Announcing the MIT Bitcoin Project - <AUTHOR> http://bitcoin.mit.edu/announcing-the-mit-bitcoin-project/ <comment><USER2> If you wanted to spend $500,000 to encourage the emergence of bitcoin in a "market" like MIT, I think it would be more productive to use the USD like a traditional subsidy: Pay MIT merchants to offer discounts on BTC-based sales. If I'm spending $40/week at LaVerde's, a 10% discount might be enough to get me to convert a few hundred dollars of my own money into BTC.

As it is, the project will have to deal with getting merchants set up to accept BTC anyway, and my bet is that most students will be content to sit on their BTC hoping for another price spike rather than go through the trouble of learning how to use it for everyday transactions.

<comment><USER3> That sounds just like a typical boring government subsidy. This is more akin to a large scale academic experiment.

Economics should always be treated like experiments, rather than some attempts at top down market manipulation, ala subsidies.

<comment><USER4> a bitcoin subsidy has the side effect of requiring to actually use and spend bitcoin.

a USD subsidy is just a discount you might receive without even realizing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very interesting. Having that many people all holding BTC will have a bootstrapping effect around MIT.

The three obvious effects are:

1\. stores near campus will (probably) start supporting it

2\. the black market on campus will (surely) start accepting it

3\. Some undergraduates will invent things using it

I think #1 and #2 are more interesting by far than #3... I can't wait to see what happens when BTC and USD are even vaguely on the same footing in a geographic area.

<comment><USER6> 4\. Lots of bitcoins will be stolen, because people don't realize how insecure their various computer systems are

<comment><USER7> They're MIT students. If they lose their free hundred bucks because they didn't secure their computers, they should've known better, it'll be a valuable educational experience, and maybe it'll motivate some to figure out better ways of storing bitcoins.

<comment><USER8> MIT offers degrees in gender studies, anthropology, theater, etc. Not everyone at MIT is a computer geek.

<comment><USER9> And not all computer geeks properly store their Bitcoins either.

<comment><USER10> In my experience, geeks didn't realize mtgox and the like weren't a secure way to store your money, while non-geeks did simply by using common sense (ie. Do they have insurance? Can I sue them locally should something go wrong?).

I know that's not even the proper way to store your coins. But only security experts knew better.

<comment><USER11> I'm a geek, I knew MtGox wasn't a secure way to store my money, but I didn't know what a secure and convenient way was.

Hint: It was [https://electrum.org/](https://electrum.org/). It's amazing.

<comment><USER10> The main point is having your keys secure from theft and loss.

No wallet software can keep your coins safe if it has to store your keys in the same machine you use for your internet activities. You have to use either an air-gapped machine (also called offline or cold storage) or multi- signature.

Then there's also the issue about trusting what you have downloaded. Even if you run the software in an offline machine, if it's meant to steal your coins it certainly can do it. Do you trust Electrum's developers or whoever reviewed the code? What about the maintainer of the website (or Github)? Did you use SSL? Did you check the signature? Did you get the signature from a different and secure channel?

For now I'm trusting Armory, but I'm planning to move to multi-signature once I have time, and maybe use three different wallets to create the keys.

Losing the keys is a separate issue. You have to think about different scenarios like disk failure, data decay, a fire in your house, your friend dying and their family not letting you recover his part of your n-of-m backup, police raid, etc.

<comment><USER12> Have you seen [https://greenaddress.it](https://greenaddress.it)?

Multisignature, deterministic, open source

<comment><USER10> It seems to be good and they are very active. They also support tipping.

But I'm not sure if I like their 2-of-2 scheme. I would rather have a 2-of-3 one. Maybe I should re-read their paper.

Another thing that bothers me is that it's not very safe by default. The only way to be safe is if you use a (reviewed) plugin and you don't let it update automatically. Because if you use Javascript instead, they can take your key whenever they want. Imagine if the FBI seized their servers and injected Javascript malware like they did with Tormail.

<comment><USER12> disclaimer, I'm the founder of GreenAddress ;)

2of2 with time locked transactions means you can prevent double spend and thus allow instant confirmation.

the android app doesn't update by default and the chrome app doesn't update if installed from github but otherwise you are right although the web client remains useful for watch only mode (no keys) or for small amount

these two local and open source wallet clients also verify data before signing against the electrum network.

we are also working on our api, plugins for popular open source wallets (including hardware) and a full Java desktop client using bitcoinj.

we also worked hard to make all user transactions non correlatable to users or us (instant confirmation is out of band) and are working on a bunch of interesting things on top of it

<comment><USER7> > 2of2 with time locked transactions means you can prevent double spend and > thus allow instant confirmation.

Could you explain this more, or link to an explanation?

<comment><USER12> Sure, I posted the design document/'white paper' here:

[http://blog.greenaddress.it/2014/04/05/firstpost- updates/](http://blog.greenaddress.it/2014/04/05/firstpost-updates/)

Direct pdf link:

[http://ghgreenaddress.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/greenaddre...](http://ghgreenaddress.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/greenaddressp2sh2of2hd-61.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Two MIT students have raised half a million dollars for a project to distribute $100 in bitcoin to every undergraduate student at MIT this fall.... The bulk of funding for the project is being provided by MIT alumni with significant additional support from within the Bitcoin community. The total of over $500,000 already pledged will cover the distribution of bitcoin to all 4,528 undergraduates_

I guess I don't understand the "Why?". MIT kids are among the most elite already - why would people donate $100 to each student for that student to spend as he/she wishes? It's an honest question. As a company owner, why would you do this? What would be the benefits you would expect to see? I am clearly missing the "Why?" here. How would you feel if, after this first year, you found that 50% of the kids never did anything with the BTC? Or if 50% of the kids gave their BTC away to another student for nothing?

An interesting thing to see at the end was how many students ever logged in to set up an account, or even check their balance. The funding covers less than $50,000 for anything else - $452,000+ will go directly to the students. That leaves less than $50,000 to cover the administration, the distribution, and the education (a big part). If they get the education part wrong, it will have wasted a huge chunk of the $452,000.

<comment><USER14> The "people" who are donating are MIT alumni and the Bitcoin community. Both have clear incentives for Bitcoin adoption at MIT.

MIT alumni - A degree from MIT is prestigious because of the amazing work the community does in creating and developing emerging technologies. Alums had the chance to work on similar projects in their day. They want to put the intelligence of the next generation to work. It's an investment in the future.

Bitcoin Community - Bitcoin needs to be trusted in order to be widely adopted. If a prestigious institution is putting a lot of brainpower into developing the infrastructure of the payment network, it well lend credence to the entire scheme and provide a great test case for a USD-Bitcoin integrated economy.

MIT students are smart; they will do something with the Bitcoin, even if they do just sell it for the $100. If you were given $100 would you give it away? I don't think so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Perhaps I'm wrong but wouldn't it make more sense to actually just use the open source Bitcoin software to create their own altcoin......perhaps call them Mitcoins? They could give the initial, easily mined Mitcoins away to students, and spend the $500K on promoting it as a viable altcoin and getting the major exchanges to add it to their trading mix. With the credence lent to it by MIT, it would stand a far better chance of success than other altcoins, and the students that keep their initial coins would likely wind up with far more than $100.

This just kind of seems like they are squandering the $500K, and are completely ignoring their greatest asset: their association with MIT. That name carries alot of weight with the type of people that buy these currencies.

<comment><USER16> Because this way they can trade each other bitcoins for goods. If they just gave everyone mitcoins, they would be worthless for a while, and most of the students wouldn't care to even use them.

<comment><USER17> When I went to college, we could use our ID cards to pay for printing, meals in the student union, etc. If MIT did something similar and accepted "Mitcoins" for transactions done on campus, they would give the currency an inherrent value.

<comment><USER18> There is already a TechCash system for making purchases with an MIT student ID. All the on-campus food vendors accept it, as well as the student bar. No need for crypto-currency, there's already a functioning local system.

<comment><USER4> they could pin the value of the techcash currency to the USD/BTC rate

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "Two MIT students have raised half a million dollars for a project to > distribute $100 in bitcoin to every undergraduate student at MIT this fall."

> "The organizers admit they do not know how students will decide to use their > bitcoin. However, they plan to use the time between now and when the bitcoin > is distributed to build up the Bitcoin ecosystem at MIT."

