How to pick startup ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.defmacro.org/2015/02/25/startup-ideas.html <comment><USER2> Interesting article - a lot of good stuff in it but I found it a bit to general to be really useful. As an example, the author states: "So you need to get to market with a viable product before anyone else does."

That's the type of statement that I question - there are plenty of examples of companies creating products in saturated markets where they were not the first mover. In fact, sometime being a first mover can be a disadvantage as you must, as a startup, spend huge amounts of time and money educating the market.

Now, the author's approach of "look at the trend, get in front of it" is great - but it's pretty rare that someone can do that. In startups, I've usually seen that luck plays a bigger role in it than anyone wants to admit - that is, you start a company, and you happen onto the right market wave at the right time.

Definitely bookmarking it!

<comment><USER3> I found the article great in forcing me to reconsider my goals in that space. I'd always had this belief that it was possible, eventually, to find the right idea and break through and become the next Microsoft / Google / Apple. The more I actually understand about the broader economic environment, and the more I read about the people in question who started these companies, the more it just looks like right-place-right-time luck.

The article puts that neatly in proper perspective. And that changes the personal self-actualization path calculus for me considerably. Targeting "building a rocket ship" as a goal doesn't make you any more likely to actually build a rocket ship than just starting a company in wherever you find your passion. Where you find your passion is, just due to the way humans are, more likely to be rocket-ship-worthy than any idea borne out of any rational brainstorming process aimed at producing one.

<comment><USER4> > the more it just looks like right-place-right-time luck

That's confirmation bias. There are tons more people than you know of in the right-place-right-time, but couldn't/wouldn't act on it. You still have to build the start up and be persistent at it, have the right vision, do the right adjustments when competition comes around. These are also features shared by the Microsoft / Google / Apples out there.

<comment><USER5> It's not an either/or: almost every successful company requires both hard work and luck. In very rare cases one or the other might be sufficient, but in the vast majority of cases both are necessary. The amount of luck required can be reduced by hard work, but it can't be taken to zero.

In the usual case, picking a product that turns out to have high demand is the biggest area where luck matters.

There are two kinds of high-demand products: the things that everyone wants but no one knows how to do, and things that no one knows they want but everyone knows how to do.

Fractal image compression is a good example of the former.

Almost everything else is a good example of the latter: smart phones, Facebook, Twitter.

There are some things that are both: the Model T ("If I'd asked my customers what I wanted they would have said a faster horse") and so on.

If you choose one of the former, the odds are you'll fail because if no one else can do it, you probably won't either.

If you choose one of the latter, the odds are you'll fail because if no one knows they want it, it's probably a stupid idea--which is often a smart idea whose time has not yet come.

This is not to say you shouldn't go for it! "The odds are you'll fail" is a simple statement of fact with regard to starting a business, but only for certain values of "fail". You'll learn a huge amount, grow in ways you never knew were possible, and have the adventure of a lifetime. Just be really, really careful about not getting wedged financially, and especially make sure you don't let friends or family members over-invest.

<comment><USER6> I'd question whether 'everyone knows' how to do smartphones, or social networking, or any number of other innovations. The winners in these fields prove the opposite - hardly anyone knows how to do these things well enough to keep growing a customer base.

I still find an inexplicable number of startups apparently unaware of the critical importance of market-building and networking.

A poor product marketed well will _always_ outcompete a better product marketed badly - or not at all - as long as it has acceptably basic functionality and isn't completely unfit for purpose.

There are so many examples of this in tech it's baffling that it doesn't seem to be considered more often.

And I think the article is just plain wrong about innovation, because in fact there's a constant stream of possible new innovations. The stream comes in waves, but anyone who isn't thinking about what's going to be possible soon isn't paying attention.

'If it was possible someone else would have done it by now' is a Dilbert argument, not one based on evidence.

What doesn't exist is a constant stream of opportunities with instant Apple/Google/FB/MS earning potential.

But these corps got big in many steps, which included choices about products and services, marketing and ecosystem building, customer lock-in, brand management, investor relations, management culture, and worker culture.

They didn't just make a thing and instantly kill the rest of the market because it was just that awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What he refers to as "technology" companies are not ones innovating in any technological area. He's really talking about online application business-to- consumer startups ("appcrap"), for which there's a well-defined assembly line process. A real technology company is defined by their ability to do something hard that others have trouble doing.

The first mover has an advantage, but it's not overwhelming. IBM didn't come out with the first personal computer - Apple and Commodore did. Microsoft didn't have the first operating system for x86 machines - Digital Research did. AOL once dominated social networking. Facebook moved into a quite mature space - Myspace, Geocities, and several others were big companies when Facebook started.

Luck does indeed play a big part. If Gary Kildall, the author of CP/M, had been in the office the day IBM was looking for an OS for their new PC, the history of personal computing could have been very different.

<comment><AUTHOR> _> IBM didn't come out with the first personal computer - Apple and Commodore did._

IBM wasn't a startup -- it had _massive_ distribution resources. When you have access to an enormous distribution channel and massive marketing budgets, the rules are obviously different.

 _> Microsoft didn't have the first operating system for x86 machines - Digital Research did._

Yes, but Microsoft piggybacked off of IBM's distribution channel. That's _extremely_ rare, and 99.99% of startups can't swing that sort of deal.

 _> AOL once dominated social networking. Facebook moved into a quite mature space - Myspace, Geocities, and several others were big companies when Facebook started._

AOL, MySpace, and Geocities effectively committed suicide. It's nice when that happens, but you can't count on it.

There are no guarantees, it's all a balance of probabilities. The point isn't that the first mover always wins, it's that if you aren't the first mover the balance of probabilities is against you.

<comment><USER8> First movers don't always win.

[http://staffweb.ncnu.edu.tw/clhung/MOT/Mohr02.ppt](http://staffweb.ncnu.edu.tw/clhung/MOT/Mohr02.ppt) (slide 19 and on)

First movers have an advantage when they can raise entry barriers (economies of scale, network effects, switching costs).

However, fast followers or late movers have some important advantages, and if the early movers don't have significant barriers they can pull the rug from under them if they have a superior product or better business model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two efficient market theorists are walking down the street. They see a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk but keep walking. One turns to the other and says, "If that was real, somebody would have picked it up already."

</comment><comment><USER10> I like this article. Much of the advice on startups is biased from an investor perspective, this is something that's very real from a founder's perspective.

If I had to summarize and riff off of the ideas here, I'd phrase it as "Be very careful about where you're getting your information from." If you got your startup idea because you heard about something from a news article, you are _way_ too late. If you got it from an Internet forum, there's a chance that you might be on to something, but it depends on how niche the forum is and how close to the bleeding ege. If you got it from a problem that you or a friend personally had _and you know how to solve it right now_ , you may be on to something, but you have to carefully consider how many other people are like your friend and whether that's going to grow in the future. If you're in a niche community yourself _and that community is growing rapidly_ , there are probably lots of things you can explore that might be fruitful startup ideas.

<comment><USER11> "Be very careful about where you're getting your information from."

I would encourage you to apply this nugget of gold to this post as well.

It is a mistake to dismiss an idea just because others are working on it. In fact, I would argue the opposite. It validates the idea and the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> nah, I had to stop reading when it said that First Mover Advantage was the key to success.

That's been so thoroughly debunked (try and think of a single successful startup that was First Mover with its business model). The First Mover spends all its time educating the market, the businesses who follow soon after can take advantage of that.

Really nice writing though :)

<comment><USER13> I'm not exactly sure about this, and in no way does it detract from your point, but would Uber count as a first mover?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is built on top of many faulty assumptions... Most notably,"When you're second to market with a viable product, your customers will compare you to the company and product that got to market first."

This assumes that the entire market knows about a solution the moment a first mover comes to market.

The reality is that building a brand to the point where every prospect you approach is comparing you to an incumbent takes years.

The first couple years of a new market opportunity, even with dozens of competitors, there are enough prospects in the market that you can be first to market with the people you reach and your competitors will be first to market with a different segment of the market.

That being said, it is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL for every company to differentiate themselves in a way that they can't be compared to a competitor.

There are some nuggets of wisdom sprinkled throughout this post, but It is clearly built on one subjective individuals perception of things that are beyond our control to really grasp. (i.e. the surface is successful because of a massive ad budget. I would argue the surface is a new category by itself.)

<comment><USER10> That's true, but you also need a story about how you're going to grow your reach & influence faster than your competitor does. It can work, for example, if your main competitor is a hobbyist who doesn't take his product seriously. Ditto a major corporation for whom this is a sideshow that can't get resources from execs whose attention is focused elsewhere.

But anybody can spend more money to tell more people about their product. This is not a competitive differentiator; if you do it, and the company who got to market first does it, they'll win simply through Gambler's Ruin, since they start from a bigger base.

<comment><AUTHOR> _> This assumes that the entire market knows about a solution the moment a first mover comes to market._

It doesn't. The first mover will start getting customers before you do, and as they do their ability to reach customers will grow exponentially. You might start reaching a segment of the market they aren't reaching, but they'll trivially be able to lock you out.

<comment><USER4> Like Altavista locked Google out.

<comment><USER10> Altavista falls under the "parent company believes it's an inconvenient sideshow, a technology demo for the company's main products" clause. The point of Altavista was to demonstrate the power of DEC's Alpha chips. That made it politically unfeasible to adopt one of Google's key innovations, using large quantities of commodity hardware to power innovative new algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> on saturated markets:

many of the companies you've never heard of made their money building an easier to use X in a saturated market.

