Ask HN: Knowing how some thing works vs Knowing how and when to use it? - <AUTHOR>

How does knowing how something works compare to knowing why and when to use that something?
I'm a self-taught programmer with a lot of experience. I know when to use a database index, and I know why they exist. I know the performance limitations, I know the tradeoffs, and I know when they are appropriate and not appropriate. But if you were to ask me about how they work, I have no idea. If you were to ask me to explain the computational complexity of selecting a tow on an indexed table compared to a non-indexed table, I have no idea.
How does this fact effect me as a developer? I recently got into a discussion on another forum about this topic. The consensus from that discussion seemed to be that not knowing the low level implementation details significantly hinders your ability reason about the technology. In other words, if I can't explain how a B+tree works, I'm pretty much worthless when it comes to understanding how to use a database.
The discussion came up when I noticed that just about 100% of the job interviews I've done, I'm always asked to explain how something works, rather than when to use something, or why you would use something. This means that I pretty much fail every single job interview, and probably will remain so for the foreseeable future.
To what extent does understanding the underlying concept effect you ability to reason about a technology? <comment><USER3> Let's just see how this might work. Here's a question phrased both ways.

When do you use traceroute?

How does traceroute work?

In my experience, anyone can make up some kind of answer for the first one. There's enough wiggle room in the language to let them say "when you need to trace a route", only using different words. This establishes nothing in terms of the candidate's abilities.

The second question is harder to answer without actually knowing something about the problem domain. Granted, I've had plenty of people flat out lie and make things up rather than saying "I don't know", but there are ways to catch that. If they try to memorize the answer, perhaps because a question is becoming too popular, then they'd better hope they learned it all the way down to the bare metal, since that's where I'm going to take them.

Incidentally, for candidates who say "I don't know" to the second one, a good followup question is "Okay, how would you build one from scratch?". The people who know the domain but simply haven't dissected that particular tool will be able to reinvent it on the spot. That's when you say "are you sure you didn't know this?" to make them feel better about themselves.

Those who don't have any idea about what goes on with IP will be stumped.

This assumes perfect performance on the part of all involved. Bad food, butterflies, jet lag, and other human anomalies can and will affect you.

So, bringing this back full circle, maybe you don't know how a B+Tree works internally for whatever reason, but could you build one if you had to?

<comment><AUTHOR> From reading the Wiki page on B+Trees, it seems they are just a way to store data so that is is always sorted. If I ever needed to store data in such a way that it is always stored, I'd use a database+index. I don't know B+Trees because I've always reached for a database when I needed to do what B+Trees are good for. I've never had the need to learn B+Trees.

I haven't had the need to learn many low level things. Not having a computer science background, there are tons of things I don't know, but those things just don't come up ever in my day to day programming life (other than interviews).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Grasshopper - you ask the difference between knowledge and wisdom. This is a well understood question with not a well understood answer. Illumination is left to dear reader.

[edit - added below]

Knowing how to do something demonstrates technical ability.

Knowing what to do and when to do it demonstrates experience, judgment, finesse, and sometimes, political savvy.

Depending on what kind of role one is interviewing for, the interviewer may be interested in whether you can do the things they tell you to do. So little of hiring managers want people who can think; they want people who can do.

While I recognize that these hiring managers are short-sighted, I submit that they are the majority.

In spite of their preference, certainly an implementor has to make decisions about which choices to make all the time. Yet, many people view a 'programmer' as a do-er, not a decision maker.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe this is an overly simplistic response - but is it possible your question is exploring the difference between "learning something" and being "taught something"? I suspect that if you truly understand when to apply some technology then you probably have some insight into how it works - <USER2> opposite would be that someone has an imaginary table of "when this do that" values prepared by some notional domain expert that they employ.

To get back to your issue with interview type situations - I think that there is possibly some confusion between understanding how something works and how then it should be applied - with a lot of people biased towards "how it works in detail" as a key indicator for knowing how to apply.

For myself, I find it very difficult to understand the "when" (can I call it) if I do not understand the "what/how" first - but I do understand that might be just me.</comment>


Zuckerberg foundation to invest in India's Byju, an edtech company - <AUTHOR> http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/startups/mark-zuckerbergs-foundation-leads-50m-round-in-byjus/54195192 <comment><USER2> words like 'philanthropic' and mission statements like 'promote equality' are being bandied about but come on: this is zuck's VC arm investing in a potentially profitable startup, no different than any other funding deal. please stop insulting us by claiming this is for the good of humanity blah blah.</comment>


Microsoft: You need to fix your Skype and Microsoft account issues, this is insane - <AUTHOR> https://kolemcrae.com/microsoft-you-seriously-need-to-fix-your-skype-and-microsoft-account-issues-this-is-insane-6fd51e104caa <comment><USER3> It looks like [email] is used with more than one account. Which account do you want to use?

\- Work or school account

\- Personal account

I get this prompt every time I try to log into Azure with my work email. If I choose the work account (the most intuitive option) my azure subscription list is empty. I have to log out and select the other option.

Why is there a difference and why isn't this transparent? I am authenticated, you know who I am, give me access to the things I'm authorized for. I don't know what kind of weird backend situation MS has, but asking me to understand it is terrible UX.

<comment><USER4> As I understand it, the work account is actually tied to your company's office 365 subscription or something like that.

The private account is the one created by you.

If anyone knows the exact difference, please explain! Would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER5> As you said. the Work/School Account is one provided by your employer (normally), and usually comes from Active Directory (or AzureAD).

The Personal accounts (also called Microsoft accounts/IDs or Live IDs) are the ones you as an individual create directly with Microsoft. The prime example would be people who've had a Hotmail account for ages, and that eventually became a Microsoft account.

The confusion comes because since a couple years ago, you can create Microsoft accounts with any e-mail that you own, be it personal, from work, hosted in gmail, hosted by your employer, hosted by yourself... You name it. So it is possible to create a Microsoft account with your work e-mail, even if your work e-mail also has a Work/School Account tied to it. All the notifications for that Microsoft account will go there, but they are _not_ for your "Work/School Account" (also referred to as Organizational account), they are for your personal one.

Yes, it is a mess. After a while I got used to it and now I'm comfortable navigating all my identities, but it can be very annoying when you first encounter it.

<comment><USER6> It's not just annoying, this can cause authentication to be broken in subtle ways.

<comment><USER7> Indeed - heaven forbid you try to sign into Azure Storage Explorer with both! It invalidates the other (workaround: use a SAS)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Microsoft truly sucks with account management. Here is what happened to me with Microsoft Office last week:

\- My Office University account expires.

\- My father invites me to be part of his Office 365 Family subscription (it includes 5 accounts).

\- I click on the "Get the invite" button on the email I have received and... "You already have an active account".

There was no way from the website to cancel my expired University account, the only available option was to subscribe to my own Office 365 Personal account (€10/month).

I have contacted Microsoft and it took 90 minutes of chat, including a one hour session where a Microsoft support guy took control of my computer (it was totally useless, the error has been solved by a modification in the Microsoft account database), to fix the issue. As titled here: this is insane.

<comment><USER9> I had similiar problem. I called them, got to the real person, who fixed issue within 2 minutes. Total call time was about 5 minutes. That included time, I was searching for invite and so on.

<comment><USER10> So basically you can be lucky - or not.

IIRC my boss wasted a few hours on the phone with two MS employees - <USER2> over a week or two because their accounting and customer service teams couldn't speak together it seems.

I however was lucky, some tool I had bought was missing from my Windows Store account, after contacting them they contacted me back and I had it fixed within 20 minutes or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shit like this is why I don't use anything from them. There are probably 15 or so different accounts for me in their DBs, which I will never even attempt to use again. Life is too short to put up with managing other people's CRM for them.

Apple is actually getting close to this bad, too, and in some ways, worse.

I gave my mother my old iPhone over a year ago. It was wiped, and we set it up with the 'family' whatsit. For reasons I won't go in to, at some point, I ended up giving her my Apple ID password to fix a problem when I couldn't do it.

Ever since then, something has periodically decided to sync a random assortment of things. It isn't consistent, temporally or in terms of what it syncs. (I'm very anti-cloud-service; I don't use online backup, sync or cloud docs or any other sync services from Apple. I think my other uses the backup, but nothing else, because the phone is her only Apple device.)

A few months ago, her contacts ended up splattered all over mine. I deleted them, it happened again a few days later, this time just a random assortment of them.

Yesterday, my call logs ended up on her phone.

Short of asking her to wipe the phone again, I don't know how to make this crap stop, but I'm sick of it. Seriously considering going back to a feature phone; everyone making modern phones appear to (a) make it impossible to have a self-contained phone without your personal life smeared across multiple companies' servers, and (b) be too incompetent to actually smear my personal life across their servers without fucking it up.

<comment><USER12> "For reasons I won't go in to, at some point, I ended up giving her my Apple ID password to fix a problem when I couldn't do it."

I won't ask about the reasons, but it seems like everything in your email is a consequence of you setting up someone else's phone to use your account information.

Sure, going to a feature phone would solve that, but so would not actually sharing your account with someone else. What else did you expect?

In other words, how could Apple differentiate between "it's my account but not my phone" and "it's my account and it is my phone"?

<comment><USER11> > In other words, how could Apple differentiate between "it's my account but > not my phone" and "it's my account and it is my phone"?

