EFF: Dissecting the Gizmodo Warrant - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/gizmodo-search-warrant-illegal

<comment><USER2> It bothers the heck out of me that there is a corporate sponsored, multi-state police force out there (REACT) that jumps at their whim.

Apple is a high level advisor to REACT, serving on their steering committee. There is no coincidence here.

Just try getting that kind of personal law enforcement reaction if your cellphone was lost and then sold on craigslist.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I misunderstand you, but that's an enormous accusation you're wielding - that Apple could influence a police force to execute an illegal warrant at their bidding?

Do you have any sources backing up that REACT is "corporate sponsored"? While I saw that Apple was on "a steering committee", where did you hear that they were a "high level advisor"? While "steering committee" sure sounds impressive, that doesn't tell us much about how they could have influenced the process for issuing and executing a (allegedly) illegal search warrant.

<comment><USER4> > that's an enormous accusation you're wielding - that Apple could influence a > police force to execute an illegal warrant at their bidding?

Wait a minute — is there some question about whether this has just happened? I thought it was clear that:

1\. A police force just executed a warrant.

2\. The warrant was illegal.

3\. They executed it at Apple's request. (Or Apple would have denied it and requested that they return the equipment.)

So I don't see how that's an "enormous accusation". It sounds like a simple reporting of the known facts. Do you dispute one of those bullet points?

<comment><USER5> Yeah -- #3. Where are you getting this from? And what does your parenthetical "(Or Apple would have denied it and requested that they return the equipment.)" even _mean?_

It's true that the warrant was executed as part of the investigation into a crime involving Apple, but that doesn't imply that Apple has the level of control over the investigation that you're claiming they do.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I didn't realize that was unclear. I meant that if the folks at Apple who had reported the crime had thought it was unjustified to seize the "reporter's" equipment, they could certainly have issued a press release saying that they regretted that the police had seized all his stuff, and hoped that the guy would get it back immediately. They might additionally have behind-the-scenes channels to make requests like that — as Adobe did in the Sklyarov case — but that hypothesis isn't necessary for my #3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the end of the article: "... the task force should freeze their investigation, return Chen's property, and reconsider whether going after journalists for trying to break news about one of the Valley's most secretive (and profitable) companies is a good expenditure of taxpayer dollars."

If someone purchased stolen property, why does it matter who it came from? In my eyes, the analyst loses a lot of credibility with this final statement. Feels childish.

<comment><USER7> Purchasing stolen property should be a much smaller investigation -- police do it all the time. While they shouldn't do nothing, this is a significantly more expensive reaction.

<comment><USER8> If someone purchased the stolen Mona Lisa the police would be down on them like a ton of bricks.

It's all a matter of relative value. This iPhone prototype was worth a lot more than the parts inside (which was obvious to Gizmodo since they paid upwards of $5000 for it).

<comment><USER9> I get the stolen Mona Lisa and relative value analogy, but Gizmodo offered to return the 'stolen' property to their rightful owner!

Didn't they send Apple something like, "We believe we found a prototype phone which might be yours. If so, let us know and we'll be glad to give it back."

I certainly hope all thieves were like that...

<comment><USER10> I don't think they'd be having any trouble if they had done that _before_ dissecting it, publishing what they found, outing the engineer, and publicly demanding Apple submit a request for the return of their own property.

<comment><USER7> Apparently, the original finder contacted Apple to return the device _before_ selling it to Gizmodo.

<comment><USER11> _Apparently, the original finder contacted Apple to return the device before selling it to Gizmodo._

Well, no.

The law gives him the option of: 1) finding the owner and returning it, or 2) turning it in to the police.

What the guy actually did, it seems, was poke around in the phone, find out the name, Facebook details, etc. of the person who'd lost it, and then... called an Apple customer-support line to tell them a vague story about finding something that might or might not legitimately be an iPhone.

Even if we accept that as a bona-fide attempt to return it to the owner, the only other option the law gives him is turning it in to the police. From that point forward, anything he did which was not "turn it in to the police" qualifies as theft; the relevant bit of California law has been quoted so many times in so many threads that there's really no argument left on that point.

And since "sell it to a tabloid for $$$" is not "turn it in to the police", well, you can kinda see how we end up at criminal investigations and search warrants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This analysis hinges on some large assumptions.

First, Chen must be considered a professional journalist, and securing journalist protections for bloggers seems to be actively pursued by the EFF (a conflict of interest to keep in mind).

Second, he must not have directly committed a crime himself, and receiving stolen goods is a crime. The claim that this was "lost" property may be the argument of the defense, but any case based on this seizure will surely claim that the phone was stolen. The evidence will be searched to determine Chen's knowledge of the phone's procurement.

<comment><USER13> Apple gave Gizmodo bloggers press passes to Apple events, so Apple seems to believe they were part of the press.

<comment><USER14> Just because you invite someone to your party doesn't mean they are your friend.

Handing you a press pass is simply the easiest way to tell my security that you are allowed in. It doesn't mean that it makes you a member of the press.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This whole analysis is predicated on the idea that Gizmodo editors must not be the subjects of a criminal investigation because none of them have been arrested. Doesn't that whole analysis fail against the single word: "yet"?

<comment><USER16> It's not predicated on that, though, the broadness of the warrant seems to be a problem _regardless_ of whether Jason Chen is suspected of anything.

<comment><USER15> I read the article twice and don't see the evidence to support that argument. Can you be more specific?

<comment><USER17> >Furthermore, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal appellate court for California and the surrounding states) in its 2009 opinion in United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing Inc., 579 F.3d 989 (9th Cir. 2009), identified a series of guildelines meant to ensure that even otherwise lawful warrants authorizing the search and seizure of computers do not give officers too much access to private data that might be intermingled with evidence of a crime.

They seized what probably amounts to all of the personal and professional records stored in his home, which seems excessive given the nature of this investigation.

Also:

>First, California Penal Code Section 1524(g) provides that "[n]o warrant shall issue for any item or items described in Section 1070 of the Evidence Code." Section 1070 is California's reporter's shield provision (which has since been elevated to Article I, § 2(b) of the California Constitution). The items covered by the reporter's shield protections include unpublished information, such as "all notes, outtakes, photographs, tapes or other data of whatever sort," if that information was "obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public."

<comment><USER15> Second quote first: that citation is circular. The reporters shield law doesn't protect reporters who themselves commit crimes.

First quote second: how do you know what is or isn't excessive? Nobody besides the authorities know what they're investigating.

<comment><USER18> " _The reporters shield law doesn't protect reporters who themselves commit crimes._ "

According to Orin Kerr's analysis on _The Volokh Conspiracy_ ([http://volokh.com/2010/04/27/thoughts-on-the-legality-of- the...](http://volokh.com/2010/04/27/thoughts-on-the-legality-of-the-gizmodo- warrant/)), while the US Federal law has this exception it's missing from the California state law.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the link! To sum it up: it is possible to argue that the Shield Laws as written in CA protect Gizmodo, but the result of that interpretation would be "weird" (their word), in that it would essentially protect journalists from prosecution for their own criminal activities.

Extrapolating: we won't know until a judge (or, most likely, series of judges) interprets.

[update: more fodder, some of it from Volokh, none of it particularly comforting for Gizmodo: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003539-37.html?part=rss&...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003539-37.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News- Apple)].

<comment><USER16> What's interesting is that the shield laws are there for the journalist _and_ their sources. I'd almost argue that it's more important to protect the sources than the organization in most cases.

It's scary to me that prosecutors and cops now have a whole ton of information that may be related to sources for other stories Jason Chen's worked on independently of this particular iPhone thing. What if some whistleblower at REACT was working with him to expose deeply rooted corporate corruption of the task force for instance? It's unlikely, but if a shady officer thought something like that was up, it's a pretty big incentive to go for an overly broad warrant on a convenient public issue.

