Why you should or should not get a co-founder - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/Why+you+should+or+should+not+get+a+co-founder <comment><USER2> For me the biggest advantage to having is a co-founder is the psychological support it brings. Being a single-founder is a lonely, pressurised position to be in, it can take its toll. The biggest problem is that there's no one there to share the burden, even if you have the most supportive friends and family and get the best business advice, nothing beats being able to have a frank, detailed discussion about the company with someone who's in the exact same position as you, whose goals and fate are intertwined.

For this reason, I think it really helps if the co founders are in a similar position financially, for example, if one co founder is struggling to pay the bills, can't afford to eat etc and the other is financially comfortable, this might become a bone of contention between the two. The struggling co founder might feel that the other isn't putting as much work in because they don't have the same kind of pressure on their shoulders, the better off co founder might feel obligated to support the other one, and that introduces possible equity squabbles later on.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an excellent point actually, I should have included that somehow. If founders are of a very disproportionate level of wealth then that can create a lot of friction.

One of the reasons is that for one co-founder the business is a life-or-death matter, whereas for the other it may merely be a way to get through the day in an interesting way.

I've seen one such situation up close and it caused a lot of trouble.</comment></comment>


You are not a designer and I am not a musician - <AUTHOR> http://www.drawar.com/articles/you-are-not-a-designer-and-i-am-not-a-musician/55/

<comment><USER2> "Web designer" is just a way to tell people what you do. Doesn't mean you're good at it, or formally trained. There's an artist outside that isn't Picasso. Still calls himself an artist.

The web is just a really easy place to find (and apparently dwell on and become offended by) novices.

Edit: As I think about it, this attitude really bothers me. I used to work at a design agency where my boss would pin poor resumés to a wall for group mockery. That kind of snobbish behavior is a plague based on insecurity. Everyone's gotta start somewhere, and formal education is not always the answer.

Furthermore, until some body starts issuing professional licenses for "web designer," it really doesn't matter what individuals think of the term.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree. I don't think I'm a _good_ designer, but I do design things, so I'm a designer. Same for programming and cooking.

The world has enough elitism. Don't make it worse.

<comment><USER4> Credentialism (even for lawyers and doctors) isn't my favorite thing, but it's defensible by fairly reasonable people. But this baseless elitism is just too much.

"I'm not an astronaut" because I don't go to space, but "I am a musician" because I play the guitar, despite the fact that I do it poorly and have no formal education.

<comment><USER5> The problem here is that the design field doesn't seem to have separate forums for amateurs and professional.

I'm into photography, and that community has sorted this out fairly well (for good reason, it's much older than the craft of web design). There are amateur forums (where professionals participate, but nothing is judged for commercial quality), and there are professional galleries where people who do it for a living put their best work forward.

Nearly every place that showcases photography sits on one side of this divide - and make this context clear. You're either a place to show portfolio-level work, or you're strictly for-fun. This keeps the marketplace clear, and also doesn't confuse people trying to hire photographers.

Web design galleries like the one above don't seem to do this, so in a way they're the cause of their own problems. One hit wonders are only a problem if they're trying to get hired doing it, they're simply not a problem at the amateur level.

<comment><USER4> I have to admit, it seems a little odd to me that there's a clear divide in photography. The barrier to entry is low, and the quality of a photographer's output is somewhat subjective. Does my friend with his $500 camera, who gets paid (albeit rarely) to take pictures, fall on the "pro" or "amateur" side of things?

<comment><USER5> It depends entirely on where he puts his work - if he only puts his work on Flickr, then he's likely amateur. If he's submitting his work to sites where professionals troll for work, then he is by definition professional.

Which isn't to say professionals don't Flickr their pictures - they do, but the judgment that their work gets is different on the two sides of the fence.

In either case, someone looking to hire a photographer will not have to dig through pages upon pages of amateur work, and in a forum of professionals, unskilled amateur work becomes painfully apparent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Once you label me, you negate me._ \- Kierkegaard

 _Specialization is for insects._ \- Heinlein

 _Eat my shorts._ \- Simpson

</comment><comment><USER7> For all the pretension in this piece, I think the design on that page is pretty poor.

Serifed fonts can be very pretty on the page, but are tricky to use on the web. The low resolution (~100ppi) of current monitors brutalizes them in small sizes. Trying to use them the way he's doing is the result of an ignorance of the limitations of his medium.

Reading through the article (after magnifying a few times to make it readable), he seems to be grappling for some "arteest" notion of design.

The fact is though, that designers have work because a very large number of web sites need published. They do not need to be masterpieces. They need to support and conform to the needs of the information and workflow of the site. They need to support and reinforce the client's brand. And they need to not turn people away by being archaic or ugly.

You don't need a Pollock or Warhol to do that kind of work. In fact, it'd be a terrific waste of money to hire that kind of talent to design an online store. There is an army of solid designers out there who can meet the above requirements.

I'd also like to add that, as a web developer, I find print designers (or designers who went to school and studied print design) to be the absolute worst to work with. They do not understand the limitations of the web. They don't make designs that can flow, and can handle content created by the client through their CMS. They produce unusably rigid designs and then get emotional when they're changed to meet the needs of the client.

<comment><USER8> I agree about design problems on that page. Why is there no left margin? My lizard brain kept wanting to scroll left, since the edges of the letters were kissing the window border.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Designers resort to snobbery because they operate in a realm where everyone has an opinion, and thus they need to distinguish their opinions from those of the untrained in order to reinforce their value. It's a rational, albeit unfortunate, response.

They are the experts who are tasked with deciding on the color of the "bike shed": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_shed>

</comment><comment><USER10> "No, you are not a designer. You are someone that can piece together some stuff in Photoshop or add the right pieces of code in XHTML/CSS. You aren't the person that creates experiences. You aren't the translator of ideas that people never thought could be produced visually. You aren't the person that can toss their own style to the curb and come up with something even greater because of it."

I am not a computer programmer, i am just someone who throws together some characters in emacs which compile on a computer for the most part but sometimes crash. I am not a person who creates codes that have not previously been thought to be creatable. I am not making the world an unimaginably better place of incredible grandiousity. I totally lack the condescention and hubris required to be the ONE TRUE PROGRAMMER.</comment>


Lain, the Whom of the Verb World - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2015/03/09/lain-the-whom-of-the-verb-world/ <comment><USER2> An interesting article but frustrating to read as a non-linguist/grammaticist.

While it's about the incorrect usage of the word "lain", the article only actually uses "lain" correctly once in a sentence ("Those skeletons had lain under that supermarket for centuries"). Additionally, the article uses but doesn't really define the terms "transitive" or "past participle"; ignorance of which are the key sources of confusion for regular speakers.

<comment><USER3> I was going to respond with an explanation of the obscure terms, but I'm sure without looking that Wikipedia can do a better job than I.

Instead, I would like to exhort you and everyone else to take an interest in linguistics[1]. I really wish we could replace our 12 years of mathematical education, which I think is overall quite useless[2], with 12 years of linguistic education. If we spent 12 years learning how all of the world's languages work, I also think we would go a long way to reduce xenophobia and racism. [3]

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want people to learn how to speak correctly. I want people to expand their innate curiosity for just how goddam smart humans are at languages. Like the article said, the unusual thing isn't that we can't keep lie/lay/lied/lain/laid straight, but that we can keep almost everything else straight. Language is a unique human phenomenon. We have opposable thumbs, but so do monkeys, and elephants are quite handy (haha!) with their trunks. Even a raven can use tools, but no other animal exhibits the breadth of ability of language that we do. Birdsongs are complicated and maybe even culturally transmitted, but they can't be used to dictate laws or record writing or persuade others as I am now trying to persuade you.[4]

Linguistics is a science: it proceeds by gathering empirical data of how humans speak, then formulates hypotheses that will predict how they will speak, and confirms or denies these hypotheses. What more interesting object of study than ourselves! Language is something we all do on a daily basis, spontaneously, naturally. Ever wondered why we do it the way we do it?

Sadly, the beauty of this science is clouded behind the way it is taught today in schools, along with a jargon that further distances some of us from the actual object of study. To the prescriptivist grammarians, I say their objective is as futile as trying to educate ants on architecture: ants will build anthills as they see fit. But for the jargon, I am sad to say that some of it is inevitable, because we need the lens of analysis and classification in order to see the true attraction of our linguistic abilities.

Transitive or intransitive verbs don't occur only in English: virtually every human language has something like them. Participles are less universal, but they are also not a uniquely English phenomenon. But why does this happen? Why does every known language have verbs but only some has participles? Why do humans craft languages as they do? Therein lies the science! (or lays?)