Because the phone in question used that Apple id precisely once, and is now configured with hers?

There's obviously some foreign key floating around keeping the association, even though it should not be there.

And that's ignoring the question of why and how, when syncing, backup, etc is turned off, my phone logs are even being sent to Apple at all, let alone leaked through to another phone? Same question with contacts - if I am not syncing or backing up, why does Apple grab my contacts?

> What else did you expect?

I expect, when logging in to a device with a given account, to only have access to things associated with that account.

I also expect, when configuring something to not share data, that it not share data.

Do you really have different expectations?

<comment><USER13> It's configured with an account at setup. You need to reset the phone before logging in with another account.

<comment><USER11> 1) That is a false statement. [1]

2) Even if that were true, that is not what happened in this case.

3) Even if that were true, it still does not explain the weird random data leakage.

[1] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203983](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT203983)

<comment><USER13> But did you reset the phone before handing it over?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Try using Skype for business... Your chat history is gone when you switch to another app and is not even saved on a PC. It's always the question if a chat ends up on your laptop of mobile. You frequently miss chats or have a "you missed a chat" email, even though you were logged in. It is an insanely poor product. I guess it's not where their focus is. It could easily be a Slack alternative except that it is so bad.

<comment><USER15> I have such a passionate hate for S4B. This also happens to me, and the logging options mentioned below being enabled don't make a reliable difference: the logs don't always save!

Additionally, group chats often split in to two windows where the conversation suddenly continues in a second thread even when no one joined/left... and then you try and reply and it jumps to another conversation on its own.

People in my office have recorded this because it's so obtuse and unbelievable.

<comment><USER16> In addition to the awful client application, the logging issue is really frikkin' annoying. Something simple like 'show log history for <contact>' doesn't work.

I used to use Pidgin with the SIPE plugin, which worked well enough, and most importantly, logged in plain HTML with a fully working search mechanism, and if it came to it, I could just grep the folder.

Unfortunately my company recently moved to cloud-hosted S4B, and that completely broke Pidgin, so I've been forced onto the official client.

Someone at Microsoft really needs to learn the meaning of 'improvement'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yes.. I have a similar tale of woe.

I'd like to change the username of my basic Skype account. Alas, it has the company name I worked for at the time. I also have some credits in that account. I'd either like my credits back, or I'd like to change my Skype username. Neither are possible.

I'd also like Microsoft to stop asking me if I'm using a business account, or a personal account, when I enter my work email address into every Microsoft service we use every day.

That'd be nifty, too.

</comment><comment><USER18> By ways of some bad choices I wound up with 3 Microsoft accounts. I never knew which services were on each.

In addition to those 3 accounts, I had 2 Office accounts (one for work, one personal). Notwithstanding that the O365 sign in _really_ can't handle two accounts on the same browser (by ways of automatic redirects) - I didn't know if services were on O365 or Live. MSDN and VSTS do not support O365 login, so I had to tell my Live account to claim my MSDN keys. It's nuts.

I eventually just forget about accounts. I stopped using O365 for personal email. Don't use O365 for _anything_ personal, you will pay hell for it (for more reasons than merely sign in).

</comment><comment><USER19> I love that I can't sign up for Azure services because i need a "real" phone number and no, VOIP numbers like google voice, Microsoft's own Skype or even my actually land line (which is through my ISP and apparently classified as VOIP) won't work.

I don't have a mobile phone so that's fine, I can get texts on Google Hangouts or Skype but their account software refuses to send the verification texts to those numbers.

Fortunately there's an option to have them call you but they refuse to send call my home phone system that is registered with my name and that is a valid e911 number associated with an e911 address. A call with a Microsoft support person confirmed that nope, I can not sign up for Azure.

<comment><USER20> This may be enough (receive SMS without a phone) if you're desperate for Azure or other account:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13631724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13631724)

<comment><USER19> that's the problem, every site I tried failed their "is this a real phone" check including their own service and the phone that nearly any normal person, technical or otherwise would consider a "land line"

<comment><USER20> If that's true for this specific site I'm sure the proprietor would appreciate a heads-up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My Skype account was temporarily hacked at one point, to the extend that it got disabled it. I still have access to the email associated with my Skype account. I've talked to MS support on this already but for whatever reason, they can't validate my identity to the extend that I can reset the password on that skype ID. Their only solution was for me to create a new Skype account. What other cloud service does not allow reset of account via e-mail validation!?

What a cluster MSFT

EDIT: And guess what, I have not used Skype since. Trying to recreate my contacts and the whole process of having family accept my new account was a much larger barrier than just instructing my family to use another video chat service. FU MSFT.

</comment><comment><USER22> Skype accounts are fucked. Try signing in on Skype for Linux with two different accounts. If you're lucky, you'll experience the contact shuffle where some contacts are moved from one account to another and others randomly deleted from both accounts. I mostly stopped using Skype after that one.

<comment><USER23> On my personal laptop, Skype forced me to update to the "new" skype version that's styled like the windows 10 one. I could no longer log into the old one. This new one is objectively worse.

\+ chat history seems to work

\+ dark mode

\- no cross platform video calling (except to web)

\- way less settings (like notification configuration stuff, all sorts of settings)

The only thing I really use skype for is skyping to family members. Now I can't do that, because cross platform video doesn't work. The old skype worked and had more features and settings! Why force me to switch when the new version isn't feature-complete!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here is a fun one. If you use the wrong email address for a password reset, Skype will create a skype user name and account linked to your email address. You will not be able to delete the Skype account. Yeah, fuck you Microsoft.

<comment><USER25> that's a pretty shitty bug on their end. Now you've fucked two accounts, brilliant

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Microsoft's accounts are just managed horribly in general. I've got two microsoft accounts for work and one for personal. The personal one I separate out by having a different chrome profile. However, for work, I have to wrestle with the login screen for about 6 iterations everytime I want a new tab. I use one MS account for azure, another for office 365. Regardless of which one I enter/select, it always prompts me for the password for the other account. Drives me effing nuts. Plus that whol "is this a business account or a personal account" selection. jesus. so frustrating.

<comment><USER27> That drives me insane as well. I expect it is nessecary in some fashion, but the implementation is severely frustrating. It should be "sticky" and allow you to switch if required. Also the personal accounts can only have 16 character max passwords, so my normal wetware password generation algorithms don't work

<comment><USER28> When was the last time you tried to change your password? Long password support has been live for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5jg8y6/fyi_crimin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5jg8y6/fyi_criminals_are_still_attempting_to_use/)

Reddit discusses hackers using weak Skype credentials to access other MS accounts and bypass 2FA

<comment><USER30> thanks for this, i couldn't figure out months ago how could be my Microsoft account compromised despite using 2FA, seem after this hack and resetting all of my security settings they removed ability to sign in with old Skype account since when i went to check it now it was already unchecked

though i still see in recent activity unsuccessful attempts for IMAP synchronization from all over world, not sure if they are trying to use some old app password, which i reset after discovering have

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Funny to see this thread after what's happening to me today.

I need to get access to my Microsoft Office online documents. I go to login and it has me do a security check with my email: email@example.com. It's supposed to send a code to verify my email, but I never get it. So I try option 2, a different email: email@example.com. Never get the code...

Hmm, does it not like the word microsoft? So I try email@example.com, and I get the code! Although now I have to answer a bunch of questions and my account is under review -- I should get an answer within 24 hours.

But what about the future? My real account is still firstname.lastname@example.com. Will this keep happening? :\

</comment><comment><USER32> Don't get me started.

I once subscribed to Office and am pretty sure I had to supply my first and last name once if not multiple times. But the final confirmation email still started with "Dear null null".

<comment><USER33> Serves you right, little Bobby Tables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> As much as I dislike Google services. Their account stuff just works. For everything they create. It just works.

I love MS stuff, but they have the worst account process ever, closely followed by Apple.

I do wish MS would sort their act out in regards to accounts.

I lost my Xbox account trying to transfer my games and such between my windows live account and an old account. Lost my games and points and credits :(

<comment><USER35> I once lost my Xbox Live account because I deleted the associated Hotmail address that I never used. I didn't realize it until the attached credit card expired years later. I went to update the card info on the website and couldn't get on due to the non-existent email address. Spent hours with customer service over multiple calls and no one was able to link the account to a different email address or add a new credit card for me. Just insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have been using Hotmail and Skype since the old days, but now my Skype (on Linux, mind you) is totally unusable and the Outlook online abomination is becoming _WORSE_ every day. I just noticed today that they added a DOOOONG sound to the _" webapp"_, but then when I open it nothing happened. It was a message in the "Others" recently added tab (not a folder, not spam, somewhere in the middle but physically in a totally different place). I love the "Done" action from Inbox (Google) as it's a perfect categorization.

So I'm migrating everything to Inbox (Gmail) and people don't care at all switching to Hangouts instead of Skype.

</comment><comment><USER37> I got caught by another Skype issue - merged my long-time Skype account with my MS account.

Old skype account - kinda bad password.

MS account - great password, 2FA.

Then I got alerts that someone in China had logged in to my MS account. I couldn't figure out how they'd done this until...

I figured out they'd signed in to skype, using my old skype username and old skype password that were still valid for some unknown reason after merging it in to my far more secure MS account.

