Please check out my startup Hybir before our public launch (Site) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hybir.com

<comment><USER2> It seems a little underhanded, but try and populate your forums with a decent number of posts before you launch. Either that, or don't launch your forums until you have a decent number of users. An empty forum has a pretty significant impact on someone who is casually looking at your site. Whether that reaction is justified or not, you still have to recognize it. You might consider a mailing list as a temporary alternative.

Also, I'm not sure how essential the user's email is to the sign up process, but if you can take that part out, I would go ahead and do it. That will encourage people to register, and you can give them an incentive to add their email later. For example, on the admin page you could tell them to enter in their email in order to receive notifications about the status of their backup, etc. That's mostly just a personal thing for me. It's not like your breaking any rules by using an email in the sign up process. In fact, it's nice not to have to deal with remembering a user name.

More advice: when you launch send a press kit complete with a company summery, personal bio, relevant media (images, video, etc), and a free registration key to all the popular tech blogs. People are inherently lazy, and if you hand an author all the tools needed to quickly write an article, plus a free premium version of your product, it's likely you can generate some good press. It also might be a good idea to include the press kit on your site for easy downloading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Very insightful advice.

You are correct on the email and in fact you can use any unused user name. I should make that clear. It will save them a step.

I will prepare a press kit as you are suggesting.

Thanks again!

<comment><USER2> No problem. The email point is the one I am least comfortable about. I'm not sure how the public in general feels about it. It may be that they like being able to sign up without an email, or it may be that they find it annoying to have to enter it later. My other points represent common knowledge and/or are not too controversial. My email point is just based on personal feeling. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yawn....

No Value Proposition. No Call to Action. No Immediate Offer.

No idea what you sell?

Online, Offline, Come hold my hand and teach me?

Do I have to be a nerd to use this?

Is there phone support.

How much does it cost.

How do you secure it so that I can be assured no one else can get it.

And I roll my eyes when I see hyper claims like

"Reinvents Backup"

You have 15 seconds. You lost me at 3....

And black makes me feel dead...

</comment><comment><USER4> Change or Modify "Hybir Unbelievable" to add something descriptive like "Hybir Features". When I don't see any obvious way to checkout a list of features I bail out instantly.

Also why do Signup, Login, Unbelievable and Forums each have their own font? Different colors, same font please.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I like that even better than my learn more thought.

I will fix the font issue too!

I love this community! I should post more often.

Again thanks for your help everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the duplicate. I thought it was inconvenient to have to cut and paste the link.

Fellow Hackers.

The product is Hybir Backup which is a full online backup service. It is windows only for now.

The site has all of the relevant information.

Comments and Questions are encouraged.

If you would like a free trial use HACKERNEWS as the promotion code.

I have lots of exciting news I have been unable to share with community just yet. But if you are where I was a year ago. I was told "NO" so many times I thought it was my nick name. Just keep going it is well worth it.

Thanks,

Rasch (Hacking Founder)

</comment><comment><USER5> The homepage doesn't make it sufficiently clear what your site does.

<comment><USER2> It's not immediately obvious, but click the image that says that they reinvent backup.

Direct link: <http://www.hybir.com/HybirBackup.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Or the big Hybir Logo. Hmmm. It never occurred to me people might not click. Maybe I should change Unbelievable to Learn More.

<comment><USER6> That's a good idea. "Unbelievable" is a TV infomercial slang, not too professional to put it mildly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I may be in your target market.

I am currently/always looking for better user backups for our employees. We have tried multiple online solutions before (Carbonite, Mozy) and we've tried multiple local backups (rsync to a central server, Maxtor Onetouch+, Acronis Truebackup, etc)

Here are the questions I have when hitting your site. They're just my quick overview thoughts, but they might be of help-

How much does it cost? Do you charge per user, or per GB?

"Every Hybir Backup is the equivalent of a Full Backup at the speed of an incremental. " Do you do block level backups, or file level? Ie, is this akin to Ghost, or more akin to rsync?

"Hybir Backup leverages all the data it has ever backed up for everyone. "

This makes it seem like you do a md5 on the file, and store by that, rather than by the file itself. Do you preserve permissions, etc?

Also- What do you do if there is 1M of changes in a 100G file?

How do you handle updates to the client? Do they roll out automatically, or do users need to download and install them?

Is it possible to have one master account have access to all sub accounts? I'd rather not have them all have the same username+password, so that users can't download eachother's files.. All the same, I don't want to have to keep a spreadsheet with XXX passwords.

"Security a bank would envy" SSL security is great for it getting to you. I'm not worried about that. What about isolation from other customers? Can we encrypt our backups with a private key, so that you compare block-changes against OUR files, but not against others in your datacenter?

"Full Backup" You're backing up the MBR, etc. Is there a way to restore this if it's broken (a boot cd or similar?). If not, what good is it? (Honest question.)

"We may use your PII to contact you in connection with offers, responses to your inquiries, information on new services and features, and in connection with administering and offering our services."

I'd really like to see the privacy policy clarified with regards to the difference between Personal Information (Our name, etc), and the data we upload.

"The Software may be installed and used solely on one standalone, un-networked desktop or laptop computer identified by Customer when subscribing to the Services, and the Services may be used solely for such standalone computer."

This terms of use sounds like it's written for a commercial program, not a service - We want to install on many computers, that's the point ;)

"3.3 Hybir retains the right, but not the obligation, to retain copies of obsolete or deleted files, subject solely to its obligations of confidentiality hereunder."

This makes me nervous, FWIW.

Overall, it looks like a good product, in a very, very crowded market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cost is per user. $5/Month for the standard plan

It is mixed we backup the MBR in raw blocks. We back up files in Blocks or as a whole depending on the likely hood the file will be changed and the size of the file.

Yes we preserve permissions and ACLs for files.

What do we do if there are 1M changes in 100GB? It depends on where the changes are. We take a snapshot and any changes will be picked up in blocks of various sizes and only those changes are unloaded. So if most of the changes happened in 5GB then only 5GB would be uploaded. If they are spread out across the 100GB the whole 100GB could have to be uploaded.

We perform automatic updates. This is an option you can choose to opt out of.

Each user currently is its own account. We may offer group account management in the future.

We currently do not offer private key encryption. It offers no additional protection. Here it is from the website to save some typing "Private Key Encryption is a good way to protect sensitive data. In online Backup solutions not so much. There are many secure private key encryption programs some of which are open source and some that are free or both. What is wrong with Private key encryption in online backup solutions? When it is built in to online backup it defeats the purpose. You are giving the key to those intrusted (the online Backup provider) with encrypting and storing your data. This gives the uninformed a false sense of security. This is analogous to using a safe in your hotel room. You choose the combination (The password) and write it down on the safe for the cleaning staff (The backup program) to gather your valuables and place in the safe. They lock it and promise they haven't looked at the password. Most of us would never think of using a safe in a hotel room with that arangement. If you have ultra sensitive information on your PC we recommend that you use a third party application. If you have data that would cause you significant pain if it fell into the wrong hands, you should be encrypting it because unfortunately your PC could get stolen."

The technology does not do block compares. The only access to your data is through your account.

Yes, although it is not available for download yet. There is a windows pre- installation environment iso that you can use to restore or repair a disk.

Great catches on the privacy policy and terms. Those are definitely off from what I want in those documents. I will have those revised.

Thanks for the detailed post!

Rasch

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You just published your startup on a popular tech news site.

This _is_ your public launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I figured I'd do a press release later everyone would ignore.

<comment><USER9> Press releases of your own baby creations are more than welcome. What is not welcome is press releases to other people's products and services with your affiliate/referral ID neatly tucked in the submitted URL :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The site says "We currently do not offer private key encryption," and adds "You are giving the key to those intrusted (the online Backup provider) with encrypting and storing your data."

But it isn't true that online backup requires giving the key to the backup provider.

There are two main security models: (1) All data is encrypted on the user's machine with a password known ONLY to the user that never leaves the user's machine, and the encrypted data is transmitted and written to backup exactly that way; on restores, the encrypted data is returned and then decrypted on the user's machine (Connected Online Backup from Iron Mountain and some ways of using JungleDisk work this way). Or (2) the data is transmitted securely, decrypted at the backup server, encrypted there with a key known to the backup service and saved; on restores, the data is decrypted at the backup server using the service's key, then returned securely to the user's machine (most other online backup services work this way).

The second model is, as you say, insecure--which is why it is a big competitive disadvantage.