If the dominant company in the industry has not made significant changes to their product in 10 years, then that's an obvious opportunity for a startup, even if the market is completely saturated.

at least in B2B i've found that many companies solve a problem for their customer demographic in year X, grow pretty big, and rake in the cash. They stay stagnant for X+5 to 10 years and they leave their customers frustrated without any real options.

\-----

Another fallacy I hear from people thinking of ideas has to do with "solved problems"

A "solved problem" is just a problem with 1 solution. People are different, customers are different. Is there another way to solve the problem that obsoletes the previous solution?

ex: transportation; solved by "horse and buggy", and then obsoleted by cars and public transportation.

<comment><USER15> Search on the web was a "solved problem" until Google came along and showed that all of the search engines before then were actually pretty useless. However, until Google came along we didn't _know_ they weren't very good as any kind of web-scale search seemed like a miracle at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Really engaging post. Placed in the context of RethinkDB though it is a bit contradictory no? RethinkDB does not have first mover advantage and they are against the likes of Riak, Mongo, Couchbase, Cassandra, etc. All of those I believe are in a much stronger position according to the criteria in the post.

<comment><AUTHOR> RethinkDB won't be in this position for long (and in fact, most lessons in the article came directly from the mistakes made in the process of building RethinkDB).

We found a big point of a differentiation ([http://rethinkdb.com/blog/realtime-web/](http://rethinkdb.com/blog/realtime- web/)), which, depending on one's definition, can be considered discovering a new market, and we'll be the first open-source scalable database in that market. The upcoming 2.0 release will reposition the company around realtime web/push database. A huge part of the reason why we chose this path is the lessons in the article.

<comment><USER17> The shift from spinning hard drives to SSDs is an environmental change like the ones you describe in the article. What made it hard to exploit? Not enough improvement, compared to legacy databases on SSD?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. There were many, many companies that attempted to exploit this trend in databases and caching, and all of them are now dead, zombies, or pivots.

The reason is that there is no valuable product there one could ship. Putting an existing database on an SSD gives you all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This articles makes sense, but it's hard to step back and be so reflective without being victim of analysis paralysis. Many times, you build a toy, something you like, and it turns out big. If you over analyze it, you may not build it because you can't predict the future no matter how well you think you can.

In many cases, analyzing your startup idea with such a complex framework will stop you at your tracks.

I prefer to follow the basic rules PG laid out (there are some overlaps) in his article on startup ideas.

</comment><comment><USER19> I agree with the statement that startups are like biological organisms evolving in the broth of an economic environment. In @pmarca's words "the market needs to be fulfilled and the market will be fulfilled". Once we move on from this fact (that we can't create startups out of thin air without there being an underlying wave ...without a "why now"), the rest of the actionable advice here will work better for an investor and/or the entrepreneur who views herself more as an investor than say a hacker. Alternative advice is to "live in the future" as PG would say it or to be different as Peter Thiel would imply. What I think this means is to ask yourself how similar what you do for fun/ for projects is to what everyone else is doing[similar --> bad]. How often do you work on that stuff? Do you collaborate with people? I am convinced ideas emerge as a natural consequence of working on ideas at the fringe with interesting people. What is hard is a) working on ideas and b) finding interesting people to work with. Another thing that doesn't help is committing to a company prematurely. Easier said than done, but i think if we as entrepreneurs took it a little less serious...we'd net out with more successful companies.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's an interesting argument but I can think of so many counterexamples. A guy named Michael Wolfe (pipewise founder) wrote an interesting quora answer on dropbox. Dropbox was way late to the file syncing party.

The answer:

Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do:

There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync.

They built that.

Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea.

"But," you may ask, "so much more you could do! What about task management, calendaring, customized dashboards, virtual white boarding. More than just folders and files!"

No, shut up. People don't use that crap. They just want a folder. A folder that syncs.

"But," you may say, "this is valuable data... certainly users will feel more comfortable tying their data to Windows Live, Apple's MobileMe, or a name they already know."

No, shut up. Not a single person on Earth wakes up in the morning worried about deriving more value from their Windows Live login. People already trust folders. And Dropbox looks just like a folder. One that syncs.

"But," you may say, "folders are so 1995. Why not leverage the full power of the web? With HTML5 you can drag and drop files, you can build intergalactic dashboards of statistics showing how much storage you are using, you can publish your files as RSS feeds and tweets, and you can add your company logo!"

No, shut up. Most of the world doesn't sit in front of their browser all day. If they do, it is Internet Explorer 6 at work that they are not allowed to upgrade. Browsers suck for these kinds of things. Their stuff is already in folders. They just want a folder. That syncs.

That is what it does.

<comment><USER21> This is the best start-up lesson I've seen this year. I wish more people followed it, though cynic in me thinks it's irrelevant because most of the time, it's not customers that are the users - it's investors and potential acquihirers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Excellent essay. I feel like the emphasis on "the story" reinforces pmarca's point in his "product market fit" article ([http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee204/ProductMarketFit.html](http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee204/ProductMarketFit.html)): that more important than the team or the idea is the market (in coffeemug's words: the environment).

 _You can obviously screw up a great market -- and that has been done, and not infrequently -- but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most.

And neither a stellar team nor a fantastic product will redeem a bad market._

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole essay is really a rip off of pmarca's product/market fit argument, and Peter Thiel's contrarian but right argument. I just rewrote it through the lens of my own experience.

The only truly new thing that I discovered was the "story" bit. I haven't heard that anywhere else before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What an excellent post! I don't agree with every point, but this is thoughtful, clearly articulated, and the thought process reminds me of PG's best writing.

<comment><USER24> It did felt pgish - I don't like this way of trying to structure the world too much though. I think patio11 would agree with me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> == Paradoxically, the solution is to stop thinking of startup ideas in terms of solving problems in the early stages of startup germination, and instead start thinking in terms of changes in the economic environment and the opportunities these changes unlock. ==

strong point, exactly what I have been thinking lately while trying to understand every single products Google acquires. I still think there are rooms for innovation.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's a good article and has some good points. But after some thinking, it seems that almost none of successful startup ideas come with capturing the change of environment. Instead, most of successful startup ideas come from hobby, solving a problem, iteration, improving existing products, etc. Besides a good idea, building a successful startup requires a lots of other stuff like great team, good fund raising, great execution, great user growth, etc. I guess all the other parts are much difficult than finding a good idea. If you don't have a good idea yet, you can just focus on other parts: building a good team, or learning to executing well. You can start with small projects with positive cashflow like consulting, etc. The best way to pickup a startup ideas is to look at new startups and find the ideas that you like and that you can improve and execute well. Just as some other posts mentioned, if you are smart, you can make difference even in mature market. Market is not efficient at all, especially for new and emerging market.

</comment><comment><USER27> Question -- is there any good place to post ideas for startups? Quite often, I'm looking for a company that provides X, and there is no one that I'm aware of that does X. However, I can see how X could be a profitable business for someone, even if I'm not in a position to start X myself.

<comment><USER14> This is an idea me and a friend wanted to try out.

[http://idealist.tips/](http://idealist.tips/)

We promoted it but it didn't get any up-take

(the site is using the opensource lobste.rs code from [https://github.com/jcs/lobsters](https://github.com/jcs/lobsters) )

There is also a sub-reddit where people post this type of stuff (i'm unaffiliated with it)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/](http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is excellent. Your intuition, thought process, and writing style remind me of PG's essays.

</comment><comment><USER29> Thought this was a great article and found the Pixar storytelling framework particularly interesting. Thank you very much for taking the time to put this to paper. I'll definitely check out RethinkDB!

</comment><comment><USER30> "Market efficiency implies that if a problem is valuable and solvable, it's overwhelmingly likely that it already would have been solved."

I think it depends on many things, including the size of the market. I'm willing to bet there are many profitable niches which are served currently with only sub-optimal products. But to find these one needs domain knowledge od the niche, and I think these are served best by teams of adventurous established experts rather than teams without domaim knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would love to have Slava's articles in my feeds but can't find any RSS/Atom link. Anyone?

<comment><USER32> How about [http://www.defmacro.org/feed.atom](http://www.defmacro.org/feed.atom) ?

<comment><USER31> Oh, so there is. Thanks a bunch!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Solutions to problems, be those problems you personally experienced or in the workplace, is what creates a successful product. Without a successful product, you can't have a successful startup. That being said, a successful product doesn't guarantee startup success.

</comment><comment><USER34> I like the distilled version you get from @FakeGrimlock ... find right because, make people want.</comment>


Insulin Pumps, Decapped Chips and Software Defined Radios - <AUTHOR> https://blog.usejournal.com/insulin-pumps-decapped-chips-and-software-defined-radios-1be50f121d05 <comment><USER2> This is the story of Hacking the Omnipod, worthy of the front page of Wired.

What an amazing story, and with so many incredible details along the way.

The proprietary technique for reading contents of the locked chip is pretty fascinating in the context of Secure Enclave...

The reverse engineering efforts were stymied for months by a bug in Omnipod's CRC calculation!

The perseverence in bringing this all to fruition is one of the best things I've woken up to on HN in a long while.

Both my kids have T1D and use Omnipods. I've been looking forward to this for years.

EDIT: Is it just me, or is a bad title significantly holding back this post? This story is worth way more than 23 points in 5 hours.