<comment><USER38> It wasn't manually hacked, there's someone out there running a program to brute force known Skype usernames & spreading spam & confirming more Skype usernames. Alphanumeric password upto 9digits are not safe absolutely.

<comment><USER37> Well of course

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yes, they need to fix a lot of things. Also if you use Onedrive online, you are automatically logged into Skype every time you use onedrive. You cannot log out. You can set yourself invisible, but you will be set back to online next time you log in again. It is ridiculous.

Another point is that you cannot use a "work account" you use in office365 as your personal account for OneDrive etc.

</comment><comment><USER40> My skype account was hacked (who's wasn't?) a few months ago. I tried to access it to change the password but in the process I was forced to link it some other Microsoft account that I didn't even know I had. It took me half the day to recover my original passwords then reset them. Now to get to Skype (if I'm logged out) I have to log into some Microsoft cloud identity thing.

All for a service (skype) I rarely use.

</comment><comment><USER41> Google used to be pretty bad at this too, but they seem to have their act together these days. It's not an easy problem. But yeah, when I go to use a Microsoft service online it's always a crapshoot, and certain products require either a personal account or a work account. Syncing OneNote is a confusing mess because of this. And don't get me started on Lync/Skype for Business...

<comment><USER42> It is not always easy to do a good quality control when they downsize their best people and hire people willing to work for less money but a lower quality.

Back in the 1990s I worked as a tech and programmer. I issued bug reports to Microsoft and they would fix them in the next service pack or version. But in doing so they'd change the Windows API calls which broke my Visual Basic programs. I had the Dan Appleman book on API calles but had to surf the net for the changes made to them on Microsoft blogs for developers or Yahoo Clubs on programming, etc. Everytime they made a book, it was outdated as soon as it was published.

<comment><USER43> Still have a couple of the Microsoft Developer Network t-shirts they mailed to you for reporting bugs in Visual C++/MSDN.

I can remember having an issue with a Windows API call in the 90's and having to go on usenet to find someone who knew where to download an example program that Microsoft inexplicably removed from subsequent MSDN CDs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> If I were Satya Nadella I would fire top Skype executives first, cannot believe how a rational company can destroy this brand. Full stop.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've got at least three different Microsoft accounts with the same email address. Supposedly there's a way to link them, so that this becomes less of a clusterfuck, but I've never been able to make that work. So it's just this big mishmash of resources associated more or less at random between these different accounts.

It's russian roulette every time I try to login to something that's authenticated with Microsoft accounts, and trying to remember which login I need to use to access which resources is more than I can keep track of, across outlook, MSDN, forums, Azure, Active Directory, etc, etc.

</comment><comment><USER46> TL;DR: impossible to delete old skype accounts without knowing EVERYTHING about it.

I have like 3 old skype accounts which shows up with my name which I can't access due to me not having the email addresses anymore nor do I remember the passwords, so it is a pain when people try to add me on skype and I contacted them and asked if they could delete my old accounts since I can't access them and they said that is not possible since I don't remember all the security questions and answers, wouldn't even give me the questions so I could have a chance at answering them..

Edit: added TL;DR

</comment><comment><USER47> Managing accounts is a massive problem everywhere. I recently moved from Australia to the USA, and I have been having this problem ad-nauseam. Try switching your Google developer account to a US bank, or your amazon, paypal or god knows how many others. I accidentally put skype credits on the wrong skype account, and was hoping to be able to merge accounts somehow, but ending up just deciding it wasn't worth the $20.

<comment><USER48> I lived in the US, got a paypal account, all good. Moved to sweden, updated address + bank info, still ok. Moved back to USA, now: "You cannot change your country of residence. If you have moved open a new paypal account". WTF? This is a paypal account I've had since the early 2000's.

<comment><USER47> Yeah I had to basically set up new Ebay and paypal accounts, which is a pain, because you go from having 100's on good reviews as a buyer and seller to having none. It's a hard problem, in some a ways a universal internet ID would make life so much easier, but it would also make tyranny much easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Microsoft should fix this, but I have learned to never link my personal accounts with work accounts after the Dropbox enterprise debacle that led to users losing their personal files! after having their Dropbox linked to enterprise Dropbox and then leaving the company.

These situations where you mix personal and enterprise/job accounts become edge cases that can be catastrophic for users stuck in them after they leave companies.

</comment><comment><USER50> To some extent I think this is a user category error. Similarly, one of my platform's most frequent support requests is account recovery due to a change of employment. The number of people who use their work email for personal accounts, without thinking about the long-term consequences, is staggering.

Protip, don't name anything expecting you can change it later. See also: S3 buckets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or, you know, let us unlink accounts or change the username, two pretty normal and reasonable things to request.

<comment><USER50> There's nothing that makes either reasonable, other than "I demand it".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is bad, and I'm not letting Microsoft off the hook here. But, there's an easy workaround for this particular case: Use an alias, such as email@example.com, for the new account.

<comment><USER52> Just tested, My office 365 account bounces for this type of address.

<comment><USER53> This is why I use Postfix and Cyrus for my personal mail. I get Postfix to pre-parse transform the '-' char to '+'; this way I can use email addresses that stupid systems don't barf at but can still get mail delivered to the right mailbox (including sub mailbox if it exists). e.g. firstname.lastname@example.com goes directly to my junk mail box :)

<comment><USER53> I should have mentioned in the previous post, recipient_canonical_maps is probably what you are looking for. Depending, trivial_rewrite might also fit your use case depending on how early into the delivery process you want the addresses to be rewritten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Looking into active directory based features in Azure (key vault, etc) convinces me that somehow active directory is to blame for a lot of the confusing account issues around Azure. I get the feeling a lot of the microsoft authentication systems are built on top of active directory, which does not seem like the most straightforward auth system out there.

</comment><comment><USER55> I am also having a Microsoft account issue that is similar to this.

[https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/outlook_com/forum/oaccou...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/outlook_com/forum/oaccount-ocloseacc/problem-between-work-and-personal- accounts/38eae1e5-5ba9-4eb8-9c88-de9ac88b841a?tm=1489679818866&auth=1)

Difference for me is that I have no idea how the work account was created. I do an have Office365 account from my employer but we just recently switched and I had this problem before that account was created. Also, that Office365 account is linked to my actual work email. The problem I am experiencing is a "work" account that was mysteriously created on my personal email and it makes no sense. Over a month and no one has responded.

Anyone here have any ideas?

</comment><comment><USER56> Google drive also has extremely frustrating multi-login issues. It frequently forces me to log out of all accounts in order to correctly access drive on a specific one. It's entirely random whether it works or not. It's just infuriating.

<comment><USER57> This drives me crazy. My business partner insists on using Google Drive. So I go along with it. But not being allowed to access my Drive while being logged into other Google accounts is so annoying.

<comment><USER58> I'm not saying it's a solution, but as a workaround for similar situations it can help to use two browsers, one for each account.

<comment><USER59> Yeah, the best solution here is to use multiple chrome profiles with one for each account. Google's multiple sign-in is incredibly buggy and is a huge pain when integrating with their oauth APIs

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> > Let me change my Skype username. What the hell, this is just obvious.

The number of services that don't allow this is also insane. Its as if they use the username itself as a key, rather than one that is masked from the user allowing such changes.

</comment><comment><USER61> My corp can't use Azure. We really want to, we're mostly a MSFT shop that runs a largish SaaS application. But Microsoft automatically linked the organizational Azure account for our corporate internet domain to the personal account of an ops guy because of some cookie being present when he created the organizational Azure account. After six months of support calls MSFT cannot get it unscrewed. We're spending 50k USD per month with another cloud provider, and want to move to Azure to take advantage of SQL Azure and MSDN credits. But their screwed up account management system is losing them this revenue.

</comment><comment><USER62> I wonder how many different Auth systems Microsoft has created/subsumed/whatever over the years. It'd be cool too see a graphic of all those services and how they have merged, or in what way they are layered currently.

</comment><comment><USER63> This thing singlehandedly made me ditch Skype.

I didn't know which my login were and it was random which contacts I would see and which contacts were able to message me at all.

I just gave up on it and never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER64> Ever since Lync(corporate IM system) got merged into Skype so that now it's just "skype for business" it's atrocious, easily the worst application I have on my PC.

If someone goes offline, Skype will show you how long they have been offline for. Except....that it's just a random number. I can set my status to offline right now, and my coworker will see that I've been offline for.....168 days. Or 700 days. Or 35 minutes.

Microsoft knew about this bug for years, and there is no fix for it.

Frequently, when I send messages to my coworkers, they appear ABOVE older messages in the coversation, which is extremely confusing, because obviously the whole window will flash to indicate you got a new message, but in reality you have to scroll up to actually see it.

Highlighting text is just broken, I dare anyone from MS to reliably highlight just a portion of text without the selection jumping to seemingly random part of the window without any indication how or why.

Arbitrarily low character limit, so you can't paste snippets of code.

During conference calls, audio just dies from time to time, and the only thing you can do about it is kill the conversation and start again. This is a product based off Skype, for fucks sake, that MS is charging us millions of dollars for globally, and that doesn't even have the basic functionality working correctly.

<comment><USER45> The Skype for Business client is still essentially the same as when it was Lync 2013. In the early days of the rebranding, the version number had only jumped a couple dozen revision numbers, keeping the same major and minor versions, and still calling itself Lync 2013 on the about dialog. Changes on the server-side have been even less drastic.