So, try to learn some linguistic jargon. Underneath it lies a very interesting set of concepts that describe an ability that uniquely characterises our species. :-)

\----

[1] The language log is a good place to start finding interesting things:

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/)

[2] Particularly when calculus is the ultimate goal of elementary mathematical education. When was the last time you or most adults around you had an urgent need for calculus? Can you even state, say, Rolle's theorem without looking it up?

[3] For example, did you know that ebonics has way more verb tenses that express very nuanced moments in time, nuances which standard English lacks?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_En...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English#Tense_and_aspect)

[4] Here is a pretty interesting that theorises that human language may have evolved from some characteristics found in birdsong!

[http://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-language-evolved- birdsong...](http://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-language-evolved- birdsong.html)

<comment><USER4> > I really wish we could replace our 12 years of mathematical education, which > I think is overall quite useless[2], with 12 years of linguistic education

I wonder why it is that people can never just say "you, know, X is quite important and maybe deserves more of our attention" and instead have to go all bombastic and pretend "X is the most important thing in the world and our modern society couldn't exist without it".

<comment><USER3> I do enjoy bombasticness.

<comment><USER5> Bombasticity?

It's probably actually just 'bombast', isn't it?

<comment><USER3> Bombasticitinessation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did anyone else immediately think of Serial Experiments Lain[0]?

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

<comment><USER7> Yes. I'm not sure if describing that as the "Verb World" is strangely accurate, or just strange ... should we adopt it as another term for immerse object-oriented, programmable, mediated, augmented and virtual reality? It has a nice ring to it: Come join us in the Verb World.

<comment><USER8> Java and OOP in general are already famous for being made fun of as the Kingdom of Nouns. So it would be funny to call something built with the Kingdom of Nouns as Verb World, lol.

<comment><USER7> I was thinking more along the lines of smalltalk/croquet, and the Alan Kay quote/talk "Doing with images makes symbols". But yeah, if all you have are nouns, great lack of verbing also.

<comment><USER9> \- Object Oriented Programming, where the nouns modestly conceal their verbs in their underwear.

\- Functional programming - refusing to change your underwear for fear of getting your knickers in a twist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a native English speaker, and somebody who loves writing and languages, I grok most grammar discussions without thinking about the terms involved. Lay, lie, and so forth come fairly naturally to me. For example, if I really thought about it, I believe I would have spotted all the bad lie-forms in the songs the writer mentions.

But some things still bug me. What's the difference between "will" and "shall"? "Farther" and "further" still get mixed up in my writing even though I know better. Every few months I'll find myself typing in something quickly online and use a homophone "their" for "they're" \-- which I absolutely know not to do! Some of these formations you only come across maybe once a year or so.

It's like one other commenter said here, it's not that the oddball cases are so complex, it's amazing that we manage to remember all the rest of it.

<comment><USER11> I am not a native speaker, but isn't "will" vs "shall" simply about matter of fact vs intent?

"I shall be king" implies you're actively setting events in motion that will make you king. "I will be king" merely expresses confidence that you will become king in the future (whether you know this to be a fact or are just hoping this is how things will work out).

Likewise "you shall not suffer a witch to live" is a bit more direct than "you should not" \-- it not only expresses a moral stance, it is a direct command.

Anyway. The wonderful thing about language is that is defined by how it's used. If "carefully lain skeletons" becomes widely accepted, it becomes well- formed English. _Whom_ knows what English will look a hundred years from now.

<comment><USER12> Not a native speaker either, but "will" vs "shall" is awfully complicated, at least if you try to speak Southern English: [http://www.bartleby.com/116/213.html](http://www.bartleby.com/116/213.html)

For practical international usage, I was taught to always use "will", except in first-person questions such as "shall we go?".

<comment><USER13> Fascinating. As a native northern-US speaker, I literally had no idea how these used to work until now. (I guess most people know this, but here the sense you mentioned is the only one acceptable in speech; otherwise, "shall" sounds more commanding than "will" but archaic; and "should" always means "ought to".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've noticed that in the US, one will "lay down" in a bed. I have trouble knowing how to reconcile this in my mind. Would one day that in American English, a different dialect to British English, this is the correct usage? Can dialects have distant grammar rules? Or can it only be considered a colloquialism?

<comment><USER15> My ex-girlfriend was just very nervous about saying "lie" because it's "bad". So "I'm just going to go lay down on the couch" because "I'm not lying!".

Which results in amusing scenarios in which people don't realize that e.g. this song is about sex: [https://play.google.com/music/preview/Txqbmvyo63hydudrvpj3gf...](https://play.google.com/music/preview/Txqbmvyo63hydudrvpj3gfszl7q?lyrics=1)

<comment><USER9> You have probably hit on the real reason for the odd choice of verb 'lain' in the Guardian article - the sexual connotations of the word 'laid' (especially in the context of bodies, and given that the location was in France).

I suspect that 'laid' was changed to 'lain' after the first draft was submitted, possibly following some ribaldry from the copy editor and colleagues.</comment></comment></comment>


Unifying Relational, Document, Graph, and Temporal Data Models - <AUTHOR> https://blog.fauna.com/unifying-relational-document-graph-and-temporal-data-models <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I've been building databases since the early days of NoSQL. What we are doing at FaunaDB, to build a general purpose scalable transactional NoSQL database, fulfills the promise we set out for ages ago. I hope you enjoy it.</comment>


2013 Shahbag Protest - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Shahbag_Protest

<comment><USER2> I am in Bangladesh. This is not an uprising, or atleast not according to my definition of an uprising. If you consider what happened in Egypt or middle east in general as an uprising then this is not the same as whats happening in dhaka.

This so-called uprising is NOT against the government. There is good reason to believe part of it is instigated by the government and indirectly controlled by them.

While not a farce, or without any reason, I thing this is pointless because I thing there are some valid reasons to have neutral uprising against the corrupted government and the political parties. This is not it. Unfortunately.

The funniest part is even with all these corruption Bangladesh is going through one of most amazing period of economic growth in its history, in many cases surpassing even its powerful neighbors. If only they could curb corruption, BD can be an economic powerhouse in the region.

<comment><USER3> Hello,

'Bangladeshi' here. Thanks for putting your thoughts together, however I have some points to make.

It's true that this movement is not against the corrupted government. But to say that this is 'instigated by the government and indirectly controlled by them' is nowhere near the truth. This was started solely by the students, who has had enough of all the wrong things happening(including the corruption). Several, government officials were denied the chance to speak at the movement, when they tried to give this movement a political brand and use it to their advantage. The people were angry and the politicians took off after several minutes(I was there).

What started at Shabag, has now spread throughout the country. I just spoke to my dad, who live in a small town far away from the capital, says the movement has reached there too. Its all over the news.

The youth of Bangladesh are tired of all the lies and cheating they had and this time they are on the street. Frankly speaking, even I could never imagine that people would ever rise up and protest. This is how it begins and eventually this will lead to corruption and other things that are stopping BD to what it can be.

<comment><USER2> I hope this movement turns in to something substantial. But I have reasons to be cynical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Text copied from ICSF: "On 5 February 2013, International Crimes Tribunal-2 delivered judgment against Kader Molla, who was accused of rape of minor and at least 350 murders. Tried for his crimes against humanity, his crimes were proven beyond reasonable doubt, according to the judgment. However, the Tribunal comprising of Mr Shahinur Islam, Obaidul Hasan Shahin and Mojibur Rahman awarded Kader Molla life sentence, instead of death penalty which the accused deserved. People, rejecting this lenient sentence, has risen, in Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh."

</comment><comment><USER3> BBC coverage here: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21383632>

BBC changed many inaccuracies, including a change in the article title, after people pointed them out on social media.

</comment><comment><USER4> It'd be a huge blow to the rule of law to give someone the death penalty based on public pressure -- no matter how horrific his crimes.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, the rule of law should be held above the rule of man (mob rule). The chorus however is incendiary and volatile, "Justice delayed is justice denied."

The situation is tense to say the least.</comment></comment>


Show HN: X12 EDI Parser and Generator Written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sezna/edi <comment><AUTHOR> This is my first "Show HN" submission here. This is an ANSI X12 EDI parser and generator for Rust. It has been already used commercially for multiple EDI pipelines and is able to handle any X12 document which is specification- compliant. It can both parse and output valid EDI documents while maintaining versatility to cover the entire spec. There is also a `loose_parse` mode which is less strict on the spec, in case the incoming data is slightly malformed.

I hope this crate helps some companies stuck with antiquated EDI pipelines eliminate some old tech cruft.