<comment><USER15> _"It would be frivolous to assert--and no one does in these cases--that the First Amendment, in the interest of securing news or otherwise, confers a license on either the reporter or his news sources to violate valid criminal laws," the U.S. Supreme Court has said. "Although stealing documents or private wiretapping could provide newsworthy information, neither reporter nor source is immune from conviction for such conduct, whatever the impact on the flow of news."_

If there is one word that does _not_ apply to this situation, it is "clear".

<comment><USER18> The _First Amendment_ doesn't, but the Congress in its infinite wisdom could (at least for Federal law breaking). For whatever reason, the California legislature may have done this with their shield law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This makes me feel really disappointed with the EFF, as they're a charity and they're wasting time (and resources) on this matter. Sure, it's a point worth investigating further: are bloggers legitimate journalist or not?

However, they seem to be have ignored what this case is about: is it illegal for journalists - or _anyone_ \- to buy stolen goods?

<comment><USER20> The issue here is whether or not the state has the right to take thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment because you stole a $300 phone. If the search warrant was simply looking for the phone in question, that would be reasonable. A search warrant requesting the author's Google history and browser cache is excessively invasive and harmful to society in general.

Even criminals have rights, and those rights are worth protecting. They are what makes America great.

<comment><USER19> Right and I agree with you... except that this isn't a $300 phone. If it was, why did they pay $5,000 for it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Was the warrant excessively broad? I'd say! What exactly is the point of the police seizing someones mice and display screens in a case like this other than to ensure that Mr Chen now has an even bigger bill to pay if he wants to get back to work any time soon?

<comment><USER22> Mice, Keyboards and monitors yield fingerprints which show the person in questions physically used and accessed the machine.

<comment><USER23> Considering the police took several hours to go through everything, fingerprints could be obtained on site, could they not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think some interesting commentary that was only touched on a bit by the EFF post can be found here [http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/gizmodo- warrant-s...](http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/gizmodo-warrant- searching-journalists-terabyte-age) (linked by parent).

I think what may be the interesting question here is that the police may have taken far more information then would be necessary for evidence gathering, thus constituting unreasonable search and seisure. The EFF article also notes that the search warrant doesn't state a probable cause for why Chen should have been searched, and why specific materials should be searched in relation to the presumed crime (which they don't actually state). From what I gather, this could make the evidence they gather (if any) inadmissable in court.

What's more, since the constitution guarantees freedom of the press if Chen is considered to be a member of the press that would likely make his 4th Amendment protections more stringent. The article points out that last year the 9th Circuit adopted pretty specific rules about what could be searched and those rules will likely have to be followed.

Even if Chen committed a crime I think that this was indeed an over-reaction. The use of a broad search warrant could make all evidence gathered inadmissable in court and turn this into a circus of finger-pointing.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is pretty interesting, really, regardless of whether you think Gizmodo should be tossed in the slammer or not. I've already learned quite a bit about the history of journalist shield type laws that I never would have known otherwise, particularly from the dude the EFF links to at the bottom:

[http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/gizmodo- warrant-s...](http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/gizmodo-warrant- searching-journalists-terabyte-age)

</comment><comment><USER25> Summary: the warrant to gank Chen's equipment should not have been issued to begin with.

<comment><USER26> I think that is correct with the caveat that the article assumes that Chen would be considered a journalist.

The article says that "Federal and California law both protect reporters against police searches aimed at uncovering confidential sources or seizing other information developed during newsgathering activities." The commentary discusses the author's opinion that Chen's equipment should not have been taken under sections of the Federal Privacy Protection Act and the California constitution designed to protect journalists. The article does not discuss whether Chen would be a journalist under those laws though it appears to tacitly assume that he would be.

<comment><USER27> Do you have any sort of specific criteria for what is considered a journalist? It seems like the discussion here tends to equate journalists with reporters and then speculate to what extent Chen should be considered a reporter. The problem is that reporters are actually a proper subset of journalists.

<comment><USER28> I believe the Gawker CEO has said publicly something to the order of: Our employees are not journalists. Journalists have to do it right, we just have to do it first.

However I can't find a link to back it up so..

<comment><USER29> Here you go: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/06...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2009/06/21/AR2009062101822.html)

<comment><USER27> That's interesting, but I don't think that's what positr0n was describing. The Washington Post reporter describes Gawker's work repeatedly as journalism. Even the photograph caption uses "Gawker Web site reporter" to mean blogger.

It does say that the CEO cares more about breaking the story first than verifying facts and sources--but I don't see where he goes so far as to state or imply that he doesn't consider Gawker to be journalism. And he is quoted as saying: "We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention." I can see how that might mean what positr0n says but I can also see how that could have a nuanced meaning in the context of the WP article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm pretty sure I will be down voted, but still:

1) Everyone is too keen on saying that the iPhone was "stolen" based on the definition in the CA law. However, let's put the legal definition aside for a second and consider was the iPhone really "stolen". The Apple employee lost it in a bar, someone picked it up and "misused" it. Dictionary definition of "stolen" (from Apple's dashboard dictionary) is "take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it " and I don't think that happened here and if it did, it remains to be proven.

2) I do agree that Gizmodo should not have paid for it, however, informants are almost always paid and IMNAL but it can be tricky to prove if Gizmodo knew how the iPhone was acquired before hand, and moreover if they knew if was an unreleased version if iPhone before they paid for it. Yes yes, common sense aside, where is the proof. People on eBay have paid a lot more then they're worth for a lot of things.

3) And regardless of whether Gizmodo is guilty or not, let's wait for the judge-jury to decide, it is unclear what the charges against Jason Chen are and why were those not disclosed before his house was raided.

4) I think the outcome of this this whole episode could have some really big ramifications, such as defining if professional Bloggers are journalists, or not.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a question: Why they are not acting against Gizmodo as a company and bothering Chan?

<comment><USER32> Because he is the one who (allegedly) received stolen property.

<comment><USER31> But he works for Gizmodo and I am sure he did not pay that $5,000 from his own pocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is it possible that the investigation might be including possibilities that Gizmodo has encouraged people with trade secret knowledge belonging to Apple to come forward to Gizmodo?

</comment><comment><USER34> So we pay taxes to support such force out there, that serves only the corporations?</comment>


Twitter's Growing Ecosystem: Building on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/04/0413_twitter_ecosystem/index.htm <comment><USER2> The article states: "Twitter makes its code available to outside developers"

I understand that this article targets people other than developers also, so they've not used anything technical like "API", but to make more sense, shouldn't that read:

"Twitter makes its data available to outside developers"

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not just the data, it's the ability to push to the platform. I like the phrase "open tools" in place of API.

An API is making your code available for others to call, but this phrasing could be confused with open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This Squidoo lens is probably the most comprehensive list of Twitter apps on the web:

<http://www.squidoo.com/twitterapps>

<comment><USER4> For even more check out: <http://twitdom.com> & <http://twtbase.com></comment></comment>


Post your HN tricks. - <AUTHOR> Seems like there are a whole bunch of features that a lot of people don't know about. So I'd like to get a list of everything in one place. <comment><USER2> 1\. Absolutely love <http://ask.searchyc.com/> to check if I missed any AskHNs

2\. In my personal wiki, I have a list links to people whose comment threads I follow closely. [<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=*username*>]

3\. <http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive> has not been updated recently, but still a good resource

4\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/classic> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/lists> of course

5\. <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039> modified to help me not visit one aggravating unethical "blog" (you know which). I don't hide it altogether as I value the discussion here.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, the new version of #5 allows you to apply arbitrary styles to each item, rather than just hiding them.

I put a blue background on all the Ask threads for instance.