Consumer Skype is still an entirely separate code base. The two IM platforms don't even speak the same protocol, and just barely interoperate.

The naming change is illogical as all hell, but Microsoft bought Skype, and suddenly Lync needed to be rebranded under the Skype umbrella. Before it was Lync, it was Office Communicator, before that Live Communicator, and before that, I believe went under an MSN name. It's always been hitched to the latest marketing bandwagon.

Lync/S4B is, sadly, one of the better enterprise IM systems, in comparison to other big players in that space, like Sametime, Jabber or Hipchat. It's still hot garbage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Someone has been successfully running brute forced attempts at login into accounts & spreading/amassing valid usernames & attempting brute force logins on them like a pyramid. My password of alphanumeric password of 9 digits got cracked & Skype fucking sent spam to everyone & now is most likely attempting to brute force their accounts as well.....they can't even implement a rate limiter for the logins against an IP.

</comment><comment><USER65> Wooh, am I glad I'm not the only one experiencing account problems.

An event I'm going to requires a Skype account of a preliminary interview. So I go to sign up with my gmail, and I'm able to create an account. However, I already had a Skype account through MS's weird Outlook program (I signed up with my gmail for Outlook, and it automatically created a Skype account without telling me . . . for the gmail account).

This bricks both accounts by loading to an error page when I login, telling me to go to MS's website to fix my account. I go there and then after spelunking through the maze of a UI, finally get to a page that tells me I need to call Microsoft to diagnosis the problem.

Screw that noise. It's 2017, this is archaic.

Luckily, there's a third option for signing up and that's through a phone number. I do that, but now I don't know what to enter for the username field in my interview app. I look through Skype's help docs, and it doesn't say anything about phone numbers.

I assumed my phone number _is_ my username and that's how people can add me. Anyway, that's what I put in the app and I'm hoping that the UN acts like a UN and not a phone number with calling charges.

What a mess. It's also partly the event's fault for using Skype when better alternatives exist.

</comment><comment><USER66> this is not even touching on the security issues that arise from the fact skype does not support 2FA and the merged legacy accounts remain vulnerable.

<comment><USER67> What do you mean?

If you have a outlook.com email, a merged a legacy skype account, and 2FA, what is the attack method that can be used against you?

<comment><USER68> As of my knowledge, you can log in to Skype without 2FA using an outlook.com- email-address even though it has 2FA enabled.

<comment><USER28> If you have proof of a repro for this, please reach out to our security team(s), but to the best of my knowledge this is false. 2FA works on both regular and merged Skype and Microsoft Accounts on all endpoints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I recently upgraded my Linux PC, and had to reinstall Skype.

So I sign in to the new Skype, and can't remember my password. That's OK, I'll just get them to reset it. Oh, my email address expired while my PC was sitting on the junk heap? That's OK, I'll follow their prompts, this shouldn't be too difficult.

"Unfortunately, we were unable to verify your ownership of this account using the information you provided. [...]

Please submit a new account verification form At this point, your best option is to submit a new form with as much accurate information as you can gather."

I've provided the details of six different users who were on my contact list, the complete email address I used to use, and there is nothing else I can do. No email address I can contact, no phone number to ring.

Oh, and most importantly, there's no "Import old account settings" option.

Screw you, Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER70> Similar hate post coming from me soon. I have an MSA & Office 365 (Azure AD) login using the same email. I use my MSA to login to my Surface, but now, all the sudden, I can't setup Outlook to connect to my O365 email. Their solution: rename your MSA. My response "no freaking way... no telling how much stuff that's going to break as I've used that MSA for over a decade".

And then I read your post today... I'm glad I closed my Surface and went back to my MacBook last night...

Ref: [https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Outlook/Can-t- connect...](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Outlook/Can-t-connect- Outlook-2016-to-my-O365-Mailbox/m-p/63421#M555)

</comment><comment><USER71> Skype also has a knack for randomly asking you to input a security code that it'll text or call you with, except... When I have recently needed to do it, I got 0 call or text. The email Skype offers to send a code to, in my case, isn't the email associated with the account but some old email that no longer exists (old recovery email I think). So I'm effectively locked out of my account on any new device for the time being, and getting zero feedback when reaching out to customer support. It is a maddeningly bad user experience, and I cannot believe a company like microsoft would let such crippling bugs exist on such widely distributed products.

</comment><comment><USER72> I have two or maybe one Microsoft account(s). It's impossible to tell because I seem to have made two accounts that some parts of their systems think are the same, and other parts think are different. My theory is that I was a victim of some sort of migration bug at some point because I have had at least one account for a very long time (probably since Halo 2 for that online multiplayer). This problem makes it impossible to update relevant details on either account, IIRC.

Their support is the worst; they were totally unable to even comprehend the problem I was seeing, let alone fix it. I just gave up trying to use them.

</comment><comment><USER73> I should have raised this issue long time ago but why should I do so, after all its not like they're paying me to fix their shits.

I basically moved from Skype to Zoom.us with all my clients

</comment><comment><USER74> Had to deal with Windows/Skype/Office login issues for a senior. It is insane that people who pirate have an easier time than paying customers.

<comment><USER75> Not necessarily looking to go in the direction you mention, but I'm curious what you mean nonetheless - AFAIK, Skype's consumer/personal offering is free, and then you need to subscribe for business accounts because that all runs on microsoft servers.

Are you referring to a different product, or are there copies of old enterprise skype server systems floating around out there?

<comment><USER74> This person had Skype credits and some calling plan. Very consumer level :)

<comment><USER75> Sorry - I think there's been a misunderstanding. I was referring to the context you mentioned in the latter half of your comment, and the supporting circumstances for that.

(In other words, I'm not aware of any way Skype can be pirated, and I'm not particularly aware of any, err, _accessible_ commercial alternatives.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The whole MS account management is a hot mess.

I'm currently dealing with an issue with different versions of the same (MS) software getting authenticated via a domain but ending up pointing at two different MS accounts associated with the same email address, and hence consuming two licenses. 2 weeks of "support" back and forth hasn't helped, they seem to have good tooling to introspect what is happening.

</comment><comment><USER76> I was hit by this issue a couple of days ago and suddenly I needed to use my old Skype login but the password of my second microsoft account.

</comment><comment><USER77> Allowing username changes should be basic functionality in any system that has usernames. People change, names change, and so on.

<comment><USER37> And if you want to avoid abuse rate limit it to one change every 3 months, or $10 per change or SOMETHING.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Outlook doesn't validate email addresses correctly. Their validation is a complete failure. Even # isn't allowed in addresses. [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.4](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.4)

</comment><comment><USER79> Skype no longer works on my wife's Windows 7 laptop. The latest update was pushed without being accompanied by the new MSVC DLL's that it needs, and so doesn't start. I haven't been able to install the redistributable run-time separately, and so it is in a foobared state.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh man, mine too! I have to use the web app!

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> The real fun starts if you need to change the email address associated with your Microsoft account.

Six months and multiple support calls later and I'm still receiving Azure billing information and Xbox newsletters at the old address.

</comment><comment><USER81> Android still does not support logging in with accounts created by signing in with Facebook, despite dozens of support threads and complaints... in case anyone at MS reads this, it sucks.

<comment><USER82> Why on earth would you want to sign on using facebook? Not saying this isnt a bug, but what is the use case sceneraio?

<comment><USER81> Single sign-on. It's really nice to NOT have to copy-paste usernames and passwords from password managers into native apps but use a simple "sign in with FB/Twitter" and it's done. 1 second with a decent internet connection vs 60+s for switching to Keepass, entering the wallet password, actually finding the password, copying the username, switching back to $app, pasting the username, switching back to Keepass, hope it didn't for some reason decide to randomly lock, copy the password, switch back to $app, hope it didn't forget the username in the meantime...

edit: it becomes a special annoyance when an app decides to lock you out after n days (n usually = 30). Great from a security POV but hell is that annoying if it happens to multiple apps at once on a day. Or when you have 20+ apps with unique logins when you reset your phone... as login credentials/tokens are (rightfully) not cloud synced. Android desperately needs a password- autocomplete API, secured by e.g. the fingerprint sensor found on new-ish Samsung devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I switched my (small) business back to running on Microsoft products like Office 365 and the account issues with my employees are driving me INSANE.

</comment><comment><USER84> I was running into the exact same issue. I am hoping that some product can challenge Skype and replace it entirely. It would be better at this stage.

</comment><comment><USER85> Merging a work account to a personal account just seems like a stupid thing to do to begin with. No good could have come of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't remember merging them. It must have happened years and years ago. I haven't worked for that company in a VERY long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Trust me, the Xbox accounts aren't much better. It is painful. I generally avoid Microsoft accounts like the plague.

</comment><comment><USER87> I stopped using Skype forever ago, the service just turned to crap. Facebook video calls are easier at this point.

</comment><comment><USER88> I hope someone out there @ Skype or Microsoft sees this and puts it in front of the right people...

</comment><comment><USER89> I try to avoid using Skype if I can, it feels unloved, like it's barely hanging together.

</comment><comment><USER90> * and Office 365 Business Accounts vs Microsoft Accounts and make all of it linkable.

</comment><comment><USER91> Any good way to search all my Skype chats? Or download complete history to a file?