The first model can be smart, of course, and employ the user's private encryption key which never leaves the client PC only for personal files, and use some other method on Windows system files, commercial application executables, and other files which are duplicated on millions of machines (identified on the client before encryption).

FWIW, Connected Online Backup does both incremental backups by changed file blocks and also does identification of files it already has seen and so doesn't need to send again (at all), while keeping the encryption key only on the client PC. You're right about the current price--Connected wants $995/yr for 50GB. Obviously that price level can't last much longer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know it doesn't leave the users machine? (I'm not asking that to be smart or anything.) My point is that you are trusting the backup providers that it doesn't.

My main point is that you are trying to protect your data from the backup providers or their sloppy security. You aren't trusting them on one hand yet trusting them on the other that they don't store or save the key on their servers.

One popular online backup product can recover the key if you use their generated key. Which of course means they store it on their servers.

Honestly implementing private key encryption is trivial. My hesitation is that it only adds a level of security if the backup providers are trustworthy. The lack of trust of the backup providers is kind of why it is there.

Here is the scenario I envisioned that made me question it. Let's say client X performs backups of their computer using service Y. Service Y provides private key encryption. Client X types in his secret phrase and thinks that his/her data is secure. Service Y must either require the secret phrase to be typed in each time the software is run or must store the key locally. They store it locally. Someone comes with a court order demanding every reasonable effort to release the data to the court. Service Y may WANT to comply to catch bad guy client X. Or they may just not want to be held in contempt of court and get fined etc. Can they reasonably recover the key? My answer is yes service Y can reasonably recover the key. I don't believe the answer is yes if it is encrypted with a third party tool.

There are of course holes in the above scenario. You might need to automatically update the software to upload the key for that user etc. Perhaps they don't do automatic updates. They could also require an update just for that users account to function. My main point again is you are back to trusting the backup provider.

I found it highly ironic to be writing code to protect my potential customers to gain their trust without disclosing the inherent holes in that process.

My hesitation to adding private key encryption was purely on the side of NOT wanting to pretend that backup software with private key encryption protects their data against all scenarios.

But having written this post and explaining it frequently. I think I probably should just add it in.

Thanks,

Rasch

<comment><AUTHOR> One more thought on a very high level.

I thought, what would I want to be told if I was the customer?

1) The truth that there are holes in the process and here is a better solution if you need it. or 2) That it is super secure unbreakable private key encryption.

I chose "1". I'll still stick to the story line but I will implement it in the next release.

<comment><USER10> Well, FWIW, I backup my machine every night via both of Connected Online Backup ($995/yr) and JungleDisk, (about $350 a year to Amazon) and I won't use any of their competitors who can recover their own keys--so the story of enhanced security sells me. (I do trust these vendors not to transmit my password from their client applications to their servers, that's easy; I don't trust them to secure my unencrypted data on lots of machines for decades, that's much harder.)

<comment><USER11> Fair enough and more than enough justification for me to implement it.

BTW I really appreciate taking the time to share your point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Your homepage is OK. The site is missing viewable screenshots of the application. The page with all the features is too long to read. Too much information that doesn't get to the point (ex : "how fast" have a text that goes "it can take 3 minutes to backup 1 Go"). In short, I'll make it more friendly for non-techies.

I like the design but the icons in the feature pages are odd-looking. The sub- menu (overview, comparison, in action...) was invisible to me.

It looks really cool though and I hope you will change the world of backups, we really need it...

<comment><AUTHOR> I will add screen casts and screen shots to the site. I will have to look into the invisibility issue. The icons will definitely get redone once I have someone decent to do them.

I can't really say anything yet. But you may be surprised where it is and how many places it is in the next three to six months.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those of you paying attention. I posted this first under CRASCH and then again accidentally under VIPER.

I created the VIPER account a while ago when I wanted to share my successes with the community anonymously. The reason is that I really felt compelled to encourage my fellow hackers. I never ended up posting those. I must have written that post ten times though. I always ended up thinking it either felt like bragging or was not believable with the facts to back it up. Facts I still can't disclose because of NDAs.

Rasch

</comment><comment><USER13> I think your homepage needs to say why "Hybir reinvents backup". Once I read your features page, I was sold, but the homepage doesn't do enough to draw people in. You need to mention at least one unique selling point. Maybe something like: "Genuine full PC, zero configuration backup with unparalleled performance". A screenshot on the home page would definitely help too.

Minor issue: from the forums, I can't find an obvious link back to your home page.

</comment><comment> Jan-Jaap Under the header "Architecture of a Hybir Backup" you write: 'Giving you piece of mind...'. Please change it to read 'peace of mind'.

Actually, re-reading the page, you might want to get someone to give the whole page a once-over. There are quite a few improvements to make...

Apart from that, good luck!

<comment><USER14> Change "record obliterating speeds" to "record-obliterating speeds" on the home page

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks good catches!

I have some editing to do tonight!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You should say that it's windows only.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do in several places. Perhaps I should try make it more obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone actually wants to try the service for free use the HACKERNEWS promotion code.

<comment><USER4> Signed up ok. It seemed to have logged me in after signup - great. Then it kicked me out. Now if I try to login it says invalid credentials. Pretty sure I am using the right credentials. There's no apparent way to send a password change request either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch I'll add a password reset on the login page. You can do that through the application but you haven't gotten there yet.

In the mean time can you create another account or email firstname.lastname@example.com with your user_id and request a password reset?

Thanks,

Rasch

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While registration, it is not allowing '-' char in the email address. (I am using yahoo address guard thing with disposable email addresses)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry,

Yes that is a limitation I will remove shortly. You can use any user name you want. I didn't make that clear either.

I have lots of work to do thanks to all the good feedback from everyone thanks again!</comment></comment>


The Work-Family Imbalance - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/04/the-work-family-imbalance/

<comment><USER2> That chart about marital satisfaction is pretty depressing. I too, am unwilling to concede that the next 15-20 years of my life will be shite. Surely there must be a way to get around this. Good work life balance with kids is all about time optimization and managing expectations.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to Gilbert, the unhappiness seems to stem from differing parenting styles, constant chaos and our inability to adapt and deal with the change (kinda like what you are saying). That said, have you seen this TED talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_feiler_agile_programming_for_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_feiler_agile_programming_for_your_family)

Might be worth piloting to see if you can learn and iterate towards a happier life with your spouse?</comment></comment>


Malware Has a New Way to Hide on Your Mac - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/mac-malware-hide-code-signing/ <comment><AUTHOR> >Reed says the issue has been present since OS X Leopard, released in 2007.

So not so much a new way...</comment>


Let's improve commuter rail service between Providence and Boston - <AUTHOR> https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/dear-gov-raimondo-express-trains-wrong-ask/ <comment><USER2> I would love for MA to improve the Worcester-Framingham commuter rail line, too. The infrastructure feels so dated. The trains are slow, infrequent, and are late or broken too often, so I just drive in the terrible Boston traffic instead. I would love to take the train if I could. Even the fastest train from Worcester to Boston, a single express train, takes an hour. But most likely your schedule can't align with that train (I wouldn't get on at the terminal station so I can't ride it) so you have to take an even slower one.

<comment><USER3> The Fitchburg line is even worse because you have to slog through the Concord rotary if you chose to drive. I'd love to see the face on one of my Californian friends driving on Route 2 -- nowhere else have I ever encountered a 55mph highway that ends at a stoplight.

<comment><USER4> Breezewood, PA is pretty infamous: I-70 has a stoplight with US-30, where you turn right, go through a second stoplight, turn right again, and then get back on I-70. It and the I-78 approach to the Holland Tunnel are the only two places where the interstate has a traffic light, although the road is 35mph immediately in front of it in PA (I don't know what the speed limit of the NJ road is).

Freeways ending in stoplights are actually fairly common, although they usually have lots of advance warning saying "FREEWAY ENDS." 50mph and 55mph roads having stoplights on them aren't particularly uncommon, particularly in rural areas.

<comment><USER5> I70 joins I76 (the Pennsylvania turnpike) in Breezewood, so traffic would be slowed at the toll-booths even if a proper intersection was built. I suspect that there was some political wrangling that resulted in the US30 transition though - the truck-stops, restaurants and tourist-traps are loving it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm posting this editorial because CalTrain riders need to know that commuter rail in New England faces many of the same problems. CalTrain also has the additional challenge of eliminating its grade crossings. The cost of that improvement would probably bankrupt CalTrain, but it needs to happen.