<comment><USER3> Have you looked @ Tandem's upcoming (2nd half of this year) ControlIQ for their X2 pump? It probably won't be as user-tweakable as OpenAPS. I couldn't convince myself to try OpenAPS for my 7 year old T1D. He recently switched to a Tandem pump and we are eagerly awaiting this software update.

<comment><USER4> This is more Loop. Does OpenAPS work with RileyLink and Omnipod now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My boyfriend is T1D and uses Omnipods so this is exciting news. He has also used a Dexcom (G6 I think) to monitor glucose levels. Unfortunately the Dexcom's are a bit pricy and so he can't always afford them. I have talked to him about Nightscout and closed loops or even semi-closed loops and while he is interested I haven't pursued it heavily because he isn't as technically inclined (or interested) as I am. If I were a T1D I would using some form of a closed loop system but I worry too much about bugs or problems he might run into that he wouldn't be able to solve or diagnose quickly.

While nightscout is pretty mature and the pumps/monitors they've cracked fairly reliable I think he will probably just wait for some of the closed loop systems that are starting to enter the market (or are they still just semi- closed, or maybe they call them hybrid, I can't remember). Even then I'm sure it will be a few years yet until they are affordable enough.

<comment><USER6> If he is on Android I'd recommend xDrip+ for the CGM readings. It is really nice to have on the phone with control over the data and ability to upload if he wants. Also great to be able to snooze and set the alarms as desired.

<comment><USER6> Similar program Spike for ios

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be interested how they test a Class C medical device that can kill you if you send the wrong commands. It surely is an amazing story and a great write- up, but I'd be wary of hacking insulin pumps, let alone using them.

<comment><USER2> You can read about the "We Are Not Waiting" movement and the ethical considerations of doing this research, writing the software, and documenting and even to an extent productizing the software for mass consumption.

It is not a zero sum game. Not having this control over the pump can also kill you, because the systems that were available before this movement got started were so poor.

When the hacker community started putting together remote monitoring systems for the CGMs that allowed, e.g. parents to watch their kids at school, or through the night from the next room, that improved quality of life and maybe even saved lives.

Hackers have already tapped into the Medtronic pump to build the world's first closed loop system. The OnniPod is just another pump in line to be reverse engineered.

If you saw first hand the quality of software being put out by Dexcom and Insulet, this work is serving as an important check&balance as well as pushing them to invest in R&D versus sitting back and milking their patents.

It's also worth noting that the pod has important hardware safeguards that mitigate the impact of a software error on the remote control side. You can't just send a message asking for 100 units of insulin because the hardware won't dose it. You can also hear (and somewhat feel) each 0.05 unit of insulin being delivered as a _click_ about once every 1.5 seconds.

And again I'll reiterate that it's not a zero sum game. The software and UI is so bad on the Insulet/Omnipod side that it's easy to screw up a basal program, or when applying a temp basal on top of an extended bolus, or when changing a pod while an extended bolus is active. All these events can result in low blood sugar events that are potentially dangerous.

Efforts like Nightscout have actually saved lives and while they are not without risk (what thing worth doing is?), the T1D world has been measurably improved because of their efforts.

Finally I'll says that the reverse engineering effort already uncovered one significant bug in the protocol that we know of. They didn't delve into the details of the "nonce" but I'm willing to bet that imaging the chip was not actually necessary and that the "encryption" is some homebrew POS which is highly insecure. We deserve to know the protocol which is protecting the communication between the pod and the controller, for example is there a secure DH key exchange happening when a new pod is paired and initialized? Can a third-party controller potentially spoof commands to my kids' pods? OmniPod would never disclose how this works, so I'm supppsed to just _trust_ them.

<comment><USER8> I know folks that work on Nightscout and I agree with everything in this post. I find them to be very thoughtful and circumspect about the work (the contributors often have T1D or family with T1D). Besides that, a closed loop system (which as yet is only partially implemented or is still somewhat inconsistent) is a holy grail for a lot of these folks.

Most of them are already well acquainted with manually managing insulin and the existing products and can handle any mishaps for the most part.

<comment><USER9> I don't really understand in detail how insulin pumps work, so I want to ask why are there not commercial closed-loop systems available? It seems like an obvious development that pump makers should have implemented a long time ago. Is there a complication that makes it harder than it sounds, or is it something like regulatory concerns or just plain laziness?

<comment><USER3> Few competitors, no reason to innovate. And they're charging $8-12,000 for a new pump setup. That was our experience 5 years ago with Medtronic. Not a single update in 4 years with our son's 530g pump. With his new pump (from Tandem) we're expecting a pretty big software patch/upgrade later this year. Beta Bionics is working on their artificial pancreas (dual hormone) that should be out next year. So newer/more-nimble players are forcing the bigger companies to start innovating. Having said that, it never comes soon enough ;)

<comment><USER10> I got a chance to try out the beta bionics artificial pancreas in a research trial and it is a truly new innovation in this field, it lifted about 90% of the constant thinking about bolus and blood sugar from me and allowed me to live my life. It truly deserves all the hype that it is getting.

<comment><USER3> Wow that's great to hear! Was it insulin-only or did it also have glucagon onboard? I know they're working towards releasing the insulin-only version first. I can't wait for the dual-hormone version to become available. It'll allow my wife and I to sleep through the night without worrying that our son won't wake up when he drops too low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those who aren't initiated in the world of T1D there is some amazing research coming out of the Faustman lab (MGH). There is both a promising cure (BCG vaccine), but also research which indicates that islet cells _do_ regenerate for decades after diagnoses. Islet cells are the part of the pancreas that generates insulin - needed to store/save sugar. That means, that the pancreas is constantly trying to repair the damage from the immune system.

Let that sink in.

Many diabetics suffer from 'random' lows or highs that can't be explained. Not because they aren't doing the right things - because they are - but more likely because their body is bringing islet cells online, producing _extra_ insulin, then the immune system promptly kills them and knocks off the extra production. It's a war within the body!

This is why Loop is sooo amazing and needed. You need a closed loop system that monitors and calibrates to these kinds of bio and environmental changes. Unexpected sprint for two blocks to get to class in time? no problem. Unexpected insulin production in the blood stream? no problem. This project is truly hero work.

As a spouse to a T1D, life is sometimes scary. I, like many partners always have a backup plan in the back of our minds for that that fateful day of an extreme low will not be caught in time. It's scary.

I for one, look forward to life with a bionic partner.

<comment><USER4> I've been five years from a cure for a lot of years. The research on islet cells and cures like like watching the development of fusion power.

<comment><USER11> Totally agree. To be clear, I wasn't trying to overhype the 'cure' but rather emphasize that the problem is way more complicated than many believe because of the islet regeneration. That's why I'm a believer in the tech we have now because it's the most viable path to long term management.

<comment><USER4> I'll get my hopes up when something is released. For now it's Loop and some other things. One trend that I don't like is fully automatic without a way to do manual override of all things. The variation between people and needs and even the same person is too great and hasn't been codified. Loop with Omnipod is somewhat on this side currently, but it is still new too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what would be necessary to spin up a device lab for proper TDD for the Loop?

This is such an amazing story of classical "hacking". This is what makes technology fun.

</comment><comment><USER12> My girlfriend has a Medtronic 640g pump and I still hope that one day, she can use it to close the loop. I looked into the wireless communication (which can read the current glucose levels and send boluses), but apparently the protocol is encrypted. I would like to work at the protocol, but decrypting a wireless protocol seems too hard for me. But I still hope that some day, the Medtronic pumps will be hacked, too.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hats off to the author! This is an incredible story and you're made of stronger stuff than I. I'd be too afraid of the consequences of screwing up to attempt something like this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Gotta believe that at some point it's easier, as well as safer, to just design a new "open pod" from scratch. This was a truly heroic reverse-engineering effort, and the people behind it are more than equal to the task of designing a new product. (Or at least they'd _better_ be.)

The company can and will invalidate all of this hard work with the click of a mouse button. What's the long-term goal here?

</comment><comment><USER15> Too much insulin pumped into human body can literally kill a person. I don't think it is safe for hobbyist to hack a medical device like this.

<comment><USER16> Too much of anything is bad, that is the definition of 'too much'.

<comment><USER3> An single extra unit (or less) of insulin can kill a type 1 diabetic. I don't expect non-diabetics to understand what that means, but it's not more than a few drops of insulin.

<comment><USER17> What ISF does your kid have that a single unit will kill him/her? A single unit is barely noticeable on the graph for me.

I've been using Loop for a few weeks now and the improvements in quality of life are so huge that any concerns I had about safety went away. Reading the docs, which are a great example on how documentation should be written, helped a lot with that too.

<comment><USER18> The typical level of sensitivity is absolutely in range for a single unit to produce a catastrophic event.

It sounds like you may have a low sensitivity factor. The usual starting point for estimating this, along with using the "1800 rule", puts typical sensitivity around a drop of 50 points in blood sugar for every unit of insulin. This based on a weight around 65-70 kilos and 0.5 units/day/kilo.

Of course it depends on other details too, even time of day. (My wife, who uses a medtronic pump, clocks in at right about this level but is less sensitive in mornings and more so later on. her pump is programmed for these time-dependent sensitivity fluctuations )

This level of sensitivity absolutely has lethal potential with a single-unit swing. If you're in the low end of normal at 75 points and take another unit dropping it to 25, this is plenty low to cause a person to pass out and thereby be unable to take corrective action, with lethal consequences, especially if the pump is still delivering a basal dose inching levels even lower.