To do so, the 'banlist' is now a textbox. Each line is in the format:

      *regex*->*style*

The default style is to hide anything that matches. Both titles and urls are matched. So:

      valleywag.com
      Ask HN->background-color:red;

Would hide anything from valleywag.com and put red backgrounds on all the Ask threads. The styling is pretty rough, so not sure what else works beside background colors... feel free to complain if something needs fixed. ;)

<comment><USER2> Cool! _background-color_ works but _color_ does not.

 _text-decoration:line-through;_ works and that is what I use for marking the websites to avoid. Thanks for the cool tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want to catch up on the last ~week, then you'll want: <http://news.ycombinator.com/best>

<comment><USER5> ok thank you! [http://www.newsguide.us/art-entertainment/movies/Todd- DiRobe...](http://www.newsguide.us/art-entertainment/movies/Todd-DiRoberto-of- American-Satellite-Hosts-Independence-Day-Charity-Event-for-Operation-Bigs/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To start off:

Search: <http://www.searchyc.com>

Submissions by new members: <http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories>

I know there is one to only see submissions by old users but I don't remember the url

<comment><USER6> <http://news.ycombinator.com/classic>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The [X] button in the top right corner does wonders for one's productivity. As a bonus, use a different browser for work than you usually do for "surfing". My Firefox is crawling with gadgets that each light up and pulsate with every "must see" action that happens in my extended family of RSS feeds, contacts, and bookmarks. My work browser is a light, crisp little Opera thing that has 10 tabs open all set to to various sub-URLs of <http://localhost:8080> :-)

<comment><USER8> I don't have an [X] button in the top right corner. I do have 3 brightly coloured pill buttons in the top left though.

<comment><USER9> I have a yellow tab in the top left corner. Go figure :)

<comment><USER7> Be?

<comment><USER9> You're pretty close :)

<http://haiku-os.org>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One general writing trick I learned - after writing a long comment, I'll usually go back and edit it so in the first sentence people know what they're going to read. Some of the best comments I've seen on here are detailed, long ones, but if it jumps right into the middle of presenting the argument and evidence and statistics, a lot of people will glaze over it. So the short intro that lets people know what you're writing about helps a lot.

<comment><USER8> You can use this "trick" successfully for _any_ form of writing.

As the rule goes: tell'em what you're going to tell'em, tell'em, and then tell'em what you told'em.

<comment><USER11> I've heard that rule before, and like it a lot. Do you know anything about its origins or who said it?

<comment><USER12> This reply will let you know that I don't know anything about its origins or who said it.

Sorry, I don't know.

We've just learned that Jim doesn't know anything about the origins of that writing advice, or who said it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> GM Script that enables foldable comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=747786>

</comment><comment><USER14> PG's microblog:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg>

<comment><USER15> PG's other microblog:

<http://ycombinator.posterous.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not really a 'trick', but here are two cool bookmarklets for for visualizing polls:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700669>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528172>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Don't forget the bookmarklet, makes posting stories a piece of cake: <http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> If your an iPhone user this works well on your homescreen: <http://www.icombinator.net>

</comment><comment><USER18> The HN Onepage Greasemonkey script. <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30512>

Allows me to load pages in a separate frame and then vote and/or comment on them. Saves me the trouble of loading up 15 tabs and forgetting to vote up the stories that I like.

</comment><comment><USER19> To get italics, use asterisks (*).

</comment><comment><USER20> To bypass the anti flame-war controls click 'link' when the 'reply' link isn't visible yet.

<comment><USER21> Noob question: What anti flame-war controls?

<comment><USER22> The idea was to make it impossible to reply quickly to deeply-nested threads in order to let the flames settle (the assumption being that deeply-nested threads are generally just flame wars). It appears it was only made less convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you want more than just the link in your RSS feed there was <http://nirmalpatel.com/fcgi/hn_feed.fcgi>

It looks like it is now just a redirect to [http://andrewtrusty.appspot.com/readability/feed?url=http%3A...](http://andrewtrusty.appspot.com/readability/feed?url=http%3A//news.ycombinator.com/rss) which if you de-construct the url leads to a more generic solution.

The content from there can also be fed into Yahoo Pipes for any filtering you want to do. Given the plethora of HN related pipes it seems like everybody just creates their own. Having said that if you want somewhere to start I use [http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=c0d729843a9b9e8de...](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=c0d729843a9b9e8de399036b1876f63b)

</comment><comment><USER24> What is the trick for getting active URIs on profile pages?

Examples:

* active: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mqt>

* inactive: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=iamelgringo>

</comment><comment><USER25> Autopager: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925>

Ajaxy loading of next pages

</comment><comment><USER26> RSS feed that includes HN's comments:

[http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=23159aed1a913917f8...](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=23159aed1a913917f8f422bb8f6e7e71&_render=rss)

</comment><comment><USER27> While working I use this strategy to limit my HN reading to compile cycles: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447077>

</comment><comment><USER28> I dunno, I kinda like the idea that people learn about it as they participate and lurk on the site--kind of like leveling up in an informal way, instead of getting it all at once.

<comment><USER29> They'll have to learn to search for this, once it falls off the homepage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> <http://hackerne.ws> -> <http://news.ycombinator.com>

<comment><USER31> While I guess the folks who registered this name have nothing but legitimate intent, this is pretty much text book man-in-the-middle attack technique. It would take one change to the DNS record and a simple sniffing proxy, and every user to use that address would be compromised.

As long as it is not owned by pg and rtm, I would strongly suggest you use news.ycombinator.com

Actually looking at the registration data, I'm extremely suspicious of this name. If I had ever used it, I would be changing my authentication details.

whois for hackerne.ws:

1234567 lemesos, lemesos 12345 Cyprus

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (<http://www.godaddy.com>) Domain Name: HACKERNE.WS Created on: 27-Nov-07 Expires on: 27-Nov-09 Last Updated on: 28-Nov-08

Administrative Contact: man, europe email@example.com none 1234567 lemesos, lemesos 12345 Cyprus 35799123456

Technical Contact: man, europe firstname.lastname@example.com none 1234567 lemesos, lemesos 12345 Cyprus 35799123456

<comment><USER20> yep.

And even if the folks who registered it are 'legit', if they let the domain lapse who knows where it will end up and it's not as though you'll get a warning the next time you point your browser to that address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> noprocrast: on maxvisit: 20 minaway: 700

</comment><comment><USER33> IRC channel: #startups on irc.freenode.net

<comment><USER20> I'll just pretend I didn't see that, HN is a large enough timesink as it is.

<comment><USER34> Was about to post the same thing... <plugs ears and says "la la la la la"></comment></comment></comment>


Zuckerberg Tells Startup School: MySpace Had Chance To Succeed - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/10/20/zuckerberg-to-startup-school-myspace-was-great-earlier-on-but-felt-threatened-by-facebook/ <comment><USER3> I am still a big fan of MySpace for music. If I see a listing for a band that I don't know, I just google band name+myspace, and know that I will get an instant stream.

Websites make it often painfully difficult to find an instant stream, and before officially releasing a record most band are not listed on iTunes.

The only somewhat adequate replacement became YouTube.

<comment><USER4> Soundcloud > Myspace. Bandcamp > Myspace.

Myspace could have salvaged themselves as a music community, but they somehow screwed it up. I'm guessing nepotism is involved in some way, with some of the worst user interface decisions I've ever seen come from a company on its way out. Pop-up music players? Going directly to "Myspace radio" after streaming a song you selected? Horrible, backwards-thinking decisions.

Music profiles benefit from being simple and looking simple. People just want the names of the songs and a play button and they're happy. This is why the indie community has generally shifted over to Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

The best thing Myspace has done in the past five years is allow people to delete their old profiles without gaining access to the profile itself (via the declaration of ownership).

