ARIN Finally Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2985340/ipv6/arin-finally-runs-out-of-ipv4-addresses.html <comment><USER3> If IP addresses are scarce, why does it not seem to cost me anything to get one? I've had a bunch of online servers that came with a static IP, and an ISP service that came with one, at various times. It seldom seemed to be explicitly priced, and when it was the price was not really something worth considering.

<comment><USER4> Because address allocation is inefficient and it is impractical to address this inefficiency in IPv4.

ARIN is out but your ISP has extras. Why doesn't your ISP sell its extras, since a scarce resource should have monetary value?

 _Routing tables_.

Selling individual IPs off piecemeal isn't practical because routers simply do not have enough RAM to handle the enormous routing tables that would resultantly be necessary in order for packets to find their destinations.

<comment><USER5> I have a hard time seeing how IPv6 solves this problem. If we allocate them all individually, we have a world-shattering routing table problem. If we allocate them in gargantuan blocks, we have the same problem we have now with IPv4 -- we can't reallocate because routing becomes an impossible task. What am I missing? We're certainly not going to get the allocation right by doing it all at the beginning.

<comment><USER4> > What am I missing?

A few things.

There's only 4,294,967,296 addresses in IPv4, so if you hand out giant blocks, you run out quite fast, whereas with 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 you could hand out huge IPv4 /8 sized blocks from now until the heat death of the sun if you wanted to.

But there's more to it than that. Right now only 1/8th of the IPv6 address space is "assigned to the internet", so there's effectively 7/8ths being held in reserve for the foreseable future -- this is partially to accommodate realistic router memory limits in the near term. IPv6 also has a more efficient hierarchical routing scheme than CIDR (which was kind of bolted on to IPv4 after-the-fact), which helps keep router tables from consuming terabytes of RAM. And IPv6 is designed to be more easily renumberable when we _do_ make mistakes with assignments, with a clear separation between subnet prefix all that requires is changing the routing prefix.

At the end of the day, with 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses, handing out too many isn't ever going to be a big worry in the foreseeable lifetime of...anything, really.

<comment><USER6> The fact that only 1/8th is assigned to "the Internet" right now is worrying. After all, we know how that worked out with the 240.0.0.0/4 range in IPv4 - <USER2> was reserved for future use, but was never able to be used because by the time it would have been useful, everything classed it as non-routable. It's a huge swath of addresses that just can't be used.

<comment><USER7> The only solution to that sort of thing is just to be bloody minded.

Make it known from the start that when the currently unallocated blocks are needed they will be used, and if that breaks things for people who have used them already that is their fault and their problem to fix.

<comment><USER6> To be clear, I don't mean that 240.0.0.0/4 isn't able to be globally routable because everybody's using it for their own private stuff. I mean that 240.0.0.0/4 isn't routable _at all_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We just did an internal migration to some ipv6 for some of our internal code so we could communicate with sites that use ipv6...

Long story short, it was hard. Required custom lib recompilations, etc.

I don't have all the details but it was significantly harder than I originally thought.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_countdown.html](https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_countdown.html) Looks like 9 /24's remain

<comment><USER10> Considering there were once hundreds of millions kicking around and being handed out like candy, having about two thousand left is basically nothing.

It's like saying the grocery store isn't cleaned out, there's still a single jar of peanut butter left.

<comment><USER11> My current company has maybe 100 left to sell virtual server hosting with. Sometime in the next year this fact will reach management and we'll be going on a harvesting spree to reclaim them from elsewhere. All of which is ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's worth noting that APNIC, LACNIC, and RIPE all ran out of IPv4 addresses years ago (2011, 2014, 2012, respectively). Although, by the definition of exhaustion those organizations used (roughly "someone requested a block that we couldn't fulfill), ARIN ran out seweral months ago.

What this announcement really amounts to is "we cannot give out anymore IPv4 addresses." ARIN lists just 9 /24 blocks. By contrast, RIPE bottomed out at about .8 of a /8--about 6000 times the current ARIN IPv4 address pool. RIPE, for example, hit its . By contrast, ARIN is at 9 /24s.

</comment><comment><USER13> Require payment of $1 per year per public IP, and suddenly wastrels like the Apple class A will be available again...

<comment><USER4> IANA was allocating at a rate of 2 /8s _per month_ right before they ran out.

Recovering an /8 would take staggeringly more effort than it is worth in terms of how little it fills existing demand.

There is no scheme that will make IPv4 work in the long-term. The mathematics are very simple. You cannot fill demand for exponentially more than 4 billion numbers with a pool of only 4 billion numbers.

<comment><USER13> I think you mean /24?

<comment><USER14> Nope. They've been allocating at least several /24's per day even since getting down to their last /8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While it's sad that there are so many large and unused blocks (Apple, DoD, etc), whats worse is the disgraceful adoption of IPv6 by ISP's.

<comment><USER16> Despite all the hate that Comcast (deservedly) gets, they do bring IPv6 to my apartment. Good on them for being on the ball.

<comment><USER17> > Despite all the hate that Comcast (deservedly) gets, they do bring IPv6 to > my apartment. Good on them for being on the ball.

Which would be great if everyone was running IPv6 - however my experiences is that some IPv6->IPv4 tunnels break some protocols (like T-Mobile's IPv6->IPv4 tunnel - I have to use IPv4 because their tunnel appears to break SIP connections. I'm not sure if they did that on purpose for suspect reasons. And of course - they don't make this easy...).

<comment><USER18> No, SIP is a terrible protocol so things will often break unintentionally. A lot of NATs also try to "fixup" the breakage and make it worse.

<comment><USER17> > No, SIP is a terrible protocol so things will often break unintentionally.

I use Asterisk and I've never had random problems with SIP. All my problems have been due to network (such as firewalls or network disconnected) or client implementations. I've found this article which makes me laugh [1]:

> The solution is remarkably easy!

If it's so easy - why doesn't he create an RFC proposal for a SIP 2.0?

SIP isn't the only protocol that isn't flawless. FTP and VPN comes to mind.

But here is an article that states exactly what I said and experienced [2]:

> SIP works fine in either an IPv4-only or IPv6-only environment, but issues > arise in a mixed environment.

[1] [http://www.talkingpointz.com/why-sip- sucks](http://www.talkingpointz.com/why-sip-sucks)

[2] [http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/can-sip-and- ipv6-...](http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/can-sip-and-ipv6-co- exist/d/d-id/1233831)?

<comment><USER18> Yes, FTP has an atrociously bad design. The difference is that SIP wasn't made in the early 80s, so what's their excuse? VPNs typically do OK, except IPSec because the IETF didn't want to admit that NAT existed (though I believe they cleaned that up with an add-on and things are mostly fine now.) As an end- user, hopefully your implementors have solved most problems for ya. As an implementor, SIP is a curse. (HTTP, which SIP drew its nutty parsing rules from, recently ditched the entire format in preference of a binary format. Not related to the IP-embedding-galore that SIP added, but still interesting to note.)

SIP does not "work fine" in an IPv4 only environment, as any NAT user will attest to. It _can_ , by ignoring the RFC and hoping that no middleware gets involved. (Middleware only gets involved because the RFC makes it a juicy target.)

<comment><USER17> > VPNs typically do OK

Assuming the network administrator has configured his router for VPN pass through [1].

> SIP does not "work fine" in an IPv4 only environment, as any NAT user will > attest to.

Seems to work fine for me. The built in SIP client for Android works great in IPv4 both NAT and non-NAT. However, it seems to have some issues with IPv6 (not surprised due to the lack of feedback on the Android bug tracker...). Zoiper on the other hand will work through pretty much anything you throw at it.

I'm not saying SIP is perfect - but my experiences with SIP have been generally positive with Asterisk. Now I'm also in control of Asterisk and can tweak the configuration - I'm sure a lot of canned SIP systems are completely broken.

[1] [http://www.tp-link.us/FAQ-558.html](http://www.tp-link.us/FAQ-558.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For the normal users out there. What are the implications? Is this simply IPs being reserved for servers on the internet?

<comment> ju-st One implication is that you may not get a real IPv4 address anymore. So your cable/DSL connection will be behind a Carrier grade NAT ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier- grade_NAT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT) ) which breaks applications and causes problems for your internet provider (technical complexity), for software developers (implementation of workarounds for CGNs) and for you, because you suffer the consequences.

Also, more expensive IP addresses raise the barrier to entry for new competitiors, so your internet connection may get more expensive.

<comment><USER13> The cost of entry argument is specious because everyone has the same variable cost.

The real cause of lack of competition is the cost of physical access.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are at least a million IPv4 not in use here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks#List_of_assigned_.2F8_blocks)

Possibly 100+ million.

What the frack does Halliburton need with 16 million IP addresses?

On that note, US Department of Defense apparently does not just consume most of the US budget, it also consumes over 210 MILLION ip addresses.

There are also a quarter billion ip addresses in the E block, which is probably easier to reprogram all routers than get all consumer devices to support ipv6 properly.

<comment><USER21> I was a sysadmin for a division of Halliburton for over a decade (until this past January) and word came down the pipe that they were going to retire/give- back 134.132.x (owned by Landmark Graphics subsidiary) and work on moving off 10.x in the next few years.

Keep in mind that a lot of these allocations were made in the 80s and 90s when nobody worried about running out of IPv4 addresses; in addition I saw what we paid to ARIN every year just to "have" 10.x and it was an insane amount (I remember it being more than my yearly salary).