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool, thanks for putting this together!</comment></comment>


Our Favorite Elasticsearch Features, Part 2: Index Aliases - <AUTHOR> https://cambium.consulting/articles/2018/2/22/our-favorite-elasticsearch-features-part-2-index-aliases?utm_source=hacker_news&utm_campaign=elasticsearch <comment><USER2> Index aliases are one of the most underappreciated features in ES. In general, when building an app that uses ES I'd recommend to always hide the actual index behind an alias. There's a minor error in the post: you can write to an alias, but only if it points to exactly one index. By using an alias to read and write, the actual index is hidden from the app. This allows tweaking indices and doing test runs on two indices with different mappings/settings by modifying the alias. Especially when doing performance or scoring optimizations, this can massively improve your agility when testing such a change.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meanwhile, my biggest issue with elasticsearch is that for any kind of system where you have indices of different sizes (eg you have several data models being indexed), your cluster will make no attempt at trying to distribute smartly and instead will stop at "same number of indices per node". Which means you very often end up with a very unbalanced cluster with regards to disk usage. For earlier versions there was a plugin that had a smarter allocator, which would look at disk usage when assigning nodes, but for any recent ES cluster (>2.0) you're left with a shrug.

<comment><USER4> Have you seen [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/curr...](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/disk- allocator.html#disk-allocator) ? Elasticsearch does take into account disk usage when balancing shards. Perhaps you haven't yet hit the (configurable) high water mark where that rebalancing would occur?

I work for Elastic, but not on Elasticsearch.</comment></comment>


IBM Q system in development with working 50 qubit processor - <AUTHOR> http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/53374.wss <comment><USER2> The article appears to be saying that they are offering an _actual_ quantum computer as a service, but as I recall, their previous offering was a _simulation_ of a quantum computing environment. Yet, this same article refers to that thing as if it were a real QC. This makes me skeptical that the thing being offered here is a real quantum computer...Anyone here have any insight into whether this is legitimate?

<comment><USER3> Their previous offerings have been 2 physical quantum computers that can be accessed over the cloud. One with 5 qubits, and another with 16 qubits[0]. These computers have had thousands of users who have run millions of quantum algorithms [1].

[0]: [https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/52403.wss](https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/52403.wss)

[1]:[https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/10/ibm-50-qubit-quantum- com...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/10/ibm-50-qubit-quantum-computer/)

<comment><USER4> Wait, I didn't think we had actual quantum computers yet. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing)

<comment><USER3> We've had quantum computers since the 90's. We just haven't had "useful" quantum computers yet [0].

An implementation of quantum computers that is currently flourishing is one that is built out of superconducting circuits. This makes it easier to scale the quantum computer because you can leverage existing nanoelectronic fabrication techniques [1].

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

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_quantum_comput...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_quantum_computing)

<comment><USER4> > "We've had quantum computers since the 90's".

It wasn't until 2005 we had the first (probable) qubyte created at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

<comment><USER5> You don't need bytes to do computation.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't a qubyte be 8 qubits?

<comment><USER7> The term doesn't make sense because you're not going to use groups of 8 qubits to represent characters on a screen.

We may actually need a new word for 2 qubits (dual-qubits? dubits?) because it seems 2 qubits are enough to break 1-bit of encryption, and I think I've read it's enough to simulate 1 atom, too.

<comment><USER6> I thought it was x qubits is equal to 2^x classical bits? So wouldn't 2 "dubits" actually be _four_ times (not twice as) better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Presenting the pictures of a quantum computer with adbobe flash is an impressive combination of technologies. I hope they are use a different technology stack to develop the OS of that machine ;-)

<comment><USER9> Talking about the websites stack instead of the content is the HN equivalent of bike-shedding. It sounds like a contribution but it isn't.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding)

<comment><USER10> Jeez man let him make a joke

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quantum computer news! Everyone is excited and confused.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this a true quantum computer? The controversy around D-Wave was confusing.

<comment><USER13> They're definitely referring to a real ("universal") quantum computer, not the quantum annealing devices of D-wave. Their computer will be able to run the Schor algorithm, if it is as advertised. If they have 20 qubits in two months, as they say they will, that seems like great progress compared to where I thought the field was. And if they have 50 within a couple years after that, it would be huge. One caveat is they seem to be making a distinction between a "universal" quantum computer, and a "universal fault-tolerant" one. Fault- tolerance requires a lot more qubits so it's not clear to me how valuable even 50 will be, if not error-corrected. I must say I will be kind of amazed if quantum computers prove to be scalable the way classical ones have been. I'm inclined to believe that the "Church-Turing" thesis will ultimately prevail once the cost of construction of the machines is factored in (~linear growth for the classical machines, greater than polynomial for the quantum). But I've been wrong before.

<comment><USER14> You say " _If_ they have 20 qubits in two months" and " _if_ they have 50 within a couple of years". Doesn't the article say that they have 50?

I'm unclear on this, because I have yet to see a published result talking about running Shor's algorithm on a quantum computer beyond the NMR-based physical simulation and the adiabatic one (which is just annealing). What exactly is IBM claiming to have done here?

<comment><USER15> They're simulating 50; they're implementing 20.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are they doing about error correction? Not that it makes this any less impressive (everything starts _somewhere_ ), are they simply ignoring the problem?

<comment><USER3> It's a bit too early for quantum computers to do fault-tolerant (error corrected) computation. This is because you need more than one physical qubit to make a logical (error corrected) qubit. You need 7 physical qubits to encode a logical qubit if you use the Steane code [0]. So with 50 qubits, they could theoretically make 7 error corrected qubits.

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

<comment><USER17> In fact, the smallest quantum error-correcting code using qubits uses only five qubits. [1] So you could fit 10 of these codewords into 50 qubits.

But that's not right. At least two more qubits are needed for _fault-tolerant_ error correction. So that means you could fit nine codewords into 50 qubits (since 9x5+2=47 < 50).

But that's not right. There exist more efficient codes that put multiple encoded qubits into a single code block. [2] For example, three qubits can be encoded into eight, still with distance three. [3] Six of these could fit into 50 qubits (since 6x8+2=50), giving 18 encoded qubits.

But that's not right. The IBM systems are superconducting qubits, with very constrained interactions. Not every qubit can talk directly to every other qubit. So you'd probably want every code block to have its own extra qubits dedicated to error correction. If you need 8+2 qubits per code block, then you could fit five code blocks, for 15 encoded qubits, into 50.

Obviously this is really complicated.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilizer_code#Example_of_a_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilizer_code#Example_of_a_stabilizer_code)

[2] [http://www.codetables.de/TableIII.php](http://www.codetables.de/TableIII.php)

[3] [http://www.codetables.de/QECC.php?q=4&n=8&k=3](http://www.codetables.de/QECC.php?q=4&n=8&k=3)

<comment><USER18> I recently had a conversation with a Microsoft quantum researcher, and this a close approximation to his answer. I just wanted a number. It's complicated.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like 15 is that number

<comment><USER20> It's also not 15 at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does the appearance of quantum computers mean that the effectiveness of programming languages becomes secondary and that ease-of-use/expressiveness will be the most valued trait?

<comment><USER22> No. Quantum computers are very specialized devices. They allow massive speedups for certain applications, and no benefit at all for general-purpose computing.

I expect to see a flourishing of quantum programming languages with which to write code for quantum computers, but that's a different subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good job, IBM. You may actually be ahead of other tech companies for once, although Google seems to be breathing down your neck in this area. Others seem to be at least a generation or two behind.

One other thing to note is that until recently it was believed that 50-qubit quantum computer would achieve "quantum supremacy". However, IBM itself has shown that we can simulate 56-qubits on a classical supercomputer.

[https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2017/10/quantum- computing...](https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2017/10/quantum-computing- barrier/)

Now let's see who gets to the 100-qubit quantum computer first and achieves quantum supremacy.

Going by recent developments, quantum computers seem to be following a "Moore's Law" of sorts, where their number of qubits pretty much double every two years. We need a few more generations to be sure of this, but it does look like this is the rate at which they are going to evolve.

D-Wave, which isn't a universal quantum computer, has in fact been evolving at 2-4x every 2 years (closer to 2x for last few generations).

This is exciting because unlike classical computers, quantum computers increase their performance by much more than 2x if their number of qubits double every 2 years.

<comment><USER23> > You may actually be ahead of other tech companies for once

IBM Research is and always has been an industrial research powerhouse. I doubt you could name a company that has contributed so much to so many different fields over the past few decades (Bell Labs is the universal exception).

From [1]:

"IBM Research's numerous contributions to physical and computer sciences include the Scanning Tunneling Microscope and high temperature superconductivity, both of which were awarded the Nobel Prize. IBM Research was behind the inventions of the SABRE travel reservation system, the technology of laser eye surgery, magnetic storage, the relational database, UPC barcodes and Watson, the question-answering computing system that won a match against human champions on the Jeopardy! television quiz show."

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

<comment><USER24> > won a match against human champions on the Jeopardy! television quiz show.

I'm _much_ more impressed by Google's AI Go champion. And besides Watson, what has IBM Research done in the past 20 years? Personally I would have thought they'd be more involved in self-driving cars.