You might argue that careful people shouldn't encounter this situation, and you'd be right. But it still can and does happen, meaning a hobbyist setup that gets something even a little bit wrong has that same potential.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who owns WordPress.org domain? - <AUTHOR> The WordPress code is open source, but who owns and maintains the WordPress.org domain? Is it Automattic Inc, the owner of WordPress.com? <comment><USER2> It's likely the WordPress Foundation. [http://wordpressfoundation.org/](http://wordpressfoundation.org/)</comment>


Microsoft Unveils Surface Laptop and Windows 10 S to Rival MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/02/microsoft-surface-laptop-rival-macbook-pro-windows-10-s-battery-life <comment><USER2> The subheadline is wrong - from the article: "The Surface Laptop is lighter and thinner than any MacBook Air or MacBook Pro currently available and it's faster and has longer battery life than any MacBook on sale today."

So basically it's an ultrabook, not something that dominates any 2016/2017 apple product.</comment>


Apple Card approvals level high; Steve Jobs didn't want anyone to be rejected - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2019/08/09/apple-card-approvals/ <comment><USER2> I applied and was flat out denied, even with a fico of 670. Pretty sure it's due to high balances on my existing cards. (I'm working on it..)</comment>


Why indoor navigation is so hard - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/10/indoor-navigation.html <comment><USER2> Besides Meridian (the app mentioned in the article), the guys at Building Layer (<http://buildinglayer.com/>) are also doing some pretty interesting stuff. They totally nailed the pitch at Vator Splash and already custom-made Microsoft Surface solutions for some hospitals and other places. It's a very interesting space!</comment>


The Nordic countries are still not recommending face masks - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelocal.com/20200730/why-are-the-nordic-countries-still-not-recommending-face-masks <comment><USER2> People know that cloth face masks don't work, right? That it's about as effective as airport security? Google Scholar would be the best place to start.</comment>


Building client routing / semantic search at Profi.ru - <AUTHOR> https://spark-in.me/post/profi-ru-semantic-search-project <comment><USER2> Slightly off-topic sorry. Does common crawl data contain HN/Quora/Reddit content? And is it possible to extract Question/Answers to support something like "Related Questions" in StackOverflow?</comment>


PHP-Queue - A unified front-end for different queuing backends. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/miccheng/php-queue

<comment><USER2> "Job Queue is Backend agnostic"

This may be slightly tangental and I really don't want to come across as a troll but 'agnostic' in its absolute loosest terms could be defined as 'unknowable' (although it specifically relates to whether the existence of a higher-being/god-figure is provable or not).

I don't know techies have latched on to this word when it's totally unrelated; words like 'independent' or 'neutral' already existed and do actually mean what the techies want it to mean!

I know language evolves - trust me, I'm a computational linguist who used to work for Longman Dictionaries - but if people started using 'mangler' as a synonym 'compiler' nerds would, quite rightly, wonder wtf is going on!

Other than that, keep up the good work :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha ha... guess i picked up that "lingo" in my past life as a proposal writer for govt funding (read: BS generator). But thanks for the tip. I'll steer clear of that term in the future. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Thanks for putting it on Composer :)

</comment><comment><USER4> very cool & useful

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Regulators may punish Deutsche Bank for its Jeffrey Epstein ties - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/business/jeffrey-epstein-deutsche-bank.html <comment><AUTHOR> Most interesting part is the last two paragraphs:

"While Mr. Epstein was a client of Deutsche Bank, his main business was Southern Trust Company, which generated more than $250 million in revenues during its existence, according to public records. Mr. Epstein created the company in 2013 and told government officials in the Virgin Islands that it was involved in DNA analysis and research.

Ms. George, in her civil forfeiture lawsuit, contends that Southern Trust was not in the business it claimed to be and that Mr. Epstein misled government officials in order to win a lucrative tax break. She told The New York Times in March that her office had not yet determined the kind of business Southern Trust was in."

<comment><USER2> What is Definitely Not Money Laundering For Sex Trafficking?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A darkly comical commentary on the state of justice right now: none of the child rapists will face any consequences (well, except for Epstein, though he did get away with it for decades), but the _bank regulator_ takes the accounting issues very seriously!

<comment><USER4> As Matt Levine always says, [at least] everything is securities fraud.

<comment><USER5> Bank and securities fraud are accompanied by detailed records, a fact which tends to make it a lot easier to demonstrate that something illegal happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The amount of smoke and mirrors surrounding this entire case is incredible. It's sort of happening out in the open, with even the president seemingly involved to some degree, yet all details are conveniently hidden away. I'm expecting a somewhat chilling documentary 20 years from now on the subject.

<comment><USER7> Netflix recently released a documentary describing the survivors' stories. [https://www.netflix.com/title/80224905](https://www.netflix.com/title/80224905)

<comment><USER8> it did nothing about the smoke and mirrors op is talking about. It revealed nothing on that front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nobody has ever satisfactory explained where Epstein got all this money to begin with. He seems to have been running some sort of blackmail operation ensnaring wealthy people into criminal activity and videotaping them or otherwise recording it.

His first job was as a math teacher at a _girl's school_ run by the current Attorney General's father, and he seems to have leveraged that somehow into an investment job through one of the parents at the school, despite having no qualifications for that kind of work.

It seems worth noting that he went from working with young girls to sex trafficking them, and that the man who supposedly was going to get to the bottom of his murder is the son of the man who first gave him access to young girls.

<comment><USER10> His life has been under a microscope. If there was a smoking gun to be found, it would have been found. Nobody's opsec is that good, especially with number of people involved in the kind of conspiracy you describe.

<comment><USER11> They've been covered up, and the few reporters doing a deep dive are ignored and relegated to small corners of the internet. Whitney Webb being one of those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Deutsche Bank doesn't let any dark business go by without a bite

<comment><USER13> Do you think anyone thought "If its this easy for me to launder money through DB, I wonder how easy it is for other people" and the corollary "What happens when the government realises every idiot and his dealer was using DB to launder money".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> >Mr. Epstein created the company in 2013 and told government officials in the Virgin Islands that it was involved in DNA analysis and research.

This almost seems like he was acknowledging in a "wink-wink" manner the sexual nature of what was really happening.

DNA analysis and research requires a lot of talent and infrastructure and putting it on an remote island is not the best idea.

But calling engaging in sex "DNA analysis and research" is almost at the level of what passes as a joke in middle school. This almost seems like an inside joke between the Virgin Islands officials and Epstein about the true nature of what was really going on.

<comment><USER15> It's very common for the elite to openly reference what they're doing, crime- wise, because 1) It's easy to hide in plain sight, and 2) Who's going to stop them, you? Epstein's probably on an island right now.

<comment><USER16> It's pretty well established that he's dead.

<comment><USER17> Oh really. And do you have a source for that? How do you explain the strange happenings where he was being held? :}

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Poor DB ... is there a crime they have not committed?</comment>


VESA Publishes DisplayPort 2.0 Video Standard - <AUTHOR> https://vesa.org/press/vesa-publishes-displayport-2-0-video-standard-enabling-support-for-beyond-8k-resolutions-higher-refresh-rates-for-4k-hdr-and-virtual-reality-applications/ <comment><USER2> I wish they built the following simple protocol: "Operating System: Hey monitor, are you there? Monitor: (immediately) Hey OS, I'm still here, just give me a moment to turn on. OS: Ok I'll wait and not put user's windows on one monitor.

That way we won't have this window shuffling nonsense that has plagued multi monitor setups since we started putting pcs to sleep instead of turning them off.

<comment><USER3> I've been using dual monitors for years (on Windows and Ubuntu) and I can't say I've ever had this problem. As long as the monitors are plugged into the video card, the OS recognizes both of them regardless of whether they're powered on.

<comment><USER4> I think it depends on the connection you use. If I turn off one of my monitors connected via DisplayPort, Windows 10 immediately moves everything to the monitors that are still on. My last computer, with monitors connected via DVI did not do this.

<comment><USER5> I actually wish my laptop did this. I constantly have issues with some windows staying open on the second monitor after unplugging them both from my laptop.

Sometimes I can't get to them at all on the laptop screen without forcing it closed and reopening.

<comment><USER6> FYI in Windows if you can give the correct window focus (via taskbar or alt- tab) you can move them between screens with [win] + [shift] + [left/right arrow].

The regular [win] + [left/right] for snapping to 1/2 screen positions will also move it across screens if you hit it repeatedly.

<comment><USER7> Alternately the old-school variation (works since at least Windows 3.11): [alt] + [space] to open upper-left corner menu, [m] to move, then [arrow keys] to move the window around.

<comment><USER8> Once you've started this process, I believe you can just move the mouse (without clicking) to move the window as well. This tends to be faster than using the arrow keys, especially at modern display resolutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Realistically I hope they work solidly through USB-C. I'm tired of piling up expensive high quality monitors I can't use because they keep changing the connections every 3 or so years.

And they really need to have larger displays 30"\+ for anything 4K and beyond. There's not much point to a 27" 4K monitor if you have to double the scaling just to read anything. 8K at 27" would be a complete waste.

<comment><AUTHOR> So far the earlier versions of DisplayPort have worked quite well as a USB-C alt mode so I am hopeful.

I strongly disagree that higher resolutions are not interesting on smaller sized displays. I personally find 21.5 inch to be the sweet spot for 4K and welcome the better support for higher resolution so displays in the 24-30 inch range can more easily support 220+dpi, higher refresh rates, and HDR.

<comment><USER10> 4k at 21 inches? I'm using a 4k screen at I think 31" and I have to scale everything to read the screen. My dream is a 43" 4k monitor with no scaling.