<comment><USER5> User's old profiles were very valuable. Back in the day, most bands were heavy MySpace users. They built up a huge number of followers. Now that customers have moved on, bands can't access their old fan base. They had to rebuild their online fan base for outreach & engagement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ben Horowitz noted the importance of being 10x better than your competitors..friendster was better than fb, but not so much better that it made people switch.

<comment><USER7> Friendster was more popular than FB, and worked great, until they deployed a catastrophic JSP rewrite that was 10x slower than before and everyone left.

<comment><USER8> Wow, didn't know that they rewrote from PHP to JSP. Got any articles/blog post to share? I'm curious.

<comment><USER9> <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=friendster+rewrite>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And right now, twitter is, incomprehensibly doing the same thing - <USER2> Facebook to try and become a walled garden with rich content from your 'friends' instead of sticking with their anti-facebook strengths - the open API, open data, developer friendly platform that was once their genius idea and special point of difference.

</comment><comment><USER11> Zuckerberg is arrogant and full of himself... I want to see the new myspace succeed...

</comment><comment><USER12> Tired of these badly written articles by so called "journalists" on tech news sites, I read it twice and still don't entirely understand what Zuck was really saying.

</comment><comment><USER13> So did Friendster. But they both f'd it up. Facebook has held on ... so far.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone know when a video of the talk will be online? I missed the livestream.</comment>


The New Razer Blade - philipp-spiess http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade <comment><AUTHOR> I feel quite old and stupid that I clicked on this expecting shave technology.

<comment><USER2> I assumed that's what it was too.

If that's what you're looking for, though, Bevel[0] was just launched.

(I used to get _terrible_ razor burn - switching to a double edge razor has made a _huge_ difference. Bevel didn't invent the concept, obviously, but they do make it very convenient.).

[0] [https://getbevel.com/](https://getbevel.com/)

<comment><USER3> er, what exactly did they do to make it "very convenient"?

Their shaver looks very similar to a Merkur Futur [0], which has existed for ages and isn't considered by many to be the best safety razor. The cost for the razor is fair at $60, but they want to extract $30 a month afterwards! Insane! Their lineup consists of a priming oil, badger hair brush, shaving cream and aftershave balm. None of this is out of the ordinary for well equipped wet shavers, and costs nowhere near $30 a month to supply.

Oh well, if it's worth it to someone to subscribe and forget, what do I care. I would rather keep the money in my pocket. You only need to order wet shaving supplies perhaps once a year anyway, even less if you know what you like and stock up.

Notice the bullshit copy on their website: they conveniently leave standard single blade double edge razors out of their comparison matrix so that only the Bevel Razor gets the 6/6 checkmarks.

[0] [http://www.shaving101.com/index.php/product- reviews/safety-r...](http://www.shaving101.com/index.php/product- reviews/safety-razors/261-merkur-futur-adjustable-safety-razor.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does nearly every laptop these days look like a Mac Book Pro? Once in a while I see things like the Yoga, but from the radius of the rounded corners, indents for opening the lid, shape/size of the keyboard keys, placement of inputs... They might as well have spray painted the MBP black and called it a night. Maybe they did...

<comment><USER5> It's nuts. Every laptop I see now is a plastic MacBook knockoff, and this is no exception.

<comment><USER6> What makes it a Macbook knock off? Chiclet keyboard? Sony's VAIO X505 did it first. What else? Smooth, rounded corners? (lol)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is actually a very very interesting laptop where my only question is: Will it run Linux without too much trouble?

I have a Lenovo W530, but I have an inkling that the future of the Thinkpad is very grim for my work use cases. Laptops like the Razer Blade would be my next potential go-to if it can run Linux without much fuss.

<comment><USER8> How so? [http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/w-series/w540/](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/w-series/w540/)

I really like my MBP, solid fast machine. It only has 16GB and I would like a machine with at least 32 if not 64. I am a little jealous of a W530/W540 owner. You can have RAID SSD and 32GB of ram. Coupled with VMWare Workstation ... swoon!

<comment><USER7> Right, I've seen the W540 as well, but I guess I'm thinking longer term since my previous laptop, the T61, was used for 5 or so years. In that time, I'm not too confident about Lenovo's workstation plans...

> I am a little jealous of a W530/W540 owner. You can have RAID SSD and 32GB > of ram.

There's also an available mSATA slot. I have 3 SSDs on mine, but I think I went too far.

<comment><USER8> You did not. Use all available resources I say! In my MBP I have 1 TB SSD and a 1TB rotational drive (replaced the DVD drive) for backups (runs an rsync every hour ssd->platter). When the reliability is proven I will run dual 1TB SSD and rsync to a networked machine. My Samsung 840 EVO has been stellar. You don't need Hadoop when you have fast disks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most of the specs look great, but like most made-for-Windows-8 laptops on the market there is a fixed limitation of 8GB of RAM.

Its 2014. I want 32GB of RAM as an option, and 16 GB minimum.

I am still looking for a great Linux development laptop but this is not it.

<comment><USER10> 16GB minimum is still a little silly. My desktop has 16GB, kind of on accident, and my machine literally has no idea what to do with so much RAM. Most of the time it spends 8-10GB on disk cache.

There are absolutely use cases for more. I would love to have my home machine at my desk at work, for example, for EDA tools. But that's why you make 16GB (or even 32GB) an _option_.

<comment><USER8> No way. Everything with a keyboard should probably ship with 16GB. My dev server has 128GB, my laptop has 16, 4GB is a toy and 8GB is the minimum for useful work. This laptop looks pretty good, but compared to a W540 which can have dual sata and 32GB I would have to pass.

My next desktop will have 64GB which is not extreme in the least. The worst trend that I don't see being fixed is the lack of ECC memory. ALL MEMORY SHOULD BE ECC!!!1! Lack of ECC is like running an open loop feedback mechanism. no good can come of it. No ECC and terabyte filesystems, recipe for horrible unrecoverable disaster.

<comment><USER11> > My dev server has 128GB

...when you say 'dev server', is that a computer in your home/office, or something hosted somewhere? And, if it's hosted--who are you using for hosting that makes 128GB-memory machines available cheaply enough that it's at-all- sensible to use one for a dev server?

<comment><USER8> It is a used machine hosted at a friends colo.

For something similar [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sun-SunFire-X4600-M2-8x-AMD- Opteron-...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sun-SunFire-X4600-M2-8x-AMD- Opteron-8356-2-3ghz-Quad-Core-64gb-RAM-2x146gb- HDD-/171263758307?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item27e01d8fe3)

The only reason to use hosting providers is to provide instant provisioning/scaling. Otherwise, money burned. Colo space is fairly cheap, so are old but still totally serviceable bad-ass machines.

<comment><USER11> > Colo space is fairly cheap

I'm not sure you have the same definition of "cheap" as I do. $5/mo for a 1GB DigitalOcean droplet is cheap.

Buying old-but-badass hardware seems to be similarly cost-effective for that purpose (if that link is to be believed), but where (other than "a friend in ops") can you get 1U/2U of colo hosting for anywhere near that price?

I guess, if you're talking about the marginal price of an extra 1U/2U on top of your existing production rack, it can be negligible. For non-business- affiliated goofing-around, though?

<comment><USER8> I mean actual colo space, like you just pay for 4u, 8u, bandwidth and power. No machines, just space.

Both are "cheap" just along different axis.

<comment><USER11> Right, that's the same thing I was talking about. But again, how is paying for 4u/8u of space at all "cheap", when all you want to stick in it is your own 1u junk server?