(Disclaimer: I interned for IBM Research 10 years ago)

<comment><USER23> IBM isn't a software-only company: they do research in advanced materials and semiconductor physics, low-level computer architecture, integrated circuit testing, and so on.

When you look at the bigger picture, IBM Research has been doing amazing things.

<comment><USER24> What stands out to you in the last 20 years?

<comment><USER23> IBM has been awarded more patents per year than any other company for the last 24 years[1]. In 2016 alone, IBM published ~22 patents per day, and ended up being ~2500 patents ahead of Samsung (#2).

[1]: [http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/51353.wss](http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/51353.wss)

<comment><USER25> I was responsible for a couple of those parents and I can tell you that's all nonsense. IBM employees are encouraged to patent _anything_, regardless of how useless or silly it may be.

<comment><USER23> Isn't that kind of the best strategy? You -- as a corporation -- want to make investments for the future. Each patent is a possible income stream in the future if the technology behind the patent somehow becomes "big". So it makes sense to patent everything you can, just for the chance of one of them to go "big".

Companies can't just spend money on research expecting no return, at least not for a long time. That's what academia is built to do.

<comment><USER25> No I mean I saw some patents on downright silly stuff. Things completely unrelated to IBM's business or even tech. IBM just wants to wave that number around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> At what point do we no longer trust public key cryptography (RSA)? Where's the break point?

<comment><USER7> > _It is estimated that 2048-bit RSA keys could be broken on a quantum > computer comprising 4,000 qubits and 100 million gates. Experts speculate > that quantum computers of this size may be available within the next 20-30 > years._

[https://www.entrust.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/WP_Quantu...](https://www.entrust.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/WP_QuantumCrypto_Jan09.pdf)

The paper is from 2009, so ~2030 to break 2048-bit RSA seems about right. If they can double the number of qubits every two years, then we should have:

100-qubit by 2020.

200-qubit by 2022

400 qubit by 2024

800 qubit by 2026

1600 qubit by 2028

3200 qubit by 2030

6400 qubit by 2032.

It's also possible the rate of progress will be slightly higher than 2x every 2 years, so doing it a few years sooner than that is not out of the question.

Also, you have to consider that once you get a quantum computer that can break 2048-RSA, you'll be able to break all the encrypted communications you've stored in the past few years, too. So you can't "switch-on" the quantum- resistant crypto in 2031 and think you're all good. You have to do it as soon as possible, especially after practical quantum computers that are capable of scaling in a scheduled way start appearing (which seems to have happened).

Plus, even if Google is super-quick to adopt quantum-resistant crypto, doesn't mean the rest of the internet will be, too. It could take a few more years for that to happen, too.

<comment><USER27> From the Wikipedia timeline[1], it seems to be growing linearly.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_quantum_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_quantum_computing)

<comment><USER11> To quote my thesis advisor's terrible joke: "Everything's linear to first order"

<comment><USER27> Not too long ago I summarized every datapoint in that page. It is almost perfectly linear (there's 1 qubit lower somewhere, 1 qubit higher elsewhere), the noise is way lower than anything I was expecting to see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How many qubit does it take to crack an AES 192 key?

<comment><USER29> For AES, the quantum advantage is merely grover's algorithm, which allows you to invert a function in O(sqrt(N)) time instead of O(N) time. Basically, the algorithm would look like "compute AES-192 on a uniform random quantum state, then do Grover's algorithm for 2^96 timesteps." This needs as many qubits as it takes to compute AES-192 (which, since the algorithm isn't unitary, is strictly greater than 192 qubits).

More important is the fact that it's a very long-running application: it requires to you keep over 192 qubits coherent for a very long time, which is probably an order of magnitude or more in error correction requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I look forward to supercool (no pun intended) qSeries mainframes and whatever wild OSs they'll run.

Right now, it looks like it's a batch processing like thing, with a single problem using the machine at any given time with long setup/teardown times.

<comment><USER22> I expect quantum computers will always run in batch mode. Storing quantum state in classical memory is impossible, so task switching would be very problematic.

<comment><USER30> We can try to partition the machine so your process can use some qubits and mine uses others. I suppose a classical computer would be running the OS, at least at first.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, if you have a 5000-qubit computer and two people want to run 2000-qubit jobs, I can see them being able to run simultaneously.

There will always need to be a classical computer running the quantum computer.

<comment><USER30> > There will always need to be a classical computer running the quantum > computer.

Not sure about the need, but it sure is convenient. Quantum computers are not always better for all kinds of problems and being able to route different jobs to different parts of the system should be an advantage. All this looks a lot like a digitally controlled analog computer or something that can program FPGAs on-the-fly.

<comment><USER22> A digitally controlled analog computer is a good analogy.

One big limitation of quantum computers is that they can't erase information without losing their quantumness. So simple things like if-then statements become impossible (you'd have to execute both branches every time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> eric-hu If quantum computing improves as it had been, how does this affect Bitcoin and ethereum as we now know it? Could the blockchain be compromised by a malicious actor who has much less than the majority?

<comment><USER31> My prediction: at some point Bitcoin will go through an upgrade process to transfer user wallets to a key pair based on a quantum resistant public key algorithm. Users will be given a time frame to transmit their coins to the new wallets, and after that time is expired, EC-based wallets will not be considered valid transaction sources any longer. Classic cash conversion in the digital age.

<comment><USER19> That would be a fork, which is interesting. The recent BTC fork shows that this can be politically successful so there is hope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> IBM also plans to offer a 20-qubit hosted service this year.

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/10/ibm-passes-major- milestone...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/10/ibm-passes-major-milestone- with-20-and-50-qubit-quantum-computers-as-a-service/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Are there some practical use cases for 50 qubit processor or is more off a research thing?

</comment><comment><USER34> I've been following quantum computing since D-Wave made its press release some years back. Now I'm a complete skeptic.

The huge red flag I can't get over is if it is as so, why can no one validate it after all this time?

Why is there the proverbial "it works but not in the way you think it works" (i.e., quantum annealing) or "it works but we can use non-QM systems to simulate it faster, better, cheaper by a factor of a trillion"?

If QM computing was truly feasible (assuming that QM does have an underlining phenomena that is physically real), why are the results after all this time so fuzzy?

<comment><USER35> Because you have to build the quantum computer in a world that is overwhelmingly classical.

There are no qualifiers along the lines of "underlying phenomena". It's simply difficult to get a stable enough interface between the classical and the quantum, so you can control it, while at the same time isolating it enough that it doesn't decohere to classicality.

Who knows, maybe reliable scalable quantum computation truly isn't feasible for some reason, but if you study the physics, the fact that this is so hard is not really a surprise.

<comment><USER34> But they have already solved the engineering problems (at least 10 years ago).

They already have "qbits".

The interface issues look to be 98% solved.

And the temperature cooling, the EM shielding, and everything else (that is outside the circuitry design and the physical chipset), a person with a budget of 80,000 USD can recreated in his garage.

Its the results I can't understand.

Why can't X qbits, in the time they stay coherent, produce results that agree with the mathematical analysis of the setup? Why is it always off by a factor so large that its not even productive for any task.

My understanding of it is not complete, this is why I ask. Is the interface issue only 2% solved (and not 98%), etc.?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Do you think this can f __k up RSA and render our industry obsolete?

<comment><USER37> The paper in the thread below claims that in ten years it might be the case:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15674970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15674970)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quantum computing reminds me of time travel for all the same reasons. This is not a quick win.

How would you even validate you built a quantum computer?

<comment><USER38> Quantum computers can be simulated classically, in a timeframe exponentially related to the number of qubits. So as long as the quantum computer is not too big you can compare the results to an exact classical simulation and see if it works. The current record for classical simulation is 56 qubits ([https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05867](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05867)). This is an active area of research, since we want to be able to check the early- generation quantum computers carefully.</comment></comment>


RFC 1607 – A View from the 21st Century - <AUTHOR> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1607 <comment><USER2> There seem to be a strange concern about material tools, given the expressed avaibility of nanotech 3d printing technology. Why should we concerned whether "VR-95HR/OS headsets" are available at a given facility, just 3d print them when you need them.</comment>


Show HN: KubePlus API Add-On – Like AWS CloudFormation/Terraform, for Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cloud-ark/kubeplus <comment><AUTHOR> Hey community,

We are looking for feedback on KubePlus API Add-on ([https://github.com/cloud- ark/kubeplus](https://github.com/cloud-ark/kubeplus)), which is our on-going work for declarative platform stack creation using Custom Resources on Kubernetes. For popular cloud platforms, there have been tools like AWS CloudFormation and Terraform that enable 'as-Code' creation of infrastructure stacks. With KubePlus our goal is to provide similar experience on Kubernetes simplifying the discovery and use of Kubernetes Custom Resources.