But 1440p at 21" I think would be great. Personally I only use 1080p screens as secondary monitors, and would never go back to 1080p for my primary display.

<comment><USER11> "No scaling" is a state of mind. It's a fiction we hold onto from our purely bitmapped, pixel art past. If your OS doesn't adapt to high DPI monitors cleanly, change your OS.

<comment><USER9> Even if the OS supports it, many apps still write their own UI primitives and won't scale with the OS scaling, or when they do, it's not uniform so the text is either obnoxiously huge, or the UI affordances are way too small.

Working with a larger screen without scaling makes this problem go away. I personally have 2 x 4K monitors at 32" and find it quite ideal.

<comment><USER12> That's a Windows problem. Macs have had high-dpi screens that work perfectly for seven years now.

<comment><USER13> The only thing macOS does is downscaling by a factor of 2 the oversized rendering resolution (virtual display on X server). For certain dpi it works fine, for certain it would blur everything (i.e. the screen I use atm is 24" 4K with 185 ppi).

Windows 10 has no problems rendering on ANY DPI, certain apps and frameworks ignore it though which is not a problem of OS.

<comment><USER11> Downscaling the screen at "retina" resolutions works _way_ better than your intuitions assume. I thought it would be terrible and ugly, but I was wrong. And I'm normally super picky about things being pixel-perfect.

The way macOS does it is perfect 99 percent of the time—and it guarantees no weirdness when app developers have differing ideas about how their app should react to scaling. Apple got this one right and everyone else should just copy them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's the headline and lede, which I thought were a pretty effective TLDR:

> VESA PUBLISHES DISPLAYPORT™ 2.0 VIDEO STANDARD ENABLING SUPPORT FOR > BEYOND-8K RESOLUTIONS, HIGHER REFRESH RATES FOR 4K/HDR AND VIRTUAL REALITY > APPLICATIONS DisplayPort 2.0 enables up to 3X increase in video bandwidth > performance (max payload of 77.37 Gbps); new built-in features enable > improved user experience, greater flexibility and improved power efficiency

</comment><comment><USER15> This is all nice and dandy but there is not even a DP 1.3 MST hub on the market ...

Of course, that might be because Intel IGP is still stuck on DP 1.2 and so an overwhelming majority of laptops are DP 1.2 only as well. But for video cards, we have been there for three years now: nVidia went full DP 1.4 with Pascal in 2016 AMD has been DisplayPort 1.4 since Polaris at least in 2016 as well.

As an aside, I am unclear whether [https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4674/~/g...](https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4674/~/graphics- firmware-update-for-displayport-1.3-and-1.4-displays) enabled them on most Maxwell cards as well? [https://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce- gtx-95...](https://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce- gtx-950/specifications) still says DP 1.2.

<comment><USER16> Anandtech mentioned in their coverage that the previous versions of Displayport "required that the branch device be capable of decoding a DisplayPort bitstream", this new version apparently drops this requirement which should make daisy-chaining or hub devices much less complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm impressed that they're able to squeeze 77 Gbps through a USB-C connector, when Thunderbolt is 40 Gbps, and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 is only 20 Gbps.

When will this stuff run into the physical limits of copper?

<comment><USER18> Thunderbolt 3 allows 40 Gbps in each direction using two 20 Gbps channels for each direction. As a protocol driving a display is mainly unidirectional, DisplayPort 2.0 simply uses all four channel for transmitting the data to the display, resulting in 80 Gbps. So they're not squeezing more data through the connector and the cables than Thunderbolt 3 already does, but simply do it in one direction only.

<comment><USER17> Ah, that makes sense. There's probably still room in the copper for more than 20 Gbps per lane, if they switch to an encoding with more than one voltage level, like PAM4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd really like for PCs to send a wakeup to the TV. My AVC and ShieldTV can both wake up a TV connected for display, why can't a general computer do it? Currently using a 42" 4K high refresh TV as a monitor (would prefer 36-38" 4K).

I've resolved to just use a classic screen saver to keep the TV from shutting off, which causes total chaos when resuming from sleep.

Aside: anyone else notice how hard it is to actually use a screensaver these days. Linux desktops have removed it from in the box mode, and windows has totally obscured it away from you.

<comment><USER20> I just bought an Intel NUC and this is one of the bios options. Those are amazing little computers of you don't need a discreet GPU. It's the size of a sandwich, and I got an 8th gen i7, 16gb of DDR4, and a 500gb nvme SSD for under $600! It handles 4k HDR content flawlessly. As a computer geek of a certain age, this is mind-blowing.

<comment><USER21> I'm thinking of one of those too. Maybe with the Akasa Turing replacement case for fabless operation. It will grow in size but not much more than two coke cans on top of each other. And it'll cool a Core i5 barely breaking a sweat. The entire case is sort of a heat sink.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> At 8K, 120hz ( Pro Motion, hopefully someday on Mac ), 10bit colour, that is roughly ~145Gbps of Raw Bandwidth requirement.

At 6K, 120hz, 10bit ( Basically Pro XDR with 120Hz ), that is roughly ~88Gbps of Raw Bandwidth.

The above two scenario aren't too far off. Although a 5K / 120hz / 10bit only needs ~64Gbps. I assume in two config above they will have to use 2 x DisplayPort 2.0 ?

( That is assuming Apple will gives us Pro Motion on Mac, why they haven't done so is beyond me. And Why Windows haven't done something similar? )

So the future USB4 and DisplayPort 2.0 will both be based on Thunderbolt 3. Are there any reason why TV keep sticking to HDMI? ( NIH Syndrome? )

And since DisplayPort 2.0 essentially turn TB3 into a one way connection, does that mean there will be no more USB Pass through or Charging Laptop while using it Display?

<comment><USER23> It's worth noting that VESA DSC compression is available for DP interfaces at 2,3,4:1 allowing all of these on the announced standard. It's visually lossless even in a large screen flicker test so I think we're pretty set, except maybe for newer and more extreme daisy chaining and VR.

<comment><USER24> What is the quality of text with DSC?

<comment><USER23> That is where some of the most challenging images come from... especially with white 4pt type against highly patterned backgrounds. However, frankly with a jeweler's loupe even on the most difficult images, I can't tell the difference flickering between compressed and uncompressed at 4:1. If you think about it, H264 is 100:1 compression (PNG 20:1) so it's not surprising that human eye visibility (especially at 10bit HDR and 8k) is excellent.

For a quantitative estimate, PSNR is ~40dB even on fairly extreme images, which means less that those +/-1 code for 8bit sRGB. I'd expect even better from 10bit and natural images to be >45dB.

<comment><USER24> Given what you have said, I am willing to be optimistic and no longer associate DSC with4:2:0 TV screens displaying text :)

In particular your mention of PNG reminds me that it is lossless, so the idea of "visually lossless" at a much lower ~4:1 compression ratio seems more reasonable to me now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> No mention of "Variable Refresh Rate" which is now in HDMI 2.1. I'm really hoping once that's standardized it'll put an end to the Gsync/Freesync nonsense we're currently dealing with.

</comment><comment><USER26> On that topic, I was a bit sad to see that USB-C alternate mode wasn't picked up as the display solution for the Pi 4. I have multiple devices that work this way, and it has been a very pleasant experience.

<comment><USER27> Its complex to implement. You need a type-C port controller that can speak the funky half-duplex 300 kHz signal of USB-PD, a set of power delivery fets, some high-speed muxes, and a little microcontroller to manage the protocol's higher layers in realtime.

[http://www.ti.com/product/TPS65982](http://www.ti.com/product/TPS65982) is an example of a fairly high-integration IC. Its 5USD/ea in bulk, and you still need some other supporting IC's around it, such as - I kid you not - a flash chip to hold its program code. Take a good hard look at section 9.3.4 of that manual to get a taste for how complex this gets.

They only have very reduced schematics published, but it looks like the RPi4 isn't deploying a PD solution at all. I think they are just relying on the analog signaling of Type-C. The power supply is just a "simple" type-c 5V/3A unit.

<comment><USER28> > They only have very reduced schematics published, but it looks like the RPi4 > isn't deploying a PD solution at all. I think they are just relying on the > analog signaling of Type-C. The power supply is just a "simple" type-c 5V/3A > unit.

This is the first I've heard of the RPi 4 not having PD -- could you point me to the specs you saw? I searched around a bit but couldn't find anything either way.

<comment><USER27> You have to dig a bit. I got there via Main Page -> scroll to very bottom -> documentation -> Hardware -> Raspberry Pi -> Schematics -> Raspberry Pi 4 Model B

You can see the fixed resistors attached to the CC lines for basic Type-C analog signaling, and a simple PD_SENSE line connected to the power supply IC.

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/schematics/rpi_SCH_4b_4p0_reduced.pdf)

<comment><USER28> Ah, wow, that's definitely a bit of digging! Thank you very much; I had my own suspicions due to the recommended power supply but it's nice to have more concrete evidence. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow, DisplayPort 2.0 offers literally twice the bandwidth of the latest HDMI spec:

HDMI 2.1: 16 Gbit/s per pin, 3 pins total, less efficient 8b-10b encoding: 16×3×8/10 = 38.4 Gbit/s

DP 2.0: 20 Gbit/s per pin, 4 pins total, more efficient 128b-132b encoding: 20×4×128/132 = 77.576 Gbit/s

The article claims "77.37 Gbit/s" but I think that's a typo+rounding error (.57 → .37)

</comment><comment><USER30> I had an old man moment recently when I upgraded my PC and my fancy new GPU came with 1x HDMI and 3x DisplayPort adapters. My perfectly good dual monitor setup (which I'd been using with DVI cables) was suddenly obsolete.