I've been waiting to hear about the next phase of bitcoin development; beyond exchanges and marketplaces. What would be the easiest way to keep tabs on the bitcoin projects at MIT? Is there a publicly accessible message board for this project?

Edit:

Reorganized this post a bit. Didn't mean to side track so much from the content of the article.

Side note:

Please stop hijacking the native browser scrolling. I don't know if it's because I ate guláš for lunch, but the custom scroll effect on this site makes me feel nauseous. Additionally, the site doesn't work at all without JavaScript. Why? The site could probably very easily be built to static HTML files for faster load times, decreased load on the server(s), and wouldn't require JavaScript to render views.

<comment><USER20> Dont understand your issue. the only javascript served by this page should be

      <script type="text/javascript">
      function byId(id) {
        return document.getElementById(id);
      }

      function vote(node) {
        var v = node.id.split(/_/);   // {'up', '123'}
        var item = v[1];

        // hide arrows
        byId('up_'   + item).style.visibility = 'hidden';
        byId('down_' + item).style.visibility = 'hidden';

        // ping server
        var ping = new Image();
        ping.src = node.href;

        return false; // cancel browser nav
      } </script>

for the <a> links, as such:

      <a id=up_7666264 onclick="return vote(this)" href="vote?for=7666264&dir=up&xxxx">

and this makes it surely works correctly even without javascript.

<comment><USER21> Did you make that up? There's like 10 jquery plugins loaded in the bottom of the body, including jquery.nicescroll

<comment><USER20> No, i misunderstood OP, thought he meant HN, due to his wording.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I once read some account or theory of akkadian proto-currency. Market officials would issue clay coins stamped with a pictogram in exchange for goods like cattle or wine. These coins could be exchanged in the market and then would be be cashed in for the goods at the exchange. At that point the coin would be smashed. I guess more durable goods like wine could be stored long term in the exchange and the coins could function as a medium of exchange.

You could do something similar with bitcoins that might be fun on a campus. A trusted bank-like-thing issues clay coins that can be smashed to retrieve the private keys. It might be nice to be able to go from digital back to clay from time to time. It would be interesting to see if they trade at current bitcoin prices, how many get smashed, etc. It also adds a layer of anonymity that can be seen and understood by non tech savvy folks.

<comment><USER23> I'll give this idea away for free...

Bitcoin Lottery. You buy fortune cookies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Part of me is hoping this is a Caltech prank, and when the MIT students try to redeem their "bitcoins" they just find some obscene taunt left for them inside the blockchain.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've read the technical docs for bitcoin, but something I still don't comprehend. With a distributed network like Bitcoin, how does the initial network get started? How do the first 2 or 4 or 12 nodes of a network find one another?

<comment><USER26> Satoshi posts a link to the software to a cryptography forum, and gets 2-3 other people to download it and try it.... and then people begin to dream of the possibilities...

<comment><USER25> Right - but how do those first nodes "find" one another from a technical / networking / communication standpoint?

Edit: I'll answer my own question.

Apparently the current method is to use DNS seeds. Known relatively-permanent node addresses are hardcoded into the client software in order to enable initial connectivity to the network. Once they achieve this initial connection, they're able to obtain additional addresses from the nodes already operating on the network.

After this initial network connectivity is achieved, the addresses are saved, so upon relaunch re-connect attempts are made to the database of previously found nodes. If these fail, then you fallback to the DNS seeds to start the process over.

IRC used to previously be the communication network used to initiate the client connectivity, but this has been deprecated since the network is now more self-sufficient.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_Client_Node_Discovery](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_Client_Node_Discovery)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19956088/how-do-two- bitco...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19956088/how-do-two-bitcoin- clients-discover-each-other)

<comment><USER27> That's completely correct. In order the node tries it's inbuilt knowledge of the network, the falls back to DNS seed nodes to discover peers, then falls back to hardcoded nodes if all of those fail. If no single peer can be contacted the node is dead in the water, and needs manual intervention to help get bootstrapped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like the premise, but it's pretty evident that MIT will then have the highest concentration of naive Bitcoin users on the planet. Not sure what sort of folks might notice this and focus nefarious efforts there...

</comment><comment><USER29> It would be really interesting if the organizers recorded and tracked the Bitcoins that are distributed in this way using the block chain. It could be a financial parallel to the MIT Reality Mining dataset: [http://realitycommons.media.mit.edu/realitymining.html](http://realitycommons.media.mit.edu/realitymining.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> Both the announcement and the comments here focus on the amount in USD. When will (the majority of) that half-million USD be converted to BTC? (Via exchange? Via swap with an individual or entity holding a bunch of coins? Nice way to hedge liquidity if you've got the BTC.) What does it say that it isn't already done, and that it wasn't "each MIT student will receive 0.2 BTC" (or whatever a recent exchange would be for $100)?

There is probably more information available without having to contact those organizing it, and the article was written for media press-release ingestion, but I'm surprised to see no comments on these facets here (at the time of writing, and HN seems to be acting up a touch so I've been trying to submit for a bit after I wrote this).

<comment><USER31> My bet is that the vast majority of those funds has been in the form of BTC for a long time, and a large part has _always_ been in the form of BTC.

Think about it: You're sitting on a large BTC mining fortune, and you've been watching the price of BTC slowly but surely decline over the last few months. What do you do?

Pooling your BTC with others to fund something like this in the hope that it will cause the price to go back up again in the longer term sounds like a really good investment if you're in this situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I launched free Wordpress plugin allowing anyone to build online store that accepts bitcoins (along with dollars) for physical and digital goods:

[http://wordpress.org/plugins/bitcoin-payments-for- woocommerc...](http://wordpress.org/plugins/bitcoin-payments-for-woocommerce/)

Advantages:

\- 100% proceeds goes to you (no middleman service).

\- 100% secure and hack proof - impossible to lose bitcoins even if everything on your store is hacked. It utilizes Electrum Master Public Key logic that generates receive-only addresses without need of any private keys.

\- 100% free (wordpress + WooCommerce + bitcoin plugin - all free)

With more people getting access to bitcoins - it's the right time to offer it as a payment method as well.

Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER33> This is great news for the community (and for the students)! I wonder if MIT is actively investing in coins or using pre-mined ones.

</comment><comment><USER34> So, half a million dollars to raise the demand for bitcoin, while, as ever, the supply remains roughly the same.

Gosh, I wonder why governments like to maintain a flexible money supply?

I am not saying that that is the intention of the organisers. I am just postulating it as a thought experiment, on one of the downsides of having a fixed money supply.

Not that there are not also upsides. But there are also downsides.

<comment><USER35> That's a tired old criticism of Bitcoin. The creators of Bitcoin are well aware that they're basing the currency on financial principles not accepted in mainstream economics.

<comment><USER34> It might be old, but money supply is far, far from a tired issue, whether with respect to bit coin, or to fiat currency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Prediction: Students will a) Buy drugs on the internet. b) Exchange for $ asap. c) Sit on it and probably forget/lose it.

</comment><comment><USER37> > a project to distribute $100 in bitcoin to every undergraduate student at > MIT this fall.

They probably should have studied how habits are formed. $100 is not enough money to change people's shopping behavior.

It will more likely provide the vast majority of the students a frustrating first impression of digital currencies.

<comment><USER38> >$100 is not enough money to change people's shopping behavior.

It's about getting them interested, not necessarily changing their behavior long-term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> When I first read the title I thought that MIT was going to set up a large mining project, partially as a research piece, and partially to counter balance the very large mining pools that are risking the 51% attack. Which I was very excited about.

This is cool too though.

<comment><USER14> "It is often asserted (for example, in the Bitcoin white paper [22]) that a cartel can double-spend Bitcoins. In a strict sense, this is true: a cartel can spend a Bitcoin by paying it to a player Alice, receiving goods or services, and then shifting the consensus choice of history to a branch where that coin is instead paid to a different player Bob. However, we argue that double-spending by a cartel has a limited payoff. Bitcoins have value because people are willing to trade them for goods and services. If players were unwilling to accept Bitcoins for trade or unwilling to spend Bitcoins for fear of having their payments nullified, the value of Bitcoins would diminish significantly as players lost confidence in the system.