</comment><comment><USER92> Or just stop using Microsoft products? It's been pretty clear to me since about 1985 that other companies make equivalent products that tend to be more powerful and more pleasant to use. Your time and mental state are valuable!

<comment><USER42> That is why people stuck to Wordperfect and Lotus Smartsuite bundles instead of Microsoft Office. Until new versions of Windows broke the third party office apps.

GRR Martin still uses Wordstar in a DOS machine because he doesn't trust Windows to not crash or reboot on him and lose his data.

Problem is the Microsoft tax on Intel or AMD PCs that OEMs have to pay even if they don't install Windows or Office. But now Office 2016 is installed but user needs to buy a key to use it for activation.

I suggest that people use Libreoffice because it can read docx files etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Mine:

Corporate account, used for Windows logon

Skype personal account

XBox account because they made me make one when my kids were young

A second personal account used for something I forget. Posting on MS help fora possibly.

Mind you I have three active Google accounts.

</comment><comment><USER94> People: You need to quit your usage of M$ products and services, this is insane.

</comment><comment><USER95> Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.</comment>


Life After the Bubble: How Japan Lost a Decade  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/weekinreview/19impoco.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print

<comment><USER3> As far as the stock market goes, the US has pretty much lost a decade already: both the Dow Jones and S&P500 indexes have bobbed up and down 50% since 1998. (The same goes for the NASDAQ, by the way). This indicates the the markets have priced in the shenanigans already: there has been economic activity, but broadly speaking it hasn't been based on wealth creation. You have produced as many useless things (houses that no one will live in, for instance) as useful things.

When you've been living a lie all this time, some pain is bound to follow. For philosophical purposes the difference between recession and debt-fueled boom is small: the only real difference is that people get paid..money which must be paid back later. It is, weirdly enough, an economic zero-sum game. But now it's over, and there's just one way to go on. Maybe there will be a hangover, but these things are temporary.

I think it is wrong to draw parallels to Japan. Extrapolating trends and learning from history almost never works with economics. There are too many random (i.e. unknown) variables. For all we know, the US could get its act together in half a year. You've still got the most powerful economy in the world, it has just been focusing on the wrong things for a while. I'm with Buffett.

</comment><comment><USER4> Japan has its own issues that have kept it in a virtually stagnant economy for the last 10-15 years. The entire country's natural tendency is to fold back into itself and create pockets of isolation from the outside world - <USER2> tendency that has repeated itself for most of their history. It's difficult to draw large scale economic parallels like this without discussing the underlying DNA of the culture supporting the economy in question.

The US also has some serious issues, culturally and economically (duh) but I honestly think we're in better shape. There is of course a very real possibility that we're heading into a time of depression that could last years, but the spark of innovation seems alive and well to me. It may be a little misplaced at the moment but the market has its own ways of correcting that.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm seriously irked by login-required policy of NY Times :-(

<comment><USER6> bugmenot doesn't work on nytimes?

edit: it does - <http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com>

install this extension - <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6349>

<comment><USER5> Thanks! I've used BMN sporadically through bookmarklets, but this is very nice.</comment></comment></comment>


Kubernetes V1 Released - <AUTHOR> http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/07/Kubernetes-V1-Released.html <comment><USER2> Can anyone recommend a good "Consultant's", "Solutions Architect's", or "Top- Right Quadrant on a Silly Gardner Chart" overview of how Kubernetes competes or cooperates with Mesos? It feels like there's quite a bit of dense conceptual reading you have to plow through before you can even start to talk about what these things do.

<comment><USER3> To add to the others, in a nutshell:

\- Mesos is a generalized, low level framework for distributing workloads over multiple nodes. It provides mechanism not policy. Therefore it requires quite a bit of up-front work to build something usable for any given application.

\- Kubernetes is an opinionated cluster execution tool. It provides tools and a curated workflow for running distributed containerized applications. It's generally pretty quick and easy to get running.

\- Mesos has a rich, resource-aware task scheduler. You can specify that your application requires X CPU units and Y RAM units and it will find the optimum node to run the task on.

\- By contrast, the Kubernetes scheduler currently is rather dumb[1]. There's no way to specify the expected resource utilization for pods, and the scheduler simply tries to spread out replicas as much as possible throughout the available nodes.

People are (rightly) excited about things like Mesosphere which could allow the best of both worlds: the ease and API of Kubernetes with a powerful Mesos resource scheduler, not to mention nice-to-haves like a Web UI with pretty visualizations.

You can now cut me a check for 50% of the consulting revenue you get from this information. :)

1\. The scheduler is intentionally simple and pluggable, to allow improvements easily in the future. My statements only apply to the current state of Kubernetes as deployed today.

<comment><USER4> The Kubernetes scheduler also does resource-aware scheduling. You're correct that it tries to spread replicas across nodes, but it only spreads them across the nodes that have enough free resources for the container (more precisely, Pod) that it's scheduling.

<comment><USER3> Nowhere in the pod spec is there a way to specify resource constraints or even hints ([https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/maste...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/master/pkg/api/v1beta3/types.go#L864-L897)).

So even if the scheduler is vaguely resource-aware (I'm not convinced that's true) it would be entirely static, based on things like container count.

<comment><USER4> Currently resource requirements are specified only on containers, not Pods. The requirements for the Pod are computed by adding up the requirements of the containers within the Pod.

To be more concrete: Within the PodSpec type that you linked to, there is a field of type []Container. Within the Container type there is a field called Resources which is of type ResourceRequirements. ResourceRequirements lets you specify resource requirements of the container. The resource requirements of the Pod are computed by adding up the resource requirements of the containers that run within the Pod.

In addition to resource-based scheduling, we also support "label selectors" which allows you to label nodes with key/value pairs and then say that a Pod should only run on nodes with particular labels. That's specified in the NodeSelector field of the PodSpec (which you linked to).

<comment><USER3> Fair enough! :) I overlooked that aspect of the Container type, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're using Ubuntu we've got a bundle of Juju charms for those who want to get up and running:

\- [http://insights.ubuntu.com/2015/07/21/introducing- kubernetes...](http://insights.ubuntu.com/2015/07/21/introducing-kubernetes- version-1-0/)

\- [https://jujucharms.com/u/kubernetes/kubernetes- cluster](https://jujucharms.com/u/kubernetes/kubernetes-cluster)

PRs and comments welcome!

</comment><comment><USER6> I've found that Kubernetes is a big hammer. If your problem can be backed by a web app, you should start with AppEngine. If you need specialty library support or wider computational space per instance, you can move your AppEngine app to ManagedVMs (which uses Kubernetes under the covers). If you need special, "grid-like" services where you need exquisite control over the entire stack, only then does it make sense to use raw Kubernetes and Docker. And you will spend a lot of time getting it right.

<comment><USER7> ManagedVMs don't use k8s under the covers afaik. However there's GKE (Google Container Engine), which goes on top of (at least 3) MVMs and that one does use k8s. While it is true that going with a PaaS(-like) solution like AppEngine or Heroku is easy in the beginning it can get pretty expensive pretty fast and it limits you in the choice of languages, frameworks, and data stores you can use. This can in some instances bring technical debt with it that will pose a hurdle when growing. Actually, using Docker combined with an orchestration layer like k8s is supposed to give the the ease-of-use of PaaS with the flexibility of IaaS (or MVMs), however, managing sth like k8s by yourself is not that easy and you will need quite a bunch of other tools on top, i.e. for monitoring and stuff, which paves the way for Container-as-a- Service solutions, like RancherOS, tutum, or Giant Swarm (disclaimer, I'm part of the latter company)

<comment><USER8> Correct, MVMs does not use Kubernetes today. We're looking at rebasing onto GKE now that they've hit 1.0, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Disclaimer: I'm a tech lead on Managed VMs/App Engine at Google

<comment><USER9> Since you're already here, any chance you can talk a little bit more about upcoming plans for managed vms? I hear there is a lot of investment in that area, but what will that mean technically going forward? How are things going to change so we can plan better?

<comment><USER8> I don't want to hijack the Kubernetes launch thread, but feel free to send me an email at email@example.com and I'll answer whatever I can. We have a lot of exciting stuff going out soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Getting started with Kubernetes is pretty easy and I wrote a guide to quickly run it on your local machine: [https://www.cloudgear.net/blog/2015/5-minutes- kubernetes-set...](https://www.cloudgear.net/blog/2015/5-minutes-kubernetes- setup/)

It's not up to date with Kubernetes 1.0.0 but I'll update the images as soon as the final version 1 is tagged.

<comment><USER11> I definitely don't want this to come off as a sales pitch, but you can get started in one click using Google Container Engine (and $300 in free credit) as well.

Full disclosure: I work at Google on Kubernetes

<comment><USER12> We were looking at this, but noticed that you have to one run cluster per availability zone. Any plans for being able to run a cluster across an entire region within GCE?

<comment> alex-mohr Yes, we've heard from a number of people who want that and will improve regional support.

Current ideas are either a single regional cluster or via federation of multiple zonal clusters.

See eg [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/maste...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/proposals/federation.md) for an proposal on the latter.

<comment><USER12> FWIW, I'd love to have Kubernetes clusters spanning a region with multiple regions/providers managed by Ubernetes. That would be the sweet spot for our particular usage case.