They both handle HDMI so I ended up getting an adapter for one, but I never even thought this would be something to worry about. And I'm not sure if it's DP related but when I wake the PC from sleep one of them has a frozen image for a little while until Windows realises it has to start animating again.

</comment><comment><USER31> VGA worked well enough for more than a decade (and still does today)

My work laptop, an HP Elitebook, has only a Displayport for political reasons (HP wanted to push Displayport adoption). Do you know what presentation infrastructure has Displayport? Absolutely nothing. The world decided upon HDMI to be the de-facto-standard.

So I am stuck carrying dongles and adaptors around (which means I will never have the one I need on hand) - or, if I am very lucky, I get a meeting room with a Clickshare device (which works reasonably well, but might be unpopular with external colleagues because it means installing some piece of software onto your laptop)

I know how standards work ... but for the sake of it, we do not need another option that brings virtually nothing to the table.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been having a lot of problems with DisplayPort KVMs. I have a 4K monitor and at the time of purchase, I think DisplayPort had better specs. But there are very few KVMs at the 4K resolution. The one I got was literally a switch in the sense that it didn't emulate the video and usb on the disconnected side. There seems to be lots of problems with disconnected DisplayPort devices and drivers. For Linux I found that shutting off the monitor would result in the video not coming back on unless I manually did a "xset dpms" call through ssh. In the end I now got a cheap second monitor and a USB switch for the keyboard/mouse. It just takes up a lot more space.

<comment><USER33> Now that you have a second monitor, might as well use Synergy for keyboard and mouse sharing!

[https://symless.com/synergy](https://symless.com/synergy)

<comment><USER34> That product is walking dead. Use [https://github.com/debauchee/barrier](https://github.com/debauchee/barrier) which forked the last open source version.

<comment><USER33> Thanks! Will definitely give that a look since Synergy rolled back version 2 to beta.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Referring to USB-C connections as "alternate mode" makes me wonder if Thunderbolt 3 will be inferior, signal-wise, to whatever physical port is being considered (was designed?) for DisplayPort 2.

<comment><USER36> Alt mode is a term used by USB to describe a USB port than can carry non USB signals (i.e. the alternate operating modes beyond USB). It's been around a while and has nothing to do with this announcement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > _Beyond-8K Resolutions_

I'm also gonna need a sound system with a 200 dB dynamic range, with speakers demonstrating a flat response out to 100 kHz.

</comment><comment><USER38> As far as I can tell there is still no support for touch screen displays. It is a shame that the data rate gets higher and higher but this simple feature is still missing.

<comment><USER23> There is a 1Mb reverse channel supported in DP, but there are separate drivers for Video/Touch that are required...

<comment><USER39> Let's not go overboard about the 1Mb claim: it's an incredibly inefficient protocol. At best, you'll be able to push 200Kbps through it, and that's for writes. Reads are much slower.

<comment><USER23> 10 fingers at 100Hz with 4bytes each is 4kBps or 32kbps so that's not really a problem for a self contained touch screen.

If you want raw data... then yes, you'll need 10Mbps or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So, USB 4 will support alternative mode with DP 2.0?

<comment><USER41> A note on this, for anybody who's curious. USB-C is actually its own specification, so it's not part of the USB 3.0 series of specs. Presumably it won't be part of the USB 4.0 spec either.

a USB type-C connector actually carries a USB-2 lane, as well as carrying a couple of USB-3 lanes (and some other miscellaneous stuff). So it's not really the same category of standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Built on Thunderbolt 3. Neat.

</comment><comment><USER43> I love DisplayPort !

</comment><comment><USER44> The HDMI protocol works better. Period.

<comment><USER45> Curious why you think this

<comment><USER44> Because I use both, replug 10s of times a day on different oses. HDMI is more seamless.

<comment><USER46> Given that DisplayPort 2.0 was literally just _announced_ , you really can't compare the performance/usability of X to DP2.0.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I lost years of bookmarks because of Chrome's new design - <AUTHOR> I was on a vacation and didn't realize Google added an "auto-login" feature to chrome, I work with sensitive data so naturally I tried to logout and accidentally deleted the person #1 on my browser, and just like that with no warnings I lost 7+ years of bookmarks.
Chrome used to create a bookmarks.bak file, I can't find it anymore.
I had very important bookmarks there, what should I do. I have been searching for answers all morning and they all point to previous versions of chrome.
EDIT: I was able to recover my bookmarks because google synced (without my consent) all my browsing history and bookmarks yesterday at 3:20pm aparently, I don't know how to feel right now. <comment><USER2> I'm glad you rescued your bookmarks. Make sure to always backup everything which is important for you. And thankfully Google is very backup-friendly: [https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout)

</comment><comment><USER3> Switch to Chromium then?

[http://chromium.woolyss.com/download/en/#windows](http://chromium.woolyss.com/download/en/#windows)

</comment><comment><USER4> similarly, I lost 60 opened tabs on my iphone chrome.

When I don't have time for a long read, I keep the tab open, so they are like my temporary bookmarks. The new chrome iphone app introduced a new "close all tabs" button at the bottom left corner. I mistakenly pressed it.

<comment><USER5> At a certain point, bookmarks are just better. I also think at 60 open tabs, I'm not convinced the content was that interesting if you're never getting around to reading it.

Regardless, I have been mostly Firefox for a couple of years, with a little Safari thrown in, and I've been happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I don't know how to feel right now.

Switch to Safari or Firefox.

<comment><USER7> You could feel grateful that Google saved your ass, embarrassed that it needed saving, and annoyed that Google caused the hazard it saved you from. Not creating a local backup file is probably their way of making you more dependent on them. I've accidentally lost bookmarks due to Firefox upgrades but only through my own most grievous fault (long story). Hoping not to sound like a jerk, I propose taking personal responsibility for backups and security of important and sensitive data as a way forward.</comment></comment>


DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP FOR Not BEING ABLE TO CODE - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sarharibhakti/don-t-listen-to-those-who-think-coding-is-the-only-way-to-go-f9a381d4f5a0#.3feoy93t2 <comment><USER2> I'd go further - beat yourself up for being ABLE to code. Unless you are a master at the craft, then focus on the parts of the business you provide the most value. Hire the rest - including the software devs.

<comment><USER3> It's probably easier to raise money than to learn to write quality software.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Formula 1 Lap Charts - <AUTHOR> http://davidor.github.io/formula1-lap-charts

<comment><USER2> Excellent work. Good to be reminded of Ricciardo's incredible drive in Abu Dhabi.

A minor note: The page is broken for users of HTTPS Everywhere, because several resources are loaded via URIs that specify the HTTP protocol. Chopping off the scheme names in your script tag paths and using URIs in the form "//domain.tld/script.js" should fix the problem.

<comment><USER3> Ricciardo had an amazing season, I didn't think he was going to do much after his time at Toro Rosso.

That race made me wish I could isolate two drivers, to compare Ricciardo and Vettel.

<comment><USER4> That would be a nice feature.

It's possible here, but unfortunately the pit stops aren't highlighted as in the OP's version: [http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2014/11/23/ricciardo-beats- vettel...](http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2014/11/23/ricciardo-beats-vettel-red- bulls-fight-pits/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> F1 Fanatic has been doing something very similar for several years now: [https://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.f1fanatic.co.uk+"la...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.f1fanatic.co.uk+"lap+charts")

Though I guess their code isn't on GitHub :) The gap charts they have are nice as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing seeing the chaos of some of the wet races, the early laps of Brazil 2012 is a pretty good example.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice, it looks like a D3 reimplementation of the old official Formula1 Java applet chart.

Are the F1 laps data available as API or as data dump on F1/FIA website?

<comment><AUTHOR> I get the lap data from the Ergast web service: [http://ergast.com/mrd/](http://ergast.com/mrd/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gosh those are pretty. Sort of reminds me of Pennant, that lovely baseball stat app from a few years back.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very neat!

I'd love to see accompanying commentary. For example, what happened in laps 5-6 of Abu Dhabi? Mass chaos.

<comment><USER8> IIRC, They were routine pit stops

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it!</comment>


The Effect of Waking Up Early on Happiness Quantified - <AUTHOR> https://www.trackinghappiness.com/happy-mornings-research/ <comment><AUTHOR> After my first research article on personal sleep data and happiness ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17558542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17558542)), I wanted to do a follow-up.

Sleep is a factor that has a lot of influence on my life and mental well- being, yet there's a lot that I still need to learn about it.

This new article is my attempt at getting there. I want to use the lessons and observations from these analysis essays to steer my life in the best direction possible.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this research. I have a similar sleep schedule to yours (deprived weekdays, binge sleep on weekends) and find myself low on energy.

I had a period of time in my life where I was getting in bed early and waking up early (naturally) and that was when I was the most satisfied and had the most consistent sleep.