Worse, because players are encouraged to generate a new identity for each transaction and because identities are not linked to any side information, players cannot easily determine whether a proffered payment is coming from the double-spending cartel or an honest user. Thus, a rational player should refuse to accept any payments when there is a significant threat of double- spending. As a cartel must outmine the entire Bitcoin network and thus outspend the entire Bitcoin network for as long as it would remain a cartel, we believe it is very unlikely that a cartel could double-spend enough to recover the cost of the attack." \- The Economics of Bitcoin Mining in the Presence of Adversaries (11-12)

<comment><USER40> This presumes that the only reason a double-spend cartel would exist would be to make a direct profit from double spending, rather than, e.g., being sponsored by an entity whose financial or other interests were threatened by the viability of bitcoin and who thus wanted to undermine trust in bitcoin (to, perhaps, make a profit _outside_ of bitcoin) rather than profiting directly through double spending. When you consider that motivation, the trust factor cited in that critique as making a cartel attack _less_ viable based on how undermining trust in bitcoin also undermines the ability to make a direct profit by double spending is irrelevant (or, rather, illustrates exactly why a double-spending cartel may be attractive to a bitcoin-hostile entity that wants to undermine trust in the bitcoin system.)

<comment><USER14> Agreed. The authors make this point in order to move on to the main analysis of the paper: The Goldfinger attack.

"As described above, a 51% cartel attack is unlikely to generate enough reward within the Bitcoin economy to be worthwhile to the attacker. However, this does not rule out the possibility of a 51% attack that aims to destroy the Bitcoin economy in order to achieve utility outside the Bitcoin economy. We call this the Gold nger attack after the character in lm who tries to undermine U.S. currency by ruining its gold backing [15]. There are at least three possible motivations for a Gold finger attack. First, a government or institution might want to block Bitcoin transactions, to enforce the law, deter money laundering, or achieve some other institutional goal. Second, a non-state attacker might seek to gain some political or social goal, perhaps as a form of social protest (such a model was previously postulated by Becker et al. under the name \Occupy Bitcoin" [6]). Third, an attacker might seek an investment gain, for example by taking large short positions in Bitcoins so as to profi t if the value of Bitcoins is diminished. In all of these cases, the attacker must achieve enough utility to justify the substantial cost of an attack. We agree with Becker et al. that it is unlikely that a protest movement could muster the resources to launch a successful attack. And at present it does not appear possible to acquire a short position on Bitcoins that is large enough to justify an attack."

One of the best papers published on the game theory of Bitcoin to date in my opinion.

[http://weis2013.econinfosec.org/papers/KrollDaveyFeltenWEIS2...](http://weis2013.econinfosec.org/papers/KrollDaveyFeltenWEIS2013.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This will definitely help bitcoin to grow as more people get involved with it but it will also create lot of problems like black market will get attracted, stealing of coins will start. Yes, this move is required but everyone involved needs to careful.

</comment><comment><USER42> This initiative reminds us painfully that Bitcoin still hasn't found its kill application (apart from Silk Road). If it had, they wouldn't have to give away BTC for free but these MIT students would queue up to buy BTC.

</comment><comment><USER43> [http://cryptocurrencylive.com/newest](http://cryptocurrencylive.com/newest)

Crypto Currency Live is a social news and blog aggregator for Bitcoin, Altcoin and Crypto Currency Mining

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder how many will turn around and blow it in 5 minutes on just-dice?

</comment><comment><USER45> I have a lot more than $100 in BTC and the only good use so far is speculation. With $500K, they should've funded a Bitcoin project hackathon instead and get some fruit at the end.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is a really good idea. Everyone knows everyone else has 100 more dollars in their pocket, and the smart kids will come up with business ideas to collet the bitcoins.

</comment><comment><USER47> Will they be able to avoid the same fate that happened to auroracoin?

<comment><USER48> It seems harsh to downmod this, I don't think it's a troll? Auroracoin was a new coin technically independent of all the others, with its own blockchain. That was the problem - there wasn't enough mining power to secure its blockchain. In this case, these are just normal Bitcoins - secured by the enormous hashing power of that blockchain.

<comment><USER47> Ah, I misunderstood - I thought they were getting their own coin. If it's just bitcoins then it's not an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Students get 100$ each for silk road shopping, damn!

<comment><USER49> _Students get 100$ each for silk road shopping_

They might also get a nasty lesson in the traceability of BTC, depending on how the BTC's distributed to them.

<comment><USER20> swap BTC for LTC. swap LTC for other BTC's, win.

<comment><USER50> Traceable through two blockchains, lose.

<comment><USER51> But only traceable by people who have access to the BTC/LTC exchange's database.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> MIT joins the Bitcoin Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER35> A Ponzi scheme is an investment operation where the founder pays returns to initial investors with the funds from new investors, and fraudulently keeps this fact from investors. So Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER53> It may, however, be a pyramid scheme, where early adopters can only profit by getting others to invest at ever-higher prices.

History will either record Bitcoin as a currency or a pyramid scheme, and anyone who says they're sure which one it'll be is either a fool or a liar.

<comment><USER35> Yes, but only in the same sense that every currency that has greater face value than the value of its physical ingredients is a pyramid scheme.

<comment><USER52> The US dollar is backed by Americans. A bit coin is backed by who?

<comment><USER54> Bitcoin users. Which is a larger population than that of many countries that have national currencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Can't believe they didn't call this "MITcoin".</comment>


Zeno.fm free radio streaming service - <AUTHOR> https://zeno.fm/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was about to install Icecast on a cheap VM and came out with this. Does anyone know something about this service? As far as I know it's free without limits (listeners and hosting). Haven't read the terms yet, maybe they own the rights of everything you stream (?)</comment>


EnChroma: Color for the Color Blind - <AUTHOR> http://enchroma.com

<comment><USER2> Quick summary of how it works: it's a passive filter, no electronic components. Nothing magical, but it is designed in a very clever way.

Our eyes have three types of cones, call them L, M, and S (you might think "RGB" but it's really not, but that's not a bad lie to believe). Between L and M, for example, there is a fair bit of overlap. So, these glasses filter out the colors in the middle, where L and M overlap the most. This means that the only colors which make it through are the colors which your eye can distinguish better, making the colors more vibrant.

This works because most colors are a mix of a bunch of different frequencies of light. Say, ROYGBIV. Maybe you have color blindness and a ROY mix looks the same as an OYG mix. These glasses will filter out OY, so you are left with R in one mix, and G in the other mix. These are easier to tell apart.

So, obviously not perfect, but it doesn't need to be. It just needs to be better than what nature gave you (if you're colorblind). It also doesn't work for people with, say, 100% deuteranopia, but most people with color blindness aren't that severe.

<comment><USER3> This means they're more like a hearing aid (shifting frequencies you're unable to hear into the spectrum your ear can process and simply adjusting loudness) than a "cure".

I'd want to try one out for the kick of it, but I can't imagine using it the way I would use regular vision-correcting glasses (or contact lenses). Possibly as an aid for driving (where colour vision can be critical) but not as a part of my everyday life -- much like Gunnar glasses, which I only use at work.

I guess I'll have to wait for gene therapy or bionic technologies to advance to the point where I can actually get something that lets me _see_ colours properly.

Or, heck, tweak these so they shift IR or UV into the visual spectrum and they'd have my attention.

EDIT: Emulating "normal" colour vision is interesting but emulating mantis shrimp colour vision would make the glasses worth the price tag.

<comment><USER4> Explanatory note: Most humans have three types of color receptive cones; a few have four. Mantis shrimp have sixteen.

<comment><USER5> Fewer cones may be better for low-light vision. Apparently mammals grew out of a evolutionary niche where this was important, and they generally only have two cones while other vertebrates have four. Remember how dogs have poor color vision? That's true of almost all mammals. Primates are unusual among mammals in having 3 types of cones and better color vision. Meanwhile reptiles, birds, amphibians, insects have 4 types of cones and much better color vision than us.

<comment><USER2> The eye has a limited amount of real estate for light sensitive cells, and animals have a limited amount of energy to dedicate towards eye growth. More cones generally means fewer rods, which means poorer night vision. You can see this for yourself at night, because cones are concentrated at the center of the field of vision and rods are more common at the periphery. A common trick in astronomy is to look next to a star rather than directly at a star, it is not too hard to find stars which are invisible when you look at them directly but which become visible when you look to the side. Various nocturnal and deep sea creatures also feature a number of different adaptations, such as the tapetum lucidum (which reflects light to pass through the retina a second time) and special inverted rods which increase light sensitivity. These structures come with their own various tradeoffs. For example, the tapetum lucidum reduces image sharpness.