<comment><USER6> It actually will happen, eventually, as a result of the California HSR project: [http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2012/12/grade-separation- de...](http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2012/12/grade-separation-decadal- view.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> These are good recommendations, because in the greater scheme of things these are (relatively) small expenditures that can greatly improve level-of-service.

Many European commuter rail systems -- or mainline rail segments that end up hosting predominantly commuter traffic --- run EMUs and have renovated their stations with level-boarding platforms.

</comment><comment><USER8> Advocating for these types of boring improvements is a good way to make a difference with your local City Council or transit organization.

</comment><comment><USER9> In my experience, Boston to Providence is pretty fast and pleasant. The issue is the rest of the way to NYC, which crawls through Connecticut at a snail's pace and takes something like 3.5 hours. It's a pretty brutal trip.

<comment><USER10> At least it isn't Fung Wah.

<comment><USER11> RIP $5 Boston-> NYC trips with dudes literally getting on the bus carrying chickens in cages

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/fung-wah-bus- comp...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/fung-wah-bus-company- closes-doors-good-n394026)

<comment><USER12> This.

If you were willing to put up with the downsides the price couldn't be beat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My understanding is that the reason the US doesn't have better rail service is because the auto industry lobbies the government to direct subsidies toward roads rather than railways. I've seen many cities wanting to improve commuter rail services, but until we get rid of the auto industry's influence, this is an uphill battle.

<comment><USER14> Rail service isn't practicable in most of the country, even at 200 miles an hour, NY to Chicago is still a long long trip.

<comment><USER15> At 200 miles an hour, NY to Chicago is less than four hours.

It takes about an hour total for transportation between downtowns and the airports; you need to be at the airport about an hour ahead of your flight; the flight itself is 2 and a half hours.

So, a 200mph train would be _faster_ for most travelers.

<comment><USER4> > At 200 miles an hour, NY to Chicago is less than four hours.

Assuming you can a) maintain that speed the entire length and b) there are no stops along the route. A long-distance point-to-point HSR system is simply not cost-effective, particularly when you've got a geographic barrier like the Appalachians. That's what makes Chicago so problematic for HSR: the Midwest ends up being a region where no city is particularly close to being "on the way" between any other city pairing.

<comment><USER16> The Appalachians aren't particularly an insurmountable barrier. Japan, Switzerland, China, and France all have much bigger and more formidable mountains than the Appalachians.

The real problem is:

\- Not enough government funding for mass transit projects

\- Not enough people supporting government funding

\- Too much power at the city level and not enough power at the state/national level for transportation projects

\- Terrible UX and not enough city-level public transit infrastructure. When you exit the train station in most of the above countries, you are greeted with a properly air-conditioned/heated waiting hall, delicious food, hotels within walkable distance, and buses/subway to anywhere you would need to go. In a LOT of US cities when you exit the train station you are greeted with a massive parking lot and not even so much as a restroom. (Okay, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Washington are fine, but they are quite the exception. Most other cities suck.) Even if California gets the high-speed rail going any time soon to Los Angeles, the fact is that it's stupidly hard to get around anywhere in LA without a car, so I don't imagine it getting much ridership until that problem is solved (maybe by autonomous cars, maybe not).

<comment><USER4> Appalachians aren't insurmountable as a geographic barrier, particularly because there's a very easy topographical shortcut by going next to the Erie Canal. What makes it really challenging is the lack of lesser-tier cities to plug into the network, combined with the sheer length.

Put another way, the distance between Chicago and New York is roughly 700mi as the crow flies. The distance between Edinburgh and London is 330mi, Calais and Marseilles 550mi, Zurich and Copenhagen 600mi, Milan and Calabria 600mi, Shanghai and Beijing 650mi, Hiroshima and Sendai 530mi. You're looking at a distance that's longer literally than the longest axis of most European countries, and at a much more sparsely populated region than the linear corridors of other countries that have axes that long.

NY/Chicago is on the edge of viability in terms of distance. As the crow flies, you're talking a 3½ hour trip minimum; as you actually build it, a non- stop express is looking like at least 4-4½ hours. The most feasible route with intermediate stops (via Pittsburgh and Philly) is around 860 miles, an even longer trip. If the trip were on pretty much flat, featureless terrain, the cost and time could both be kept small, but the mountainous terrain means you're generally on the worse ends of the estimate.

That's the biggest problem with the US: our cities are just simply too far apart for HSR to be viable in most of the country. And where they aren't, they tend to be in the worst pattern for utilizing HSR effectively.

<comment><USER17> We put a man on the moon, and you're telling me we can't make a train go faster than the Shanghai maglev?

<comment><USER7> There is not much point; the engineering and construction is extremely expensive (and more so in the US [1][2][3][4][5][6]), and there's perfectly good sunk-cost airports that let airlines operate this route at a variety of price-points today.

[1] [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/4/this-is-why- inf...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/4/this-is-why- infrastructure-is-so-expensive) [2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u- s-i...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s- infrastructure-costs-so-much) [3] [http://fortune.com/2017/01/23/us- infrastructure-renewal-buil...](http://fortune.com/2017/01/23/us- infrastructure-renewal-building-transportation-donald-trump/) [4] [https://www.citylab.com/life/2014/04/7-reasons-us- infrastruc...](https://www.citylab.com/life/2014/04/7-reasons-us- infrastructure-projects-cost-way-more-they-should/8799/) [5] [http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build- bridg...](http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridge- america) [6] [http://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/blog/is-u.s.-infrastructure-m...](http://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/blog/is-u.s.-infrastructure- more-expensive)

<comment><USER17> Sounds like the US needs to stop sucking at this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm traveling to Norway soon for a short vacation and I'm looking forward to using Oslo's public transit and regional rail network. Apparently it's an award-winning, world-class system.

<comment><USER16> Most Northern European systems are absolutely amazing. Not only do things just work, but their attention to detail and design is also top-notch. In most places the fonts, kerning, colors, lighting, everything is just very pleasing to the graphic designer eye. Sometimes you feel like you've stepped into an app.

<comment><USER18> Indeed. Take for example the City Tunnel in Malmö which finished ahead of time and a million dollars under budget[1]. At Triangeln it has dancing lights on the walls that are somewhat mesmerizing[2].

1: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Tunnel_(Malmö)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Tunnel_\(Malmö\))

2: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k6tJb9TwY1k](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k6tJb9TwY1k)

<comment><USER19> > a million dollars under budget

A _hundred_ million, surely? 1e9 SEK under the projected cost of 9.5e9 SEK.

<comment><USER18> Whoops you are correct, dropped a zero or two there. Makes it even more impressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is all fine and good. Just don't improve it between Boston and any city you expect people to be able to afford to buy a house in.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm 100% against new tracks being laid or any more capital expenditures to the MBTA (anyone who goes on the Red Line during rush hour, or the commuter rail during the winter knows it sucks). The current system needs better maintenance, first.

Here's one solution: create a new express lane on existing highways by removing a lane or repurposing the existing HOV lane. Make this new lane have a 80mph speed limit. Only allow buses. There you go.

This would have a higher average speed than all existing public transportation systems in the United States. No need to build any rail.

\---

As long as "undesirables" can easily go to your town via public transportation, NIMBYs will shut it down. See the Red Line extension to Arlington. Those folks are regretting that now.

Disclaimer: I live in Massachusetts -- both the above, and the OP will never happen. It's just _too hard_ to justify the capital expenses. In the case of improved service you would think it's easy, but once you consider the commuter rail is already underutilized it's hard to imagine.

Heck, they were even going to end weekend service for the commuter rail.

[http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/03/13/mbta-weekend-commuter- ra...](http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/03/13/mbta-weekend-commuter-rail-premium- ride-trip-cuts)

<comment><USER21> The point is that the rail is already there, and the rail line is already pretty much the best in the US, and already has electrification, that the commuter rail trains don't use for entirely stupid reasons. And sure, buses are great, but one comumter rail train carries the same number of passengers as literally 20 buses. Given that the tracks to Providence are already there, some relatively minor improvements can make the trains suck much less. Your bus idea on the other hand seems like a good alternative to the South Coast Rail boondoggle.

<comment><USER20> Sure, but why should the MBTA care about the Providence Line in particular, as opposed to say, Worcester or other parts of Massachusetts?

<comment><USER22> It's the most traveled line.