Now that I work in IT, I find myself more stressed and wanting to do more things that I enjoy to counter the stress of the daily grind and am fighting my sleep schedule again. I do feel quite out of balance and would like consistent sleep again, but that would probably require a less stressful job or coming to peace with my current job and situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for commenting! The things you say really resonate with me as that is exactly how I feel as well. After a long day at work, I wanna decompress and do things that I actually enjoy. This makes me happy on an otherwise dull day, but comes at the cost of my sleep... :(</comment></comment></comment>


Dart 1.13 released with greatly improved JavaScript interop - <AUTHOR> http://news.dartlang.org/2015/11/dart-113-brings-improved-javascript.html <comment><USER2> I've tried it while 1.13 was in dev, and damn, it's really easy now to use JS libs in Dart.</comment>


A safer and more private browsing experience with Secure DNS - <AUTHOR> https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/a-safer-and-more-private-browsing-DoH.html <comment><USER2> The upside of the "same provider" approach in Chromium is that it defuses a bunch of the complaints you get with Mozilla's approach about how they're picking winners (with the inevitable side dish of conspiracy theories).

The downside is that it's opportunistic encryption which means it fails open. If you're actively targeted this won't protect you. You'll need to explicitly configure a DoH server to be protected.

<comment><USER3> Forget the encryption; alter the protocol to support overfetching. (Instead of fetching a specific site, you fetch blocks of sites). In a naive version, you'd ask for every site from goodreads.com through to google.com, and then the client would actually visit the site it wanted. In a hardened protocol, I'd imagine you'd use hashing, along with a random salt so that there are many different ways to query the same site.

Right now, your DNS provider has a list of every website you visit (just not how many times you visited it). The shorter the DNS cache, the more closely this list matches your browsing behavior.

This definitely complicates the protocol, whether you put the burden at the resolver layer (needs larger cached) or at the level of authoritative servers (where'd they be effectively cooperating with root servers), but it's the only way to truly safeguard browsing data.

<comment><USER4> "Instead of fetching a specific site, you fetch blocks of sites."

I have been doing this for many years, putting bulk DNS data in HOSTS and personal use zone files served from loopback addresses. It is easier than ever today with so many sources of bulk DNS data.

DOH now lets users retrieve DNS data from recursive DNS servers (caches) in bulk, using HTTP/1.1 pipelining. Here is a working example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23242389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23242389)

Many years ago, I started doing non-recursive (no caches used) bulk DNS data retrieval for speed and also for resiliency in the event of outages. However the privacy gains are obvious. A rough analogy is downloading all of Wikipedia in bulk and browsing articles offline as opposed to making separate requests online for each article and generating all the requisite DNS and TCP/HTTP traffic. Openmoko's Wikireader experimented with the idea of offline Wikipedia.

Not only does the DOH provider get a record of all the user's DNS lookups, she can now associate each request with the particular user program/device that made it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Encrypted DNS is great, so long as the end user retains control over which DNS servers provide the answers.

This does appear to be the case here, and so it is still possible to disable it (use a local stubby instance to do encrypted DNS) or to use a custom setting (your nextdns.io config for example).

</comment><comment><USER6> I can see this leading to frustrating issues where your browser works fine but every other native app on your system can't resolve hostnames because your regular DNS isn't working. Would be nice to have all hostname resolution dealt with at the OS level rather than special-cased within the browser. Is that something that modern OS's are planning to support?

<comment><USER7> Windows 10 May 2020 update brings DoH support but chrome and Firefox are not using the Api for it to the best of my knowledge.

<comment><USER8> What do you mean "the API"? Shouldn't Windows just pass all requests to resolve domains through doh or dot? Have they really added an opt-in API instead of making it the default?

<comment><USER7> Firefox assumes the OS does not use DoH and implements its own DoH lookup client with its own settings and its own list of servers. It's a huge mess.

<comment><USER9> Just like it does for the certificate store.... And not using proper UI toolkits...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why has the world gone towards DNS over HTTPS as opposed to adding TLS itself to the DNS protocol?

<comment><USER11> There's DoT (DNS Over TLS), which operates on port 853, uses TCP and provides encryption. But it's also something network operators can easily block since it runs on a specific, separate port. DNS over HTTPS (DoH), on the other hand, rides on HTTPS/port 443, which cannot be blocked in networks without causing major disruptions to the rest of the web traffic.

A more detailed comparison is here:

[https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/dns-over-tls-vs-dns-over- ht...](https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/dns-over-tls-vs-dns-over-https/)

<comment><USER12> If there was a coordinated embrace and move to DoT (at least for the "last mile" part between end users and resolvers), network operators wouldn't be able to get away with blocking it (see secure IMAP, secure POP etc. for similar shifts in the past).

<comment><USER13> The internet is decentralized and "coordinated embrace" is not realistic or practical. See also: IPv6.

Pretty much the whole of the internet has been jammed into tcp/443 now, and it can't much be helped. Internet engineering needs to cope with the world as it is, not how we wish it were.

<comment><USER12> >The internet is decentralized and "coordinated embrace" is not realistic or practical.

I disagree, see the success of: letsencrypt, the wide spread use of 126.96.36.199 and 126.96.36.199; dkim/spf/dmarc; imaps, pop3s, tls ldap.

Why should a switch over to DoT be any different? If anything it should be easier. The general need for better security and privacy are much more widely understood and accepted concerns these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> An interesting detail: How does their upgrade work if you're using a customised DNS service where the customisation is detected differently in DoH compared to plain DNS?

For example NextDNS customers using DoH put a customisation parameter in the DNS URL paths (and so it's opaque to an adversary on the network) but obviously there's no URL path in conventional DNS, so does Chromium spot your NextDNS configuration and figure out the right URL path?

</comment><comment><USER14> Had a discussion just today with some colleagues because of internal company network(VPN) hijacking every port 53 request and responding in 2s(!).

I sure do hope this becomes a visible and flexible feature and not a google- only-dnses or "Oh, you have to run it with this special flag --use-dns-over- tls) kind of feature.

I think DNS topic has been underrepresented in the privacy-aware community. Hope this changes both for OSes and also apps people use regularly.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Furthermore, if there's any hiccup with the DNS-over-HTTPS connection, > Chrome will fall back to the regular DNS service of the user's current > provider by default, in order to avoid any disruption, while periodically > retrying to secure the DNS communication

Doesn't that make this pretty trivial to defeat? Just drop the DoH packets and boom, you've got unencrypted DNS again.

<comment><USER16> I think this is phase 1, where phase 2 or 3 is "enabled by default and don't fall back to plain DNS". So it's trivial to defeat until they change a setting.

But that's not even the big problem here. The big problem is how big an impact this will be on less-than-perfect networks.

The internet feels "snappy" because of DNS's speed and connectionless nature (and a buttload of DNS caching). Once it relies on a connection-oriented protocol, a lot of people's internet experience is going to start sucking badly, and they'll have to modify more of the common internet protocols to make it suck less again.

<comment><USER2> Conveniently DoH servers didn't exist years ago, so any that you're talking to will be new. But new servers have no reason not to implement TLS 1.3, as does Chrome.

In TLS 1.3 you can choose to avoid the handshake roundtrip but then you're subject to a replay attack in which any request side effects happen again because your legitimate request was replayed. The bad guys don't get to understand the request or the answer, they just get to perform it, maybe against a different node of a distributed system or in a different timeframe. Conveniently DNS lookups are side effect free so this doesn't matter.

So that really cuts down on the potential additional latency compared to even an HTTP GET.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So why is this better when people could still take the raw IP addresses and do reverse look ups?

If I recall looking into the spec before there is a reason it's an improvement but I can't recall what it was.

I know there are tons of servers behind proxies and so forth but still it seems like over time databases could be built up to give some decent success with this countermeasure.

<comment><USER18> rocketspark.com -> 126.96.36.199

188.8.131.52 is one of the cloudflare servers, it does not have reverse dns record and you can't associate it with any specific website. If you're monitoring traffic, you would have no idea what website user is visiting unless you can intercept his unencrypted DNS queries as well.

So CDNs increase user security a little bit.

<comment><USER19> If you're monitoring traffic you can see the SNI header in plaintext. ESNI is not deployed yet (and is only as secure as DNS; that is maybe why browsers are implementing DoH themselves instead of waiting for the OS).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From what I have seen Firefox has already been taking a similar approach for the past year. In enterprise environments, there's the ability to disable DoH. And for general audiences, the ability to fall back to normal DNS if necessary.

<comment><USER21> The significant difference here is that Firefox has made it possible to maintain Split DNS without managing and reconfiguring every device via a network signal to continue to use split DNS (e.g. PiHole)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is the impact for an organization utilizing a BYOD policy that performs DNS filtering? What about home users filtering via PiHole or pfSense or parents that use local DNS filtering? Will every device's browser need to be changed? Will Chrome revert in the presence of a network signal to use local DNS (as is the case with FF)?

<comment><USER22> Your local DNS filtering device can simply speak DoH; Pi-holes already do. That's a non-problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Am I the only one thinking it's weird that this rolls out on ChromeOS first but other Linux platforms (including Android) last?

<comment><USER24> I don't think it's weird. If there's a problem, it limits who is affected or allows them to fix it while the problem is small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sigh, the two words Google and Privacy are like oil and water, but I digress...

It will be interesting to see what reception this will get in some countries where all ISP's are legally bound to modify DNS-requests to prevent users connecting to sites with content such as child pornography.

</comment><comment><USER12> What irritates me about DoH is it's lazy.

I get the impression Google, Mozilla etc. are genuinely irritated with crappy networks and invasive ISPs meddling with DNS traffic. What I don't accept is their decision to abuse their market positions to impose a quick, unilateral solution that comes with a range of unfortunate long term implications and secondary effects vis a vis centralization.