This is only one point of data for you, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I might come across as ignorant but what is the relationship between Kubernetes and Docker, because when I was reading the article I tought of it as a Docker competitor, but further down in the comments, there is one that says they do different jobs.

And that confused me.

<comment><USER11> Docker and Kubernetes works hand in hand. That is to say, if you choose Docker as your container format, Kubernetes runs Docker on every node to run your container. Kubernetes focuses on _what_ Docker should run, and how to move those container workloads around.

Docker also has Docker Swarm, which can be thought of as a competitor in some ways. But Google will be a heavy supporter of their container format for a long time to come.

Full Disclosure: I work at Google on Kubernetes

<comment><USER13> So Kubernetes compliments Docker, but how it complements it.

I had tested Docker just for fun, thinking that maybe I could implement it in the way I work, and sure it is a super tool for developing (far better than Virtual Machines), but deploying was kind of nightmerish, for what I understood Docker wasn't at the time ready for being a deployment tool.

Does Kubernetes fixes or extends Docker in this way

<comment><USER3> Think of them as different layers. If you're a front end web dev, it's sort of like SASS vs CSS: the former is a layer on top of the latter that makes it more powerful/convenient/easier to use.

At the bottom of the stack (most low level) is the Docker runtime. It knows how to run containers on the local machine. It can link them together, manage volumes, etc but at the core it is a _single machine_ system. (That's probably why Docker, Inc has developed their proprietary orchestration tools like swarm).

Layered on top of that are container-native OSes like CoreOS. CoreOS provides facilities for running distributed containers on multiple physical nodes. It handles things like replication and restarting failed containers (actually fleet "units"). This is a huge improvement over vanilla Docker, but it's still pretty low level. If you want to run a real production application with dependencies it can be tedious. For example, linking together containers that run on different nodes. How does container A find container B (which may be running on any one of N nodes)? To solve this you have to do things like the Ambassador Pattern[1]. Any complex application deployment involves essentially building discovery and dependency management from scratch.

Layered on top of this is Kubernetes (it runs on CoreOS but also Ubuntu and others). As said elsewhere in this post, k8s provides an opinionated workflow that allows you to build distributed application deployments without the pain of implementing things like low-level discovery. You describe your application in terms of containers, ports, and services and k8s takes care of spawning them, managing replica count (restarting/migrating if necessary) and discovery (via DNS or environment variables).

One of the very convenient things about k8s (unlike vanilla Docker) is that all containers within a pod can find each other via localhost, so you don't have to maintain tedious webs of container links. In general it takes the world of containerization from "Cool technology, but good luck migrating production over" to "I think we could do this!".

1\. [https://coreos.com/blog/docker-dynamic-ambassador-powered- by...](https://coreos.com/blog/docker-dynamic-ambassador-powered-by-etcd/)

<comment><USER11> was about to write a response, but bkeroack did a perfect job with the above :)

Full disclosure: I work at Google on Kubernetes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And related to that, CoreOS has launcehd a preview of its Kubernetes comercial platform [0]

[0] [http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/21/coreos-launches-preview- of-...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/21/coreos-launches-preview-of-tectonic- its-commercial-kubernetes-platform/?ncid=rss)

</comment><comment><USER14> Wercker has a post on continous integration for containers to Kubernetes which Micha, their CEO, did back in June: [http://blog.wercker.com/2015/06/23/Deploying-minimal- contain...](http://blog.wercker.com/2015/06/23/Deploying-minimal-containers- to-kubernetes.html), which uses Google's Container Registry for pushing images.

If anyone is interested, I just wrapped up a similar post for deploying containers to Giant Swarm from Wercker, no Docker required: I just got done doing a continuos integration post for containers using Wercker and Giant Swarm: [https://github.com/giantswarm/swarm- wercker](https://github.com/giantswarm/swarm-wercker).

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm hoping for ACI support soon so that I can use rkt instead of docker. :-)

<comment><USER11> I have good news for you :)

[https://blog.kismatic.com/running-rkt-on- kubernetes/](https://blog.kismatic.com/running-rkt-on-kubernetes/)

Full Disclosure: I work at Google on Kubernetes

<comment><USER15> Yes you can use rkt for docker images, but I want to be able to use ACI's. which doesn't seem possible yet[0].

But awesome that there's at least some support! :D

[0] - [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/issues/720...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/issues/7203)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > containers scheduled < 5s on average

That seems awfully slow for a fancy chroot. I use KVM to bring up WinXP snapshot VMs in around 2s to a running state...maybe they mean 5ms?

<comment><USER17> 5s is the right number, but it leaves out that it is 99%ile, on a 100-node, 3000-pod cluster. See [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/issues/395...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/issues/3954).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting to see IBM placing a bet each way by joining the new foundation, seeing as they're already in the Cloud Foundry Foundation.

Edit: and I see the Cloud Foundry Foundation logo on the Cloud Native Foundation homepage. It's Foundations all the way down.

(Disclaimer: I work for another CFF member, Pivotal).

<comment><USER19> Its pretty orthogonal to cloud foundry, which is a composite infrastructure, while these are lower level products that can be used to build PaaS.

<comment><USER18> Right -- the analogous component is Diego.

I guess I got caught up by the inside baseball.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is Kubernetes pronounced "koo bur NET ease" or am I way off?

<comment> a-robinson Yes, that's how it's pronounced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's with the recent adoption of the .io TLD @ google? cncf.io, gcr.io, ...

<comment><USER22> I guess it's driven by the same motivation everyone else has: it's impossible to get a decent .com domain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> how do you pronounce that word?

<comment><USER24> coo-bur-net-eees</comment></comment>


Illegal number - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number <comment><USER2> This "Illegal number" argument needs to die. Child porn, revenge porn, trade secrets, state secrets, identities of undercover operatives, etc can all be represented as number. Are you arguing (some of) those things shouldn't be illegal to disseminate because of "Illegal numbers"?

This is akin to someone arguing that laws against assault are making "Illegal Force Vectors", and laws against threatening speech are making "Illegal air molecule vibrations".

<comment><USER3> > Child porn, revenge porn, trade secrets, state secrets, identities of > undercover operatives, etc

I think we should probably move away from _pure_ possession of information being illegal, in substantial part because it's comparatively easy to plant. But regardless it doesn't have much to do with "illegal numbers".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. I thought this was going to be some silly alternate meaning of "illegal" within software, like a famous invalid memory address or something. Nope, it's actually a number that's against the law.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a thing every young idealistic programmer discovers. And then he thinks he has found a big, evil injustice.

Until he matures and realizes the "illegal number argument" is structurally the same as the "I didn't murder her, I was just moving through the room with my knife extended" argument.

<comment><USER6> You are equivocating murder with sharing a small piece of data, I can't even take this as a good-faith argument.

<comment><USER5> I am not, and the fact that you accuse me of that proves your malignant intentions.

And maybe learn what "to equivocate" means.

<comment><USER7> Would you please not break the site guidelines, regardless of whether someone else did? Let alone escalating the malice.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Realtime Replication Between GraphQL and the Client-Side Database - code-is-code https://rxdb.info/replication-graphql.html <comment><AUTHOR> This sounds really exciting!

I think it should be fairly straightforward to get this to work with Hasura/Postgres on the server by ensuring a few data-modelling constraints. Authorization should also just work I think. Can't wait to play around with this!

(I'm from Hasura).</comment>


Uber partners with Cargo to help drivers make money by selling stuff to riders - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/19/uber-partners-with-cargo-to-help-drivers-make-money-by-selling-stuff-to-riders/ <comment><USER2> While I can definitely see it being a good business partnership since one supplies a captive market for the other. From a rider pov this makes me cringe and hope it doesn't make my rides seem like i'm standing in front of a kiosk in a mall.

If a rider just has a "menu" on the back of their seats with a couple things sitting there, and doesn't push it, great. Understandable, maybe I'd buy something if I were in a pinch and price is reasonable.</comment>


Bitcoin hits $10,000 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/bitcoin-leaves-skeptics-behind-while-blasting-to-record-10-000 <comment><USER2> "Rosenstreich at online trading firm Swissquote said bitcoin's surge harks to the surprises of the U.K. referendum on European Union membership and President Trump's election.

"We have underestimated the populist movements," he said. "There is growing unease on how central banks and governments are managing fiat currencies. Ordinary people globally understand why a decentralized asset is the ultimate safe haven.""

That's the reason for 10k and it will be the reason for 100k. 100k puts the market at cap at a trillion, it's not that crazy if you remember that Gold is several times that and other than looking good as jewelry it has no other real intrinsic value. No one likes to talk about that though, they like to demonize bitcoin which actually does something gold could never do. Force trust in a world where you can't trust anything.

<comment><USER3> >No one likes to talk about that though, they like to demonize bitcoin which actually does something gold could never do.

Just playing devils advocate, but you can't replicate/duplicate gold. On the other hand I could create 21M cryptocoins on a blockchain (calling them Bitcoin2 or even just Bitcoin if it pleases). I can make them function identically, similarly or more efficiently than Bitcoin. I can create a new blockchain (network) or put these coins on an existing blockchain (say the Ethereum blockchain). How much would you pay for all 21M Bitcoin? How much would you pay me to create you 21M Bitcoin2 and transfer 100% of them to you?