<comment><USER20> Sure, but by that logic, why not extend rapid transit -- it's far more traveled than all of the commuter rail lines combined.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Enter a pair of names to see if any intersections in the US match those names - <AUTHOR> https://www.crossing.us <comment> maze-le Good, that no such intersection exists, or it would immediatly collapse into a black hole: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Chandrasekhar/Schwarzs...](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Chandrasekhar/Schwarzschild)

It does not exist, or maybe it exists, but only in superposition: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Heisenberg/Schr%C3%B6d...](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Heisenberg/Schr%C3%B6dinger)

Sadly, non computable: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Turing/Church](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Turing/Church)

Computable, but only by partial Integration: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Hamilton/Lagrange](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Hamilton/Lagrange)

For friends of modern art: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Pablo/Salvador](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Pablo/Salvador)

</comment><comment><USER5> My wife took it as a highly romantic gesture when I sent her the link for our names.

So thanks for the easy points!

<comment><USER6> I wanted to do the same thing, no results! I guess thats what having obscure names is all about

<comment><USER7> Yeah I wouldn't expect many streets are named "qqg3".

<comment><USER8> I tried to search for something I could take as a cosmic sign, inputting my girlfriend's name and then my own. Nada. Zippo. Zilch.

We were however eating in a restaurant last year, a pizza place where people scribbled on the walls in marker, kind of an added character thing. Above my girlfriend's left shoulder were our names in faded writing, dated 4 years prior. We do not have fairly common names, so I'll take that as my sign.

Anyway, I digress. This is pretty cool and I have sent it along to my friends.

<comment><USER9> Do you interpret it as a positive sign (since your names were there) or negative sign (since the writing has faded)..?

<comment><USER8> Good question...I would say a positive sign. Although faded, the names were still there four years later — kind of like how initial infatuation fades but hopefully the deeper love stays strong?

Maybe a reach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This one always makes me giggle when driving through it but didn't show up on the site:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Antonio+Pkwy+%26+Avenida+D...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Antonio+Pkwy+%26+Avenida+De+Las+Banderas,+Rancho+Santa+Margarita,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-117.6115259,3a,66.8y,218.94h,84.23t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sKw9IqhxyKCHC8DJQbPwc8A!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x80dceb912706b9b3:0x3944f2782af6fbd5)

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Antonio/Banderas](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Antonio/Banderas)

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/hooker/pleasure](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/hooker/pleasure)

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/charles/manson](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/charles/manson)

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/colon/butz](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/colon/butz)

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/strait/crooked](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/strait/crooked)

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/inyo/butte](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/inyo/butte)

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't tell if there's an intersection of Church and State. All the top results at [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/church/state](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/church/state) (for me) have Church Street/Road intersecting with State Highway X or similar.

<comment><USER13> Ann Arbor, Michigan (the location of the main University of Michigan campus) has a Church Street and a State Street, but they do not intersect.

I read a joke that went: In Ann Arbor, separation of Church and State is about three blocks.

<comment><USER14> I stumbled across an amusing sequence of streets in Brooklyn, Indiana. When you leave Home Avenue, you can go one block west to Church Street, or one block east to Hooker Street.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm honestly kinda fed up with sites that prompt me to share my geolocation while they load. Why should I have to clear a prompt before accessing the site? And it clearly works well without knowing my location, so why make the prompt something everyone has to go through?

<comment><USER16> Thanks for mentioning this. I'm now pretty sure this is the reason some sites don't load at all in the app that I use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice! But I wish I could also check for triplets so I could find absurdities like this Bellevue,Bellevue,Bellevue intersection in Seattle :

[https://goo.gl/maps/fj55h9auMSL2](https://goo.gl/maps/fj55h9auMSL2)

<comment><USER18> And imagine if that intersection was in Bellevue!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some developer is a Tolkien fan:

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/rivendell/middle%20ear...](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/rivendell/middle%20earth)

<comment><USER13> There's an entire subdivision in Sterling Heights with several Tolkienesque road names.

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/lorien/elrond](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/lorien/elrond)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are actually two of these: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/tesla/edison](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/tesla/edison)

<comment><USER12> I was expecting these to be in horrible suburban office parks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's one that's only found in the suburb where I grew up: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/analog/digital](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/analog/digital)

</comment><comment><USER12> A politically relevant one: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/donald/moscow](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/donald/moscow)

(It's actually the intersection of "Don" and "Moscow". But judging from the other street names here, "Don" was probably intended to be the river in Russia.)

<comment><USER22> The story of why a tiny town in Kansas has Russian-themed street names is pretty fascinating (to me anyway):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munjor,_Kansas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munjor,_Kansas)

<comment><USER23> It's fascinating to me too; I live in Ellis county and my wife and I both have Volga German ancestry :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Single name search seems broken:

      We couldn't find any intersections for James

      We couldn't find any intersections for Molly

Actually, looks like it's just broken in general.

      We couldn't find any intersections for james and molly

But it worked a few minutes ago...

<comment><USER25> The endpoint is throwing 502s now. Looks like they decided to just handle all bad responses with "We couldn't find any intersections..."

<comment> numerum-bestiae True, anything else would've been better - even a 404. Kept me wandering

<comment><USER26> Where did you end up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not entirely sure how the listing for Peachtree and Peachtree didn't find anything in Georgia.

<comment><USER28> Years ago, I was visiting friends in Atlanta, one of whom was a civil engineer for GDoT. He took me to the intersection of Rosser Rd and Rosser Pl.

<comment><USER29> That's hardly uncommon. Up near Calgary they went big on planned developments. If you lived in oaktree then you would come in on Oaktree Road, turn off on Oaktree lane, take the corner at Oaktree Place, and then turn on your street, Oaktree circle.

Mail got misdelivered quite frequently in that area, often because the people addressing it weren't paying enough attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It seems to have trouble with street names that don't start with the search string. So it didn't find the corner of Antonio and Banderas, maybe because it's "Avenida de las Banderas".

Nearby Antonio and Oso Parkway was no problem, though.

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/antonio/oso](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/antonio/oso)

Then again, it doesn't have a problem with the San in "San Antonio Avenue"

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/antonio/flores](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/antonio/flores)

<comment><USER31> I don't think it's just location in the string. It couldn't find this one either.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nancy+Reagan+Dr,+Alpharett...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nancy+Reagan+Dr,+Alpharetta,+email@example.com,-84.2260662,18.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x88f59c2aec90686d:0xc94daca46c75f1!8m2!3d34.1094714!4d-84.2267187)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/democrat/republican](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/democrat/republican)

Who would have thought that only one would exist in...Memphis.

<comment><USER33> _It 's easy if you try..._

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

<comment><USER32> Meh, southern democrats exist because some southern voters still associate Lincoln with today's republican party.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There's also [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/bill/ted](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/bill/ted)

<comment><USER19> The greatest and least heinous of all intersections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Contrary to popular opinion, Trump and Lincoln does meet: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/trump/lincoln](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/trump/lincoln)

</comment><comment><USER36> Managed to find my name in it. I suppose both parts are fairly common.

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Oliver/Norton](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Oliver/Norton)

</comment><comment><USER37> My favorite: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/President/Clinton](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/President/Clinton)

</comment><comment><USER38> There's always one of us in every group...

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/ball/nut](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/ball/nut)

<comment><USER12> I'm not even going to ask what a nut hatch is.

<comment><USER39> It's a small passerine bird.

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

<comment><USER40> When I was in sixth grade, our science teacher had us go bird watching every school day and document the birds we'd saw.

Eleven-year-old me immediately became obsessed with red-breasted nuthatches. To this day, when I see one, I'll yell out to my wife, "Look! A red-breasted nuthatch!"

<comment><USER41> Wait until you see a Great tit _(Parus major)_

<comment><USER42> Or any thrush ( _Turdus_ ), booby ( _Sula_ ), crane ( _Bugeranus_ , old name).

There are many, many rude-sounding Latin names.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you like this, you'll also like: [https://www.what3words.com](https://www.what3words.com)

</comment><comment><USER44> Good, it correctly finds my favorite local intersection: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Kitchen%20dick/Woodcoc...](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Kitchen%20dick/Woodcock)

</comment><comment><USER45> There is no intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Technology/Liberal%20A...](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Technology/Liberal%20Arts)

</comment><comment><USER46> A developer in Florida was probably really homesick.[https://www.crossing.us/intersection/12110431995188_11043201...](https://www.crossing.us/intersection/12110431995188_110432017644)

<comment><USER47> Wow, that -entire- neighborhood is named after places in New York: Ithica, Albany, Buffalo, Elmira, Mt. Vernon, Great Neck, Jamestown, Middletown, New Rochelle, Coney Island, Syracuse, Queens, Niagra, Yonkers, Catskill, Cohoes, Westchester

The only streets that aren't associated with New York place are Terita, Faith, and Norwick.