<comment><USER22> You paid for using 10.0.0.0/8? Am I reading this correctly?

<comment><USER23> Possibly meant 11/8 which has been abused as an extension of 10/8.

<comment><USER21> Typo; I meant 18.104.22.168/8.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BangleJS open source smartwatches – experience of usage - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rfox.eu/en/Improvements/The_Most_Personal_Device_experiment/BangleJS_opensource_smartwatches.html <comment><USER2> As someone who kickstarted this, I unfortunately agree with the disappointments. I spent a reasonable amount of time wrestling with the device, but there were just too many holes in the experience to justify using it daily.

I think that 98% of the let-down is the fault of the hardware. It is cheap, bulky, and was missing the speaker when it was delivered to the creator, which shows just how much care and attention went into the manufacturer's quality control.

That said, I have absolutely no regrets in funding this. Gordon Williams does a bunch of things that I would never be able to replicate, and while this one fell a little short of expectations, everything is absolutely above board, and can only hope that the meagre profits from this fund future successes.

And as watch software goes, is a little clunky, but not irredeemably so. It would make for an excellent starting point. If I can ever find decent programmable hardware to pair with it, I would be seriously tempted to hack at it again.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was about to buy one of those but I was skeptical about the whole concept behind. I didn't find any solid docs and source code and dropped it. It looks shady...</comment>


Ask HN: people outside the USA, will NSA issues help your economies? - <AUTHOR>

I am just curious. I live in the USA, and I worry that the so-called "Patriot Act" and NSA issues on privacy will hurt our economy.<p>Turning this around, do people in vibrant tech communities outside of the USA see this as an opportunity? <comment><USER2> Right now, non-US based cloud services are using the PATRIOT Act as a way of selling themselves ([http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/12/patriot-act- and-p...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/12/patriot-act-and-privacy- laws-take-a-bite-out-of-us-cloud-business/)). As an example from that article:

 _BAE Systems had ditched Microsoft Office 365 over PATRIOT Act concerns, because Microsoft could not guarantee the company 's data wouldn't leave Europe._

Also, you may not have heard of FATCA, but it's hurting business for Americans outside the US. I'm an American living in Paris and I was approached about an executive level position at a company that really wanted me because I'm an expert in my field. However, due to the nature of the position, I'd have signing authority over this company's accounts. This triggers FATCA laws which would compel this _European_ company with _no_ US business to spend a lot of money preparing financial statements to turn over to the IRS. The exposure and cost outweighed the benefits of hiring me. I'm not the only American abroad whose been screwed this way thanks to US laws. The laws are designed to catch rich tax dodgers, but they wind up punishing a bunch of innocent Americans like myself (I'm a very far cry from rich).

On top of that, many Americans abroad are now losing banking services due to FATCA ([http://www.overseas-exile.com/2012/07/ing-france-turning- awa...](http://www.overseas-exile.com/2012/07/ing-france-turning-away-us- customers.html)), meaning that for many Americans abroad, it's getting very hard to do any sort of business at all. Eduardo Saverin, the Facebook cofounder who famously gave up his US citizenship strongly hinted that this was blocking his business opportunities, so like some Americans abroad, you're faced with giving up your US citizenship or giving up your business. Not a fun choice.

 _TL;DR_ : Americans abroad are getting squeezed out of business opportunities thanks to FATCA and American businesses abroad are losing customers due the PATRIOT Act. If you're in business, it's a rough time to be a US expat and all the business opportunities we lose are going to foreign companies. Thanks, Congress!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Ovid - that is interesting about FATCA - I had never heard of that.

<comment><USER2> You're welcome.

Most Americans back home (we expats often call them "homelanders") have never heard of FATCA. It was a law recently passed which stated that every foreign financial institution (FFI) had to turn over information to the IRS about American customers. Never mind that this was often in violation of their country's privacy laws and expensive as hell to implement. It also had a wide variety of other consequences which have eventually led to many FFIs referring to Americans as "toxic assets" and refusing to do business with us.

I have more background in a variety of articles I've written about it: [http://www.overseas-exile.com/search/label/fatca](http://www.overseas- exile.com/search/label/fatca)

It's still wonderful to be an expat and see the world, but if you get caught up in the IRS mess, life can become hell.</comment></comment></comment>


Bounce Rate: Sexiest Web Metric Ever? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2007/06/bounce_rate_sexiest_web_metric.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know if this is based on unique visits in Google analytics? You wouldn't want the same visitor contributing multiple times to the bounce rate (e.g., by checking the stats on a page every day say).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also see:

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=ppgfjo6IIf4></comment>


The 2-step trick to getting sweet-ass job referrals - <AUTHOR> http://www.humbledmba.com/the-trick-to-getting-a-sweet-ass-job-referral

<comment><USER2> _I'm thinking in the back of my head: go figure out what you want, and then come back when I can actually be helpful. But what I tell her is this:

Sounds good. I'll let you know if I hear of anything.

And I won't. She won't pop into my head again._

I know you need to let people figure out their lives on their own, but if nobody is blunt with this person what chance does she have of moving past this? Shouldn't he just have said what he was thinking in the back of his head?

<comment><USER3> Totally agree. What she needs is guidance and he could have provided it to her with an honest opinion. Why not speak your mind?

<comment><USER4> I agree. He gave up way too easily with her and then places the blame on her.

If someone is seeking guidance from you, then guide them. If you can't, tell them why. If you can but aren't willing, then don't offer guidance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the real answer here is to stand out. She's spectacular, but doesn't market herself well because she's good at everything and doesn't give him an easy hook.

There's something weird about this situation, though. Why is she asking him for job referrals when he obvious doesn't know anything personal about her? He doesn't know anything that she likes or dislikes... This might as well be their first meeting. (And might have been!) Sounds more like a recruiter than a friend.

But it's not a recruiter, because a recruiter would just submit her to anything that even slightly matches... Which for her is everything.

So while I think the advice is good and on-target, I think there's a pretty small window of usability.

<comment><USER6> > _I think the real answer here is to stand out..._

That's the opinion the author is rebutting here, and I agree with him. It's not enough to just stand out. You have to tell people how you stand out, and what you want. Narrow your scope, have high standards. Of all the things you've done in the past, pick the one or two things you liked the absolute best and pursue whatever it was that made those things awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you run a business, the same point (clarity of focus) is specifically applicable for receiving client referrals as well. I'm in a fairly broad industry (business coaching) and I have colleagues who, variously, work with businesses from solopreneurs to listed multi-nationals, across countless industries, 27 countries (and counting), and on projects that range from cashflow management to cultural purpose and intent. I can, and have, helped businesses with all of that myself.

But if I asked you for a referral and told you I was looking for a business of any size in any industry in any country that needed any guidance, how many would come to mind? Zero, or at least none that you felt were specific enough to refer to me. In fact, you probably wouldn't refer to me because it sounds like I'm saying I can do everything and that's probably (and actually) not true.

Alternatively: "I am looking for young, energetic business owners in London, turning over £2M-£20M per annum and looking to grow by learning from someone else's experience".

How many come to mind now? Probably still none, especially if you're not in London. But for the people who can make the right referral for me, the specific definition of my ideal client makes it easier to understand who I want an introduction to, and for them to make that introduction.

So whether for a job or your next client, I whole-heartedly agree that knowing what you ideally want and being able to articulate that will lead to results.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Maybe if someone in the next 2 days randomly asks me if I know anyone in > online marketing looking to make a jump.

My agency is looking for a talented strategist who has the flexibility to work on a number of different accounts across industries. Feel free to pass along my info (in profile).

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh man, the first thing I thought was of the KXCD comic <http://xkcd.com/37/>

<comment><USER6> Referrals for sweet ass-jobs would be another type of blog post I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I watched the Steve Jobs 1997 Keynote chat this week and he again defined focus, which the subject in that post is lacking. Jobs (paraphrasing): "People think focusing means saying 'Yes.' No. Focus means saying 'No.'"

<comment><USER11> I love Jobs' advice to Nike's CEO: _"Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I call BS. If she's asking for help, help. Figure out a way to help. I'm the same way. I'm industry agnostic and have worked in both large and small companies. When I talk to recruiters or friends looking for intros the ones that sit and talk to me for more than 2 minutes get a good idea what the types of projects I'm looking for.

By limiting myself to a certain industry (finance for example) I might miss out on a completely perfect project in BioTech or something. If I say 'small' companies, something in a big company might be skipped over because of it.

OP should have asked more question to find out what 'type' of work she likes and gone from there instead of dismissing her as unfocused or hasn't figured out what she wants.

<comment><USER13> The point of this post isn't to judge how he handled the situation. His handling of the situation is a framing device for advice about how to ask for job referrals. Comments like this muddy the waters; his advice is obviously correct.

<comment><USER14> I agree. The point of this article is to refute the belief that a broad and open field of employment interests will increase your chances of finding a job. The reality is that a refined interest is better. Same goes for job postings; it's better to pick a company and hone in than it is to blanket resumes across a number of potential employers.

<comment><USER12> I will agree 100% regarding the job postings. 'Carpet bombing' companies rarely works. However the same doesn't always apply to dealing a recruiters and/or friends, your reality isn't everyones.

I'm only expressing that there is validity to not narrowing your interests, fields or industries and that dismissing someone out of hand because they are 'unfocused' is just as bad and unhelpful as dismissing someone because they don't have a degree. (an entirely different conversation)

<comment><USER13> There is value in being wide open to opportunities, but there is no value in being wishy-washy when asking for a referral.