You say Bitcoin is $10k because ordinary people understand why a decentralized asset is the ultimate safe haven. If that is your premises it makes little sense to compare Bitcoin to gold, compare Bitcoin to other currencies. Why does Litecoin = $100 and Ether = $500? Bitcoin may do something gold could never do, obviously, but can it do anything any other cryptocoin/token can't?

The real irony is cryptocoins and blockchains couldn't even exist without gold, because it is a necessary component in the machines that created bitcoin, that hosts blockchain nodes, mines, hosts wallets and facilitates transactions.

<comment><USER4> >On the other hand I could create 21M cryptocoins on a blockchain (calling them Bitcoin2 or even just Bitcoin if it pleases). I can make them function identically, similarly or more efficiently than Bitcoin. I can create a new blockchain (network) or put these coins on an existing blockchain (say the Ethereum blockchain). How much would you pay for all 21M Bitcoin? How much would you pay me to create you 21M Bitcoin2 and transfer 100% of them to you?

Econ 101: The price of a currency is based on people's trust in that currency.

>The real irony is cryptocoins and blockchains couldn't even exist without gold, because it is a necessary component in the machines that created bitcoin, that hosts blockchain nodes, mines, hosts wallets and facilitates transactions.

That's not irony. Thats a happy coincidence.

<comment><USER5> "Econ 101: The price of a currency is based on people's trust in that currency."

Right, but how many people really trust Bitcoin? And by trust, I mean trust that it will retain its value for the foreseeable future.

I have trust that the Euro will retain its value, so I feel confident pricing my product and services using it. On the other hand you'd be crazy to price anything in Bitcoin.

No one has trust in Bitcoin as a currency. Some people have some degree of trust in it as an investment vehicle, which is fine. That doesn't make Bitcoin a currency any more than gold is.

<comment><USER6> > I have trust that the Euro will retain its value

You must feel very betrayed every year when you look at the inflation rate and the price increases...

<comment><USER7> The euro zone had around 1.5% inflation this year, what are you talking about?

<comment><USER6> How is that retaining it's value? That's nearly 10% gone after 7 years.

And that's assuming 1.5%, some years are worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Disclaimer: I do own BTC.

But I really can't see how this is not just an instrument for some people to get very rich in a very short amount of time on the back of others.

Can it reach 100k? Absolutely. 1M? Who knows. 10M/BTC? Someone on Reddit said it will get close. But in the end I do think it will be remembered as a global mania instead of the creation of a new asset class.

I do believe in block chain and the value of crypto currency in general, but I just don't see how BTC will be the winning asset in the end, if anything Etherum has a lot more solid foundation and is a lot more scalable technically.

<comment><USER9> I heard a rumor that it will hit 1 trillion dollars. It sounded legit.

<comment><USER10> Was the rumor on Reddit, though? Because if so, I'm loading up on BTC. To the moon, as they say over there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Be careful. There is evidence that certain parties are issuing fake dollars called USDT / Tether from which they buy cryptocoins (incl. BTC) to artificially increase the price:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/bitfinexed](https://mobile.twitter.com/bitfinexed) (One of the people monitoring the situation)

[https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7g5yml/my_investigation...](https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7g5yml/my_investigation_of_tether_scam_and_some/) (Some more info)

Make sure you are able to get out on time if needed. Investigate and decide for yourself. There is a lot of censoring and vote manipulation going on. I am not going to point fingers, but just that you are aware.

<comment><USER12> The Friedman memo showed they were 1-1 cash/usdt back in September, and they've stated clearly it's institutional money coming in. In fact, that's exactly what I would expect for large buyers trying to spread their purchases across exchanges who don't use USD directly.

"I agree that if no one was able to get fiat in or out of Tether and USDT were still being issued that would be a huge problem. As it stands, however, institutional customers are able to deposit USD to Tether, and this is how USDT is being issued."

[https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7fsfwl/dail...](https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7fsfwl/daily_discussion_monday_november_27_2017/dqfwq33/)

<comment><USER13> If you believe them you must believe that they've received $250 million dollars in the month of November alone.

[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/)

This on a daily pattern that looks like a step function. Where could this money possibly be coming from? Anonymous millionaires?

<comment><USER12> Hedge funds, family offices, etc.. $250M isn't all that much. Arrington is trying to raise a $100M crypto fund, Novogratz is raising a $500M one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 7 years ago: The first bitcoin article on HN with comments!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670)

One of the posters says the feds will shut it down. I also thought this too. This remains one of the most enduring mysteries of Bitcoin to me. Why has the government taken such a hands off approach?

<comment><USER15> You mean the USA government? Because they have no legal basis to take action. Rule of law is weird like that.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure I understand your comment. There seems to be plenty of anti money-laundering laws that would provide a legal basis.

<comment><USER15> You can prosecute people for money laundering, that is very different from banning bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The most remarkable aspect of bitcoin is that if Satoshi is a single person, it's the first time in history someone has become a billionaire by themselves.

It's not quite that clear cut, but it's not too far off.

<comment><USER18> The only problem is that Satoshi's coins are watched like a hawk. Satoshi can't liquidate any of them, or even really move them without causing an immediate reaction in the community. Exchanges might halt trading, whilst it would immediately give away his or her identity. If the price of bitcoin doesn't crash following a coin movement, Satoshi's life is most certainly at risk. If it does, then the coins are worth nothing.

<comment><USER19> Satoshi is almost certainly dead. No living person could resist the temptation to talk about their creation of a 100 billion dollar phenomenon. Two plausible candidates who died at about the right time are Hal Finney and Dave Kleiman.

<comment><USER20> Edit: I misread the initial post, but still think what I wrote is reasonably relevant. Had I been Satoshi (and I'm not), I would have no trouble not talking about it.

I think this is unlikely. I think it is much more likely that he deleted his keys -- on purpose. Despite the common "Bitcoin was created as a scam" sentiment, I see very little evidence of this. Satoshi appears to have just been a very idealistic person who thought that he was doing something useful. From the beginning he said that he shouldn't hang on to those initial coins because it would undermine the validity of the currency. Out of curiosity I've read through a fair amount of the original dev forum archives (I forget where they are, but I'm sure they are not hard to find -- last time I looked I found them right away). As far as I can tell, it is what it appears to be. Which is not, of course, to say that there aren't plenty of scammers in the Bitcoin world. It just seems that Satoshi wasn't one of them.

<comment><USER17> [http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/](http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Most comprehensive all-time Bitcoin price history chart you will find online, to give some perspective: [http://bitcoin.zorinaq.com/price/](http://bitcoin.zorinaq.com/price/) (Chart is interactive, see instructions at the bottom. I made it.)

<comment><USER22> You should fix the Y axis. Completely misleading.

<comment><USER21> A logarithmic scale is the proper way to show an exponentially increasing value.

<comment><USER23> But nowhere as impressive looking as a hockey stick graph.

<comment><USER21> True but the point isn't to be impressive, but to be scientifically precise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If this keeps up buying $100 in Bitcoin would seem to be inexpensive ransomware insurance.

</comment><comment><USER25> Makes you wonder what triggers people have for themselves to sell their 'stash'. 10 fold increases in a year won't last for very long.

<comment><USER26> There's a FOMO narrative of "$1,000,000 BTC if it goes mainstream" going around which has fuelled speculative investments from some people I know (myself included - obviously using money I am totally OK with losing given how far-fetched an outcome it is).

<comment><USER27> Yes, that was written at the very beginning of bitcoin. The thought is that bitcoin can be divided into 100,000,000 satoshis and a dollar can be divided into 100 cents, so to make 1 satoshi = 1 cent means 1 bitcoin = 1,000,000 dollars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Back in September I've written down my thoughts on how Bitcoin price is determined in a two part blog (the second part is about pricing), and back then I concluded that Bitcoin will falter if it does not reach the cap closer to that of gold, which has to do with the total "capacity" of Bitcoin as store of value, which is its market cap. It still has more than 10x of growth to get there.

[1] [https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/22/bitcoin- value/](https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/22/bitcoin-value/)

[2] [https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/25/bitcoin- value-2/](https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/25/bitcoin-value-2/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Can someone explain to me why bitcoin should be priced so high relative to other cryptocurrencies?

The conspiracy theorist in me wants to say that the best way to undermine trust in cryptocurrencies is to create market turmoil. This would not just undermine trust in cryptocurrency, but serve to embolden the Fed's 'Price Stability' justification.

<comment><USER30> I'd have to argue it's because Bitcoin went net-positive after the BCH fork -- that shows a bit of resilience and probably would inspire false confidence in speculators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd love to force disclaimers on bitcoin ownership prior to commenters trying to convince us how decentralized currency will change the world and hit $1M eventually.

It's called talking your book, which isn't illegal, but wildly disingenuous. FOMO is why the number keeps going up, these other reasons are window dressing for utter nonsense.

<comment><USER32> I bought a laptop with BTC a few months ago. Also MDMA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how many tulips you can buy with a bitcoin?

<comment><USER34> This is such a lazy comment and it comes up every time. It contributes absolutely nothing.

<comment><USER33> Pointing out the obvious in a minimum of words is not lazy.

Expecting people to stop pointing out the obvious is optimistic at best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Well, there are only that many people with speculators mentality who will keep buying. At one point, all this will collapse. It's very easy to be profiting when there's momentum upwards - just like it used to be with DotCom... until everybody lost and the economy couldn't recover for years! I know a friend who lost everything, including his house during the DotCom putting every single penny into the stock market, including his 401(k), etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't follow it but I read somewhere the other day that it now costs tens of dollars worth to actually make a transaction on the blockchain.