Your thoughts, comments and general feedback on KubePlus is much appreciated.</comment>


A spider that searches out for copyright infringement - <AUTHOR> http://www.copyrightsheriff.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This spider hit my site today. I'm not too worried since everything on my site, I own. But it's still interesting.</comment>


Human Longevity Launches "Physical on Steroids" for $25,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.frontlinegenomics.com/news/2285/human-longevity-launches-physical-on-steriods-for-25000/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found this recent video where Craig Venter gives more details:

[https://youtu.be/iUqgTYbkHP8](https://youtu.be/iUqgTYbkHP8)</comment>


Show HN: Polymail - <AUTHOR> https://polymail.io/ <comment><USER2> Per [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html), "If your work isn't ready for people to try out yet, please don't do a Show HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then."

It doesn't seem like this is really ready for prime-time seeing as how I'm unable to use the app.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

It invite only and waiting for users to use it. It would be nice to post it once I could download and use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it safe to assume the open tracking is just embedding some custom tracking image into outgoing mail?

Sounds like another client-server app with the developers' server between me and mine (eg my own imap server, be it self hosted, gmail, iCloud, fastmail etc)

</comment><comment><USER5> I have been using it on mac for a few days. Loving the slick design. Don't see markdown for composing by default? And also support for custom domain email accounts are not supported (yet).

Will the same invite for the mac version work on the iOS version?

Edit — Check this out: [https://superhuman.com/](https://superhuman.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> No it wont, there's two separate code invitations actually.</comment></comment>


Car Hacker's Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://opengarages.org/handbook/

<comment><USER2> Looks like the website is having some trouble with all the HN traffic. Rehosted the ebook downloads on GDrive to save him some traffic. I'll remove them when the post leaves the HN front page.

Just FYI, this book literally teaches you how to identify security vulnerabilities in modern cars and exploit them.

You can purchase it from Amazon here[0], or download the book for free in EPUB[1] or PDF[2].

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/2014-Hackers-Manual-Craig- Smith/dp/099...](http://www.amazon.com/2014-Hackers-Manual-Craig- Smith/dp/0990490106/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405445024&sr=8-1&keywords=2014+car+hacker%27s+manual)

[1] [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzxo-UKxFmN- bDlNSi1IT1JLdHM...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzxo-UKxFmN- bDlNSi1IT1JLdHM/view?usp=sharing)

[2] [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzxo-UKxFmN- WFVjcEVVX3B5azg...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzxo-UKxFmN- WFVjcEVVX3B5azg/view?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER2> I've now removed these file mirrors!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is especially heinous given that car manufacturers are trying to keep you from repairing your own car, claiming that the computer systems are copyrighted.

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/24/8490359/general-motors- eff...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/24/8490359/general-motors-eff- copyright-fight-dmca)

<comment><USER4> Here in the USA the carmakers are bound by law to not act in a way that prevents you from repairing your own car.

The article that you cited does not seem to advance the argument in your comment, even though it opens with a story of a company getting sued for actual copyright infringement. (Ford has not sued the "ForSCAN" team.)

The carmakers are bound by law to implement the OBD2 application with an acceptable OBD2 PHY. They are also bound by law to provide their dealer system for flash-programming and for operations that cannot be carried out using the OBD2 application. Anyone can obtain a J2534 gateway to use these tools, and anyone can obtain access to these tools.

This is necessary to resolve antitrust issues and because a broken car is a potential emissions problem.

The carmakers have not stopped thirdparty diagnostic providers from reverse engineering the carmakers' tools to develop their own tools for sale. Autoenginuity, Launch X431, Snap-On are examples of companies that do this and who have no connections to the vehicle manufacturer supply chain the way that Bosch, Actia, and Continental do.

<comment><USER5> Ok, but go ahead and try to DIY your Tesla.

<comment><USER6> Have you heard of the Stretchla? [http://insideevs.com/video-update-diy- stretchla-project-tesl...](http://insideevs.com/video-update-diy-stretchla- project-tesla-model-s-to-underpin-stretched-volkswagen-vanagon-body-battery- evaluation-and-removal/)

<comment><USER7> [http://cafeelectric.com/stretchla/](http://cafeelectric.com/stretchla/)

"Due to the salvage status of your Model S , I have been instructed to cease providing you with parts. Tesla is very concerned about vehicles with salvaged titles being improperly repaired. Going forward, all salvaged vehicles must be inspected by us or our approved body shop, Precision Auto Body. If declared a candidate for proper repair, reconstruction must be completed by a Tesla- Certified Body Shop."

<comment><USER6> Yeah, looks like he's still stalled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I worked for one of those car manufacturers for the telematics unit like putting specific frames on the CAN bus to make the car do remote operations like start/stop engine and also read values from ECUs for DTC codes. We used to teraterm into the unit with a serial cable & a trivial password. The security measure we had during that time was that "we do not give cables to customers so that they cant teraterm into the telematics unit. It might have changed now with the recent CAN Bus hacks.

<comment><USER4> Ha, Harman tried that with a recent project of theirs that is in serial production now for a big carmaker. I identified the strange connector and asked for a free sample of it, from there it took me ten minutes to disable the firewall and enable SSH access from the ethernet.

<comment><USER8> I didn't want to give specifics of the hardware. Now that you know , yes its Harman with QNX on Chryslers. Now you need to figure out the remote execution codes to put on the CANBus frames :) . There is a catch though , without the original car keys , you can't move the car or can you ?

In another news , access to the terminal is now based on an "authentication key" , root access is not enough. For development purposes , Harman provides these keys and they expire after a certain period of time. I am not sure those "fixed" telematic models are out there on the market currently.

<comment><USER4> I attacked a Harman QNX device done for a different carmaker. When I got access to the serial console I was able to look deeper. I found a script to take down the firewall, and that a series of canbus messages will run the script to enable this debug or development mode (very easy with one of the carmaker's leaked engineering tools), so now we know how to break into the device without taking the car apart to gain access to the connector.

The box is really cool, it would be neat to develop our own applets, but mostly people are only interested in changing the splash screen. We found some really neat things about it too, for instance if a second device appears on the ethernet it can be a 'slave' to the first one and access its media.

We have seen demonstrations of the keyless cars from this automaker being started and driven without the actual rfid-key device. Someone apparently used some hardware to bruteforce the private key of the security controller so that the authorised rfid-key information can be read and modified. This is apparently becoming a problem in Europe where a car thief can simply drive east for a while and be out of reach of the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Site overwhelmed. Archive links to the site, pdf and epub from 2015:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150628210322/http://opengarage...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150628210322/http://opengarages.org/handbook/)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150525100844/http://opengarage...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150525100844/http://opengarages.org/handbook/2014_car_hackers_handbook_compressed.pdf)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150628210322/http://opengarage...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150628210322/http://opengarages.org/handbook/2014_car_hackers_handbook.epub)

</comment><comment><USER10> Some very interesting stuff in there... that's bound to make some manufacturers very unhappy. I remember a couple years ago when some Tesla forum geeks got access to the Linux system running the infotainment dashboard of the model ... and got a nice (seriously) message from Tesla engineers to the amount of "good job... but please stop there".

Many folks have mentioned how the Tesla Model S at least is more of a supercomputing cluster on wheels than a car with some ECUs. I don't know how armored their CAN bus(es) are, but I'm sure the "Attacking ECUs and other embedded systems" is giving some safety engineers white hair.

(of course, everything I've said about Tesla is just about equally applicable to other high-end vehicles. It's just that Tesla are a bit more connected to the traditional software world)

<comment><USER11> >I'm sure the "Attacking ECUs and other embedded systems" is giving some safety engineers white hairs.

If the systems were properly documented for the owners I seriously doubt there would be a problem. Give people a USB stick with docs, sources and signing keys and those who can make sense of them are probably smart enough to hack responsibly.

<comment><USER4> No way. The carmaker cannot guarantee emissions, safety or its operation if tampering is permitted. I think they should stop at voiding the warranty, though, and not move on to making threats or legal actions.

<comment><USER12> If someone can make a Tesla Roadster fail emissions with a software patch I will be impressed.

<comment><USER13> Brake non-driving wheels and apply power to at least one drive wheel. Result: lots of smoke!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks awesome, hope this will be updated for V2X (Vehicle to Vehicle and Vehicle to Infrastructure) / DSRC / Wave

I would have bought the Kindle e-book for sure - Does Amazon allow pay-what- you-want?

</comment><comment><USER15> On the enduser side, this a big leap towards maintenance transparency: [https://www.automatic.com](https://www.automatic.com) \+ being tethered to YourMechanic is brilliant.</comment>


A gene that keeps track of how often it's made into a protein - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/a-gene-that-keeps-track-of-how-often-its-made-into-a-protein/ <comment><USER2> Misleading/incorrect title:

The use of "gene" made me expect a claim about some kind of DNA modification after each transcription. This is about a claim that ribosomes may "pile up" on mRNA after each translation.