There's also a whole bunch of other NY places in surrounding streets. (Utica, Rye, Troy, Rochester, Corning, Rome, Vassar, etc.)

Really cool! The cool part is pretty much the entire state is covered,from The City to the Hudson Valley to Western NY, to the Southern Tier.

(Found the person who grew up in New York)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wonder how a simple site like profit on a mobile ad, I assume it's only good on certain bumps of viral traffic and even then would get around 300 a month. If it's doing well then I need to pump out some simple mobile sites

</comment><comment><USER49> Who knew that the universe had so many nexuses: [https://www.crossing.us/intersections/1st/1st](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/1st/1st)

</comment><comment><USER50> Ha, it found the intersection that made me giggle when I was 10, and still makes me smile.

The intersection of Crouch St. and SE P St. in Bentonville, AR. Crouch and pee, everyone. My grandma lived on the corner there thirty years ago.

</comment><comment><USER51> Sadly, there's still no Jekyll & Hyde:

[https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Jekyll/Hyde](https://www.crossing.us/intersections/Jekyll/Hyde)

</comment><comment><USER52> I amazed commenters here are looking up non-rude intersections. Classy bunch!

<comment><USER12> I think most people probably start by looking up rude ones, then feel a bit embarrassed and move on to non-rude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This confirms for me that when my grandfather would say "I'll be at the corner of Walk & Don't Walk", he was employing a euphemism that meant he was going out drinking.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's worth mentioning that you can enter just one name and Crossing will pull in a bunch of intersections across the country that contain that one moniker.

</comment><comment><USER55> I think it is cute that the Amazon adverts that is on the side of the screen leverage the names you entered into the search bar. Quite clever actually.

</comment><comment><USER56> Oooh...it seems to be smart, or at least accepts loose matches. I searched for "Judith" and it matched a street named "Judy".

</comment><comment><USER29> Having lived in the south for a few decades, I am extremely surprised there is no Jackson and Lee intersection anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER57> I tried The example given on the landing page and it's not working either.

</comment><comment><USER58> We couldn't find any intersections for haight and ashbury

Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER59> What is this site doing with my geolocation information?

</comment><comment><USER60> It doesn't find Grant and Green in SF.

<comment><USER61> Here it is: [https://www.crossing.us/intersection/06110498932921_11049893...](https://www.crossing.us/intersection/06110498932921_110498932948)

<comment><USER60> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Voight/Kampff - <USER4>

Sapir/Whorf - <USER4>

Deming/Kruger - <USER4>

:(

<comment><USER63> Dunning/Kruger, perhaps?

<comment><USER62> hehe, thanks. My bad.

But still 0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I asked a very famous NY intersection, "Walk w/ Do not walk" and it didn't find :( :)

</comment><comment><USER65> Site is broken. Nothing works.

<comment><USER56> Site was overloaded. It's working now.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you fix the healthcare.gov website? - <AUTHOR>

According to the Washington Post, "The Obama administration said Sunday that it has enlisted additional computer experts from across the government and from private companies to help rewrite computer code and make other improvements to the online health insurance marketplace, which has been plagued by technical defects that have stymied many consumers since it opened nearly three weeks ago."<p>What advice would you give President Obama in regards to addressing the technical issues with HealthCare.gov? <comment><USER2> The same advice I would give the designers of the Titanic after it sunk: you really should have thought more about this ahead of time.

In all seriousness: Open source it. Tell the dev's to put it on Github, and let the global development community figure out what the hell is going on.

<comment><USER3> I like the first part but not the idea of open sourcing it. Why does the American government want "the global development community" involved? That makes no sense to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Decisiveness. Per this [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6583327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6583327) the contractors have been without decisive high level strategic decisions while the White House and HHS/it's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS) decide what to do, hopefully by Thursday.

Fire the CMMS as the integrator, borrow a few of their more cluefull people and have them work with a contractor that can do this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Take your time. And deliver. Entrust some small but really smart team with fixing the thing. And give them absolute power related to the project.

The situation is so bad right now that the second launch - doesn't matter when it will be, but it just have to work.

Also make sure that head rolls in the procurement parts of the agencies responsible and claw back maximum amount of money possible.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to Washington Post article, [http://wapo.st/19kTpEP](http://wapo.st/19kTpEP)

</comment><comment><USER6> Delegate as soon as possible / Don't mess around with things you don't understand.

The idea that you need the president making technical decisions is madness. Go find a reputable company and ask them to implement your basic functionality for a decent fee, (actually offer one, don't just seek the lowest bidder,) then get out of the way and let them to do so - payment on successful delivery, no alterations to what you ask for after the fact, complete autonomy within operational parameters. You can iterate to fine tune the things you'd like it to have after the base case is up.

</comment><comment><USER7> Short term: Assuming it can scale, and that many of the problems result from various timeouts (e.g. I recall one report on a 5 - 7 second timeout for a IRS data request), then _throw hardware at it._ Get out the checkbook, call up Amazon, or whomever, get them to physically segregate a collection of machines, and ramp up.

Long term: Take it in-house. Enough of this contractor bullshit. The Government is known to have some effective auditing agencies. Turn them loose on the resulting program.

Also: First make it work. Then make it pretty. What are the American people most going to notice? Whether it _fucking works._</comment>


Ask HN: are you 1) skinny and 2) self-employed? - <AUTHOR>

Strange request: if you're a skinny guy who is self-employed (freelancer, consultant...) then I would like to interview you.
This would be an interview over Skype, about 20-30 minutes.
I'm willing to pay you for your time.
I also won't pass on or abuse any of the information you choose to share. It's for my own use only.
And what's the use?
A friend and I are trying to launch a product aimed at helping self-employed guys who want to gain muscle and weight.
Why self-employed guys?
Because they tend to be positive, can-do types. They're people we would like to work with.
Why muscle gain?
There's a lot of useful knowledge out there about gaining weight and muscle, but it's often presented badly.
We think there's value in trying to present this information more effectively.
Anyhow, we are now trying to talk to guys who are actually trying to gain muscle and mass, in order to understand their needs better.
So, if you are
* a guy * self-employed
* skinny
then I would like to hear your story. Write me at email@example.com and we can set it up. <comment><USER2> I'd be happy to help :) What age guys are you looking for?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there ever an excuse for browser-restricted websites? - <AUTHOR> Websites (generally some sort of form-filling/viewing site) that only work (or claim they only work) with a specific browser(s), specific browser versions, specific OSes, etc. Usually this is Internet Explorer or at least includes it.
Is there ever a good reason or excuse for this? I've only ever seen it in government/university/internal-company sites that (a) don't have a lot of development budget and (b) have a captive audience. Generally quality is pretty low as well. Is there actually a solid security advantage or something to e.g. only supporting IE7-10 on Windows XP, Vista, or 7?
(That last is an actual example of a "training program" site my current contracting agency is making me run through. I'm thinking of sending them a polite but stern email regarding the standards one expects in a company whose entire job is contracting coders and web designers.) <comment><USER2> It's not a security advantage, it's a QA advantage: restricting browsers ensures that the website works as expected, which is extremely valuable to government/university/internal-companies which can't develop/QA for other browsers due to finite capital/time.</comment>


Amplitude (YC W12), Mobile Analytics Startup, Raises $2M Seed Round - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/11/amplitude-the-analytics-startup-undercutting-mixpanel-raises-2-million-seed-round/ <comment><USER2> One of the things I really like about Heap Analytics is the "no instrumentation" approach. You just drop in some JS and you're good to go.

Do you have a similar feature?

This is quite useful in the early stages, when you don't have much data but also don't have much time.

Also, we're using HTML5 + Trigger.io (a YC-backed PhoneGap-like tool). Do you support that toolchain?

[edit: Added another question]

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't- you need to explicitly instrument.

I think auto-instrumentation is great for web because you already have a clear DOM structure. Mobile is more difficult as it's native code and 1 to 1 mapping to UI elements is not as cut and dry and things can become brittle. It's also more difficult to scale because when you're tracking everything data volumes get pretty crazy. There is the big upside not having to instrument though! We haven't seen any requests from anyone who has experience analytics for it. I'm curious to see how this shakes out for developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> From the article: "The funding comes after a period of growth among Amplitude's enterprise customer base, which is up by 400 percent since the service's launch."