You are imagining every conceivable conversation you could have with someone in a position to help you network for a job, and searching for something that breaks the pattern of "being specific and actionable". Lo and behold, there are cases where "specific and actionable" doesn't fit! For instance, if you're asking for advice about what kinds of roles fit your skills and interests, maybe you don't want to lock the conversation down to a specific title.

But that has nothing to do with _asking for referrals_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of the classic "What Color is Your Parachute?" which I cheerfully recommend to all. One-sentence summary: You have to have a particular goal in order to achieve it, and boldness and politeness are of the utmost importance along the way.

</comment><comment><USER16> IMHO: don't see no problem or valuable advice in the post above. If you are really interested in helping person, you will explain the need for specifics. If not, you'll give an answer you gave.

Move on, nothing to see here.</comment>


Ask HN: Can media stop live broadcasts? - <AUTHOR> Or are they required by law to conduct it? https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/the-media-must-stop-live-broadcasting-trumps-dangerous-destructive-coronavirus-briefings/2020/03/21/b8a2a440-6b7c-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html <comment><USER2> its thier equipment they can shut it off if they want but that would be promoting ignorance of the total situation, and thats where despots will thrive

<comment><AUTHOR> But today increasing the despots are living via media - twitter, Facebook and major news outlets. Basically in this case his physical rallies stopped but he is continuing the same by having daily live sessions. Berating news reporters and media outlets and getting away with which strengthens himself in the eyes of his followers thst he is the chosen one

In other words if nobody could hear him or very very few people could hear them then the damage would be that less right?

<comment><USER2> yes that means we can see and hear the situation.

if people cant see smoke and mirrors right in front of them, thats unfortunate, without media coverage those who can see what is happening wouldnt see the problem developing, it would just suddenly show up on your doorstep

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> No one taking into account he runs the Emergency Broadcast System. He can still get his message out.</comment>


Neuroscientists create interactive model of word-to-brain-region mapping - <AUTHOR> http://gallantlab.org/huth2016/ <comment><USER2> To anybody who is only in for the visualization: This study may show that word embeddings (like word2vec) are a fundamental feature of the representation of semantics in the human brain.</comment>


Pedestal: An open source tool set for building web applications in Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://pedestal.io/

<comment><USER2> How does this compare to compojure or other clojure web frameworks?</comment>


Catholic church launches 'Confession' iPhone app - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12391129

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, dchs, but this is neither hackerly nor even newsworthy. This app is barely a step above the laminated cards posted outside confessionals in most Catholic churches.

Here's a direct link to the app: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/confession-a- roman-catholic/i...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/confession-a-roman- catholic/id416019676?mt=8&ls=1)

Any practicing Catholic would know this stuff cold by adolescence. A worrisome "feature" is "password protected profiles." You'd better choose a secure password, or anyone who steals your iPhone will have (even more) blackmail material on you.</comment>


Show HN: Where Do My Taxes Go? - <AUTHOR> https://wheredomytaxesgo.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Jacob here from WhereDoMyTaxesGo.

I started learning to code on January 1st, 2018 and this is my first real site that i've built without any tutorials or help - just figuring it out as I went!

Two years ago, this idea came out of a barroom debate on how much tax money gets split up between different governmental departments. Fast forward to today, and WhereDoMyTaxesGo is a cool little web app that takes your gross income and the state you live in, calculates a rough amount of taxes you pay, and then shows you how much of your tax dollars get dolled out to each government department in the proposed 2019 budget.

I know it's not quite perfect, but for a first product to put out there, I think it's pretty fun! I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have and am excited to hear what you all think!

<comment><USER2> Can you provide the feature to order by highest to lowest percentage. I used to love showing people another site that did this in aggregate (deadpooled atm) and it was clear the US spent most of its money on old people (Medicare) and war (Defense) and the paltry amount spent on Education, Science and Infrastructure was much more clearly showing how our money is spent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea! I'll add it to my improvements list! I mad it alphabetical thinking it would be easier to look up a particular department, but I agree, a numerical sorting would be nice too.</comment></comment></comment>


Eye Intelligence dossier: China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/bombshell-dossier-lays-out-case-against-chinese-bat-virus-program/news-story/55add857058731c9c71c0e96ad17da60 <comment><AUTHOR> Archive incase of paywall:

[http://archive.is/fU3JZ](http://archive.is/fU3JZ)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the difference here?  (HP and Apple multitouch) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/touchsmart/index.html?jumpid=re_r138/091013xc/TouchSmart%20PC

<comment><AUTHOR> Really, why is it that this:

[http://www.hp.com/united- states/campaigns/touchsmart/index.h...](http://www.hp.com/united- states/campaigns/touchsmart/index.html?jumpid=re_r138/091013xc/TouchSmart%20PC)

caused so much less of a splash than this?

<http://www.apple.com/ipad/>

It's a given that Apple is better at marketing. But what else? I can envision doing some serious work on the HP devices.

<comment><USER2> I think marketing and a focused message. With the iPad, you know Apple is going to iterate until it gets the experience right. As a consumer and developer, you're willing to invest your time to learn the product or develop applications for it. With HP, you're not sure if it's a novelty item that they'll cut next quarter.</comment></comment>


What salary/equity do I ask for? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> So, let's say this is all "theoretical" for now. A startup in CA (Stanford or Palo Alto likely) wants to fly me over to discuss salary/equity. They gave me a demo of their product and I think it has a lot of potential.

Here's my situation: I'm a college student (sophomore), been writing websites in html since age 9, very comfortable with many open, web-based languages, and very skilled in graphic design and marketing. I have most Adobe/Macromedia programs down. I would also be the first 'employee' at this startup (would prefer a co-founder position, but I'm not sure if it's reasonable to negotiate on that level).

I've calculated it may cost me $2,000 a month to get a studio apartment. Aside from that, I'll have to start paying my financial aid 6 months after leaving school. Does anyone know what ballpark number I should be negotiating under?

<comment><USER2> I'd suggest asking for 90% of a first-year salary for CS majors in the area (I'm guessing $55k or so?), plus 5% equity. Take it from there. You might get beat up on the 5% but if you're employee #1 it sounds reasonable.

Think hard though about leaving school. Not saying it's a bad idea, just think it through.

<comment><USER3> It would have to be one heck of a sweet deal to justify quitting school for, especially if you're getting parental support. Startups base their decisions on your demonstrable talent; everyone else looks at credentials. If the startup fails (80% chance, on average), not having the credential will be a liability.

I wouldn't take an employee position at a company (startup or no) in the bay area for under $100,000, and it would have to be pretty sweet to get me to accept that. For a startup, it would have to be people I really liked on top of that, because I don't put in 80-hour weeks for money alone.

And if you have parental support, quitting to take a job may well mean that that support never comes back in quite the same way, and finishing school, if you ever do, will be on your dime. And college is a lot more fun when you're 19 and carefree than when you're 30something and wondering if it justifies the tuition.

It's your call, though; this is one of those decisions that has the possibility of being something you later regret no matter which way you decide. Think long and hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's very little parental support on this ;) My parents are the "get a degree, work for the rest of your life" type. If it were up to them, I'd live 5 minutes away from home for the rest of their lives.

School isn't very exciting, honestly. Most of the stuff they teach you early on is useful, but after that, they just drill down into very specific applications of certain things, in regards to programming and business. That stuff isn't too relevant to what I'd want to do, I'm finding, and it makes the coursework much less engaging and interesting.

<comment><USER3> Do _not_ make the mistake of confusing _school_ with _classes_. (Or the _education_ with the _degree,_ another common mistake.)

You have more free time now than you probably ever will again. You have incredible resources all around you -- libraries, books, computers, professors, other students. The cost of living is low, and you can easily get student loans and grants to cover it, and you have few to no other financial commitments. As soon as you leave the school bubble, all of that changes.

 _Classes_ are just the excuse to be there, and if you play your cards right they won't take up more than a quarter of your time.

<comment><USER4> "You have more free time now than you probably ever will again."

I haven't found that to be the case. I have much more time available to work on my own projects than I did in college. Perhaps not in absolute terms, but in terms of usable get-code-out-there blocks.

In college, I found that homework always got Parkinson's-Lawed so it took up _all_ my available time. Either I was actively doing homework, or I was procrastinating on homework and couldn't justify working on other productive projects instead. Plus, available time in college tends to get broken up into 1-2 hour blocks between classes, after activities, before dinner, while waiting for friends to go out to a party, etc.

Now that I'm working, I have significantly less actual free time, but everything I have is _mine_. There's no work to take home, nothing hanging over my head when I'm not at work. And it's generally in large chunks, too. It does kinda suck not having a social life, but it does leave decent-sized blocks available for a startup.

<comment><USER5> Try adding a wife and some kids and report back!

<comment><USER4> Lack of a social life takes care of that one. ;-)

<comment><USER5> I forgot you are a geek! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I Took a Couple Years Off of Work to Swing Trade. Here's What Happened - <AUTHOR> https://theascent.pub/i-took-a-couple-years-off-of-work-to-swing-trade-heres-what-happened-fbaa53087f3 <comment><USER2> "A lot of people have flipped a coin 10 times and had it come up heads only 4-6 times, but I had it come up heads a full 7 times, so clearly I have an extremely proficient coin flipping technique. Sit down and listen to me discuss the wrist exercises I did!"