If this is true then it seems to me that it's effectively become an inter-bank settlement protocol (which may not be that surprising or bad of an outcome given its inherent latency)

<comment><USER37> One thing I learned since learning about cryptocurrencies: NEVER trust "something you read somewhere". A lot of them are propaganda or people who have no idea how it actually works scratching the surface.

Do your own research if you're curious about it and don't want to feel left out. It's never too late to make an actual informed decision afterwards. I've seen so many otherwise intelligent people just keep dismissing Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies without even knowing how they actually work. Don't be those people.

Try to read some books about the actual technology that runs Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and THEN make a decision whether you think it's a scam or not. Even if you think you think it's a scam or a bubble or whatever, at least then you'll be actually making an independent judgment on a new piece of technology that nobody--including the inventor him/herself--fully understands.

<comment><USER36> Oh, I'm well aware of how Bitcoin works. All the way down to the cryptographic constructs.

I studied it for a while, and it lead me on to some more interesting topics, but the currency itself doesn't interest me.

Understanding Bitcoin to assess "whether it's a scam" makes about as much sense as learning about the mechanics of an electronic exchange to figure out whether it's a good idea to invest in Facebook.

<comment><USER37> Not a great analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> From the outside, as nonuser, I cannot understand how this currency price surge helps the currency as a medium of exchange. Wouldn't this signal everyone to hold on their bitcoins? Doesn't this hurt the adoption in the long run?

<comment><USER39> It can also signal that you have enough money to buy what you wanted to buy in the first place... while encouraging saving. Maybe not super bad. You're right that if its function is as a currency then it should be used but it's hard to make that case for Bitcoin. For Monero, it's very clear: Monero's anonymity is strongest when it is actually used – when there are more transaction outputs from which to choose, and so usage of it is to be encouraged – especially when the alternative is the influx of hordes of speculators who merely hold or trade and don't contribute to the technology nor community in any way. Well, except perhaps in providing comedy material…

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I vividly remember when it crashed down from around 900 a few years ago and the /r/bitcoin subreddit literally had suicide hotlines pinned.

</comment><comment><USER41> Sometimes when I think if humanity met extremely advanced alien civilization - what kind of "stuff" could they use to trade? At one point I thought - it must be information, pieces of information are ultimately valuable. BTC might be something close to that. Foggy thoughts, but its a foggy concept.

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe the price jumping high because organization like Amazon will announce that they will start accepting BTC soon

</comment><comment><USER42> Honest question: Is Bitcoin used in significant quantities for "legitimate"/legal transactions? I don't know a single person who has bought anything with a Bitcoin, or received payment. From my non-economic POV, it sure seems like /pure speculation/.

<comment><USER43> I have received payment for programming work in Bitcoin. I also used it to buy a movie ticket one night when my bank account had run out at the end of the month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm note sure if bitcoin can be a viable currency if the price movements are so volatile. It's all good the the volatility moving the price up, carrying it in any big amount without insurance feels like gambling right now

<comment><USER45> This is my hangup with it. The libertarian dreams of a decentralized currency can never happen if people expect their money to rapidly increase in value.

Why would I buy a pizza today, or a house, or an island, with BTC if in 6 months, that same BTC would be worth 10x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'd like to see Bitcoin gain more utility as a payment platform. I'm hoping that CME's plan to offer futures contracts gives merchants the stability they need to offer products priced in BTC online.

</comment><comment><USER47> How do you transfer Bitcoin into fiat currency? There was a Bitcoin ATM in Portland, OR a while back but I'm not sure how it worked and haven't really heard of other ways to liquidate BTC.

<comment><USER43> There are a lot of ways. You could use Coinbase or an exchange. Or Bitpay. You could also try localbitcoins.com. Or just find a person who is hyped about it and help them set up a wallet then make a deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I am surprised to see very little mention of monero, given that it's closer to true anonymity than other cryptocurrencies.

</comment><comment><USER49> People from the start have been predicting the death of Bitcoin and yet keeps going strong. What going on here ?

</comment><comment><USER50> It broke 9000 yesterday, didn't it? That's more than 10% in a day.

Is there any reason it is up, other than speculation?

<comment><USER51> Tether hyperinflation.

Edit: I should clarify. Bitfinex printed 95 million worth of tether in the last _two days_ , and used it to buy btc. When your prices are denominated in Monopoly money, the sky is the limit.

<comment><USER52> This is the story that's missing here. When one of the major exchanges is starting to look insolvent and USDT is getting scarier and scarier by the day, a flight from USDT into Bitcoin is not surprising...

<comment><USER12> Tether is being issued because institutional money is coming in through USDT.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7fsfwl/dail...](https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7fsfwl/daily_discussion_monday_november_27_2017/dqfwq33/)

<comment><USER30> That makes no sense; if institutional money were to come into cryptocurrency (that is, fiat to crypto) -- which is a taxable event -- why would they be going into USDT when the main goal of USDT is to be stable?

Essentially, that means people will be losing money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I heard pretty much the same bs when it hit 5k. And now, oh boy, when is it going to hit 100k now.

</comment><comment><USER54> this time, it's for real... (the last time a 10k value was posted on HN, I could not find 1 bitcoin for 10k on my exchange ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503\)))

<comment><USER55> "This time is different," amirite?

<comment><USER56> "This time, it's Bitcoin." (tm)

<comment><USER24> Ok, that just crossed into the T-shirt threshold.

<comment><USER57> I am currently making a personal tshirt based on the this thread.

<comment><USER58> This whole place has lost its collective mind on the subject of crypto.

<comment><USER56> "This whole place has lost its collective mind on the subject of crypto!" (tm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I bought my first Bitcoin at $10.

Of course, I had to sell it at $20...

<comment><USER25> At the present rate that is less than a year. Time to buy some more. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Unlike gold a BTC has absolutely no use beyond whatever its current use is. The only way for a BTC to be ever in demand is if enough people trust each other that nobody will start selling it in large mass and therefore entirely flooring the value of it. However trust is not exactly a great foundation for a currency's value. Gold has at least has some useful applications outside of banking. For a start it looks beautiful, it is highly in demand in fashion and jewellery an it has also great application in electronics. This is a much better foundation for being resilient against a complete loss of value and promising longevity.

Besides BTC has serious flaws in order to attract a critical mass. It is extremely unsustainable - for example buying a sandwich with BTC requires more energy than a house for an entire week. This is alone is just horrible, especially in times when we should be trying to save our planet and not waste energy for shits like this. Secondly with it's current volatility the people who own BTC are much much less likely to spend it somewhere, because of the hope of gaining more value. However if nobody is willing to spend their BTC then adoption will lack and eventually counter act on it's value.

Thirdly you can't really convert the value of BTC into hard cash and even if you could, before you'd finish converting a large amount of BTC into cash you'd have halved the price of the BTC as part of the exercise.

Overall the technology behind it is interesting, but BTC I honestly think will massively flop and the current hype comes from pure greed. Investors trying to convince the populus to buy into BTC so they can finally cash out, but the reality is that for the normal person BTC is literally too cryptic to jump on the train and tech savvy people know better that it's too late now. It's too volatile and anything can happen. You don't buy expensive assets which are so widely known that they are in the news every day. This is too late.. we just watch and wait for the burst.

<comment><USER61> What percentage of the value of gold do you think is due to its "inherent" value in jewelry or electronics? I'd wager it's incredibly tiny, and I don't understand your argument that gold is a reasonable store of value only because it has some tiny bit of "inherent" value.

<comment><USER60> It has a lot with it to do, because a lot of today's asset value is based on pure emotions of investors and their feelings and if something is actually physical, which you can see, hold in your hands, which has a very shiny appearance, is being worn by rich people around their necks and is used in the most sophisticated electronics (which itself is required for the world to function nowadays) influences one's feelings a lot - so yes, the fact that gold has these attributes plays a huge role IMHO.

On the other hand a BTC is literally just a made up hashsum which is not only extremely volatile on the markets, but could also very easily just physically disappear through loss, theft or just malfunction.

<comment><USER61> But if you're going to use emotions to explain a significant portion of gold's value, surely the emotions of Bitcoin traders should provide an equally legitimate explanation of Bitcoin's value.

I don't really like appeals to "inherent value," except for assets that can be expected to be desirable to almost any individual in almost any conceivable scenario (like food). Even then, there is some level of social or "network" effect, because in order to trade food you need your trade partner to have confidence that your assets are genuine (e.g. it's not fake cans of beans) and that there is some fundamental protection of property rights (e.g. you're not going to trade your canned beans for their eggs, only to immediately steal back their eggs using the threat of force).

In that sense, all "inherent value" is just an abstraction based on your confidence in your ability to predict the future behavior of other humans, which isn't so different than your decision today to trade fiat currency for cryptocurrency (or even to trade your labor for fiat currency, like most of us do in traditional jobs).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Are we going get every other bitcoin price milestone on the frontpage now?

Earlier today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503)

Then two days ago for 9k:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15786821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15786821)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15779933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15779933)

at 7k:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15609264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15609264)

<comment><USER43> Right and in a few months or years it will be on the front page when it hits 20k and then 40k.</comment></comment>