Is it just me, or does this not really make any sense? Assuming they have 0 customers at launch, how would they have 400% growth?

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually had a good number of customers in private beta from before our launch but it's grown by a factor of 5 since then. It's true though that the lower the denominator the higher the growth percentage that you can quote.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Spenser from Amplitude here, happy to answer any questions you guys have about what we're up to.

<comment><USER4> If you were to describe how Amp is differentiated with say Localytics, what would you say? We use localytics and while it's ok, I'm interested in learning about other tools out there. I think one pain point for us is understanding cohorts across apps, since we have a large portfolio.

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct access to querying on your data via a data warehouse (Amazon Redshift). Localytics' sales team will say they have that but if you actually try it you basically have to build an entire ETL pipeline yourself (I'd encourage you to ask!) With Amplitude you login with the psql command from any CLI and you're done. It's particularly good if you have complex requirements like how particular metrics compare across apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome. Mixpanel's pricing is outrageous, especially their People analytics.

<comment><USER6> We tried a few, and honestly for us nothing came close to Mixpanel. It's not perfect though, and as you said really expensive...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Spenser and Curtis are a study in how persistence pays off. Congratulations guys!

</comment><comment><USER8> The instant demo is a huge plus. Thanks for having that available.

</comment><comment><USER9> Congratulations to Spenser and Curtis!

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats guys!</comment>


Q&A with Alexis Ohanian – March 1 - <AUTHOR> https://generalassemb.ly/education/703/q-a-with-alexis-ohanian-online-class/1169

<comment><USER2> Creating a community around an app is very difficult. Getting traction and sustaining is numero uno on gaining "success". Looking forward to what Alexis has to say!

</comment><comment><USER3> How is a Q&A with Alexis Ohanian considered an online class? I feel like this whole MOOC thing is going a bit off the edge haha

<comment><USER4> It's a livestream, so folks who attend will be able to ask questions and interact with him.

<comment><USER3> Why didn't they just call it a livestream then!?</comment></comment></comment>


China Tops U.S. in Supercomputers - <AUTHOR> http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329941 <comment><USER2> The truth is, US Super-Computer spending is hard to justify and most of the owners of these in various national institutes are shopping for customers to justify their funding, although their set-up is not a good fit for many types of computing.

Every dollar spent on building these computers is a dollar NOT spent in the budget of a research-driven grant. Give these dollars to physicists, mathematicians, genomics scientists, chemists, climate people etc. This way the demand in computing will dictate the type of systems built.

p.s. I've attended the event in person that's listed in the article hosted by the OSTP, which is a part of the White House (National Strategic Computing Initiative). My conclusion was most of these computers aren't needed and a misdirection of funds to the tune of billions of dollars that computing / scientific computing could really benefit from in other ways.

<comment><USER3> Yep. I'm part of a significant project which is being shoehorned into a Cray because the government has already spent the money for it.

If it's not an MPI job, it's going to be painful.

<comment><USER4> _> If it's not an MPI job, it's going to be painful._

What are you using for communication between nodes?

To make the tone clear I'm genuinely interested as I'm not sure what running on a Cray prevents you from doing?

<comment><USER3> That's the problem:

We don't need to communicate between the nodes; We don't need MPI. We need distributed databases and we might need Spark. We need machine learning. We need servers. We would like availability and reliability.

We get full batch nodes that are relatively anemic in memory for our workload (4GB/core) for a maximum of 24 hours at a time.

<comment><USER5> > We don't need to communicate between the nodes

Huh. At the core of almost every problem I've ever encountered in my 20+ year career programming that I would consider "interesting" is the need to allocate work across many compute nodes _that have some amount of shared state._ You could just as well take A* as a baseline for these types of problems. Your typical cloud computing infra/design is not a good match for these.

<comment><USER3> Well I guess computing in astrophysics and HEP isn't that interesting then :)

It's true that we need shared data, but we don't need shared state (memory) for any of our workloads, and shared data (e.g. disk/db) is a much easier problem to solve than shared state.

There is still coordination and orchestration, but that's an extremely coarse amount of communication compared to the cost of Cray interconnects. That being said, there are cases where we might benefit from the Cray networking, but that comes at the cost of other tradeoffs (no local disk, low memory per core).

So what do we do? Well, we use a handful of Ferraris to get the job done because they are available when cheap bus would have suited us fine. The double whammy is that the Ferraris end up in the shop all the time and occasionally somebody else gets exclusivity to them when they want to get in a Bell prize submission.

<comment><USER6> Well this is where you talk to the network admins at your university and get them in on a top secret program, code name: "It Was China", to hack into all the detectable ps4's on campus, call all those students to a hall for a random lottery social for a couple of hours while you commandeer there equipment, for science of course.

Or you can send get the network admins to allow you to send them a email, but the first suggestion sounds more fun :P

<comment><USER5> That, sir, is hilariously awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's worse is that the U.S prevented China from buying Intel chips to build their supercomputer with[1]. It was a huge order and probably had something to do with the recent layoffs.

[1] [http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/05/us-supercomputer-chip- ban-d...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/05/us-supercomputer-chip-ban- delayed.html?m=1)

<comment><USER8> The worst is yet to come. China's home grown chips may now spread out from China to undercut Intel at the end high cloud market if Linux-based software is easy to port to it. Intel's CPUs are way over priced and ripe for disruption if someone can get the required massive upfront investment to create a real competitor, and it looks like China is doing this. Repeatedly topping the supercomputer list is perfect marketing for introducing a new high performance CPU to the world.

<comment><USER9> A former NSA and CIA chief, wrote a post about stuff like this, before the US banned US chip makers from selling to China:

> _By the time I became NSA director in the late 1990s, however, the > calculation was no longer that simple. We still wanted an MTOPS advantage, > of course, but we were fast realizing that our preferred limits were > undermining the global competitiveness of the U.S. computer industry — the > very industry on which we relied for our success. It was becoming clear that > the overall health of that industry was more important than any MTOPS > advantage against a specific target country. We still insisted on limits > with regard to places such as Cuba and North Korea, but we became far more > forgiving elsewhere.

This, of course, had a powerful, positive commercial impact, but the NSA didn't flip its position for commercial reasons. We did it for security reasons. On balance, this change made us stronger, not weaker, over the long haul, since retarding exports would inevitably retard the technological progress that was both our economic and our security lifeblood.

That early lesson has caused me to continue to challenge arguments that technological protectionism furthers national security. It might, but then again, it could have the opposite effect if it freezes development, alienates allies, feeds distrust or invites the creation of similar barriers abroad. I would recommend these broader considerations to those in the U.S. security enterprise with responsibility for evaluating these trade-offs today._

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-let-america- be-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-let-america-be-boxed-in- by-its-own- computers/2015/04/02/30742192-cc04-11e4-8a46-b1dc9be5a8ff_story.html)

The whole post is worth reading. The same logic could be applied to US trying to put backdoors in its products for a _specific_ national security goal, which will ultimately end up undermining US technological supremacy and national security as well. And yet the current CIA director just implied that US would be _fine_ with backdoored products, because "where are people going to get their encryption from? The foreigners? Ha!"

This sort of _arrogance_ , which is the same type of arrogance that ended up banning chip sales to China last year, is what _will_ make the US lose out in the long term.

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160618/08022234741/cia-d...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160618/08022234741/cia- director-john-brennan-says-non-us-encryption-is-theoretical.shtml)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for that article by Hayden. Wow. It echoed much of what Schneier et al kept saying to him. Shows that they're more honest, receptive, or both when they finally leave the job that forces them to BS for SIGINT gains. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please excuse my ignorance in this area, I was just wondering - why does it matter so much who has the biggest and baddest supercomputer? Shouldn't that which we process on them matter more?

A while back I recall reading rumors that China didn't even know what to process on their Tianhe-2. That kind of makes a supercomputer look like a pile of hardware, no matter how well it's organized or engraved.

<comment><USER12> Its essentially a matter of realistic benchmark acceptance. Right now machines are compared by how well they run this benchmark called LINPACK, which has been criticized for being non-representative of real science codes. As mentioned here [1], China's new system only achieved 0.3% of its peak flops on a slightly more realistic benchmark, HPCG.