A lot of people have tried to do what the author did and lost all their money. He recounts how he lost tons of money on different occasions. He says it's been bad for his mental health. He freely admits that much of the limited success he did have was luck, and mentions that doing it during a bull market made everything much easier. But even so he product calculates that, once he mastered this skill hes...

...failed to beat the market. Ouch.

For anyone who skimmed the article (which spends about 90% of it's length talking up "swing trading" and making it sound like the author thinks it's a great idea), make sure you read to the end:

> So what should you do with your time instead of mastering swing trading? > Find what you really want to do with your life that adds value to the world, > and get to work!

Quite right. (Well, assuming for the sake of argument that swing trading is actually a thing, and that it's something that can be mastered.)

<comment><USER3> What's swing trading ? Is that like day trading where you try to buy low and sell high on small fluctuations ?

<comment><USER4> It's like day trading, in that _it's total nonsense._ Reading tea leaves of patterns in charts of 'cup and handle', 'double top', 'flags and pennants' is what your gut tells you. It's astrology, dowsing, EVP -- our brains' amazing ability finding patterns in noise.

Once in a while, someone lucks out, or at least enough to turn it into a proselytizing grift. Y'know, like writing and selling a few thousand copies of an Amazon book or making a youtube series (totally something a successful investor would do!) Looks like this guy bought into it -- pity him!

> Being frugal, I still wanted to dabble with money-making opportunities at my > disposal.

> Swing trading was one option, so I tried it.

> As a business teacher, I already knew a lot about trading and personal > finance.

I can't believe these three sentences occurred in sequence. This man is a caricature of a Dunning-Kruger profile. Even a "frugal" "business teacher" succumbs to the lure of magical get-rich-quick thinking! I doubt he would have much pity if his own students indulged in such willful stupidity...

So heed exactly zero of his foolish advice -- it's a litany of what not to do in investing. Save for the warning not to pursue this folly.

Also note: the hottest version of this scam is in bitcoin: [https://uk.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/JwruXpQx-Head-and- sh...](https://uk.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/JwruXpQx-Head-and-shoulders- pattern/)

<comment><USER5> > succumbs to the lure of magical get-rich-quick thinking!

When it works, it works. Is it gambling? Probably no more so than ISOs.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/80e7x2/the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/80e7x2/the_big_long_made_25_million_in_january_off_100k/) (/r/wallstreetbets | The Big Long - Made $2.5 million in January off $100k options investment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > A few years into swing trading, and I can say I learned a lot. I've made > more than I've lost. I'm up about 16% ROI year to date.

The article was published December 15th 2017, so he made 16% since January 1st.

If he had bought the S&P500 on January 1st 2017 (2276.98) and sold on December 15th (2675.81) he'd be up > 17.5% (and who knows how much he paid in commissions).

<comment><USER7> Not to mention how much it cost in time to do all that work. Index funds don't incur any opportunity cost overhead in terms of your own time, they are fire and forget.

<comment><USER8> This! I am convinced that with a lot of careful work, you can beat the market a little. But to do so, you've got to work at it more than full time. To get paid for your time, you've got to be working with a ton of money so that a 1-2% beat gives you a good salary.

Otherwise, just invest in the major indices, diversify your portfolio so that it's appropriate for your current and future needs, and do something else with your life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Being frugal, I still wanted to dabble with money-making opportunities at my > disposal.

That... does not sound frugal to me. Frugal is working some part-time job during your time off, keeping your expenses low, and maintaining your savings, not gambling in the stock market.

<comment><USER9> Being frugal has nothing to do with one's income. Your advice to work a part- time job is no less irrelevant to frugality than his to engage in other ventures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've done some trading (2010-2014 was probably when I did the most) and played poker full time, among other things. Profitable at both. The only problem is that's it's tough on your mental health, stress levels, and while it's easy enough to be profitable (my education was in economics which is a great background for both activities), it's tough to be more profitable than a decent full-time job while also growing your bankroll if you start with a modest amount. I probably could have kept it up if I lived somewhere with a very low cost of living or was willing to give up my lifestyle, but in the end I decided the stress wasn't worth it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I read an analysis of technical trading that demonstrated that the theoretical best return is buy-and-hold in a bull market, and only do technical trading in a down market.

[1] [http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2016/01/gtt/](http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2016/01/gtt/)

<comment><USER12> It's bullshit. There's no reliable way to time the market. Horoscopes would be just as accurate as predicting recessions as pseudo-intellectual articles like this.

<comment><USER13> You don't need to time the market though. People act as if traders go all in on every stock purchase betting everything. That's not how it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you are engineer there are better use of your time than trading.

I say from experience lost a good chunk, learned a good chunk but most importantly lost my mind in the process. Thankfully woke up after few months and realized what harm I was doing.

I certainly learned a lot about business, capital markets and common life patterns.

<comment><USER15> What does common life patterns mean?

<comment><USER14> Momentum is the number #1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's terrible for your mental health, that's for sure.

</comment><comment><USER17> it takes at least 4-5 years to become a profitable trader. 1-2 years is nothing. just to learn the mechanics it will take couple of years.

<comment><USER18> This exactly. It's like starting a business, more so, a bootstrapped business. You have to make sacrifices to achieve your goal. You probably would need to spend 16-18 hours a day testing all the different ways you can find your edge. It's a never ending cycle as well, so once it starts to work, you have to keep refining it. The first few years are pretty challenging but when it pays, it pays. Many businesses fail, similarly, many traders fail as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> it takes at least 4-5 years to become a profitable trader.</comment>


AT&T Is Dragging HBO's Streaming Strategy Out of the Dark Ages - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-07/at-t-is-dragging-hbo-s-streaming-strategy-out-of-the-dark-ages <comment><USER2> My problem with this is as follows:

HBO has led the way in making some of the highest quality television of the last 20 years. Competition has gotten stiffer, but I still view HBO as the premier place for TV (Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City, Curb, Veep, Leftovers, True Detective, Deadwood... and of course GoT, the list goes on and on). I would argue many of our favorite broadcast/cable shows would simply not exist if HBO hadn't gone there first.

They've had some duds, and certainly have a lot of small-audience niche TV, but for the most part it's a premium quality that I'm willing to pay for.

I'm reading through the lines a bit and here is what I see in the article:

"More content, faster, cheaper."

This isn't about an outdated streaming strategy, HBO Go/Now are fine.

If they race to compete with Netflix (dropping price, increasing output), who is quite literally shitting out content every day, the overall quality of HBO will decline greatly. Netflix started with premiere TV (House of Cards) but has evolved into a massive mess of content, rarely of which any really captures my attention anymore.

Unfortunately, as the money machine needs to be fed, I 100% see HBO slowly turning into a content factory, and quality is going to fall off.

I hope in 3-5 years to come back to this comment and laugh at how wrong I was, but I feel pretty certain about an upcoming quality drop from what was once the bellwether of high quality entertainment.

<comment><USER3> We're in a golden age of television in part because everyone is producing high-quality shows. For every Deadwood, there's a Justified; True Detective, a Mindhunter. HBO has never been the best place for comedy series and, good as Crashing was, it remains an also-ran there as well.

HBO's quality has been pretty far off its peak for awhile. GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good (it's no The Wire). Deadwood and the Sopranos are from a different era of TV. Veep is great, but True Detective, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, Enlightened, and The Newsroom would all be in the middle of the pack at Netflix.

More importantly than what Netflix itself creates is the fact that everyone else is creating great TV, and Netflix can just license it. The Americans is better than anything HBO ever produced except The Wire, and it's an FX show. So are Atlanta and Better Things, both better than any HBO comedy series other than Veep. AMC has Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, which arguably are the best thing ever done on TV.

The Deuce is great, but if I have to choose between paying for one show of that caliber per month, or just getting access to stuff like Counterpart, Legion, Get Shorty, Halt and Catch Fire, and Fargo, it's pretty obvious where I'm getting my money's worth.

Which is the big dilemma with HBO's previous strategy. There is too much content that clears the bar HBO set available outside of HBO for them to charge a premium, unless they can keep bottling lightning like they did with GoT, which is not at all a sure bet.

<comment><USER4> > GoT is a tentpole show with a rabid audience but it's not especially good > (it's no The Wire). Deadwood and the Sopranos are from a different era of > TV. Veep is great, but True Detective, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, > Enlightened, and The Newsroom would all be in the middle of the pack at > Netflix.

As The Dude once said "Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man"

Objectively speaking, there isn't a single Netflix-original TV show rated over 9 on IMDB: [https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/netflix/tv- shows?ratin...](https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/netflix/tv- shows?rating_imdb=9)

Compared to 7 titles on HBO: [https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/hbo- now/tv-shows?ratin...](https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/hbo-now/tv- shows?rating_imdb=9)

But I think your point is that when we're talking about "The Wire" level production, others have caught up (AMC, FX, etc) and Netflix can simply license those titles. But, there's notable downsides to that (you have to wait, there's a significant cost to purchase, etc). Also, AMC, FX, etc have yet to establish a long-term credibility for consistently creating high quality content...until they do, HBO as the "premium offering" in light of others is still there.

At the end of the day we're talking about whether HBO's content can sustain the justification of paying $15/month. You just need rabid audiences for that to happen, not "one dude on the internet thinks The Wire is greatest thing ever created".

<comment><USER5> How many of those HBO titles are more than 5 years old? Because, comparing 45 years of programming to 5 is completely missing the point.

GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material. Recently HBO's actual original content has been lacking. Their library is enough to get people to sign up and binge watch old content, but they need to pay for a lot of 3rd party content and or high volume production like Netflix to keep people paying 15$ a month.

In the end streaming needs new content to keep people paying every month. And the economics of that are going to be brutal.

<comment><USER6> > How many of those HBO titles are more than 5 years old? Because, comparing > 45 years of programming to 5 is completely missing the point.

No, having 45 years of exclusive back catalog is a real and concrete competitive advantage.

> GoT was low hanging fruit with great source material.

I'm not sure I agree; I mean, I get why it seems like they in retrospect, but the history of genre fiction jumping from print to film (whether big screen or small) is littered with dozens of corpses of failures of conversions of "great source material" for every even modest success.

> Their library is enough to get people to sign up and binge watch old > content, but they need to pay for a lot of 3rd party content and or high > volume production like Netflix to keep people paying 15$ a month.

I pay for both HBO Now and Netflix, and I pay of HBO Now largely because it has fairly consistent if low volume high quality new original exclusive content, unlike Netflix's high-volume firehose of stuff I have no interest in that occasionally produces something of value, which even with their supposedly personalized recommendations is still hard to find and identify among the sea of mediocrity.

> In the end streaming needs new content to keep people paying every month.

So did premium TV. HBO is more focussed on providing very high quality to a more focussed audience while Netflix is running a scattershot content approach; the latter probably has less value per customer but can perhaps support a larger customer base; or it's a consciously unsustainable model that only lasts until they figure out what their target audience really is.

EDIT: however, AT&T seems to want to try something closer to the Netflix strategy with HBO, which I think is likely to be a disaster, but possibly one that gets recognized in time to turn around.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that last argument is true. Yes, Netflix has a shotgun approach to picking content. But Netflix has core prestige series that hold their own against HBO, and HBO has middling series that go nowhere; the only difference is that Netflix has _more_ stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I personally have not found the UX of HBO's streaming offerings (I use HBO GO, primarily through an iPad and a PS4) to be appreciably worse than Netflix's. The apps load and are straightforward to find my way around in, I can always find the content I'm looking for, I've never had any technical issues prevent me from streaming that content.

In some regards, I would even say their UX is _better_ than Netflix's -- scrolling through a list of items in the HBO apps doesn't trigger a parade of loud auto-playing videos, and HBO doesn't visually privilege their own original content over stuff they've licensed by giving it huge icons and putting it at the top of every list.

The article mentions that HBO couldn't handle the streaming demand for _Game of Thrones_ in 2014, which is pretty bad, but which was also _five years ago._ It doesn't mention them having problems like that anymore, so it seems reasonable to assume they learned something from the experience.

If anything, I would say HBO's biggest failure is in marketing/branding: naming their offering for cable subscribers "HBO GO" and the one for cord- cutters "HBO NOW" is an invitation for confusion, and the logos/icons for the apps are so similar anyone could be forgiven for downloading the wrong one. They need to distinguish these services better, and provide some incentive to use HBO Now to attract people like me who are getting HBO through their cable company to jump to having a direct relationship with them instead.

<comment><USER8> There's also the DirecTV Now app, which gets bundled with some AT&T mobile plans, and the UX there is much worse than in HBO Now. I don't think you can make watchlists, and it won't pick up from the same time if you get interrupted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like HBO just as it is and can't fathom why anyone would claim it is in the dark ages.

"Decisions are made slowly and by consensus; longtime employees guard the network's lucrative, award-winning status quo." \-- this is said like it is a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with not being "disruptive" and being slow and steady to stay excellent.

Many businesses and consumers would be better off if there were less pressure to be #1.

<comment><USER10> Deliberation is slowly going extinct in favor of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. I see it as the "news feed"-ification of video content.

<comment><USER9> OR A/B testing until every product fits only the lowest common denominator niche.

Same argument as the "dictatorship of the majority" in democratic government. Everybody doing what is most popular results in many people losing.

<comment><USER11> It is perfectly possible to A/B content to find which content targets a more lucrative niche.

It just depends on the goals you set for the test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those (like me) who are puzzled by some of the assertions made in this article -- I suspect that it's what journalists refer to as a "beat sweetener"[1].

Reporters have particular sectors, companies, etc. they're assigned to cover; these are referred to as their _beat_. To get stories, a journalist has to develop sources within those sectors/companies/etc. -- people "in the know" who are willing to share information with them. Developing sources is a hard thing to do, as people tend not to talk to reporters unless they've got an axe to grind, which biases their information and makes it less useful to you.

One way to get potential sources to open up to you is to butter them up in advance with some flattering coverage. Once you're fixed in their memory as the guy/gal who wrote that great story about them, they're less likely to see you as an adversary.

So it's not uncommon, when a new executive takes over somewhere, to see a glowing profile of them appear -- a profile that "explains" how all the problems the place the executive just took over at are the fault of their departed predecessor, who was an idiot whose momma dressed him funny, and how the new executive's bold, daring Vision for the Future™ will solve them all at a stroke.

I have no hard evidence whether that's the actual thought process that led to this puzzling article, of course. It just really, really reads that way.

[1] See [https://www.thenation.com/article/washingtons-beat- sweetener...](https://www.thenation.com/article/washingtons-beat-sweetener- media-culture/), [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/04/a-beat- sweetener...](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/04/a-beat-sweetener- sampler.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> If AT&T wants to drag anything out of the dark ages, I wish they would take a look at the DVRs they give to their customers. They are so slow and their user interface is atrocious.

When our contract is up, we are going to try YouTube TV and Hulu to see if either of those is better.

<comment><USER13> The solution is DirecTV Now and, while far from perfect, is under very active development.

<comment><USER14> It's not really a solution. It has a _terrible_ interface. Same with Playstation Vue and Hulu+Live TV. They're all geared towards people who turn on their tv and get blared at by whatever random channel it's tuned to. None of them comes close to what Tivo was doing 20 years ago where the menu of your currently recorded shows became front and center and live tv became a secondary concern.

Not to mention that several of those services have certain shows blacked out on their DVR service, and some even convert your recorded shows into on-demand versions which (or course) contain unskippable commercials.

When I cut the cord last summer it was extremely sobering realizing that all the fancy new internet tv services were so far behind my already long in the tooth Tivo.

<comment><USER12> > some even convert your recorded shows into on-demand versions which (or > course) contain unskippable commercials

Is there a higher paid tier that gets rid of those commercials?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I going to be able to give them money in exchange for watching Game of Thrones? Or do they still expect me to mix and match a cable TV package, a "partnered" home entertainment box, and some other nonsense?

<comment><USER16> You can subscribe to HBO NOW for $15 a month.

<comment><USER15> That was an option last season too, but I think I had to have a unique, partnered, non-computer device on which to register the HBO Now account, and the process was broken on the one "acceptable" device I had. I don't remember what it was, but I do remember digging it out of storage and being terribly inconvenienced.

In any case, after two thorough, time-consuming attempts I gave up and mooched of a friend who had recently bought a Roku or something.

<comment> X-Istence Creating a HBO Now account can be done through the web at [https://hbonow.com/](https://hbonow.com/)

You need a web browser.

<comment><USER15> In that case, I'm cautiously optimistic that they've reconsidered the nonsense!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I prefer HBO's content and streaming app so much more than Netflix/Hulu, I always start there if I am wondering what to watch.

</comment><comment><USER18> The best HBO experience is on Amazon. HBO Now is so unreliable and bad that I cancelled it and added the HBO Now channel to my Prime Subscription. Same content, but a player that actually works.

HBO Now's web player (on my Macbook Pro, anyway) would not play in HD on an external monitor no matter what I did. HDPC is working. Every other service (including Netflix) worked fine. Only HBO reverted to SD video as soon as I moved my browser window to my 4K display, no matter what browser I used. I'm sure the problem is Silverlight. But it's ridiculous that they still use that piece of garbage.

</comment><comment><USER19> Slight tangent: Does anyone find it weird that no matter what you watch, HBO puts a 30 second preview for something else before your show. Fix that - and a skip intro button. Otherwise, keep it as is.

<comment><USER20> Needs an "Are you still watching?" prompt as well. It will play every episode of a series if you fall asleep while watching. Would cut costs for them too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I can appreciate "HBO Now", which is netflix-esque, I fear HBO is still too bogged by the legacy of being a premium cable channel. "HBO Go" is just that, restricted to the cable TV bundling problem. With AT&T in the mix, I can see it going to needing Cable TV or AT&T wireless internet as the requirement to be able to buy HBO. If that happens, they'll still not be as good Netflix at distribution.

</comment><comment><USER22> Subtitle: With Richard Plepler out, new boss Robert Greenblatt will need to fix years of missteps to catch up to Netflix.

If what they are giving HBO is anything like the "AT&T Watch TV" app, that's a pretty accurate subheading. The user experience is a solid 5 years behind Netflix and Hulu.

<comment><USER23> The current HBO Go app has a really good interface, much better than Netflix and sooo much better than Hulu's jumbled mess (on the AppleTV). I can find the shows I want to watch easily, the current shows are easy to find on the main page, the categories are clean and easy to sort through. Just the fact that you scroll down and not some infinite row like in Netflix works so much better on the TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> most of the large media companies need a wakeup call... why is it easier to find pirated content then finding a source willing to take your money for non- drm content...

</comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps their streaming strategy needs to be dragged out of the dark ages, but I don't think the situation bodes well for the quality of their content. The CEO who just left was apparently beloved by creators in the industry, and the new one just wants a firehose of content like what Netflix offers. So it feels like the end of an era.

Looks like the future will be HBO trading on the brand they built over the last few decades but content-wise attempting to match Netflix. I hope I'm wrong.</comment>


The Problem with IRC - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JeromeLeclanche/posts/icC6gDToBsQ

<comment><USER2> > So why are the basic problems not getting fixed?

Because it's a protocol, not a service. There is nobody in charge of IRC or its evolution, there is no single entity in charge of dealing with spam, so as he said it's every network's job to do it. There are of course some things that don't need scripting or a bot, such as history, for which we have a replacement _protocol_ : XMPP. But short of having a single company running things, all the niceties of centralization can't be implemented .

</comment><comment><USER3> IRC is just a really old protocol back from a time when security was an afterthought.

I like it. It is raw and functional.</comment>


28Gbps Microstrip with Pepper Jack Cheese as Substrate (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/28gbps-microstrip-pepper-jack-cheese-substrate-ryan-lott/ <comment><USER2> There's a pun about "queso factor" buried at the bottom of the comments too.

This is a nice little article, there's something very Bob Pease about it. And it's good to remember that there can be quite a lot of margin in controlled impedance situations. I've done things like USB2-over-flat flexible cable for test fixtures before.

<comment><USER3> >I've done things like USB2-over-flat flexible cable for test fixtures before.

If it's never gonna see a radiated emissions test chamber, then why the heck not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Omg this is such great read! I'm nominating for best of HN! It's got silliness, existential reveal, thorough methodical detailed explanations accessible to laypeople, excellent prose and is just a joy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow. This is so far up my alley that my masters thesis was on implementing testing from 802.3bj and I have made passive microstrip filters in a class.

It's cool that he simulated the eye diagrams, and getting your hands on a real transmitter is not easy, but I think it ends up being a little too optimistic. I don't think this is meant to demonstrate a real world channel or else he could have just pulled IL and RL limits from various specs. Really cool stuff though.

</comment><comment><USER6> This of course begs the question: which cheeses act as the most efficient substrates, and why?

I wonder if there's any organic materials that would work even better.

<comment><USER5> Empirically, it boils down permittivity and conductance of the material. I am not familiar with the physical factors that influence that. For real applications there are other important factors too though. If your substrate gets moldy in a week then it would be hard to package and sell it to a customer.

<comment><USER7> > If your substrate gets moldy in a week then it would be hard to package and > sell it to a customer.

Clearly you've not worked for Cisco...

<comment><USER8> Sysco?

(Only for the humor I have no idea what Sysco's reputation in food service is)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Loosely related: ADSL over wet string

[https://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over- wet...](https://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over-wet- string.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> There's actually a lot of good nuggets of RF wisdom in this whack article. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER11> See also: custard antenna

[https://michaelcullen.name/2019/04/custard- antenna/](https://michaelcullen.name/2019/04/custard-antenna/)</comment>


William James Makes a Lesson Plan for Himself - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/william-james-makes-lesson-plan-himself <comment><USER2> I was hoping for some practical examples of the kind Benjamin Franklin describes in his wonderful autobiography. For example when he discovers he's not a very good writer and wants to improve he comes up with this strategy ("Spectator" refers to the magazine containing articles/"papers" he thought were well-written):

"I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try'd to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them."

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm)</comment>


Selfiecity – A data analysis of selfies taken in 5 cities - <AUTHOR> http://selfiecity.net

<comment><USER2> Good job on visualization! The graphs that show selfies on hover are great. How did you measure level of smile? Do you have an algorithm or you went through the photos manually?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't take credit for the great work, I came across this work and wanted to share it. :) However, according to their website it seems it was a mix of using an automated algorithm and manual checking. Their website says this:

"In the resulting set of selfie images, we ran automatic face analysis, supplying us with algorithmic estimations of eye, nose and mouth positions, the degrees of different emotional expressions, etc."

"As the final step, one or two members of the project team examined all these photos manually. While most photos were tagged correctly, we found some mistakes."

See the section at [http://selfiecity.net/#dataset](http://selfiecity.net/#dataset) .</comment></comment>


US to end policy that let legal pot flourish - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/19f6bfec15a74733b40eaf0ff9162bfa <comment><USER2> I'm not a person who would encourage marijuana (or other intoxicant) use, but the federal government should absolutely be letting the states set policy on that.

While this is not new policy (it only removes some conditions established by the previous administration) this is an example of the sort of federal overreach that real conservatives and libertarians reject.

For those who support heavy federal government involvement in healthcare and other social programs, this is an example of the downside of that approach.

<comment><USER3> Problem is, not all marijuana products are intoxicating, see cannabidiol (CBD) and industrial hemp. You could actively encourage CBD and hemp ropes use without also encouraging intoxication. Unfortunately, federal law treats CBDs on par with heroin. I've taken CBD when I threw out my back and I can attest the only affect it had on me was the reduced use of ibuprofen and reduced stomach irritation from the ibu.

The federal government is truly deranged when it comes to drug policy in general and marijuana specifically.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Active Discussion => [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16070516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16070516)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sessions doesn't want to lose one tool in his belt to use against black people. The root of this is refer madness from the last century, where white men thought marijuana would make white women sleep with black men.

<comment><USER6> How is this allowed on HN?

<comment><USER7> This is how:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2016/03/23/nixons-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2016/03/23/nixons- drug-war-an-excuse-to-lock-up-blacks-and-protesters-continues/#22a1a2dd42c8)

From John Ehrlichman, counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under Nixon:

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

<comment><USER8> This only makes it _even less_ appropriate than that comment and the OP.

 _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they 're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic._

<comment><USER9> You should note that that is from the "What to submit" section, which has no bearing on comments. In that regard this whole submission may be off-topic, but comments on a submission are inherently on-topic.

But also see:

      Please don't complain that a submission is
      inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag
      it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag
      them instead. If you flag something, please don't also
      comment that you did.

Just flag and go away from the submission.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What 2015 Taught Me About the London Tech Scene - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/22/what-2015-taught-me-about-the-london-tech-scene/ <comment><USER2> One of the things I've realized travelling around the world is that the bottom 95% of the tech scene looks remarkably similar everywhere in the world (including SF & SV). The difference is whether the top 5% of the scene exists at all and, if it does, how big it is.

It's always a hard thing to gauge because the interests of the top 5% are in protecting themselves from the bottom 95% of noise. You need to be invited behind the curtain, so to speak and there's ever increasing curtains everywhere you look once you're in.

Thus, it can be very hard to comparatively judge startup scenes by city because you never know how your view is being biased.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting way of looking at it. I'm from London and thinking of visiting SF. I guess there are more famous tech names that have made it there but you probably don't get to see them much.</comment></comment>


Support Vector Machines and Hadoop: Theory vs. Practice - <AUTHOR> http://www.distilnetworks.com/support-vector-machines-hadoop-theory-vs-practice/#more-3680

<comment><USER2> This is a interesting take and why I love machine learning and its intersection with HPC.

First the seemingly blind decision to implement an SVM for improved performance. An SVM isn't magical in fact an SVM and neural network are equivalent with the SVM being the general case. SVMs suffer from the the same problems as neural networks in that your # Hidden Nodes/Activation function is the same as trying to choose your kernel function. When looking at your problem you have to ask yourself.

 _1) Is the model time varying? - > NN_

 _2) Very large N dimensional search space - > SVM_

Secondly even without changing algorithms you can get a significant accuracy improvement by examining your features. Features are the most important part of machine learning (garbage-in/garbage-out). Even simple classifiers such as Naive Bayes can do well if given the right feature set. There are multiple methods to examine your features such as ReliefF another is ANOVA. If you find your features are not good enough try unsupervised feature detection and learn more about the problem domain and coming up with your own features.

The final issue specifically with HPC and machine learning is even given 100 cores your algorithms may not speedup. Many machine learning algorithms are built to be iterative in nature and do not lend themselves to the becoming parallel. This means that MapReduce must be invoked at each iteration. As you scale up the number of available cores the overhead of startup and shutdown of your cluster at each iteration overrides your gain in performance, as many nodes will finish faster than others and just sit and wait.

The solution to all of this is simple

1) Get your features correct

2) Try new algorithms

       - Try online learning algorithm first like vowpal wabbit
         here https://github.com/JohnLangford/vowpal_wabbit/

3) HPC

       - Apache Spark http://spark.incubator.apache.org/
         or
         GraphLab http://graphlab.org/
         or (if personal computer only)
         GraphChi http://graphlab.org/graphchi/

       - Both support HPC with graph centric framework

       - Orders of magnitude faster than Hadoop

       - Both built on top of Hadoop HDFS so connect and go

Hope this helps Everyone out there.

Have fun and try to solve some cool problems.

<comment><USER3> Nice post. Question for you: feature selection is certainly the most important part of ML. But yet, the focus of most ML texts is on the algorithm zoo and they gloss over feature selection. Are there any good references on the variety of techniques, with examples, of feature selection best practices?