In spite of this, humans have very good eyes, with a balance of good low-light vision, good color vision, and good image sharpness. There are other animals better at each of these, but humans are still pretty amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a pair of Enchroma CX Receptors and blogged a while back about my experience.

[http://madscientistlabs.blogspot.ca/2014/06/i-want-to-see- vi...](http://madscientistlabs.blogspot.ca/2014/06/i-want-to-see-violet.html)

Basically, I knew I was colorblind from a very young age. I've refrained from describing things by color since then because sometimes I'd get it wrong and people would look at me like I was insane. Never bothered to learn the resistor color code despite being an electrical engineer. Bombed my geology labs because I couldn't distinuish rocks by their color (and because didn't know there was an exemption available for people like me).

The first time I tried the Enchomas on was a very emotional experience. Chickweed exploded from my lawn. Some red cars were a red I could never have imagined. I saw a distant dead brown tree in my yard that would have been almost invisible before. I suddenly understood why my wife liked a burgundy shirt I had never cared for before.

The reactions of some of the people in the videos linked here probably undersell the effect in some cases. Why? Several of the shots were taken indoors. The Enchromas work best in bright, full spectrum sunlight. I noticed in a few of the videos that people gravitate to the windows or head outside where the effect is more pronounced. Enchroma is very up front about this on their site.

The downside with the CX Receptors I have is their weight. The Receptors fit over my (rather strong) prescription glasses and aren't that comfortable when I'm bouncing around doing something physical. They are great for driving though. I just don't like when I have to take them off - the world dies a little when I do.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is an amazing video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCcxwieuDH0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCcxwieuDH0)

A colorblind person tries these glasses on without knowing what they are. :-)

<comment><USER8> It's funny, because when he sees "purple" you have no idea if he sees the _same_ purple people without color blindness do (and other commenters seem to confirm it _isn 't_) but it's still enough of an upgrade that he's emotionally moved.

You can't beat that with a stick.

<comment><USER9> > and other commenters seem to confirm it isn't

Color isn't in the eyes, it's in the brain. Since these glasses help the brain receive the right balance of RGB, I see no reason to believe he isn't seeing purple. I'm colorblind and trying these on was a mind-blowing trip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would it be possible to apply the same filter to a sample video to make the colors pop for a color blind person? Maybe apply this filter [http://i.imgur.com/EILB2lW.png](http://i.imgur.com/EILB2lW.png) via a VLC plugin?

If so, that would be a fantastic way to demo this product online. And also could be a great way for potential users to know if it would work for them or not.

<comment><USER11> Video only dictates the intensity of the 3 components (RGB), the spectral distribution of the components is dictated by the color filters in the TFT and its lightsource.

I.e. on the software side you don't have much influence over the spectrum that reaches the eye.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> According to their test, I am a "strong pro-tan" and an unlikely to get much benefit from the glasses - I would have been curious to try the effect, but it would have been something rather special for me to consider parting with that much money for them! I can't say being colour blind has really affected my life (since I was a kid and used to colour the sky in purple anyway!) although I do sometimes worry when retouching images that I might get the colours way off. It would be interesting to see colour how other people do - as it is, it usually ends up coming in conversation, we have a good laugh at me trying to read the numbers on the test, and then I forget all about it again!

</comment><comment><USER13> A good friend of mine is colorblind and I did a bunch of research on the topic of colorblindness a while back.

The problem(I'm sure it's great nevertheless) is that their technique doesn't add any new colors and doesn't work for full dichromats.

Today we've got the technology too supply different color information to each eye, it's even commonplace in the form of 3d television. I did a bit of testing on how the brain interprets this (fun party trick, use complementary colors for each frame and the resulting picture is grey without the glasses and can be psychedelic shenanigans with.)

How stable the resulting color is seems to be connected to object recognition, for a fruitstand there certainly were colors I didn't see before, for a fullscreen it oscillated between colors irregularly.

I would love to reverse engineer the interpolation function the brain is using. Since it's subjective it's difficult, even with a big sample size you can't match to control colors.

If anybody wants to get into this topic I don't have any papers since it was a while back, but topics such as MacAdam ellipse, color confusion lines and image daltonization should be good starting points.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm colorblind and thought theirs was one of the best online tests available, but it seems they've changed it. I took their old test a few times and it seemed quite accurate to me (based on the symptoms they list). With their current test I keep getting "inconclusive". Here are my results from the "good" test, I agree 100% with the symptoms but I don't agree with the simulation: [http://enchroma.com/test/result/strong- protan/?completed=1&r...](http://enchroma.com/test/result/strong- protan/?completed=1&result=strong+protan&pts=1.85&dts=0.8745&tts=0.225)

</comment><comment><USER15> What would be the equivalent design for people with normal color vision?

<comment><USER6> From the Enchroma website:

"Do these glasses work with normal color vision also?"

"The EnChroma Cx lens causes a very powerful "super-color enhancement" effect. The same "boost" that it gives to the vision of a person with color blindness can be appreciated with normal color vision as well. In addition, the lens also has a neutral color balance, which means that your sense of color accuracy is not compromised or disturbed.

We have received testimonials from some customers who have normal color vision that the glasses have beneficial effects on their mood, such as from seasonal affective disorder. While this is an interesting potential application, this particular use case has not been studied in detail yet and we do not have any official claims that can be made regarding this use.

The EnChroma Team all wears the Cx Sunglasses, even though most of us are not color deficient–and we love wearing them!"

<comment><USER16> Yup. Apparently they weren't even invented for colorblind people; they were popular among surgeons because the glasses would enable them to better differentiate what's going on in a pool of guts.

The story is that a colorblind friend of a surgeon thought they looked cool and just asked if he could try them on.</comment></comment></comment>


The Legality of Forking - <AUTHOR> http://code.ipstenu.org/2011/the-legality-of-forking/

<comment><USER2> Related:

<http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/10/19/the-point>

</comment><comment><USER3> The author routinely confuses right and legal, makes spurious value arguments and believes that literal contractualism is a replacement for social norms. In essence, the author believes that a defection-oriented society is right and good, that we'd all be better off in a low trust, highly mercenary society.

If he doesn't, then he neither understands his own position nor agrees with it.

<comment><USER4> To me, he seemed to flip-flop back and forth on it until the end. I think he was trying to counter-argue, but ended up presenting the ideas as his own.

Very confusing.

As for the company... They tried the money & collaboration method first. When it was rejected, they went another totally legal route.

We don't know why those devs left. Maybe it was money, maybe it was pride... Maybe they disagreed with the direction that was being taken, and changed companies so they could go in a better direction. Maybe they were bored. We don't know.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure it matters why the devs left. What they did was still a breach of ethics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll either be way upvoted or way downvoted for this, but next I expect to see an article on "The Legality of Spooning".</comment>


Convert now, monetize later. Will it work now? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bubbleideas.com/2012/07/convert-now-monetize-later-seriously.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I may be over-estimating things, but I really think that the age-old strategy to seduce now, monetize later needs a re-visit. Waiting to hear some views.</comment>


What is behind the spread of a mysterious allergy to meat? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/11/mysterious-allergy-to-meat-alpha-gal-lone-star-tic <comment><USER2> link in the posting doesn't work (for me) here's an alternative: [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/11/mysterious- alle...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/11/mysterious-allergy-to- meat-alpha-gal-lone-star-tick)</comment>


Questions to ask, when you move in with someone - <AUTHOR>

What questions would you ask people over coffee if you would move in together with them? <comment><AUTHOR> This is actually the list of questions I'd ask the person:

What is your name? What is your story? Where do you come from? What are your interests? Are you a party-person or a couch potato? Do you like hackernews/designernews? Are you a geek?

</comment><comment><USER2> What do you like to cook?

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems legit</comment></comment>


PinePhone: PostmarketOS Community Edition - <AUTHOR> https://postmarketos.org/blog/2020/06/15/pinephone-postmarketos-community-edition/ <comment><USER2> As someone with a drawer full of these types of devices, from the neo1973 to the Creative Labs Zii Egg and Google G1, I'll definitely be picking up one of these phones when its available .. I've had a lot of fun with my PineTime watch already, as there are a number of different OS'es available for it .. in various states of functionality, of course .. but that's the fun of it. Its _SO_ rewarding to have a device like this, that has so many open options. Write a watch-face in Python? Hell yeah. Learn Rust and carry my lab projects around on my wrist - for sure. Its like a breath of fresh air after decades of walled gardens and proprietary junk.