<comment><USER8> But I don't want to stick my own 1u junk server (although I do have those, 4 cores, 8gb). The low end SSD back VPS are phenomenal for what you get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Razer needs to do the right thing and make Blades that are less gamer-friendly and more business-friendly. If you can tame the battery life with a more sane graphics card, you could give Apple a serious run for its money.

<comment> w-ll I would say Apple is more artist friendly than business friendly, and that's a perfect place for these high end Razor Blade machines to give them a run for.

<comment><USER13> I think GP was referring to how are Macs are engineer-friendly, since they run *nix and work well with Linux.

<comment><USER2> They run (an old version of) the FreeBSD userland, but I would hesitate to say that the "work well with Linux".

It's _tolerable_ , but it's hardly a stellar experience. Things like suspend/hibernate, fan control, etc. are problematic, even though they're fine on most other pieces of hardware on the market.

I always sigh a bit when I hear people recommending installing Linux on a Macbook, because they're not getting the full experience - they end up thinking that Linux is buggy and doesn't support these functionalities well, when the truth is that it _does_ , as long as you use hardware that is actually supported.

There are a number of reasons that Apple hardware will probably always be a sub-optimal platform for Linux. There was a HN comment a while back from one of the Linux kernel developers responsible for maintaining the MPB drivers who explained why this is the case, though I can't find it.

<comment><USER8> I don't think he means by "works well with Linux" that macs actually run Linux even ok. Which is clearly not the case, a mac running linux is waaay shittier than say a Lenovo W540 running Linux.

Running Linux on a Mac is not a good idea. Just getting it to boot is a 4hr plus long endeavor. Best to run Linux in a VM on your mac. Windows on Mac is a better idea than Linux.

I think by "works well with Linux" in that it has a bash shell, has Homebrew, etc.

<comment><USER13> No, I was under the (mistaken) impression that Linux on Mac is fine. It's not. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER8> No problem. I thought that as well until I had to boot linux on my mac for an SSD upgrade.

Witness the help pages organized by specific MBP version: [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro) yes, it is _that_ complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice laptop, but unusable website. It takes 3+ seconds to at least see something, and the scrolling effect makes everything seem so slow. There is an obvious memory leak somewhere, the graphs in devtools are INSANE for such a simple site, take a look [http://imgur.com/j13Xk6h](http://imgur.com/j13Xk6h)

<comment><USER15> They are loading like 20 jQuery libraries in the header. Nothing is minified. By looking at the JS code here [http://assets.razerzone.com/eeimages/products/15348/js/templ...](http://assets.razerzone.com/eeimages/products/15348/js/template7.js), it seems like they vomited jQuery on top of a PSD2HTML site. Bad indentation, bad class names like ".bar-prc1", ".bar-prc2", ".bar-prc3", no selector caching, no consitent usage of chaining, inconsistent style overall, in other words, a mess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For me, the most important selling point of a laptop has become how good the keyboard is. Usually, that starts with an evaluation of its shittiness. Hires version of the keyboard: [http://assets.razerzone.com/eeimages/razer_pages/16039/razer...](http://assets.razerzone.com/eeimages/razer_pages/16039/razer- blade-gallery-v2-05.png)

\- Has delete key in usable position. Good.

\- Ctrl is in the bottom left corner. Good.

\- Right Meta key is Fn. Bad.

\- No Home/End/PgUp/PgDown keys. No-go. Next!

</comment><comment><USER17> I feel like I am probably pretty alone in this. But I have really been hoping that they would update the razer edge pro line.

I have a surface pro 2 for work that I really like and having something close to that that could do high performance gaming has basically been a dream of mine since forever.

Sadly what they have shared on their forums seems to reflect that they don't want to do, or can't make work another edge despite its pretty wide popularity.

</comment><comment><USER18> I _really_ like the specs and looks of this. Trouble is, I really don't need another computer in my life. I've already got four desktops, and three tablets, one of which is a Surface Pro.

But, that screen and those specs are very appealing.

Plus, as someone who was just short of addicted—okay, addicted—to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I did not know there was a new Wolfenstein game coming up. Also excited to find out more about that.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks beautiful. How long does it run on battery? The specs are nice, but if you can't really be mobile you may as well get a desktop.

<comment><USER20> Even if you have to plug it in, a laptop is still far more portable than a desktop. If you're moving about and working in different areas, but still have access to power then a laptop could still be a better solution.

<comment><USER21> An iMac is portable, a Macbook is mobile. I'm hoping this is mobile, but knowing the PC laptop world my guess is <2hours of battery under serious use.

My question is will this need to be tethered to a power outlet to use? Is the battery just so your machine doesn't shut off while moving from room to room?

Personally MacBooks have a good battery but I'm _still_ debating buying an external battery to keep that running longer. I wonder if you could modify the HyperShop batteries to work with PC laptops...

<comment><USER22> They're claiming 6hrs of "productivity" and 2-3 hours of gaming, which is about what I get with a less powerful 13" retina MacBook Pro. Granted, this is also 1000 dollars more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So, with this and the Lenovo Yoga Pro both having QHD panels, I'm hoping there's a lot more in this vein coming down the pipe.

<comment><USER24> Still 16:9 though for some unfathomable reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _Page design made me dizzy._

But seriously, I really wouldn't mind if laptops were a centimeter or two thicker and the battery held far more than 2 hours on heavy usage. My backpack designed for laptops could easily carry two or three, so that is not a problem, and when the laptop is in use, the extra thickness doesn't really matter.

I just don't see why this craze for thinness.

<comment><USER11> I would say it's so you can have a laptop _on you_ in situations where you weren't specifically planning to bring it with you, just because it's light enough to forget you have it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How hot will this thing get when gaming? Can it be used for prolonged sessions when playing graphics intensive games on high settings (like Titanfall)?

I have an Alienware M17x and that sucker will burn you if you have it on your lap.

Beyond that, it is prone to overheating when placed on a flat surface and I had to usually put some sort of spacer underneath to give it better airflow.

</comment><comment><USER27> Oooh, this looks really nice. I'm so happy that high-pixel density screens are becoming available. It's about time.

But with a built-in battery...ahh, almost had me. Sticking to Thinkpads. I'd gladly sacrifice some thinness to be able to replace worn-out batteries or use multiple batteries on the go.

</comment><comment><USER28> I cannot wait for this style of website scrolling to die. It was neat as a proof of concept, but as a way of actually presenting information, it's ridiculous.

I want to be able to read some information and see some pictures. I don't need that to try to be a futuristic experience.

Get off my lawn!

</comment><comment><USER29> No power button next to backspace? Has a delete key? Shut up an take my money!

</comment><comment><USER30> Interesting how it's so thin and yet not really that light.

<comment><USER8> Lead, for solid smooooth heft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is a black Macbook Pro.

<comment><USER32> With a much more powerful grahpics card

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> is it wrong that I want one for the screen, but to run OSX so I can write code?

I don't game on a laptop.

<comment><USER26> What about dual booting or using Virtual Box and installing your favorite Linux flavor?

<comment><USER33> Having done the Windows 7 & archlinux dual boot dance for many years before getting a MBP, I can say I don't want to go back to that :(.