<comment><USER4> That's a good question. Feature selection is a large field of research and is a bit too broad for me to summarize in an abbreviated fashion. I would look into "model selection", specifically into scores of models that weigh both complexity (the number of variables) and goodness of fit. A good score to look into first is the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) which is used, for instance, in model selection in neuroscience. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_information_criterion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_information_criterion)

One thing you might want to try is cross-validation ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- validation_%28statistics%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- validation_%28statistics%29)). Cross-validation should help you determine if your model is overfitting, as it will perform significantly better on its training set than on the left out data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm still surprised there is no SVM implementation for Mahout ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10482646/recently-svm- imp...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10482646/recently-svm- implementation-was-added-into-mahout-i-am-planning-to-use-svm-an)).

</comment><comment><USER4> A few years ago some SVM code was contributed to the Mahout project, but as of yet, it still doesn't appear to have a working implementation. It seems one can tweak existing Mahout functions a bit in order to accomplish the same sort of thing, but Mike went ahead and started working on an SVM implementation when he initially discovered it wasn't fully implemented. Given a package like sklearn (part of the Python scipy package), it's not so hard to implement a scheme similar to the one described in the blog once you know what to do.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to see some classification performance numbers, ROC curves, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Paul,

We don't have any published performance numbers at the moment as we just implemented our cluster within our production environment. Looking to do a post-facto write up on that in a bit.

</comment><comment><USER8> how much of an increase in accuracy is gained by using the full collection of data rather than sampling?</comment>


Report on the Sunway TaihuLight System [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway-report-2016.pdf <comment><USER2> Has anyone seen details on compilers and maths libraries they're using? Must have been some effort for a new CPU.

<comment><USER3> As for compliers, they use a fork of OpenACC 2.0, with some extensions to exploit the data transfer features of the new CPU.

They've tested it with some earth modeling applications and got fairly good results.

<comment><USER2> OpenACC is the standard though, not the actual compiler they're using?

<comment><USER3> It seems that they implemented an OpenACC 2.0 compatible complier and named it Sunway OpenACC.

<comment><USER2> Ah thanks. That gives something to google for, I guess it's based on ROSE compiler. [https://twitter.com/jameslinsjtu/status/745438135790632960](https://twitter.com/jameslinsjtu/status/745438135790632960)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Memories Become Weaker Without Reinforcement - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/science/memories-become-weaker-without-reinforcement-study-finds.html?src=twr&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

<comment><USER2> I may not have read the article, but wouldn't this be obvious?

When's the last time you learned someone's name, didn't say it a single time, then saw them any amount of time later (an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year) and remembered it with ease?

I learned a lot about memory from a world memory champion Dominic O'Brien and his keys for long last memories are imagination, location, association, and finally repetition. To make the initial long lasting memory you use the first three, and to make it really stick you run through that scene you've created a week later, a month later, and a few months later. After that, it is very difficult to forget.</comment>


Android gains in tablets, Apple slows in third quarter, IDC says - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57544922-94/android-gains-in-tablets-apple-slows-in-third-quarter-idc-says/

<comment><USER2> Some numbers...

In 2Q 2012, Apple sold 17M out of 25M total (68%).

In 3Q 2012, Apple sold 14M out of 27.8M total (50%).

To not lose market share and maintain that 68%, Apple would have had to sell 30MM out of 43.8MM, more than double what they did sell. If they had just repeated the 2Q numbers, they would have had 55% share.

So the idea that the market share decrease was due to Apple buyers sitting out in anticipation of the mini seems rather misguided. Non-Apple went from 8MM to 13.8MM in one quarter.

(Here's the 2Q2012 numbers: <http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23632512>)

<comment><USER3> _So the idea that the market share decrease was due to Apple buyers sitting out in anticipation of the mini seems rather misguided._

On the other hand, Apple just announced selling 3 million iPad minis this weekend so it looks as though there was some pent-up demand: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/apple-says-first- weeken...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/11/apple-says-first-weekend- of-4g-ipad-ipad-mini-sales-set-record/)

<comment><USER4> Some of it may be but coming into the holiday season that may be people converting iPad sales to iPad mini sales and buying early in anticipation of shortages.

Probably won't know until they publish their Q4 figures in a few months time.

<comment><USER5> Just a nit that you're looking for their Q1 figures. Apple's fiscal year runs from October to September.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing is definitely true: a year ago the phrase, "...but it's not really a tablet market, it's an iPad market" was so often used as to become annoying. I haven't heard that phrase in a few months.

<comment><USER7> Oh yeah, I remember all those articles from people who said that the iPad market is exactly like the iPod market. But I knew then too that it was not true. Two things are different which change the game entirely.

First, when the iPod appeared, the whole ecosystem wasn't really about the "OS" of the device, and now iOS has a real competitor in Android, that a lot of other manufacturers can use, while back then there was no such unification from the other manufacturers. This matters because the iPod was a single-task product, while tablets are not.

Second, they said that Apple has its own stores, while the others do not. But we're living in a global market now, and Apple's stores are virtually non- existent outside of US. Having 1 or 5 stores in a whole country doesn't make much of a difference. So even if Android tablets completely fail in US, there's a huge market out there for them, outside of US, which is bound to become bigger than the whole "iPad market".

<comment><USER8> Another important thing to consider is the content that drives the two platforms. If you didn't buy any music from the iTunes store and just ripped stuff from CDs/Napster/Limewire/Kazaa, all the music that worked on your iPod worked on your non-Apple music player as well.

Such is not the case with apps. If you've spent a few hundred dollars on apps over the course of a few years using iOS devices, the cost to switch (assuming you care about continuing to use any of those apps once you're on Android) is pretty high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not sure I buy the "waiting for iPad Mini" reasoning. Is there any proof that normal consumers even knew an iPad Mini was imminent?

<comment><USER10> Well, I consider myself a 'normal' consumer and I was waiting for an ipad mini and I think you consider that a proof (of sorts). I don't think its much of a leap in logic to work out that a lot (hundreds of thousands...millions even) were waiting off for something like a smaller ipad. I mean it was in practically every technology blog prior to announcement.

<comment><USER11> Do 'normal' consumers even read technology blogs? And most certainly somebody posting on HN does not qualify as a 'normal consumer' when it comes to technology purchases.

<comment><USER10> It wasn't even technology blogs per say, they were talking about it in the Guardian and BBC online. It was rumor for months and spreading by word of mouth. My granny was talking about getting one before it was actually released and she doesn't have a clue what a blog is, she found out from friends at the bowls. True story :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> But we'll never know because Amazon and google won't release sales figures.

<comment><USER2> There are numbers from both of them in this data. Estimates, sure, but estimates make the world go round.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Apple's tablet market share took a hit as consumers "sat out" the third quarter in anticipation of the iPad Mini, analyst firm IDC said. Android tablets made gains as a result."

I _think_ this means that because many Apple buyers sat on the sidelines the overall pie was smaller. So this had a magnifying effect on Android's overall share of the market. Otherwise it's kind of an illogical statement.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let's take a look back on what HNers said about the tablet market 500+ days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2675012>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2664474>

</comment><comment><USER15> This sure is a pretty boring post. I guess what I'm trying to say is, "So?" This is hardly news worthy, just run of the mill update that comes at delegated intervals in the business world.

</comment><comment><USER16> Surprising, but, not so surprising. Surprising because the iPad is supposedly a a very good tablet. Not so surprised because Apple has lost its magic, which is expected, since Steve is no longer with us. (Admit it - The iPhone 5 IS a disappointment). I have never been a great fan of Apple nor the iPad. But I do have to admit that the iPad is a really good tablet in all fairness. At the same time, Android is evolving so fast that it's only a matter of time I guess, till they overthrow Apple. So, in a way, it's not so surprising.

<comment><USER17>
      > Admit it - The iPhone 5 IS a disappointment

Why would I admit it? It is better than iPhone4s in every sense. And where I am Google powered maps app never had transit data (and I have no need for it) so getting turn-by-turn navigation was a big plus without any loses. iPhone 4S was announced a day before Jobs' death. Which do you think is more plausible: that they only started working on iPhone 5 on October 6, 2012; or what they had all the basics of iPhone 5 already in place? Jobs probably gave his blessings to iPhone 6 before passing away.

<comment><USER16> The iPhone 5 was hyped by the media in every possible sense. It was projected to be some kind of a super-phone. Some even speculated it to have a mini projector, laser-keyboard and what not. But now, all it has is just a few inches of extra screen size and a slightly upgraded dual-core processor, while the rest of its competitors have had super-fast quad-core chips with higher clock speed and larger screen sizes for a while already.

<comment><USER18> > The iPhone 5 was hyped by the media in every possible sense.

So was the iPhone, and the iPad, and the iPhone 4, and the 4S, and the iPad mini, and basically every Apple product ever. This isn't new.

> It was projected to be some kind of a super-phone.

By who? Your local news station? Nobody with any sense made that prediction.

> Some even speculated it to have a mini projector, laser-keyboard and what > not.

Random analysts and tech enthusiasts figured that Apple would randomly switch gears to gimmicky half baked features that nobody else has shipped yet instead of using the years of actual information at their disposal that shows Apple iterates over constantly overhauling?

Yeah real surprising.

> while the rest of its competitors have had super-fast quad-core chips with > higher clock speed

You know nothing about the topic you're talking about. The iPhone 5 A6 processor benches faster than most Android tablets and the GPU outstrips all Mali GPUs and the Tegra 3. Meanwhile "super-fast quad core chip" has so little meaning it might as well just be a marketing term.

<comment><USER16> Disclosure: I am a male and not a female. So you can stop stalking every move of mine. Thanks.