That said, the Pine-* devices are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream. The PineTime watch back-face is not glued on, even .. but that just makes it a perfect hacker statement! Something so very satisfying about having a device so open, the case doesn't even close. ;P

<comment><USER3> >That said, the Pine-* devices are definitely not .. quite .. ready for mainstream. The PineTime watch back-face is not glued on, even ..

This is a little unfair to the other Pine* products. The PineTime has not been released. A development kit was released. Of course the backcover wasn't fully polished. The finished products from PineTime are more polished, while still retaining a degree of hackability that is unheard of in most of the modern tech world.

<comment><USER4> I'll add that my PineBook is a genuinely _nice_ piece of hardware. People who don't know what it is regularly assume it's some high-end laptop, due to it looking/feeling/behaving nicer that their $1k+ Windows laptop...

I'll admit there's a bit to go still in terms of "ready for mainstream" software, I wouldn't buy one of these for my mom still, but that's pretty much a) linux's problem, and b) _why_ I bought it in the first place... (I've got several MacBooks and iDevices for all the stuff where I'm happy enough with Steve's ghost telling me "You're holding it wrong" when it's not doing things the way I wanted/expected...)

<comment><USER2> I'm genuinely happy to be hearing that the PineBook is genuinely nice .. I'd switch to it from my MBPro in an instant, if I could. Maybe I will, soon.

My intention was _not_ to slag off Pines' efforts. Its just, once you see a generation raised on iThings and pocketRobots, trying to get them interested in the hacky nature of Pine, as a platform, is an interesting task.

I think the point is that it has to excel over the iPhone/Android/laptop classes in some, significant, manner, or else it just gets sniffed at. This is an important thing to recognise in the quest for platform adoption.

That isn't to say that PineDevices are not productive, more useful. They clearly are, and the fact of their quality competitiveness is refreshing. The PineTime watch is actually quite a cute thing to wear. I love being able to write python code on it, but its also comfortable hardware.

But as a platform, it will need the right attitude regarding the open nature of things. This takes a responsibility not common in most adopters of technological tools these days - and with each generational release from the tethers of last years consumer toy, the task becomes harder... or lets just say, more _interesting_ for some of the hackers who want to make great leaps in a new arena.

Someone _will_ write the killer PineDevice app, which won't work anywhere else ..

<comment><USER5> > I think the point is that it has to excel over the iPhone/Android/laptop > classes in some, significant, manner, or else it just gets sniffed at. This > is an important thing to recognise in the quest for platform adoption.

If you see mainstream domination as the goal, e.g. to surpass Android or iOS, you'll probably be disappointed. I see it as giving those of us that care about privacy, security and openness a way to opt out of the Apple/Google almost-duopoly, just as Linux distributions do for the Apple/Microsoft one on the desktop.

For me, it only needs to be just about good enough to use as a daily driver, for now. I know I will be buying the shit out of one when these are available in July.

<comment><USER4> Totally this.

I messaged friends yesterday saying "I'm totally gonna get one of these, and hope _so_ much I get stopped and asked if they can see my phone next time I cross a US border..." I'd be all like "Sure! Plug this into your Cellebrite UFED! Knock yourselves out!!!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time one of these comes up I shed tears for the nokia n900 and maemo which was a linux, fully-functional smartphone that worked great.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900)

Imagine if they'd just kept it around and upgraded it in hardware and software gently as a low-ish priority. It was already fantastic. Given security updates it's still better than any droid and less icky than any apple phone.

<comment><USER7> I'm currently prepping a Fxtec Pro1 that will become a daily driver once Lineage OS is stable on it (thanks TDM for your hard work - once I find a book on how to mod android ROMs I'm gonna join ya).

It turns out that I really wanted this N900 instead, I just didn't know it and at the time was too young to know about it.

There was some sort of attempted revival product called the Neo900 but it looks like it is dead / not updated any more. [1]

In the meantime, I will definitely order a PinePhone once they are in general availability and not pre-orders (sorry but Fxtec burned me so bad to get the Pro1 that I've learned my lesson RE: mobile device pre-orders), and I definitely will if Pine produces a physical keyboard for the PinePhone.

[1] [https://my.neo900.org/](https://my.neo900.org/)

<comment><USER8> I'm really intrigued by the Fxtec hardware, but I won't buy a phone that ships with Android. I'd buy in a heartbeat if they supported a Linux SKU of the thing.

Definitely interested in adding Pine's take on keyboards to my PinePhone.

<comment><USER9> I don't know what you mean with "SKU" but SailfishOS seems to run on it: [https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2467-community- build32120u...](https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2467-community- build32120updated-jan-20-sailfish-os-for-fxtec-pro1/)

( [https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2955-community- buildsailfi...](https://community.fxtec.com/topic/2955-community- buildsailfishos33016-updated-may-6-2020/) )

<comment><USER8> I mean sell me a product that doesn't ship with Android on it. I don't have the money to burn on expensive hardware that I then have to figure out how to flash with a probably unsupported OS to get to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've also made HDMI over USB-C work recently:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19gryM8n9kU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19gryM8n9kU)

This device will be a nice portable computer, so I can travel lightly with a phone, but use it as full blown desktop anywhere I can get hold of a monitor and an USB keyboard/mouse, without having to downgrade my user experience to Android.

<comment><USER11> That's my dream, but I think this crop of devices isn't _quite_ there from a performance standpoint. If I could have the hardware of today's flagships with the mobile Linux distros running on these things...

The Librem 5 might be closer performance-wise; I'd be curious to see how it performs docked. Regardless though, both devices have accelerated development of real mobile Linux DEs, and I'm grateful for that.

Exciting times!

<comment><USER12> What about using your phone as a thin client of sorts? I've used Docker- Machine on an external VPS before when my laptop didn't have enough RAM. The experience was pretty decent (npm install didn't run locally).

I would run my code editor locally and sync the files to the remote box.

Using my phone with external monitor/keyboard/mouse as a thin client seems fairly reasonable in 2020!

<comment><USER11> That would be basically necessary for this kind of workflow, yeah. But the PinePhone isn't quite at that level even; we're talking hardware that's going to feel unacceptably slow at fairly basic things like web browsing compared to even a low-spec x86 laptop.

Which is not to say it's unusable, but keep in mind this is a $150 phone and the software is still a work in progress as well. If you're expecting to use something like this docked as a workstation... well, it's worth tempering your expectations.

<comment><USER13> > unacceptably slow at fairly basic things like web browsing

Are you sure? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8)

<comment><USER11> >compared to even a low-spec x86 laptop

I mean... I have a Braveheart edition PinePhone sitting right next to me, and it's _usable_ , but I don't think I'd want to do even light development work on it. Not because an editor wouldn't run just fine on it (it probably would) but because of all the documentation I'd need to look up online during that process.

It's just sluggish enough with a few webpages open to make that sound pretty unpleasant. But fair, "unacceptably slow" may have been a bit hyperbolic.

(As it stands, I do have a PineTab on preorder, so... I'll likely be giving it a try then, and that has nearly the same hardware as I understand.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lately I've been thinking of the ethics of buying Apple iOS devices compared to more opened devices - most, yet, not all Android devices. In the long term, iOS device are doomed to become unserviceable my users/enthusiasts dues to its closed nature, while many Android devices seem to have it's usefulness extended in time by efforts such as postmarketOS.

Is there an inherent quality of iOS devices that make them unsupportable.

Any given gen of iOS device has, arguably, more devices than any given flavor of Android devices (more fragmentation in Android platform) so in theory it would be more fruitful and impactful to extend the use of iOS devices (if at all possible) yet, this is not what we see. Leading me to think that Apple deliberately makes iOS devices unthinkerable.

This, to me, leads to the conclusion that buying iOS devices is unethical as the only long term alternative for iOS device is to have it recycled while android devices may retain the chance for reuse into the future.

<comment><USER15> > Is there an inherent quality of iOS devices that make them unsupportable.

When you say inherit do you mean the Apple Axx CPU can only only execute the iOS kernel and nothing else? Then the answer is no.