Imho, it would have been much, much better if they had used their resources and clout to help fund & advocate for a general, independent transition over to DoT for last mile and increased adoption of DNSSEC and DNSCurve upstream.

The world manged to move to encrypted email and www. Surely it could move to encrypted DNS without browser vendors forcing us to split name resolution and send half of it over HTTP?

<comment><USER26> The problem isn't just ISPs meddling with DNS traffic, but ISPs passively collecting DNS traffic and using it to track users, something which is believed to have happened in the US on at least one occasion. [1] DoT to your ISP doesn't help if you don't trust your ISP. There is also the risk of collection by intelligence agencies.

[1] [https://gigaom.com/2014/05/13/atts-gigapower-plans-turn- priv...](https://gigaom.com/2014/05/13/atts-gigapower-plans-turn-privacy-into- a-luxury-that-few-would-choose/)

<comment><USER12> If you don't trust your ISP, you are savvy enough to use a). a different resolver or b). a VPN. In both cases, the decision is opt-in (which is what it should be).

Edit: or option c). apply pressure to your government representatives to update their privacy laws so ISP snooping doesn't happen in the first place. It's a sad state of affairs when the ISP market has failed so badly that you can't find an ISP you can trust.

<comment><USER26> > If you don't trust your ISP, you are savvy enough to use a). a different > resolver or b). a VPN. In both cases, the decision is opt-in (which is what > it should be).

So you think that non-savvy users don't deserve privacy?

> Edit: or option c). apply pressure to your government representatives to > update their privacy laws so ISP snooping doesn't happen in the first place.

That's definitely desirable. Heck, the snooping in question might already be illegal in California under the new CCPA. But I don't see federal legislation happening anytime soon, and the US is not the only jurisdiction lacking privacy protections. And while privacy laws can prevent snooping for advertising purposes, good luck convincing the government to outlaw snooping by intelligence agencies. Ultimately, legal and technical measures are not mutually exclusive, and we should use both.

<comment><USER27> The nonsavy user gets zero privacy. Who cares about encrypted DNS when your ISP sees every server you connect to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't see any mentions of it, so I'm assuming Google isn't using a canary domain to see if they should enable DoH or not. Can anyone else confirm?

</comment><comment><USER29> DNS logs are important in an enterprise. But I'm sure many would want to also use DoH.

Does Chrome provide any audit logging for DNS while in DoH mode?

<comment><USER30> > DNS logs are important in an enterprise. But I'm sure many would want to > also use DoH.

Really? Why? As someone who works in academia, I don't see why anyone would need access to my or my colleagues' DNS logs, but I understand things might be different in industry.

<comment><USER31> "Important" in the sense that many IT organizations have predicated their data forensics and incident response capabilities on being able to intercept and analyze traffic at arbitrary points within their corporate networks.

That's not to say that those choices reflect good architectural design, to be sure quite the opposite. But like many things in enterprise IT risk management, it comes down to where you spent your money, and things like DoH/DoT force will force certain organizations to admit "a lot in the wrong place".

<comment><USER29> To be clear, I'm not asking for the ability to intercept DNS requests, or encrypted traffic, at all. I'm fine (and encourage) encryption on the wire. I'm just as happy to get the logs on the local system, and ship them off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Bye bye DNS based ad blocking, hello malwares straight out of Google ads.

<comment><USER33> You can run a pihole that delegates to a local cloudflared service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Oh, get the heck out of here with "Secure DNS". Allowing Google to snoop on all DNS is the opposite of safer and more private.

<comment><USER35> _Chrome maintains a list of DNS providers known to support DNS-over-HTTPS. Chrome uses this list to match the user's current DNS service provider with that provider's DNS-over-HTTPS service, if the provider offers one. By keeping the user's chosen provider, we can preserve any extra services offered by the DNS service provider, such as family-safe filtering, and therefore avoid breaking user expectations._

Secure DNS is a "same-provider DNS-over-HTTPS upgrade" approach, and it sounds like you're conflating it with a different design, where Chrome would talk to Google-run DNS servers?

(Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

<comment><USER36> As far as I have noticed, only time Google makes something 'more private for everyone' historically, has been when they themselves have found a superior way to get around it.

Whether this is because the entire Internet uses Google Analytics, Gmail, etc, or because they have a different more effective way of tracking DNS queries is irrelevant, since they always manage to find a way due to being omnipresent.

<comment><USER22> Yes, Google is pushing DoH because, internally, in the AdWords division, they've broken elliptic curve DSA.

<comment><USER36> Not quite the implication I intended, but when you own something like Google Analytics, you don't _need_ to see everyone's DNS queries, because you have much, much more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So both Firefox and now Chrome will ignore DNS-level malware blockers, such as Pi-Hole.

Malware/Adware will inevitably start using the same tricks, if they haven't already.

And of course DoH is impossible to block without also blocking all of HTTPS. That's the point of it.

A case study in unintended consequences.

<comment><USER38> You can turn it off?

<comment><USER37> In these two examples, yes. In more malicious future software? Certainly not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The relation between DNS and internet is the same as between a boot protocol and computer.

By taking a control over DNS, Google usurps the power and makes the open web a walled corporate franchise of its own.

In other words, Google steals the open web from the world. It injects a proprietary Trojan horse in disguise of security and established a total dictating power, deciding on what can be published on the web and what cannot.

The choice of timing speaks by itself as well. A pandemic is a great mud water to pull the trick like that.

Didn't you get enough stories about unwarranted pullouts of apps from Google Store? Website pullouts are the subject of the nearest future if we allow that to happen.

The community should boycott centralized DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) approach as it clearly stays in the way of Open Internet was originally designed. DoH leads to a totally centralized, usurped, greed-driven future controlled by a single corporate entity.

This should also bring the closest attention of anti-monopoly committees around the world.

I know that not all people can grasp the danger DoH brings today, but this is a very dangerous development that may lead to disastrous consequences for communities around the world. Internet as we know it may just die.

<comment><USER13> DoH is a huge upgrade over unencrypted DNS. Google offering DoH (amongst others) is no more a danger to web censorship than their deployment of the Google Public DNS (184.108.40.206/126.96.36.199). Where was the outrage then?

It's tiresome seeing the same FUD over and over again each time DoH comes up, whether Google, Cloudflare, or whoever. This is religion, not science.

Did the rlogin/telnet people suffer so when ssh was introduced?

<comment><USER39> Not true. Publc DNS is opt-in. Pushing DNS with the browser is lock-in.

So who spreads the FUD then? Google and Mozilla combined effort (read Collusion) pushing this further warrants a thorough investigation.

<comment><USER13> Use of a specific browser is also opt-in (unless you are using an iPhone).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Research topics at the intersection of topology and computer science - <AUTHOR> I am interested in research topics at the intersection of topology/geometry and computer science. My previous line of research has been focused on numerical methods with application to mechanical engineering problems (Using methods such as Finite Element and Finite Difference). After working for two and half years in industry and being exposed to new computational problems (often with their roots in computer science), I've decided to pursue a master degree that combines my interests in geometry/topology and computer science. Some of the key/important topics of interests that I've come across so far have been:
1- A short article with three examples of computational homology https://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/preprints/nieuwarchief.pdf
2- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XJes6XFjxM
3- Computable Topology, the study of "topological and algebraic structure of computation".
4- Topological data analysis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3Hl85OBuc0), application of geometrical methods in learning algorithms and in natural language processing/parsing (for the last point though I was not able to find a lot of resources).
I appreciate comments or suggestions regarding the following questions:
1- Research Ideas at the intersection of math (geometry and topology) and computer science. This could be a new topic that I haven't mentioned here or a refinement/variation of the above ideas.
2- Graduate schools with similar research interests, particularly in the Netherlands and the western part of Germany.
3- Given the interdisciplinary nature of the topics I've mentioned, would you recommend a master study in a math department or a computer science/informatics department?
As for me, I have obtained my PhD in Computational Mechanics and I am familiar with some topics in applied math (self study during and after my graduate studies) such as Algebra, Linear Algebra, Analysis, Functional Analysis, Variational Methods and Point-Set Topology. <comment><USER2> I liked a recent paper by Baltimore Raven's center John Urschel et. al. on "Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians" \- that was mentioned on ESPN of all places (of course not the title, it was just "math" to them). Maybe "shortest-path" isn't your geometric interest, but there is definitely an overlap with this material, topology, and requires Comp Sci.

arXiv:1412.0565v1

Edit: add link [http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.0565](http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.0565)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for mentioning the paper, this comes close to one of my topics of interest, spectral graph theory. Although quite an interesting subject (I can see myself easily being drawn to the subject), I wonder if there has been any attempts to understand or study the topological structure at the heart of algorithms that are used for learning or natural language processing/parsing. I am quite curious and eager about these methods so if you happen to know of a paper or reference please let me know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You found that Ghrist article but you didn't find this: [https://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html](https://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html) ?

Also I haven't read it but: [http://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/topological- signal-proc...](http://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/topological-signal- processing)

There's also the entire field of 'computational geometry'.</comment>


Fast – Examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together - <AUTHOR> https://patrickcollison.com/fast <comment><AUTHOR> * Unix. Ken Thompson wrote the first version in three weeks. Source: UNIX: A History and a Memoir.

* JavaScript. Brendan Eich implemented the first prototype for JavaScript in 10 days, in May 1995. It shipped in beta in September of that year. Source: Brendan Eich's history of the language.

</comment><comment><USER2> I love how this ends with how ridiculously dysfunctional SF city governance is.</comment>