<comment><USER18> What in the hell are you talking about? Way to completely derail a discussion.

EDIT - Oh I see, you're also the guy who thinks open source wins everything because Android is doing well right now. I honestly hadn't noticed. I just see a dumb comment and pounce, I hadn't looked at the username for either comment until just now.

However if I'm bothering you frequently, that's not a good sign. It means you're spouting a bunch of ridiculous BS with little to no evidence or point. Try to avoid that in the future, and trust me you'll never see my name again.

Continue to and you almost certainly will. I don't check usernames, I just reply.

EDIT - I just have to add that I love that two comment replies to you four days apart counts as sexualized stalking. Either you're the biggest prude in history, extremely paranoid, or possibly just not as quick witted as you thought.

<comment><USER16> It's ok Ross, no worries. It was a very crude joke. How's Canada btw? :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


User with Muslim name blocked from downloading Sophos AV for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/07/sophos_anti_muslim_name_filter/ <comment><USER2> It seems odd to me that people would be blacklisted from accessing anti-virus at all. Imagine if that block extended to other protections like locks on the front door of your house, or access to infrastructure like hospitals.

It doesn't sit well with me, even if you do believe that they are 'evil people'. Antivirus strikes me as something that everyone should have access to. It's not an offensive tool.

<comment><USER3> The thought process with export controls is that bad actors may be able to discover vulnerabilities more easily by having unrestricted access to defensive technologies.

<comment><USER4> And of course the first vulnerability these bad actors will use is a false identity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What kind of AV software requires your personal info when you download it?

What kind of naive person ever fills out one of those forms honestly? Usually my address is "123 Fuckyou Boulevard" on those things.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hm, Hassan Ali does not actually seem to be on the denied persons list:

[http://www.bis.doc.gov/dpl/dpl.txt](http://www.bis.doc.gov/dpl/dpl.txt)

<comment><USER7> It could have been flagged by another country's system. Or there are names not on that specific list.

<comment><USER8> Almost certainly the US Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals list:

[http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN- List/](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN-List/)

Sure enough, searching the list for "Hasan Ali" gives seven hits.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Specially Designated Nationals. Wow. I wonder whether the people who come up with these terms have read 1984 and it's a form of in-joke, or if they're actually serious.

<comment><USER9> "More time passed and we got to Korea, 1950. By that time, Madison Avenue had learned well how to manipulate the language, and the same condition became _operational exhaustion_. It had been stretched out to eight syllables. It took longer to say, so the impact was reduced, and the humanity was completely squeezed out of the term. It was now absolutely sterile: operational exhaustion. It sounded like something that might happen to your car." \- George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops (2004)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't "Hassan Ali" an incredibly common name?

<comment><USER11> Yes, it is.

Source: someone who lives in the region of many a Hassan Ali.

<comment><USER12> Hmm, Egypt by any chance?

<comment><USER11> Currently, no. I avoid directly mentioning which countries I circulate between.

But I did however live in Egypt during my years of studies 5+ years ago. I was not into IT and programming then, I was an Arabic language major.

<comment><USER12> Oh, I see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can download lots of software packages (whether open source, or even freeware/shareware/trialware) without giving my name, including even antivirus software (e.g. ClamAV). I am aware of the export control laws Sophos (and other software companies) have to comply with, but I wonder how those allowing anonymous software downloads stay in compliance with the same laws.

</comment><comment><USER14> What a bullshit title. Was the ban really based on the "muslimness" of his name?

<comment><USER15> As the article points out, "Hasan Ali" is a _stupendously_ common Muslim name.

Imagine blocking anyone called "John Williams" and then claiming you were blocking terrorists, not just people with English-sounding names.

It turns out that in practice (and law), companies are held responsible for grossly discriminatory _effects_ of their actions, without a detailed process of examining motivations at the time.

<comment><USER16> Terrorists really should start using aliases like "John Williams", "George Bush", "Donald Trump" etc. to circumvent these name lists, as they already managed to max out the patdown ineffectiveness with the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber.

<comment><USER17> They could use the name "Ted Kennedy." That'd show 'em.

Oops, no, our wonderful, benevolent, and omniscient government is one step ahead of the curve as usual. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has anyone else tried using that name to see if it triggers and do they really call you?

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't wait for the Naked Security writeup on _this_ cockup.</comment>


Selling You on Facebook: Don't be surprised where your details pop up - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303302504577327744009046230.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEADTop <comment><USER2> Am I the only one that doesn't get all the recent hatred of Facebook here on HN?

I think it's fair to assume that any site, anywhere, might wind up giving information that _you have input_ into the site, to advertisers. You don't even _have_ to input information, but just visit different pages on different sites that use the same ad network, and they already know what kinds of pages you visit.

Then, sometimes you get better ads shown, and sometimes they're hilariously misinterpreted. Honestly, who cares? And if you've got something horribly secret, then it's not the kind of thing you should be putting on Facebook anyways, where all your friends can see it.

This isn't McCarthyism, where you're being fired from your job because you visited the Facebook page for communism. All we're talking about is what ads you get shown, and even if someone is peeping over your shoulder, it's not like they know if an ad was targeted specifically to you anyways, or why. Junk mail has been doing this stuff for decades, sending you offers based on your credit cards, magazine subscriptions, catalog subscriptions, etc.

Seriously, can someone please explain to me any conceivable way in which this could negatively impact me? I'm genuinely curious if I'm missing something here.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.donttrack.us> (by the DuckDuckGo-team) gives a few examples.

<comment><USER2> Right, so the "herpes" ad example -- I just have never seen that kind of thing in real life. I search for 100's of things a week, including certainly plenty of embarassing things, and have never noticed ads that seemed in any way obviously based on those.

And as for insurance companies rejecting you or charging you more -- this just seems like FUD. Has this _ever_ happened before? And if it did, it seems like something for Congress to address, not a reason to stop using or hate Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "If social norms were fences, [Helen Nissenbaum] said, "any ethical, law- abiding person won't step over the fence." In the absence of data-usage laws or norms [...] some tech companies feel unconstrained about using information in new ways that can seem creepy."

And that's one of the major pain points of 'enforcing' privacy online for users. Together with all the 'global' sets of laws that are needed and need to be enforceable throughout the internet (the EU Data Protection[1] being one of the steps in the right direction), it's painful to see that the legal system can't keep up (once again[2]) with 'the free Internet'.

[1] <http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/index_en.htm>

[2] It's another side of the spectrum of enforcing laws and norms on the Internet, users paying with their 'personal information' for 'free' services, besides all the anti-piracy efforts of the mpaa and such.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've never had a Facebook account (nor do I want one), but I want to ask the Facebook users out there something: Why do any of you put up with this crap? Whats in it for you? What does Facebook do that email, RSS subscriptions to blogs, phone calls, talking to people face to face, et al, can't do?

<comment><USER6> It lets you keep track of above Dunbar's Number of friends.

<comment><USER7> This. Facebook is 'web scale' for friendships.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A slightly off-topic thing, but I'm curious as to if anyone else here with a FB account has tried to download their FB data, but never actually received the notification email or data itself?

<comment><USER9> Honestly, the aspect that originally drew me to Facebook was as an online address book that everyone updated themselves so I always had their most recent phone, email address, etc. Unfortunately now, because of all the privacy concerns most the time I can only send a message asking for their phone number or begging them to call me. A lot of people don't even have email addresses up anymore. I think the change came about around the time they let everyone have an account.

<comment><USER9> Sorry that was meant to be a reply to G-Garon, fat fingers and iPhones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> g-garron If you happen to "really" need a Facebook account, let's say to be in contact with your classmates, then you should consider adding only your Name and email address to your account info. I've added not religion or political info there, no one should care what my religion or political views are.

<comment><USER10> I have also never felt the urge to post my status, comment on another persons status on or was compelled to "like" something.

You can use facebook as a mostly passive medium.

<comment> g-garron That is the way I use it, I share nothing, but use it to keep in touch with some friends who almost never read their emails :). Usually to organize old friends parties. It is kind of good for that. With a private group. I would have preferred a Posterous group or a mailing list, but my '91 school class is not made by geeks. They use Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Facebook requires apps to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app."

I have apps disabled on my profile and have had them so for about 2 years. So if my friend uses an app as described above, I would image my data is still shared through Facebook, correct? Having apps disabled doesn't help me here?

<comment><USER12> They claim that having platform apps disabled prevents the data from being shared. Of course, if you accidentally give an app permission to do anything, anywhere, that turns apps back on including sharing your data with other apps.

I recommend checking to make sure you haven't turned apps back on by mistake. If your apps are turned on but if you want to make sure, here is how to disable sharing your personal data with the apps your friends use:

[http://raganwald.posterous.com/when-you-share-personal- data-...](http://raganwald.posterous.com/when-you-share-personal-data-with- facebook-fr)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for that blog post. That answers the question.

Over the past 2 years I have had apps turned off. A few days ago I had signed up for Instagram. On my Android phone, I clicked "share with Facebook" but did not complete the sign-up as I did not want to accidentally enable apps. Yesterday I signed in to FB and saw app requests. FB had turned the app platform back on without any sort of "are you sure you want to change this setting" prompt. I have turned apps back off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In today's hyper-connected world always remember the maxim "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."

Always and everytyime.

In fact to make it a bit stronger even when you are paying for an App/Service/Whatever expect your personal information to be a part of the deal.</comment>