Hackintosh is close enough, but if there isn't support for the hardware I would rather try wiping off windows and putting arch/freebsd on there.</comment></comment></comment>


Onda v812 vs. Ipad 3 - Is One Better Than the Other - <AUTHOR> http://www.technogist.com/2013/03/onda-v812-vs-ipad-3.html

<comment><USER2> Too bad there aren't any details about battery life.</comment>


Ask HN: Utilizing wasted time, to work on my startup? - <AUTHOR>

I work in a startup. Naturally, the environment is very focused on getting things done, rather than hours put into the day.
I however have created a reputation of coming to the office early, and staying all day, every day.
I'm not a developer. My specific role sometimes leaves me with gaps of time where I'm left waiting for things to do.
It kills me to think that if I were putting this dead time into my own side projects, I'd be moving at a much faster rate.
Talking to my boss about this seems like a pretty insane concept however.
Any suggestions?
(used a throwaway account here) <comment><USER2> Any particular reason you can't go to your boss and ask what you can do in your dead time to help move the company forward?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not do some QA, documentation, etc. for the developers?</comment>


Ask HN: Need your input on an idea in the realm of Web security - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
I have an idea. What do you think about the concept and do you think that there's an opportunity there?
Problem:
One of the most fundamental problems in Web security is password reuse, right? For all the communication campaigns and all the alerts that companies send to their users, most users just don't care enough not to reuse their password across websites. And most companies do not dare to force their users to change their passwords regularly. At the same time, these very same companies are the ones getting the backlash when user accounts suddenly get compromised en masse.
Goal:
What if we had two 'simple' ways of improving security for many users across many websites?
1. What if a website could find out, when a user signs up, whether there already exists an identical login/pass "somewhere" on the Internet? Then it could say "eh, how about you chose another password?
2. What if a website could find out whether the guy trying to sign in has attempted to log in dozens of other websites in the past hour, logins that were unsuccessful? Then it might be that an attack is going on and the company could freeze the account and alert their user.
More information in my comment below (sorry, I kept exceeding the 2.000 character limit) <comment><AUTHOR> Solution:

Here are the two workflows I have in mind:

1\. Registration

\- user submits the form

\- company sends something like { hash(mail), hash(hash(mail)+pass) } to our API

\- API returns whether we've found at least a website where this tuple exists (no mention of the website obviously, boolean answer only)

\- company can refuse registration if the tuple is not unique

\- When the user finally signs up, send something like { website, hash(mail), hash(hash(mail)+pass) } to our API

2\. Login

\- user logs in: fills in the form as usual and submits it

\- company checks our API to find out whether there have been recent unsuccessful attempts at logging in for the same tuple (mail/pass) across several websites. If so, then there's possibly an attack targeting this user, and the company can take risk mitigation actions such as requiring an sms code or freezing the account until further notice.

\- if there's no known attack, company checks internally and if it finds out the login information is incorrect, then it reports the bad login to our API

Fundamental questions:

1\. Obviously a major point is ensuring security and trust, that is being able to store data that:

\- allows finding out whether there is an account with the same information elsewhere

\- provably forbids attackers and API users from getting more than a non- exploitable answer

My opinion is that we can achieve such _provable_ state of security by asking API clients for information hashed in a way that provably prevents us as an API provider to find out more information than needed. Then we can communicate towards companies along the lines of "see how the info you provide us _inherently_ prevent us from getting any sensitive information about your users"

2\. Well, would you take part in such an initiative?

3\. Do you know of any company that would actually pay for such a service? 'cause, you know, that would be awesome :)

PS Congratulations for reading all of this. Thanks for your input.</comment>


Isaac Newton, World's Most Famous Alchemist (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jul-aug/05-isaac-newton-worlds-most-famous-alchemist

<comment><USER2> Well at least they mention Bacon but what no love for Dee? Discover and being all sciency.</comment>


A Message for Children About Climate Change - <AUTHOR> https://www.scottadamssays.com/2019/09/23/a-message-for-children-about-climate-change/ <comment><USER2> As much as I admire Scott Adams as an insightful and intelligent cartoonist, I don't agree with his post here. The children who started the Extinction Rebellion were not, for the most part, 'scared into' their action by adults. They started this movement specifically because they learned that adults weren't doing anything. Adams' laissez-faire attitude in this post is exactly the reason why we're in this catastrophic spiral already - nobody is taking any action, there are comforting news reports of new technologies or tree- planting drives, but the overarching truth is that the climate is changing, and rapidly. There is reason to be scared enough to actually do something.

Edit: I would argue this is the single most wrong thing I have ever read:

>Throughout all modern history, when we humans see a problem coming from far away, we have a 100% success rate in solving it.

No, no we really don't. We have a 100% success rate of slapping bandages on broken legs, of being forced into literal do-or-die scenarios before we act in a mildly positive manner. No amount of foresight has ever overcome human stubbornness or stupidity. Both level-7 nuclear disasters had causes known years in advance but were hushed up. We will turn blind eyes to hideous pollution and environmental disaster, to miles and miles of documented scientific evidence, in the name of short-term profit. That is our success rate. And the buck stops with the millenial generation.

He talks about 'informed adults' currently making rational decisions but he himself is not a climate scientist, of which there are a large number, screaming from the rooftops that we need action. CO2 levels are too high. We must do everything we can _right now_ before the spiral is too strong to break out of. Laissez-faire is the worst thing we can do. He's right about nuclear technology and its safety (just about; Fukushima may have happened in 2011 but the plant was 40 years old at the time). It's not profitable to roll back all the stuff generations have invested billions and billions of dollars into - oil, coal, cars, global shipping - so the adults in charge are hesitant and frequently outright hostile to the idea. That's why Greta Thunberg had to make a stand, and that's why others stand with her.

Mr. Adams, if you read this, I wonder if you have become like your characters who are too numbed by the absurdity of their situation to believe they need to do anything about it. And just like your setting, this isn't going to get any better if we all stand around thinking it will.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rats and humans might be the only un-farmed species left on Earth, but that's OK because the economy will be 5X - 10% the size in a hundred years.

<comment><USER4> > 5X - 10%

My bet is on 10%

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like you, I think Nuclear power is a viable technology for reducing carbon in the atmosphere. I've been studying developments for the last 15 years, reading deeply in the physics textbooks and listening to technical talks. Sure, the nuclear waste will fill a couple football fields with only a shipping container worth of plutonium, a few pounds of which will level any city. All you need to do is keep people away from it forever.

Also, like you, I know that media shouts bad headlines for attention. I've also been studying developments in climate analysis for the last 8 years.

You seem to think that the real problem is "media shouting". Unfortunately, you don't seem to understand the essential problem. Think of a really massive train. Everyone pushes hard for years to get it to move slowly. Rich people jump on the moving train and encourage others to continue pushing. First world middle class gets on the train and encourage others to push. The thought is that everyone can eventually get on the train because it appears everyone will eventually ride.

If, instead of the shouting press, you bothered to read the science literature, you will see that the train has reached a "downhill grade". It is easier to push, more people benefit, and it is speeding up. But it is becoming clear that the end result of continued acceleration is a crash.

The "speeding up" is caused by global heating causing more global heating (e.g. methane from permafrost). We've been pushing the massive train for a century. It will take at least that much effort to slow it down, more effort if we hope to stop the downhill acceleration.

We don't have a century to stop the train before it crashes.

Is that clear enough for you?</comment>


For case-insensitive string comparisons, avoid char-by-char functions - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2020/04/30/for-case-insensitive-string-comparisons-avoid-char-by-char-functions/ <comment><USER2> This is not only important for string comparisons. I think in general if you have a loop that needs to run really fast you should avoid calling functions inside that loop that might not get inlined, like the standard library functions.</comment>


Chucking TV Helped me Start my Company - <AUTHOR> http://joshwhiton.com/?p=815

<comment><USER3> The fact that he ditched TV has nothing to do with the device/media itself. I could very easily write the same article about how chucking 'playing guitar' helped me launch my startup.

If anything occupies a lot of your time, of course eliminating it will free up time for other things.

<comment><USER4> TV is the biggest mind-suck. Deniers will try to justify its value but honestly, when you look at the hole you choose to fill with TV, there are so many more productive you could be filling it with.

I'm not immune either, I have been trying to cut down on TV but I still watch maybe four or five hours per week.

<comment><USER5> Would you say that books are a mind-suck? Would you say HN is a mind-suck? Would you say listening to music or going to a play is a mind-suck?