[https://fossbytes.com/linux-based-mobile-postmarketos-on- iph...](https://fossbytes.com/linux-based-mobile-postmarketos-on-iphone-7/)

But for all practical purposes it cannot run anything but iOS and any discussions about running an aftermarket OS is purely academic.

<comment><USER16> > But for all practical purposes it cannot run anything but iOS and any > discussions about running an aftermarket OS is purely academic.

The project you referred to had a follow-up in late april: [https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/22/linux-with- wayl...](https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/04/22/linux-with-wayland-is- now-running-on-iphone-7/).

Calling the project (or any project, really) "purely academic" with the implication that it will never evolve is nonsense. Like many other projects it's of course done for the hell of it, but so is most hobby/open-source projects, and yet many evolve into something much greater. There's plenty of reverse-engineering projects out there that have brought open life into closed hardware.

The question is just whether or not there's enough people interested for it to happen.

<comment><USER15> "purely academic" is not an insult. I think it a statement of fact of where running Linux on iPhone is right now. Aluminium–air battery may change the world but right now they are also "purely academic", as Lithium-Ion once was.

Do you honestly believe the average consumer, or even the average enthusiastic is going to be running Linux on the latest iPhones anytime soon? Apple is dedicated to locking iOS, and probably MacOS, more every hardware iteration. And by running anytime soon I mean usable LTE, GPS, Bluetooth and Wifi.

<comment><USER16> The opposite of "purely academic" is not being in the hands of average consumers and/or enthusiasts, nor is it that everything works and is usable.

Case in point: postmarketOS and UBPorts, as well-established and very serious projects with plenty of traction, are not in the hands of the average enthusiast, and still has ways to go to handle even the Pinephone properly.

<comment><USER14> Both pmOS and UBports are 2 of the examples I have in mind demonstrating the conceptual resilience of non-iOS ecosystem: these projects have small and fluid teams and yet manage to support dozens of devices with different HW requirements. iOS devices are so homogenous, and yet, so hard to them to be the center of these aftermarket efforts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am loving this PinePhone concept and PostmarketOS it because it's cheap, but because it's right, safe, user owned and secure OS is what everyone who spends their money deserves.

</comment><comment><USER18> I thought PostmarketOS did not (yet) support making calls.

So what's the point of running it on hardware designed to address the issue of running FOSS alongside a blackbox baseband?

If you don't need the baseband, what's the usecase that a Chromebook form factor doesn't solve?

<comment><USER19> As mentioned in the article and the issues linked, you can already make and receive calls & SMS and use mobile data with postmarketOS on PinePhone. I have a Community Edition PinePhone with postmarketOS and have gotten mobile data working on a data only SIM, but won't be able to personally test calls and SMS until my new SIM arrives in a few days.

It's a very cool device, and while it's def not a daily driver for most people, it's a ton of fun to use and seems to be improving quickly.

<comment><USER20> Does it support group messaging? I don't see that mentioned. That was the deal breaker for me when I used Firefox OS, Ubuntu Touch, and Sailfish OS in the past. I loved them all! But they all had a dealbreaker or two.

<comment><USER11> Assuming you mean group SMS: I suspect not, since it seems to be using mostly the same stack as the Librem 5, and that doesn't seem to yet. (This is my dealbreaker too; I have a PinePhone sitting next to me running Ubuntu Touch, but I won't be able to use it as my daily driver until that works.)

<comment><USER20> Thanks - yeah I figured.

This is silly, but I always get confused about whether "group sms" == mms. Maybe group sms was mms years ago, and things have since changed.

I love trying these alternative OSes (I even thought Windows Phone was great!), and really hope I can use one as my daily driver in the near-future.

<comment><USER21> Group SMS == MMS. This is the one thing that is stopping me from switching as well. There is someone who has gotten experiental support, but it sounded like there is still some work left to get it to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > As for the hardware, we will be making an announcement closer to date; > presently we are working on the assumption that the PCB to ship with this > edition will still be version 1.2. We may, however, decide to make some > further tweaks to this PCB design. We will, of course, document and inform > you of any changes to PCB 1.2 there may be in the future.

Hmm, it will be interesting if there are any major things than need to be fixed with the v1.2 PCB. There were quite a few things fixed between 1.1 & 1.2.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is the hardware capable of handling an external monitor? This phone could be very useful to me if it becomes a desktop computer on demand.

<comment><USER10> Yes. See above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been researching getting a mobile "phone" that is only ever used as a hotspot for an iPod touch which runs (1) an always-on VPN and (2) apps for SMS and VoIP voice calls. So in a way, phone that can't do voice calls sounds like a good thing to me.

<comment><USER10> Where did you get this can't do calls?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The RAM and internal storage seem to be too less otherwise I might have bought it.

<comment><USER26> The PinePhone has 2 Gb of RAM, which is plenty for a smartphone (especially running Linux). You can put in a micro SD card to get more storage.

<comment><USER27> How is that plenty? Is Android not Linux?

<comment><USER28> Android and postmarketos are both linux in the same way as whales and rabbits are both mammals. It's true, but not usually the useful way to compare them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think I'll try and use this as a PMP.

<comment><USER30> Prototype Mobility Platform?

Percussive Maintenance Phone?

Pimp My Pandemic?

<comment><USER31> Portable Media Player?

<comment><USER29> bingo

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How will this OS be secure? Via obscurity?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Rather the opposite; it runs an up-to-date Linux kernel and an Alpine user land. An exploit against this would likely work against most servers and/or containers on the net.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Coffee Test – Quality, on-demand in-person user testing of your app - <AUTHOR> http://coffeetest.io/?ref=hackernews <comment><USER2> One piece of feedback -- I know what Slack is but never created a bot / user before. In the first step where it says to create a bot large, I wasn't sure what that meant or how to do it. A quick GIF or video showing the process might increase your conversion.

<comment><AUTHOR> good idea, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I clicked on the FAQ at the bottom of the page expecting to learn more about the service but instead I got a page telling me more about Large and restocking office supplies and office cleaning

</comment><comment><USER4> please fix your meta tags. you copy pasted from your hirelarge.com

and slack thinks that coffeetest.io and hirelarge.com are the same site

</comment><comment><USER5> How do you find the user testers?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are sourced through various channels and job posts. They are typical every day consumers, which is great for many products but less so for SaaS and enterprise products.

<comment><USER6> Are they paid?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who are the user testers?</comment>


Show HN: Etymap – interactive visualization of Wiktionary words and etymologies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zifeo/Etymap <comment><USER2> [https://www.reddit.com/r/etymologymaps/comments/7oasca/inter...](https://www.reddit.com/r/etymologymaps/comments/7oasca/interactive_etymology_map_for_wiktionary_words_oc)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting!

Is this (wiktionary) also where google gets their etymology graphs displayed in search from? I'm always amazed by these graphs, showing the history of words all the way back to Latin

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll have to check this out on my computer later, since it's unreadable on my iPhone 7 (left half of screen is solid grey). Looks cool though.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool. The demo website is fast, and the graphs are intuitive, pretty, and tell you exactly what you want to know.</comment>


Western Digital and OwnCloud Team Up to Bring OwnCloud to Home Users - <AUTHOR> https://owncloud.org/blog/western-digital-and-owncloud-team-up-to-bring-owncloud-to-home-users/ <comment><USER3> I don't really get why one wants to trust ownCloud with private files:

\- "logging changes": [https://github.com/owncloud/core/commit/eea96298951805dfc6eb...](https://github.com/owncloud/core/commit/eea96298951805dfc6eb9f58ccb172b5a718e7e2) vs [https://owncloud.org/security/advisory/?id=oc- sa-2014-020](https://owncloud.org/security/advisory/?id=oc-sa-2014-020)

\- ownCloud is a PHP application with quite a few third-party modules of varying quality. Looking at the security history of Wordpress, it's not hard to imagine what's going to happen.

\- The maximum bug bounty for ownCloud is 500 USD. I think my data easily exceeds that.

\- From what I've heard, security fixes are provided to enterprise customers first, so if you're lucky your adversary is one of them and knows about vulnerabilities way ahead of you.

To their credit, ownCloud openly publishes security advisories for every vulnerability, but I still think it's architecturally designed to fail. Exposing this to the internet is probably a bad idea. If you just need storage, you probably should just use dumb storage. If you need project management stuff and care about privacy, maybe look at [https://protonet.info/](https://protonet.info/) or something along those lines. Also [https://www.boxcryptor.com](https://www.boxcryptor.com) is really nice - the Dropbox desktop client does proper cert pinning (ownCloud doesn't) at least.