EDIT:

This single sentence is a much better summary than the article:

"We propose [a] mechanism is used to count and limit the number of protein molecules that can be synthesized from a single mRNA template. [http://www.nature.com/articles/nature25174](http://www.nature.com/articles/nature25174)

So basically they propose there is a way to put an upper bound on number of proteins that result from each individual mRNA.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't help but think this is going to lead into some sort of "biological DRM" that companies like Monsanto are almost certainly going to love.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#As_defend...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#As_defendant)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is profoundly cool. I think the biotech applications of this might be really huge.</comment>


Watch one of the first iAds - impressive concept - <AUTHOR> http://ipadwatcher.com/2010/07/01/watch-one-of-the-first-iads/ <comment><USER2> I wasn't entirely sure what the new iAd was all about.

This video demonstration makes me think that this is a product that is really only effective for a few years.

I suspect that most of the native apps will move to being web-apps enabled with touch and native capabilities, so why would an advertiser tie themselves to a single platform.

The only 'interesting' bit of iAd is that it launches an app instead of opening the ad in a browser. I guess now we know why jobs finally decided it was a good idea to allow multi-task. iAds wouldn't work without it.</comment>


Reasons why Splunk might be bad for you - <AUTHOR> http://www.hoardinginformation.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=3691&action=edit

<comment><USER2> Leads to login page?

<comment><USER3> This is the correct link [http://www.hoardinginformation.com/6-reasons-why- splunk-migh...](http://www.hoardinginformation.com/6-reasons-why-splunk-might- be-bad-for-you/).</comment></comment>


Regulators Want Comcast to Cough Up Lots More Data About Its Internet Policies - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/08/22/regulators-want-comcast-to-cough-up-lots-more-data-about-its-internet-policies/

<comment><USER2> Is it technically possible for counties to own the "last mile" and charge companies a maintenance fee directly proportional to the amount of customers that use each service?

Can the last mile connection be shared between companies or is it technically required for every company to maintain their own lines to peoples houses and businesses?</comment>


Third Tesla crashes amid report of SEC probe - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2016/07/11/tesla-motors-ceo-elon-musk-secret-master-plan/86936778/ <comment><USER2> Double entendre of the use of crashes. Stock barely moved in after hours. Investigate the journalists.</comment>


Patented prime numbers - <AUTHOR> https://cpunks.org//pipermail/cypherpunks/2014-May/004445.html

<comment><USER2> Although the primes are included in the patent, are they the subject of the patent? Follow the logic here:- If NO: Then they themselves are not patented but the "Partial modular reduction method" is. If YES: Then these specific primes were an intrinsic part of the patent then I can use the "Partial modular reduction method" with different primes and crypto-primitives and not risk prosecution for patent infringement.</comment>


Fusion startups step in to realize decades-old clean power dream - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/fusion-startups-step-in-to-realize-decades-old-clean-power-dream-11581001383 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/EvoGx](http://archive.is/EvoGx)</comment>


Ask HN: Best Code Generator - <AUTHOR> What is the best code generator you know? That one tool that takes you from zero to MVP on no time. <comment><USER2> Outsystems (no code platform)

</comment><comment><USER3> WordPress.

<comment><AUTHOR> what? how's so?

<comment><USER3> It's a few minutes to install on a lot of servers. A lot of plugins can do work, basically every kind of CMS, from simple blogs to e-commerce and payment. You can probably even set up a CRUD system with it, use it as an API, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> grpc

<comment><AUTHOR> DOn't know what you mean.</comment></comment>


IPv6 enabled Christmas Tree - <AUTHOR> http://ipv6tree.bitnet.be/ <comment><USER2> > As it turns out inviting the entire internet to ping my IP address might not > be the best idea I ever had... Bandwidth is regularly maxing out at > 300Mbit/s of incoming ICMPv6 traffic

Oh, boy. I'm impressed it's still working.

<comment><USER3> I very much suspect that a lot of those ping6 packets are ignored.

At 300 Mbit/s that would be around 400000 pings per second or less than 3 μs/flash. At that speed the camera would not register individual flashes.

<comment><USER4> If his connection is actually saturated, he's more likely being packeted by someone trying to have fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Playing music automatically once a page loads is not the best idea. Please avoid doing so when possible. Even in Christmas season.

<comment><USER6> Normally I would agree, but in this case it improved my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I'll wait a few days when everyone forgets about this, so I can actually see the effects of my pings .. if it's still up.

<comment><USER8> I sent some yellow (f0:ff:0) pings, they definitely showed up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The first IPv4 enabled Christmas tree made the front page of the New York Times: [http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/25/business/cyberspace-is- loo...](http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/25/business/cyberspace-is-looking-a- lot-like-christmas.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> And now I'm convinced we're off the rails and should just revert to being an agrarian society.

</comment><comment><USER11> So that's like 16,581,375 IPv6 addresses right? How much would all of those cost?

<comment><USER12> IPv6 officially keeps the last 64 bits for the "host" part of the address, which means that unless you are abusing the protocol, each subnet gets at least 2^64 addresses. Current "best practice" is for consumer ISPs to give each end-user at least a /48, that is 2^16 = 65,536 possible subnets' worth or 2^80 total address. Your mileage is going to vary depending on your ISP though.

Edit: looks like the RFC has been updated to recommend smaller allocations where appropriate. Still keeps /64 as the smallest allowed subnet though. [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6177#page-4](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6177#page-4)

Edit2: fixed devices -> subnets.

<comment><USER13> > each device gets 2^64 addresses

Each subnet gets 2^64 addresses. You can have multiple devices in the same subnet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Eagerly awaiting a writeup explaining how it was done. It seems to be an Arduino with a pair of shields, the lower one being an Ethernet shield and the upper one perhaps a protoboard shield?

</comment><comment><USER15> finally an ipv6 killer feature!

</comment><comment><USER16> can you provide some stats?

</comment><comment><USER17> IPv6 keeps being a running joke. At least some people still have some sense of humour about it.

<comment><USER7> IPv6 needed to happen a decade ago. We have exhausted the IPv4 space. I feel IPv6 suffered from huge usability issues, although it can be worked around with good provisioning systems that automatically setup DNS entries.

We're going to get to the point where spinning up a VPS with an IPv4 address is going to get increasingly more and more expensive, unless we make some huge strides in moving to IPv6.

<comment><USER4> We need to 1) force owners of legacy /8s to give up on them, and 2) make sure all mobile ISPs worldwide and residential connections in developing countries have their customers behind a CGNAT

2) would also help a lot with the upcoming IoT security shitstorm

<comment><USER18> CGNAT prevents users from hosting personal services - its a PitA.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I just discovered my ISP (WebPass) has exhausted their IPv4 allocation [1] and is transitioning residential customers to private IPv4 addresses, and I'm not really sure how to set up a VPN on IPv4 now. I guess I need to set up a tunnel over IPv6 somehow?

1\. [https://webpass.net/blog/ipv4-exhausted](https://webpass.net/blog/ipv4-exhausted)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Proving Early Stage Validation, When Everything Is Wrong With Your Idea - <AUTHOR>

So we have a primitive thread going on at Reddit (here: http://redd.it/rmpcy) trying to learn about our customer segment and possible issues with our StartupWeekend App but Reddit is nowhere as credible/reliable as Hacker News. Our advisors are iffy on a few things listed below. Our Idea: We want to crowd-source development and design for business minded startups, making launching a reality for the no technical (yet good) teams.
Here are our issues:
 - Intelectual Property,   - Integrating Github and StackOverflow into a Badgeville or Badge Farm (www.BadgeFarm.com) like system to vett the talent, and   - The actual "want/need" for a product like ours (http://www.joinastartup.org).
We need your advice HN! :) <comment><USER2> You would probably want to avoid IP, it seems like a complex problem to tackle. Perhaps look at other websites who are doing similar things? Good luck!</comment>


Unprecedented North Pole Heat Wave in Progress - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/heat-wave-alert-nunavut-1.5212801 <comment><USER2> One of the many unknown and unforseeable ways in which the climate crisis might play out is that different countries have different imperatives.

As temperatures rise, countries like Russia might well be net winners, as their frozen lands thaw out and become viable for agriculture.

When/if carbon capture becomes a reality, we'll have something of a global thermostat. What sort of wars will ensue to decide who gets to tweak the thermostat and whether it is turned up or down?

<comment><USER3> Are there any soil biologists around on who can comment on the viability of this? Because as far as I understand, the land under permafrost in Russia is pretty much tundra and in Greenland, it's gravel. So it would take centuries to make it tillable compared to the timescale of decades we have before current breadbaskets lose the production capacity.

<comment><USER4> I would also like to hear from biologists or and agricultural scientists. Beneath the frozen tundra, there's vast reserves of natural gas and other fossil fuels, does this indicate that the soil has a lot of nutrients? If animals dies to become fossils, does it indicate lots of animals died there to fertilize the earth?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _The average July high for Alert is 7 C._

...and...