[1] [http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/19/china-125-petaflops- sunway...](http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/19/china-125-petaflops-sunway/)

<comment><USER13> While Sunway TaihuLight has weak HPCG performance, 0.3% number should be understood in context. Tianhe-2 (#2 system) scores 1.1%, and Titan (#3, US #1 system) scores 1.2% for HPCG. So Sunway TaihuLight is 3~4x worse for HPCG compared to other top systems.

Note that K computer (#5 system, Japan) scores 4.9% for HPCG. So Tianhe-2 and Titan are again 4x worse for HPCG compared to systems which score best for HPCG.

<comment><USER8> Why does the Sunway TaihuLight have bad HPCG performance? I suspect it has to do with memory bandwidth needed to serve 260C on the same chip?

<comment><USER13> Yes, it's memory and interconnect.

I don't think it's as simple as LINPACK bad, HPCG good. LINPACK _is_ representative for some workloads, when compute dominates. HPCG aims to balance compute and memory. There is Graph500, if memory dominates for your workload.

By the way, K computer is #1 in Graph500.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.graph500.org/](http://www.graph500.org/)

The interconnect on the Sunway TaihuLight seems to be standard Infiniband, from reading other articles about the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> clickbait title. previous top supercomputer, now number 2, was also chinese. should link this article instead of the paged, clickbait one: [http://www.top500.org/news/china-tops-supercomputer- rankings...](http://www.top500.org/news/china-tops-supercomputer-rankings- with-new-93-petaflop-machine/)

</comment><comment><USER16> They already did in 2013 with Tianhe-2.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianhe-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianhe-2)

What is interesting about this new supercomputer is that it is apparently built with CPUs that were developed and produced by the Chinese themselves.

New Supercomputer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunway_TaihuLight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunway_TaihuLight)

CPU architecture: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShenWei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShenWei)

</comment><comment><USER17> Happy to see the US government ban intel chips from China, we are forced to make something by ourselves, good start.

</comment><comment><USER18> Designers of the supercomputer published their paper here: [http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCIS/59/7/1...](http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCIS/59/7/10.1007/s11432-016-5588-7?slug=abstract)

</comment><comment><USER19> China Tops for _now_

Sierra and Summit are coming out soon, which are POWER based.

[https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/summit/](https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/summit/)

[http://www.cnet.com/news/ibm-nvidia-land-325-million- superco...](http://www.cnet.com/news/ibm-nvidia-land-325-million- supercomputer-deal/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Whilst touched on in the linked article but not mentioned is that the codes for the Gordon Bell runs are in the 30-40 petaflop range of sustained application performance. That's not too shabby.

      According to TOP500 author Jack Dongarra, three scientific simulation codes run
      on TaihuLight have been chosen as Gordon Bell Prize finalists, two of which have
      managed to reach a sustained performance of 30 to 40 petaflops. The award is
      bestowed each year on the most noteworthy HPC application, based on "peak
      performance or special achievements in scalability and time-to-solution on
      important science and engineering problems."

Source: [http://www.top500.org/news/china-tops-supercomputer- rankings...](http://www.top500.org/news/china-tops-supercomputer-rankings- with-new-93-petaflop-machine/)

<comment><USER20> Here's something that's always bothered me. In the HPC and scientific computing world, it seems that the word 'program' is never used to refer to what is being run on the computers, rather it is always 'codes' (note plural) that are executed. Does anyone know when or why this split of terminology occurred?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So what is the cost of these CPUs? Could then be used in desktops or more importantly various cloud services (AWS, Google, Microsoft)? What OS do these run?

Is there plans to commercialize these chips? We need accessible low cost ultra-high core count chips widely available. I feel that Intel and AMD have been under performing in this area (growing core count) for the last decade. And Intel has kept the price of CPUs exceptionally high for the last decade as well.

If low cost ultra-high performance chips from China under cut Intel's excessively priced Xeons (+$3K per CPU), it really could change things. If these start to spread, I wouldn't be surprised if Intel tried to prevent the spread of these CPUs outside of China via trade barriers.

<comment><USER21> Ultra-high performance and low cost don't belong in the same sentence. Even with intel if you want bang for buck you're better off buying 12 core CPUs than the 18 core ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For technical information, read the paper: [http://www.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway-...](http://www.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway- report-2016.pdf)

Compared to Tianhe-2, the previous top system, 2.7x more flops, and 3.2x more flops per watt.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway-...](http://www.netlib.org/utk/people/JackDongarra/PAPERS/sunway- report-2016.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER22> Forgive my ignorance, but what's the point of a "super computer" in a world where we can have an application access thousands of machines around the world at once with a button click to compute something? I could see maybe cost savings, but considering how much it costs to build the machine and that I doubt it's used to 100% capacity at all times. Is it a security thing, or just a pride thing? What's the advantage over just farming it out to a cluster in the cloud?

<comment><USER23> Traditionally, supercomputers and mainframes have way higher inter-node IO performance like bandwidth than anything you can spin up on EC2. IO is extremely important because it's very rare to have a true shared-nothing algorithm, which means that Amdahl's Law will bite you and make the little bit of IO and coordination a dominant factor. For example, in deep learning, an awful lot of the work is simply moving around and updating data, which has been a bottleneck for attempts to train NNs on multiple GPUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a question. 125.4 Pflop/s ... that would be about 23k nvidia GPUs (granted, 1080s). They claim they'll be able to do that with 10k by the end of the year, beginning of next year with server-class GPUs.

So that Chinese number seems awfully low to me. I would expect that the number Amazon has to be higher, for instance. Same for Microsoft and Google. Therefore I'd be amazed if the DoD, NSA and even the DoE wouldn't have more capacity available.

<comment><USER25> This isn't about total computing power, but about computing power per one system.

<comment><USER26> But if you have an application that can be distributed transparently to thousands of GPUs, the difference between one and several systems is not very relevant.

<comment><USER27> It is, because some problems can be distributed to 1000s of GPUs and done in parallel, and some can't, because the answer to one calculation depends on the answer to another calculation. You could combine the computing power of Azure, AWS and Google, and be pretty disappointed because of all the waiting time due to latency from one data center to another That's when the system's architecture - software and hardware - becomes important.

<comment><USER28> Many problems are very latency tolerant. Unless you have an algorithm which is truly latency intolerant, I argue you are best served not investing in low- latency interconnect because it costs so much.

When I ran Exacycle, we distributed protein folding, protein design, drug discovery, telescope design, and other problems globally. We never had an issue with latency, because these problems all partition really well. People who claim supercomputers are "necessary" for these problems typically construct problems that are well-matched to supercomputers (for example, running molecular dynamics on huge proteins) but they tend not to have very high scientific value.

In my experience, partitioning to minimize communication has always increased my total scientific throughput, while programming to supercomputers has always reduced it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The Chinese government has been committing industrial theft on a large scale for years. This is well-documented but somehow China has gotten away with it.</comment>


Forget Technical Debt – Build Technical Wealth - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/forget-technical-debt-heres-how-to-build-technical-wealth/ <comment><USER2> Reframe - okay, good point. But reframing this way opens the door to mission and feature creep, when you may just want things to work; so be wary of that.</comment>


Ask HN: How I can visit startups offices and meet founders in Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN Community!
I am going to travel 6800 miles (9800km) to Silicon Valley for the first time in my life, I am really exited and I want to meet startup founders, visit offices from companies like Google, Facebook, Apple. My idea is to meet other people and discuss things, understand how they do business and try to learn as much as possible.
Can you suggest me some ways to do it? Thank you very much :) !! <comment><USER2> Offices: connect people on linkedin and ask, it's surprisingly easy to get a visit to any office in SF/SV. In SF many also have public areas, for example Linkedin, Airbnb, Pinterest.

Founders: it depends. Founders of small startup, same as above. Founders of big/famous startups it's definitely harder.

Go with a more concrete ask though, like I'm doing X, I'm at this stage, I want to understand Y. Then, indirectly, you'll learn more, but otherwise your requests will likely be ignored.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a site which allows you to stay with founders. May be this can help :)

[https://www.staywithfounders.com/](https://www.staywithfounders.com/)

<comment><USER4> have you or anyone you know had experience with this site?