Other than that, storage connected to a raspi via USB will probably yield rather bad transfer speeds?

<comment><USER4> If you're interested in something ownCloud-ish but with more security emphasis, you might like Sandstorm:

[https://sandstorm.io](https://sandstorm.io)

[https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/developing/security- prac...](https://docs.sandstorm.io/en/latest/developing/security-practices/)

(Disclosure: I'm the lead developer.)

<comment><USER5> Happy user here. Sandstorm works amazingly well.

Especially enjoy

\- the usability of Sandstorm, -it just works.

\- extensibility - you can adapt other apps, open source or commercial, to run on sandstorm. As far as I'm aware you can even upload them to the hosted version.

\- security seems to be taken good care of by pragmatic and experienced people.

\- the fact that I can pay a small amount monthly for it depending on my storage and computing needs, making sure incentives are aligned (although last time I checked I think Sandstorm hadn't even started the billing machine I think.)

Furthermore it seems to be completely, real, free software, -I ran the OS version at a maching at home for months before oasis became available to me, and I haven't noticed any juicy parts missing or filed under "Enterprise only". The only difference between the versions seems to be the storage and compute resources available. (OK, the billing system doesn't seem to be in the Open Source version, but that is OK to me. : )

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the kind words. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > We will create a self-hosted device with Western Digital hardware and > ownCloud software, to be made available for on-line purchase in early 2016. > In preparation for this we're looking for people who want to help us lower > the barrier to self hosting and help turn this dream into reality.

Maybe I'm being cynical, but the way the first paragraph is worded seems a bit odd. Is the goal of this project to act like free R & D for ways to deploy this or make it compartmentalized? It seems like it. Why would you send 10 developer units out, require proposals, etc.? No compensation is offered -- just a devkit.

> This is where you come in! We're looking for concrete proposals and offers > for help. Can you build a disk image which boots up and allows a laptop to > find it over the local network? Can you create a setup optimized for > performance on the Pi? Can you write a simple web interface to finish > configuring the Pi or to check how it is running? Develop a backup tool? > We're looking for creativity here!

Fantastic, that sounds a lot like crowdsourcing your product development.

> Sometime in February or March you can expect ownCloud and Western Digital > Labs to release a goodie – and you will be there with a big thank-you in the > manual!

A thank-you in the manual. My goodness!

> This is a project of the ownCloud community, not ownCloud, Inc.

But who's going to be shipping the final product, with the fixes that someone makes, and gets the thank-you in the manual? The ownCloud community?

<comment><USER7> We're an open source project, remember. 'product development' happens in the open.

ownCloud, Inc. is not involved other than allowing some of their employees (me incluis) to spend some time on this, even though it isn't interesting for customers at all. See [http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2015/12/western-digital- labs-a...](http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2015/12/western-digital-labs-and- owncloud.html)

so, on your last point: yes. As in - WD will ship the hardware, and the software comes from volunteers - or not at all.

IF this turns out successful (as in, the first batch of devices has great software and sells out in 2 weeks so a second, much bigger batch is made) we'll talk to WD about sharing some of their profit with the community. Until then, there is only costs for all involved and we're not asking for financial donations to cover that. Isn't that cool?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> People are somewhat missing the point with the security discussion: the target use case is almost certainly the "home NAS" box, such as the WD "My Cloud" they already sell. You put it entirely inside your firewall and use it to stream media and so on.

Having an open-source version supported by WD is much better than having a random closed-source web UI on your NAS.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I'm looking at the security discussion with interest and a lot of confusion.

I appreciate that security is important and those that give it up for connivence deserve neither... but I'm at a loss as to why some 'hacker' would go to the effort to sift through the type of content that is typically stored on the average NAS box. Like you said, family photos, birthday videos...

If you're a digital nomad / homeoffice user then yes, your livelyhood depends on something more secure - but that's not the userbase here.

I have rolled my own raspi/owncloud in the past but happily use the WD MyCloud to sync all the devices in my house.

<comment><USER3> > but I'm at a loss as to why some 'hacker' would go to the effort to sift > through the type of content that is typically stored on the average NAS box. > Like you said, family photos, birthday videos...

It's not 'some hacker' going through your stuff, it's an automated attack scheme. Your adversary may choose to do something CryptoLocker-like or more stealthy stuff that makes your NAS part of a botnet. Neither option is good.

As others pointed out, it is highly likely that the ownCloud instance ends up publicly accessible, because that's the primary way to access files from the outside.

<comment><USER9> Thank you. Out of curiosity, can you point me at a significant case cryptolockering of NAS data? I've read windows boxes being hit.

I have nothing on my WD MyCloud that isn't duplicated somewhere else (either it's a backup of google photos/videos, or dupe'd to a USB drive)

Again, a lock is the same as a HD failure to me. Both could happen with this setup. If the information is too valuable to fall prey to either circumstance then the system as implemented the wrong setup.

Now, a botnet is different. I assume one could not run off of the WD box and the Raspi/Owncloud base is too small to target. Unless you can point me at content that indicates otherwise?

<comment><USER3> > Out of curiosity, can you point me at a significant case cryptolockering of > NAS data?

[http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2358733/synology- na...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2358733/synology-nas-drives- get-cryptolocker-clobbering)

> I have nothing on my WD MyCloud that isn't duplicated somewhere else (either > it's a backup of google photos/videos, or dupe'd to a USB drive)

It sounds like it doesn't apply to your case, but a potential issue with Dropbox/ownCloud/Google Drive is that the master server can instruct all copy- holders to delete their copies. You should have off-site backups, but I suspect many people don't.

> I assume one could not run off of the WD box and the Raspi/Owncloud base is > too small to target.

This is not really an issue - there are multiple router-based botnets as well. You can't really mine bitcoins, but there are tons of other stuff you can do, e.g. DDoS is usually not constrained by the processing power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was about to ask if a Raspberry Pi 2 would be sufficient to run OwnCloud, but it looks like it's the hardware of choice—great!

Is there a way to run OwnCloud along with a typical system (really, an ssh server and a few utility programs) on the Pi? It's mentioned as an SD card image, but it would be nice to run it on top of a normal Raspbian or Arch installation.

<comment><USER11> ArchLinux ARM has packages for OwnCloud. Unfortunately, the software itself is a PHP spaghetti monster from hell (is there any other kind?) that doesn't really scale.

Even worse, the RPi is extremely limited in I/O capabilities, with only a single USB2 hub shared between the 100Mbit ethernet and 4x USB2 connections (including your harddrive.) This means that any file transfer is limited to 10-11 MB/s in the best case... We can only hope that a RPi3 will with USB3 support will materialize before 2020.

I am running a RPi2 as a home server / NAS / VPN / seedbox, and it works - <USER2> long as you set your expectations right.

Finally, note that the RPi kernel stack is always slightly outdated due to out-of-tree patches. Most ARM SOCs suffer from this problem, and the RPi foundation is slowly taking steps to fix that after years of user pressure. However, I have decided to switch to a low-power x86 CPU with a fully open linux stack for my future home server needs, until ARM decides to fix their driver mess.

<comment><USER12> > Unfortunately, the software itself is a PHP spaghetti monster from hell (is > there any other kind?) that doesn't really scale.

And here you go invalidating your whole post with some unnecessary inflammatory B.S.

Sure, I mean Facebook runs on PHP, but we all know it just doesn't scale and can't be written cleanly.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand, Facebook being built on PHP meant they eventually felt the need to dedicate significant engineering time into building their own PHP VM (HHVM) along with their own spin-off of the PHP language (Hack) to get it to work for them.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, and they could have switched to any language they wanted, but they stuck with PHP and created HHVM (they most likely run other languages as well).

They also felt the need to create other open source things you have had heard of, such as react.

<comment><USER15> Heh - it's funny you mention React there, in the context of sticking with PHP instead of jumping ship to some more appropriate technology:

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/11/mark-zuckerberg-our- biggest...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/11/mark-zuckerberg-our-biggest- mistake-with-mobile-was-betting-too-much-on-html5/)

It was only 4 years ago when creating HTML5 based hybrid mobile apps was "the biggest mistake Facebook ever made", and it was all about "native apps" for iOS and Android... Now React and React Native are "the new hotness"...