> _Environment Canada says Canadian Forces Station Alert hit a record of 21 C > on Sunday._

If we're talking about the same exact region, those are drastically differing numbers, indeed.

Stupid question: Would it be a run-away greenhouse[0] type of situation that would explain the starkly contrasting differences?

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect)

<comment> dfeojm-zlib Runaway greenhouse effect on Earth is impossible for a billion years or more for a variety of reasons. You're looking for doomsday cult nonsense rather than minor/major climate changes that are more nuanced and more probable.

<comment><USER6> You're right in that our atmosphere will not soon "prevent the planet from cooling and from having liquid water on its surface." In other words, yeah, we aren't going to literally boil the oceans. We shouldn't throw around the term "runaway greenhouse" in serious discussions of anthropogenic global warming.

However, reality is somewhere between "doomsday cult nonsense" and the flippant, dismissive tone of your comment that characterizes the worsening climate crisis about which our species is not doing enough as "minor/major climate changes." That's definitely understating the costs and disruptions that human civilization is facing on its current course.

I wonder if OP was referring to any of the more immediately concerning positive feedback loops: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Positi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Positive)

<comment><USER5> > _I wonder if OP was referring to any of the more immediately concerning > positive feedback loops_

Yeah, that's why I prefaced it with it being a dumb question. :)

If the feed backs are accelerating global warming, it wouldn't be too distant a notion from the premise of runaway greenhouse gases.

I'll have to brush-up on my nomenclature to not ask such bone-headed questions in the future. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like it's time to start planting trees up there. Greenland is going to be green again before we get this under control.

<comment> dfeojm-zlib The North Pole doesn't have any land, and a blue water summer in the Arctic ocean is likely within 4-10 years. And, high Arctic lands also DO NOT NEED MORE TREES BECAUSE THAT WOULD HASTEN TUNDRA COLLAPSE. A Russian scientist proposed deforesting Siberia to convert it to grassland tundra using large herds of hybrid mammoth-elephants in order to eliminate trees that keep arboreal tundra from hard freezing in the winter which hastens its destruction in the summer. [https://pleistocenepark.ru/](https://pleistocenepark.ru/)

A better solution would include many overlapping approaches for a holistic strategy, including iron fertilization of the oceans and bio-energy with carbon capture and sequestration (BeCSS).

Furthermore, the best anti-desertification solutions must include extremely large, managed herds of browsing animals like goats to restore soil health. There was a TED talk on this. [https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...](https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The last 2-3 weeks in South Central Alaska have been crazy hot for that region. 90F common across the area, we hit 80+F at our higher altitude cabin several days in a row. First time we ever hit 80 in the 15 years we've had it.

</comment><comment> dfeojm-zlib I hope Paul Beckwith does a video on this topic. The climate emergency is even more urgent.</comment>


WhatsApp is back online in Brazil - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102814103934951 <comment><USER2> > the idea that everyone in Brazil can be denied the freedom to communicate > the way they want is very scary in a democracy

Says the person (in name of the company, I assume) whose company blocks things they don't "like", such as messages containing telegram.org or telegram.me[1].

Now Facebook is not a democracy and they can block and censor pretty much any message they like, but now they go on to tell Brazil how it should run its judicial system. That's like giving people free beer and then asking them to take up pitchforks and come along to put some pressure on a third party you don't like very much.

[1] [https://i.snag.gy/9KBPGR.jpg](https://i.snag.gy/9KBPGR.jpg)

<comment><USER3> There is a huge difference between "the government of Brazil denying everyone the freedom to communicate the way they want" and "facebook not auto-linking to a competitor's site in a chat program." You're comparing a government making communication through a specific (and popular) channel illegal, and a company not providing a link to a website as they send your message to your recipient.

I know Hacker News enjoys getting riled up at Facebook, but come on. You're not comparing apples to apples, you're not even comparing food to food, it's like saying this rock isn't like this sandwich.

<comment><USER4> Facebook/WhatsApp is trying to have it both ways. Either it's a for profit private company (and it can do things like that), or it's an important communication medium for a democracy (and access should be open).

When it comes to blocking telegram, Facebook/WhatsApp wants to be the provate for profit company. When some judge blocks WhatsApp, suddenly they're an important service for a democracy.

<comment><USER5> > Either it's a for profit private company (and it can do things like that), > or it's an important communication medium for a democracy (and access should > be open).

Blocking telegram is _classic_ bone-headed stupidity. It's like an invitation for government lawyers to burrow under your skin and lay their eggs.

But inconsistency only shows that one of their positions is wrong, and it's that one.

<comment><USER6> Paying an appropriate amount of tax in the countries in which it operates might be another. All that democracy stuff costs money and has to be paid for somehow.

<comment><USER5> It isn't a company's job to pay more taxes than it owes, it's a country's job to set sensible taxes.

Stop trying to tax "corporate income" for multinational entities that can trivially shift profits into other countries, and instead tax the thing they actually do in your country.

And if they don't actually do anything in your country, what makes them owe you anything?

<comment><USER6> But Facebook can't have it both ways. They can't pay almost no tax and then call themselves defenders of democracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We dodged this bullet but here in Brazil but RIGHT NOW there is a much more dangerous risk: with the Parliamentary Commission on Cybercrimes (CPI dos Crimes Cibernéticos / CPICIBER) report a "combo" of bills will get "fast track" on Congress and, to list some things, expand data retention, allow access to IP addresses without warrant and allow judges to block "illegal" content, including copyright violations much like DMCA does (they use the "notice-and-staydown" terminology).

More details here:

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/battery-dangerous- cybe...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/battery-dangerous-cybercrime- proposals-still-hang-over-brazil)

[https://www.accessnow.org/access-now-delivers-petition- brazi...](https://www.accessnow.org/access-now-delivers-petition-brazil- cybercrime-commission/)

[https://theintercept.com/2016/04/26/brazilian-cybercrime- bil...](https://theintercept.com/2016/04/26/brazilian-cybercrime-bills- threaten-open-internet-for-200-million-people/)

The final voting will happen TOMORROW, 9 a.m. Brasilia time (GMT-3), 5am in California I guess. If you can help raise awareness and use EFF's Action Center to message the parliamentaries through Twitter and Facebook around that time, it would help a lot.

[https://act.eff.org/action/fight-back-against-brazil-s- draco...](https://act.eff.org/action/fight-back-against-brazil-s-draconian- new-cybercrime-bill)

In portuguese, this is the best starting point on the debate (disclaimer: I work on antivigilancia.org):

[https://antivigilancia.org/pt/cpiciber/](https://antivigilancia.org/pt/cpiciber/)

<comment><USER8> Your page isn't clear, what exactly happens tomorrow? Is it the final voting on the CPI? Or is there some law project under vote right now?

<comment><USER7> I'll work on a quick article today to explain this and adapt the page to reflect that. Thanks for the tips. Answering you quickly (I'm preparing dinner :-)):

\- Tomorrow, the CPI decides their final report (after three drafts and a couple separate patches) on all the inquiries the commission made the last months. This report includes "recommendations" to some existing draft bills and proposes a number of other bills.

\- Parliamentaries presented "destaques" that will be voted separately and may supress the "IP blocking for illegal content" and "notification-based removal of illegal content" bills.

\- The final report as of now is the first link with a small patch on the Projeto de Lei 1.6 made by the second link.

[http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesWeb/prop_mostrarintegra?...](http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesWeb/prop_mostrarintegra?codteor=1452665)

[http://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade- legislativa/comissoes/co...](http://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade- legislativa/comissoes/comissoes-temporarias/parlamentar-de- inquerito/55a-legislatura/cpi-crimes-ciberneticos/documentos/outros- documentos/nota-de-esclarecimento-sub-relatores-deputados-sandro-alex-e- rafael-motta)

EDIT TO APPEND:

TL;DR: The two bills that we may realistically remove through the help of friendly parliamentaries tomorrow are the ones about illegal website blocking (ISP blacklisting) and content removal through notification; both open the door for criminalizing remixes and using copyright infringement for censorship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is hardly the first or the last time this kind of things happens in Brazil.

Long story short, this is exactly the same standoff that happened recently in the US between the FBI and Apple: the authorities want information from a suspect phone, and assume they can get it from a company, in this case WhatsApp. A warrant is issued, and the company refuses to comply.

The big difference is: WhatsApp has been a major headache for telecom companies in Brazil, especially since the arrival of voice calls. With Wifi everywhere, people have been avoiding expensive traditional calls and just using WhatsApp to call for free.

For that reason, the telcos in Brazil are more than happy to comply with court when it comes to WhatsApp blocks, so they do it right away, no questions asked.