Even if you think all those other forms of entertainment are "bad", I'd still ask what's so wrong about being "unproductive" some of the time? I don't think you should seek to be 100% "productive". I think being a cultured person is a perfectly good goal as well.

<comment><USER6> The primary test that I put any kind of leisure activity through is whether or not I feel better in some way during or afterwards. Most of television, for me, doesn't do that; it's a convenient way to fill some time, but leaves me feeling generally less energized than when I started.

<comment><USER7> A very good test. I find that even TV can fit this requirement if it's the right kind of TV: A 60-minute episode of The Wire, for example, leaves my mind in a vastly more engaged state than the same amount of time spent watching a few minutes of one show, changing channels, watching a few minutes of another, channel surfing, and finally concluding there's nothing on.

<comment><USER8> Good point. It's not just what you're doing in your downtime, but how you're doing it. Anything that you can make challenging, relaxing and significantly different (from work) can actually leave you more able to focus, and therefore go towards increasing your productivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Chucking out Hacker News would help me start my company.

(there's a really funny irony to this statement)

<comment><USER10> And the thing is, if chucking HN (or: chucking HN and similar internet distractions) enables someone to free up enough time and energy to do something good ... they're less likely to write about it on the internet, and so we HN junkies are less likely to hear about it.

The _other_ thing is that when someone stops (say) watching TV and it turns out _not_ to make much difference to their life, we probably won't hear about that either.

Sampling bias is a powerful thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you absolutely must have some form of TV entertainment in your life, just try a 1-week or 1-month binge on Netflix or AppleTV to soak up any relevant or thought-provoking show/movie/doc you must see, then unsubscribe/stop using those services for a year—preferably more—and repeat.

I stopped watching TV and most films from 2007 onwards… until Netflix finally came to Canada and I gorged on it like an all-you-can eat buffet for a month or two. I couldn't believe I missed stuff like Mad Men and Slumdog Millionaire and started to kick myself for not having seen them sooner.

But really, I watched those a few years after their release, and they're still just as great as when they first came out. I may have missed a few water cooler talks about Don Draper's relationships with his secretaries, but who cares. And while many documentaries I've seen during the binge were eye- opening, I didn't lose big by not being able think critically or apply what I've seen immediately after.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that binge-watching is a good way to use TV.

TV is a fine way to soak up a leisure hour when you don't particularly feel like doing anything else. If you're alert, do something creative. If you're energetic, go do some exercise. But if you're dog tired for two hours before bedtime, then by all means go watch some damn TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I also overdosed on TV and got rid of it around college time. That is, until Netflix came along. Now I'm thinking about unsubscribing from Netflix. I like what he says about needing a break: you just need to exercise another part of your brain. And that is what I've discovered to be the solution for work-life balance: take a break from work, and immerse yourself in family time, so that you can return to work refreshed. You shouldn't feel guilty for missing out on work while with your family, nor guilty for working while not being with your family, as long as there is balance, because you need to satisfy different needs at different times, and it helps you return to full power.

<comment><USER14> I have avoided subscribing to Netflix for this exact reason. Hulu is bad enough, and that's all the TV I watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have cut back on watching TV. Using a DVR helps: not only for skipping commercials but for some reason when I am watching something that is recorded it is much easier to bail out and delete it after a few minutes. I try to watch about 4 hours of TV a week and perhaps 3 movies - this may seem like a lot, but a decrease compared to 10 years ago.

My big time sink is reading: I read about 3 technical books a month and about 2 novels. For a mindless vegging-out activity, I like hiking.

</comment><comment><USER16> When I was six years old my parents decided to move the family to another country, and they left the TV behind (never to buy one again). I've never owned a TV, though I've shared my household with people who would have one in the common area.

To this day, TV just absorbs me, I just _can't_ stop watching. I become the caricature of an absent minded drooling zombie. When people speak to me while watching TV I don't respond. When I go to a bar that has any channel on, I zone out of social life.

Though I developed what some people might call "good habits" (I picked up cooking and reading as a kid). But I also think TV is _culture_ in it's own merit, in the sense that it's a shared experience. I've seen a lot of people talk about TV shows with great passion, and I'm totally lost on that experience.

In the end TV is just a medium, and you choose what to watch. It is true that the quality of most TV shows is appalling (and yet I can't stop looking), but I've found that if I turn it on specifically to watch a show, instead tuning out, I can have a healthy relationship with it.

<comment><USER17> > To this day, TV just absorbs me, I just can't stop watching.

Same here. Having grown up without much TV, I find it absolutely hypnotic when it's on, which is why keeping it off is critical to my productivity.

My not owning a TV isn't some form of elitism; I don't keep a TV in the house for the same reason a recovering alcoholic doesn't keep liquor in the house - I can't trust myself with it 24/7.

My question is - how do you maintain this discipline in the age of internet video on demand? As PG put it in his essay on distraction, I often feel like sometime in the last few years someone snuck in and put a TV on my desk.

I work from home much of the time, and that requires a fast, always-on internet connection. I've been reasonably successful at keeping my bad habits in check to date, but the temptation alone is a regular distraction.

I'd be very interested to hear how others deal with this.

<comment><USER18> I do the Pomodoro technique when focus is crucial... it's surprisingly effective. Something interesting happens when you have permissible but cleanly defined segments of time to goof off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> i actually find that tv makes me _more_ productive. i'm not sure why... i can just put on a season of futurama or arrested development and keep focused/keep coding.

without tv, i find i get antsy or distracted. if i put on music, i spend more time air drumming and rocking out than typing.

<comment><USER20> Try different music? Anything without words is good when you're working - <USER2> lean towards ambient or chillout.

Not that I don't like heavy music, but as you say, it doesn't really work as something to have on in the background.

<comment><USER21> I'm with the poster. I play reruns of TV shows in iTunes throughout my day. The white noise from meaningless TV is one of the only ways I stay productive.

I find it 100% impossible to work with Music on. I just can't handle it.

Every 3 minutes there is a completely different sound playing.

Each song has a completely different story.

Each song triggers an entirely different set of emotions.

Every 6 to 10 minutes I have to stop and start skipping through tracks to find something suitable for the moment.

If I just play the same band over and over, I find it leads to a trance like state, or I feel like I'm being punished and forced to listen to the same music.

Then there's the music I would have to play in order to stay focused, say instrumental music only, and in this case I get frustrated. Tired of the loop, of the sound, it turns into a "tick" instead of a sound.

Anyway, I have a real hate-hate relationship with listening to music while I work. Very few people are with me on this.

I prefer to turn on white-noise TV just so there's ambiance in the room that has no rhythm :)

<comment><USER22> > Every 3 minutes there is a completely different sound playing.

> Each song has a completely different story.

> Each song triggers an entirely different set of emotions.

> Every 6 to 10 minutes I have to stop and start skipping through tracks to > find something suitable for the moment.

None of the above issues relate to Chuck Wild's Liquid Mind albums, which is the only music I listen to.

<http://www.liquidmindmusic.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've found some truth to this in my own experience. I've actually given up on having cable/satellite/some other system where I can just turn on the TV and be inundated by crappy content. However, I still have a few shows a week I must watch in a timely fashion (via non-cable sources) and then a large DVD library of past seasons that I can use if I feel I need some sort of background activity.

My productivity is huge with this set up but I still get to watch my favourites.

</comment><comment><USER24> LOL - lots of folks defending TV :)

I completely agree with Josh though. In my case, I haven't watched more than 30 minutes of TV (usually zero) in a week for probably 10 years now. Instead, during the evenings I worked on my business while my spouse watched TV. Now I have a great business to show for all those hours. Don't have anything to show for the TV-watching hours from the previous 10 years though. YMMV (though you'll never know 'til you try it!)