<comment><USER14> Or maybe the devices are "good enough" now to actually run these sorts of things?

But yes, it is a circle of life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are already personal cloud products like tonido is available on pi ([http://www.tonido.com/tonido-for-raspberry- pi-2/](http://www.tonido.com/tonido-for-raspberry-pi-2/)) They work rather very well.

</comment><comment><USER17> I had high hopes for OwnCloud. I set up a server to manage my home backups and found it to be far too slow for my needs.

It was estimating over a year to sync a directory that was about 180 GB in size. That's just not going to cut it.

<comment><USER7> Well, I don't know what your upload speed was - a normal ownCloud setup can saturate the link speed with large files, a bit less with small ones though the latest versions get very close.

Of course, if the link is slow, 180GB is going to take a while.

If it wasn't the link speed then I suggest having a look at the manual: [https://doc.owncloud.org/server/8.2/admin_manual/configurati...](https://doc.owncloud.org/server/8.2/admin_manual/configuration_server/performance_tuning.html)

<comment><USER17> Thank you for replying. I should have specified.

I am running this on a 100mbps LAN. It's not even coming close to saturating my switch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm just curious...

I run a number of web apps as separate docker containers, and use nginx as a frontend to force everything to HTTPS. Is there anything that these cloud products provide over and above what I have now?

</comment><comment><USER19> Weird that they'd do this... They already kind of do with their My Book Cloud offerings and MyCloud Files[0].

[0] [http://files.mycloud.com](http://files.mycloud.com)

<comment><USER7> yeah, but WD is in the business of selling hard drives and they look everywhere for ways of doing that. In this case, connected to a Raspberry Pi and such boards... We're happy to benefit by getting a cool, ownCloud branded device for our users ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One hard drive? One _1TB laptop hard drive?_

I sure hope that's not the configuration they RTM with, because they're going to have a lot of people upset about disk failure and data loss if they do.

<comment><USER7> backup is mentioned for a reason ;-)

We sure are looking for people to help us ensure thing are safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find this more than a bit ironic since WD was working with the NSA to insert backdoors into all of its hard drives, and the entire point of OwnCloud is supposedly privacy and escaping surveillance.

<comment><USER22> Can you provide a source? All the ones I can find (Der Spiegel's article on TAO, Kaspersky's "Equation Group" report) seem to claim that the NSA had found ways to reflash the firmware on the victim's machine to add backdoors, and had high-quality, robust patches to WD's firmware to add backdoors. But I can't track down a claim that WD shipped (knowingly or otherwise) malicious firmware, or that they knowingly provided unpatched firmware sources to the NSA.

<comment><USER7> Still an interesting point. Note that the software for this device will be fully developed in the open on Github and IF WD builds in a backdoor between us shipping the final image to them and them putting it on the devices before they go out to users, it will not be terribly hard to find out. Heck, ownCloud 9 will already verify its own code and warn if things are modified, maybe we can do something in the OS image which does some checks, too.

You're welcome to help out!</comment></comment></comment>


The Stand affecting businesses and saving lives - <AUTHOR> http://programmersworkplace.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-stand-affecting-businesses-and.html

<comment><USER2> I had a friend who was a video game designer for iMagic back in the early eighties. He told me that they all stood up when writing code, and that they listened to loud music so they could dance while they worked.

I working from home most of the time. Usually I take my shoes off when I'm at home, but starting just yesterday I speculated that I might be more productive if I left my shoes on when working. It does seem to make a positive difference.</comment>


Virus Tracker - <AUTHOR> https://virustrack.live/ <comment><USER2> This is a great tool, and very useful. It has great, easy-to-understand data. As a designer, the UI makes it my favorite source for getting recent data on COVID-19. The comparison tools and the customization of turning countries off/on is awesome. Great job, guys!

</comment><comment><USER3> The VirusTrack/COVIDvu Open Source team needs help - we need reliable data sources because of the disruptions caused by JH CSSE changes without notice. We're looking at engaging bluedot.world, call to action for open source providers or commercial providers who'd like to contribute to the cause. Please comment here or contact Jenni via feedback AT virus track.live

Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER4> This a fantastic tool that I use everyday to keep up with the virus. It's the only source I trust!

<comment><USER5> Seconded. Didn't know about this tool, but have been looking for something similar with custom country selection and logarithmic graphs. Thank you for making this, keep it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a super cool project started and run by seriously some amazing software veterans. It's become by goto for the latest data and graphs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome site. Needed. Consolidates all the relevant numbers in one place. Clean and straight forward design.

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome, a simple tracker, no complexity. That's what I needed everyday to check what's up.

</comment><comment><USER9> So happy to see this up here, I look forward to more folks joining to make this site even better.

</comment><comment><USER10> These people know what they're doing

</comment><comment><USER11> This site is fantastic! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> w00t! We made Hacker News! Thank you, kind stranger.</comment>


What a $20MM marketing budget for security buys Cisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.cisco.com/cdc_content_elements/flash/security/therealm/index.html?POSITION=sl&COUNTRY_SITE=us&CAMPAIGN=The+Realm&CREATIVE=Superheros&REFERRING_SITE=CISCO.COM+INDEX

<comment><USER2> And your point is? I don't see the content inherent to this post.</comment>


SF's boom in home building to slow in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-boom-in-home-building-to-slow-in-2019-13497817.php <comment><USER2> So it's a vicious cycle now: when times are good, stuff is built few can afford; when times are bad, nothing is built at all.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your opinion on GitHub Actions? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Funny you should ask. I am having a lot of frustrations with it.

We are seeing jobs that hang, lingering seemingly forever. I canceled one today that was 7 days old. They have un-openable logs for some buld step that should take <10 minutes but which it says has been running for days. Apparently, the official advice is to press the stop button and the a re-run button. But often the re-run jobs button never becomes available. This has been preventing an important PR of mine from ever completing the automatic checks, so it can't be merged.

Some bits of the system assume a maximum of 100 jobs. I think we have about 140.

Sometimes the status gets confused, especially if you can find and use the re- run button. For instance, here's one where it says "100 completed jobs", I know there are about 140. All of them have green circles, but there are also errors. Here's one. Some job failed with "unable to access '[https://github.com/[redacted]/'](https://github.com/\[redacted\]/'): Failed to connect to github.com port 443: Operation timed out". Though githubstatus says things are fine right now. And also inexplicably, this particular job I checked twice has a green check next to it at the left.

Sometimes asset transfer from S3 takes a long time, but of course I don't know that's github/azure/microsoft's fault.

In the past, we saw lots of builds fail due to HTTP errors retrieving packages from azure.archive.ubuntu.com. This may be fixed, so that's something.</comment>


Does Facebook break up marriages? Research links social networking and divorce - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/does-facebook-break-up-marriages-2014-07-07

<comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

 _One theory: Extramarital affairs might have taken months or even years to develop in the past, but with Facebook, Snapchat and other social networks your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend is just a click away, says New York-based divorce financial strategist Jeff Landers, author of " Divorce: Think Financially, Not Emotionally ." When marriages go through rocky patches and people do seek support, temptation has never been closer, he adds. "You can easily reconnect with an old boyfriend or girlfriend from college online," Landers says. "It all starts innocently enough, but the next thing you know you are meeting for coffee and the next thing you know you're having an affair."_</comment>


Want to Know If the Election Was Hacked? Look at the Ballots - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-was-hacked-look-at-the-ballots-c61a6113b0ba <comment><USER2> Rather than desperately thrashing around to find some excuse why your loss didn't happen, why not instead work on improving your message to Rust Belt voters? Trust me, it'll bring you a lot more success next time.</comment>


Scientists Teleport Data on Tiny Scale - <AUTHOR> http://www.newser.com/story/48898/scientists-teleport-data-on-tiny-scale.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Seriously, i really think that if they get at there, the information world will change forever. Hope be alive until there.

<comment><USER2> Call me superstitious, but I believe that teleporting machines are just copying machines. The you a t the destination is just a copy. The you at the departure is just thrown into the supply hopper to build the next arrival.

<comment><USER3> Is that meaningfully different from what happens to you now, instant-to- instant? How many of your atoms need to be swapped out for the copy to stop being "you"?</comment></comment></comment>


IBM Watson understands TED talks - <AUTHOR> http://watson.ted.com

<comment><USER2> Cyan font on a white background, ffs, go back to geocities where you came from!</comment>