<comment><USER3> No

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just find people (on Twitter/LinkedIn/other) and reach out to them — most people are very happy to meet up to chat over coffee :)</comment>


The Brain Age - <AUTHOR> http://thelongandshort.org/issues/season-four/the-brain-age.html <comment><USER2> The comment that linked to the New Statesman article was helpful. Another good source on how much (or how little) to take most neuroscience hype seriously is the book _Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience_ by Sally Satel adn Scott O. Lilienfeld.[1] Eventually, someday, as the article kindly submitted here for discussion suggests, there will be some actionable knowledge for daily life derived from neuroscience studies, but meanwhile the hype far exceeds the reality. As the article points out, "Paul Fletcher, professor of health neuroscience at Cambridge University, explains that this is the major obstacle for progress in the field. 'Nobody has a credible idea of how brain processes produce mental processes, or even a vocabulary with which to articulate such an idea, should it suddenly come to them in the bath,' he says. 'Good science is usually about linking levels of description: showing how an observation at one level – say, the genetic – ultimately manifests in a physiological process or behaviour or symptom through a series of intermediary facts each expressed at intervening levels… We just don't have these linkages in brain-mind science; it's like the brain observations are made in one language and the mind observations in another, and there is no clue how to translate between those languages.'"

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal- Mindless-...](http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless- Neuroscience/dp/0465062911)

</comment><comment><USER3> counterpoint: [http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2012/09/your- brain...](http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2012/09/your-brain- pseudoscience-rise-popular-neurobollocks)

<comment><USER4> Absolutely right. Most of what passes for "brain science" in the popular media is neuro-bollocks. This doesn't stop quacks and scammers from trying to make a quick buck out of books, bullshit EEG devices and other businesses based on exploiting public ignorance.

<comment><USER5> To be clear, EEG is useful for non-quack things like characterizing epilepsy, coma, sleep, etc.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely, EEG is great in the neurology clinic. Its just not great as a "self-development" tool or a "brain-mind" interface the way a lot of marketeers would like to claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The lineups at the snack counters at movie theaters and sports events are about to get very long. You walk into the theater and the neural marketing transmitters trigger the craving for sugar or salt.

Jury tampering, neurally transmitted propaganda leaflets, crowd pacification, the list goes on. Fun article.

I think I'll go invest in radiation shielding stocks.

[edit] grammar

</comment><comment><USER7> > 'warehouse' the offender indefinitely in some location cut off from society

But that's just prison, the problem is we could make mistakes, and see some things as impossible to fix when they are, but otherwise it's just prison. And prison doesn't have to be bad, as evidenced by some nordic countries.

</comment><comment><USER8> what does this page do to my scrolling :) ?

<comment><USER9> Fuck it up. Sigh.

<comment><USER10> Say Yes to NoScript.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Live flight tracking – what gives? - <AUTHOR> I was (in fact, still am) tracking a flight from Paris to Mumbai in real time - https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/JAI123/history/20170606/0935Z/LFPG/VABB
A few minutes earlier, just off the coast of Mumbai (~ 150 miles out), the tracker showed the flight doing a 360 loop; it still shows on the map at the URL above, and then it resumed on course.
I've tracked flights before, but never encountered anything like this. I wonder what gives. <comment><USER2> It's a holding pattern. Commonly used when there is a lot of traffic at in the destination airspace.

[http://www.wikihow.com/Fly-a-Holding-Pattern](http://www.wikihow.com/Fly-a- Holding-Pattern)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it happens when they are not allowed to land. Mumbai is a pretty crowded airport tbh.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but I thought the holding pattern would commence once the flight is directly over - or close to - the airport.?

<comment><USER4> It can happen anywhere but is usually in relation to a certain waypoint etc. The best holding pattern would be one out of the way of other planes. The link shows aviation maps for the US to give you an idea of all the jetways they would likely be trying to avoid had the pattern been in the US [http://www.iflightplanner.com/AviationCharts/](http://www.iflightplanner.com/AviationCharts/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the common features for any startup website? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a Django project template that is meant to be helpful for start a website for startups, by helpful I mean the most common features for a website before launching.
https://github.com/mariocesar/django-startup
With the time, helping others I realize there are features that are common to everybody. like User management, Leads, Email marketing integration, branding, sysadmin tools, deployment, etc.
I want the project is common enough to be useful immediately and be ready to extend with a particular service, product or awesome idea you are thinking.
I'm on the early stage of development, so:
What do you consider are the most important and common features to all startup websites? <comment><USER2> Startups differ so much that there really aren't any features that are common to all startups other than those features that are common to all websites.

But I like the idea. I would suggest starting with a fork of dj-skeletor ([https://github.com/senko/dj-skeletor](https://github.com/senko/dj-skeletor)) which I've found to be incredibly useful for starting off all my django projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whoa, I wrote down some notes for a very similar idea yesterday. My take on it was more of a service, that let you spin up a page quickly, including things like email signups, analytics, and a domain name.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll list just a few: * Email box to subscribe to future announcements * A simple way to Pay for something(product/service) - one button * Testimonials section</comment>


Trump to withdraw from Paris climate deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/31/trump-paris-climate-change-agreement-238974 <comment><USER2> I don't understand how surrendering global influence and creating fear among European allies strengthens the America First narrative. I don't get what the end game of this Administration's foreign policy is.</comment>


How Elon Musk might make $920M in Tesla debt go away - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-convertible-bonds-20181115-story.html <comment><USER2> >If conditions are met, and all bondholders convert, Tesla would suddenly gain $920 million worth of much-needed financial flexibility. To spark a conversion, Tesla needs to boost its stock price to $359.87 or higher at some point in the three-month period between Dec. 1 and Feb. 28. The higher the price goes, the more likely holders will convert.

Funny, the strike price ($359.87) is already below the current stock price (360.47)

>(Under the bond agreement, Tesla can choose to pay the bonds off in cash, rather than exchange debt for stock. But given its cash needs, that's highly unlikely.)

Elon already said he intends to paid back the debt with cash rather than convert. They confirmed on the last earning call that they plan to pay back all debt with cash flow, and ramp up to 500K Model 3 per year with minimal spending (i.e no more cap raise).

If this happens – while the competitors start facing troubles switching to electric, with plummeting profit margins, their market cap will reach a point where they can buy out a competitor. I bet they'd start by acquiring Panasonic cell manufacturing activities though, to further accelerate their tech lead. Remember that they own 60+% of global car battery production today, and their share continues to rise as they ramp up Model 3 (only 1/3 of the 1rst Gigafactory capacity is built yet, and the Shanghai plant is already under construction). Now, wait for the production of Model Y, the Semi and their upcoming Megapowerpack…

Tesla's market cap has surpassed BMW and Daimler in the past two weeks. Someday, Wall Street will recognize that Tesla is the first (and only?) company to have crossed the chasm to all-electric, and maybe even realize that Tesla owns a big part of the renewable energy business thanks to multiyear technological advance and multi-industry economies of scale.

<comment><USER3> Where is this cash coming from?

<comment><USER4> > Tesla reported a $312 million profit for the three months that ended Sept. > 30, thanks to a surge in production and sales of its Model 3 sedan. The > company has long promised that the model would help make electric vehicles > and Tesla itself a mass-market phenomenon.

> Tesla ended September with $3 billion in cash compared with $2.2 billion at > the end of the previous quarter. The company generated $881 million in free > cash flow — cash produced through operations less capital expenditures. "The > cash-flow number is impressive," said David Whiston, an auto analyst at > Morningstar. "That's a lot of cash for a company their size."

Disclaimer: I own a Tesla and a chunk of TSLA stock.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/business/tesla-third- quar...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/business/tesla-third-quarter- earnings.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tl;dr - that debt is in convertible bonds and if the stock goes up a few bucks most holders will presumably opt to convert to owning Tesla stock.

Doesn't that just dilute the stock?

<comment><USER6> Only if they have to issue new stock to cover the conversion. I imagine the company has these shares in reserve.

<comment><USER7> "Outstanding shares" in the definition of earnings per share et al only count shares held by shareholders, not shares held in the treasury. So it is dilution whether the shares came from a reserve or new issuance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Web site blocked.

<comment><USER9> I use Firefox with ad-blockers and it worked just fine for me.

<comment><USER10> The LATimes (formerly of Tribune) and other Tribune-media properties block EU traffic because of GDPR: [https://digiday.com/media/u-s-sites-continue-block- european-...](https://digiday.com/media/u-s-sites-continue-block-european- visitors-post-gdpr/)</comment></comment></comment>


Choosing Secure Passwords - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/03/choosing_secure_1.html <comment><USER2> Schneier plays enigmatic... but what exactly does he not like about the "xkcd scheme". I mean, it's basically Diceware, isn't it?</comment>