<comment><USER10> The thing is, WhatsApp is not just refusing to comply - they can't comply, since they don't retain message data. In addition, now that all messages are encrypted end to end, it will be impossible for them to comply in the future.

<comment><USER11> Well, if they just had responded to the judge order explain that or explaining anything, maybe the judge would consider it.

We came to this point because whatsapp do not exist as a company in Brazil and simply ignored the court order.

Know they probably considered such orders may happen again and decided to respond to the order.

<comment><USER12> WhatsApp have testified about this before the Brazilian Congressional Committee on Cyber Crimes. There's no chance the judge isn't aware of it.

<comment><USER4> So if they're willing to send people to Brazil once, why not again?

<comment><USER13> It did not work the first time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > the idea that everyone in Brazil can be denied the freedom to communicate > the way they want is very scary in a democracy

If companies like Facebook were not funneling everybody onto centralized platforms, it would be harder for an ISP to deny that freedom.

The centralization of communication platforms is a bigger problem than any ISP censorship. That they have a target to shutdown at all is the real issue.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. Zuckerberg's little victory speech in this post reminds me of the kind of talk he used in defending his free basics plan. I get a little tired of people with heavy business interests weighing in on "democracy" and "freedom."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm Brazilian, my phone got bombarded with "<user> just joined Telegram" notifications today.

<comment><USER17> Hopefully it's the user that you expect: [https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/72646884513381171...](https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/726468845133811717)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Facebook once banned me for 24h just for sending my friend a link (via messenger) to animgif containing female boobs. (together with ban FB expired all API access tokens of my apps) Zuckerberg positioning himself as champion of democracy and unrestricted communication is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Brazilian appellate judge rescinds WhatsApp block"

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/brazilian- judge-b...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/brazilian-judge-blocks- whatsapp-for-72-hours-but-it-still-works-over-vpn-wi-fi/)

<comment><USER20> Now Facebook appointed Matt Steinfeld (Facebook's Head of Communications) to discuss the matter. The judge must be pleased.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Out of curiosity, what did Brazil use before WhatsApp existed?

It seems strange to me that 1 app can capture such an overwhelming majority, because it's just a client, of which there have always been dozens if not hundreds.

<comment><USER22> IMHO, the biggest selling point of WhatsApp for brazilians is that it works as offline as it is possible. All received data is stored locally.

Even if you're offline and send a message, it stores it locally and send it when connection becomes available.

Since the majority of WhatsApp users in Brazil have access only to low quality internet connection, this becomes a major issue.

<comment><USER23> So it's not at all about privacy?

That's interesting. But it makes sense, I suppose.

It's just the vocal minority that push privacy in WhatsApp. But it is good to see Facebook supporting private communication. Apple and Facebook, who would have thought?

<comment><USER24> In the case of Apple it's much more obvious, when most of your revenue comes from hardware (and now also 'services') you don't have to mine your user's data for ads.

WhatsApp introducing Signal-based end-to-end encryption after it was acquired by Facebook was definitely surprising. I guess they can always switch to on- device profile creation :p. I trusted Whatsapp as a separate entity (low costs, yearly fee). Facebook, not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This follows a nation wide uproar. Definitely not a popular decision in a country that relies on this service, however the decision was made. My wife is Brazilian and you should see her Facebook news feed...they're blaming the same government they want to throw out of office - not a great timing on their part.

<comment><USER26> On whose part? This wasn't a decision by the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Brazilians have been leaders in connecting the world and creating an open internet for many years. I hope you make your voice heard now and demand change"

I think he didn't word this right.

</comment><comment><USER28> What does the USA do about WhatsApp? Do they really tolerate end to end encryption they cant subpoena the company for...or does the NSA have a big fat pipe into the WhatsApp data-center?

<comment><USER29> If the end-to-end encryption is working as designed then "a big fat pipe into the WhatsApp data-center" would be of no help.

For high enough value targets the NSA is probably happy to compromise the endpoints.

<comment><USER30> Can't it be e2e encryption with WhatsApp keeping a copy of the private keys? or does e2e enc implicitly means the private keys are never exchanged?

<comment><USER10> WhatsApp wouldn't keep the private keys. That being said, this system could still be hacked - when the clients exchange public keys, you insert yourself in the middle, provide your own public keys to each client, and mediate between the two clients, which gives you access to the unencrypted messages.

<comment><USER31> That only works in transport if the connection is not pinned. I don't know if they do pin, but they should.

If they pin then the NSA would have to actually have access to the data center and doing that much without getting noticed is quite hard.

<comment><USER10> True, but I bet that the NSA could force WhatsApp to issue certificates for fake keys. Obviously can't do that without being noticed, but they could still use it to spy on specific users if they wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Once again the bigger problem we really have to face is the corporatization of the defense of civil rights

</comment><comment><USER33> Public service announcement: if you install Orbot, you can route traffic for any Android app through Tor.

[https://www.torproject.org/docs/android.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/docs/android.html.en)

</comment><comment><USER34> I hope the govt sees the reliance on this service and does something positive about it (for example, build their own or tie up with some company). Such massive dependence on a company with no contracts is going to end up in a mess later.

<comment><USER35> I do not understand this approach. A market solution works and is popular, so the government should step in and try to develop something better with "contracts"?

<comment><USER34> It's just a form of standardization by the government in terms of the technical protocol. Just like EU has some with OOXML and ODF. This ensures that other players can come in and build alternative clients. Without regulations, it's going to be a nation relying on a company. I don't think that is good.

<comment><USER26> The EU has been trying to enforce open formats _for their own use_ ; it doesn't try to force private individuals or companies to use them among themselves.

(It also failed; as of 2014, .doc was still used more than .odt by orders of magnitude in the major institutions - Commission, Council and Parliament)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> And now Facebook is down for me entirely.

</comment><comment><USER37> gggggggooooooaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllll

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm fairly certain Brazil didn't just wake up one day and decide to reactivate WhatsApp's service...

So my first reaction to this news is what did Facebook/WhatsApp/Zuckerberg do, or possibly even give up, in order to change Brazil's mind.

<comment><USER39> There is only one specific judge that has ordered the block both times it has occurred. Both times it has been overturned when appealed to other judges in Brazil. It's not "Brazil" that made this decision. It's one extremist judge.

<comment><USER40> I've heard of groups of people in the Southeast talk about how the mentality of the people in the Northeast is different, and that is how you get the extremist judge.

<comment><USER41> > I've heard of groups of people in the Southeast talk about how the mentality > of the people in the Northeast is different

Being born in the capital and lived in the Northeast for 3 decades, I can attest that the mentality is indeed different.

For instance: the biggest A-holes usually come from the Southeast. See what I did there? I have many examples to back this up, but they prove nothing. Generalizations are harmful.

This is just a stupid judge overstepping his authority. If anything, that's judge mentality for you.

Instead of "hearing from groups of people", catch a plane and see for yourself. I bet some of your beliefs are going to change.

Caption for non Brazilians: there's this prejudice from people from the Southeast against people from the Northeast. Some of it is historical, as the Northeast suffered for centuries with severe drought (California's current situation is better than their best case, no mountains storing ice). So, people would migrate to the Southeast, in search of jobs. Usually poor, uneducated people.

Since then, the Northeast has developed and, while the drought is still a problem, most people are in cities now. Still, the stereotype persists, specially among the elitist in the South/Southeast.

<comment><USER42> >Being born in the capital and lived in the Northeast for 3 decades, I can attest that the mentality is indeed different.

>For instance: the biggest A-holes usually come from the Southeast. See what I did there? I have many examples to back this up, but they prove nothing. Generalizations are harmful.

The person you're replying to didn't say that either mentality was better or worse, just that they were different enough to lead to 'extremes'. Don't mock that as an us-vs-them slapfight.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Incentivising the smartest people to work on world's pressing problems - <AUTHOR> Here is the thing I have been pondering about lately a lot after reading discussions such as "Talent is everywhere, an opportunity is not...", there are very big problems to be solved on this planet (equality, sustainable development, peace & justice etc.), yet how do we move around rent-seeking and wasting people talent at organisations that don't really produce anything good (aside of increasing shareholders wealth. I am sure there is impact legacy coming from these people as well but that's another topic, you get the idea).
Now there are plenty of smart, talented and amazing people on these forums. I wonder if anyone thought of creating schemes/systems where the talent shift can happen from pure profit to impact/profit.
Would love to hear your thoughts! <comment><USER2> Taxes+diverse pathways of returning this tax money to entrepreneurs, with a maximally democratic decision process for the overall goal setting (ask mutualist anarchists and information theorists studying voting for some ideas how much you can push "democratic" as a concept) and various mechanisms for overseeing the large pot of tax money which all have to be maximally transparent and accountable to some equally max-democratic governance structure.

The implementation details are left as an exercise to the reader</comment>