a SaaS app is plausibly under $200 a month, so you can very easily cover the costs by selling it to 5 people before launching it. The more interesting question is "How long does it take to get to ~$10k in monthly recurring revenue?", which is generally enough such that you can devote your fulltime effort to the business going forward. The mean time to that milestone among my friends is ~18 months; the shortest ever was almost $30k at the end of ~4 weeks and I took ~4 years to sustainably hit $10k/month myself in one business. (There's a story there.)

* What about further customer support, bug-fixes, security, SLA*

Less trouble than you're modeling them as being. Marketing and sales are hard; if you can successfully sell it to people _and_ build it, none of the above are beyond your capabilities.

 _Is it worth to spend so much time and effort if i don 't have huge savings to focus only on this thing?_

I think the plurality of my friends with SaaS companies started them as side ventures w/o having sufficient savings to buy their full-time attention from day one. This is less common on the investment seeking track, though they have a pack-it-in-if-we-don't-raise-a-seed-round-after-N-weeks built into their model.

<comment><USER3> Hi Patrick. Thanks for the ongoing great info you provide. Do you have any thoughts on how a desktop/native deployment impacts these timeframes or figures?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have not already looked at it, it's probably worth looking at Patio11's (Patrick McKenzie's) website and reading his blog and listening to his podcasts. [http://www.kalzumeus.com/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use light or dark themes when coding? - <AUTHOR> I recently started to like using light themes for my editors. Currently using VS Code and this theme:
https://github.com/tonsky/vscode-theme-alabaster
However I still occasionally enjoy turning on a dark theme with Ayu:
https://github.com/teabyii/vscode-ayu
I read that lighter themes make it easier to process information.
Source: https://www.quora.com/Is-light-or-dark-color-scheme-better-for-programming
I am curious what your thoughts on what the best theme for coding is? What themes are you using? <comment><USER2> I find that a light theme is easier on my eyes, but I also don't have great vision. For instance I have difficulty driving at night.</comment>