</comment><comment><USER25> The proverbial "this." When friends and family ask if I've seen this or that, I usually reply "no," but if pressed ("Turn on channel 6 now! There's a dog driving a lawn mower!") I politely remind them I don't have a TV.

The fact is, I do have a small (wait, 32" is small now?) one in the bedroom, but it's hooked up to AppleTV and Roku, for the sole purpose of putting on podcasts and informational videos (like TED Talks or Khan Academy) to fall asleep to.

</comment><comment><USER26> > To this day, TV just absorbs me, I just can't stop watching. I become the > caricature > of an absent minded drooling zombie....

I can relate. But I've learnt to teach myself that TV is like a drug. It can be very relaxing to "turn your mind off" and "zone out" to TV. Sometimes you have had a long day and feel like you "need" some TV to help relax.

The truth is that TV is harmful. It is lazy, bad for your health, unproductive and a massive time waste.

What is scary is that you can watch 5 shows in a night and then the next day not remember any of the shows. That is why people watch reruns of TV shows - their mind is basically off the whole time so they can watch the same thing over and over.

*(TV is fine and healthy in moderation.)

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't even own a TV (or a netflix account). I'm quite happy with how much I'm able to get done.

</comment><comment><USER28> > I just had a momentary burst of willpower that allowed me to get rid of it.

Actually it's taken many bursts of willpower for my family to stay TV free. People keep pushing them on us as soon as they find out we don't have one. My brother in law sent us one for christmas one year despite being told we didn't want one. We gave it away. And it seems like every scond person has an old they want us to have because "you can't not have a TV!"

</comment><comment><USER29> The "Redefining Entertainment" part of this post reminded me of this Rands one, about finding what actually relaxes you:

<http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2010/06/22/chill.html>

(Not that I've tried that technique. Can't find the time with so many things on TV & HN. ;).)

</comment><comment><USER30> I _wish_ I had some major time waster like that to eliminate, but sadly, TV has already gone by the wayside for me a long time ago.

<comment><USER31> From my own experience, and knowing nothing about you, try accounting for your time in 15-min increments for a week. You might be surprised.

<comment><USER32> Try the Pomodoro Technique

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If watching TV is distracting you from working on your company, you don't have to sell your TV, just stop watching it. You're going to be bombarded with distractions no matter what you do. Family, friends, beer, the whole internet in general, all have the potential to be really distracting. But you can't just throw them out or sell them at a garage sale, you need to learn to get stuff done with them in your life as well. If you don't have the willpower to simply turn the TV off, how will you have the willpower to say no to a night out at the bar with friends, or when you open a new browser window and reddit is just a few keystrokes away I'll only check out a few links then it's back to work oh look its 4am how did that happen?

Basically, stop blaming TV. TV isn't what's not getting the work done.

<comment><USER34> My weakness is food. I'll eat anything that's in front of me or in the fridge. I'll just mindlessly snack on it until I'm uncomfortably full.

I live right across the road from a store and yet if there is no food in the house I won't feel inclined to go and buy more unless it's time for a meal. Then I buy exactly enough stuff to make one meal only with no difficulty restraining myself.

Result: I exercise a form of will power I _do_ have and achieve my goal rather than failing to exercise a form of willpower I don't have.

Am I just fooling myself? Yeah. Maybe this guy is too. But if the outcome is positive then that seems smart to me.

<comment><USER35> This is true and smart. There is a quote in 'Cooking for Geeks' about this phenomenon from Michael Pollan. The idea is that Americans could fix their diets by eating smaller portions, but the simplest way to get people to eat smaller portions is a smaller plate. Changing your environment is easier that changing your behavior and it works. It's a powerful idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I hardly watch TV anymore, because I find all programs of the national TV mindnumbingly stupid. Commercial stations have the same braindead programs. Movies are reduced to vehicles to shove as much commercials before your eyeballs as possible.

I still have a TV in my living room, tho. Once a day I watch the news.</comment>


C++ Filesystem Technical Specification approved by ISO - <AUTHOR> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/256220

<comment><USER2> As someone who writes portable high-performance C++ code for living I see this as no more than a great prototyping aid.

Adding a non-trivial system abstraction to your code - be it a file system or a socket/networking API - is always a tricky task, even for the simplest of requirements. For example, Windows API is inherently UTF16, so if you want good performance, you need to keep all your filesys references in wstirngs. But not on Windows, you'll need strings instead. If you are to abstract this, you have a choice of either using an opaque "filesystem_string" type that maps to wstring/string (with an API for cross-conversion) or defining, say, an UTF8 API and then doing a boatload of run-time Unicode conversion on Windows. The fun part is that while this makes the filesystem code more compact, it has a negative effect on the rest of the application. The app will either need to deal with conversions to/from "filesystem_string" when serializing/displaying them or the abstraction layer will be busy converting utf8's to the native string format. Either way you pay with performance for "portability".

This doesn't apply to just this new C++ TS. It's the same issue with the existing standard POSIX API as well (fopen/fread/etc). It's great for hacking together something that builds on Linux, BSD and Windows, but you'd typically want to put in your own system interface before shipping production version.

<comment><USER3> " so if you want good performance, you need to keep all your filesys references in wstirngs."

Why? For path manipulation, you can still use whatever format internally that you want. Only just before the native API calls you'll need to convert. I'm open to many arguments on performance, but I have a hard time believing that this conversion would matter (or even be measurable) relative to the time the actual I/O will take.

Filesystem is a great addition to the C++ standard library. If you're seriously claiming that filesystem will not be suitable for production code, I can't help but put you in the (hypothetical) group of people who say 'the standard allocator is only a great prototyping aid, you'd typically want to put in your own allocator before shipping production version.'. Uh no, millions of application ship just fine with the standard allocator, just like thousands (or maybe even hundreds of thousands) of applications are already shipping just fine with boost filesystem.

<comment><USER4> >> " so if you want good performance, you need to keep all your filesys references in wstirngs."

> Why?

I'd take this even further: The less (re)interpretation the better. Will my UTF16 <-> UTF8 conversion roundtrip my malformed UTF16 codepoints? If not, I've just lost compatibility with (admittedly buggy) software. But I've seen bugs from far tamer, such as from the simple act of converting from a fixed width wchar_t[] that was observed to be a NUL terminated UTF16 string to std::wstring. It turned out that under certain circumstances that couldn't be tested, it was an opaque binary blob with NULs in the middle... and the bit after the NULs being important. Whoops!

Less relevant here though: std::experimental::filesystem::v1::path::value_type looks to match the native OS character type. But then again, is that unichar (16-bit) or wchar_t (32-bit) on iOS? Fufufufu~

It's also just plain _easier_ when you're dealing with native filesystem APIs for whatever reason to work in the native character type, which is the main reason I'd prefer it.

> but I have a hard time believing that this conversion would matter (or even > be measurable) relative to the time the actual I/O will take.

RE: Performance: If you're doing actual I/O, agreed. If you're dealing with OS or application cached filesystem entries, it becomes more believable. If you're enumerating over and only conditionally performing I/O over hundreds of thousands of paths - you'll want to be quite cautious of conversions if you care about performance (potentially see: directory enumeration via backups, stale file scans during builds, or comparing file lists between VCS revisions...) It drives me absolutely insane when a 'nothing changed' build takes 10, 20 seconds just from filesystem scanning. And I've seen and fixed far worse (think O(n*n) scans -_-;;). As others have noted though, if you keep your conversions 'reasonable' you should be able to get away with UTF8 paths from a performance perspective.

> Filesystem is a great addition to the C++ standard library.

Agreed.

<comment><USER5> Also another problem:

UCS-2, commonly used as implementation for UTF-16, doesn't support all the characters that UTF-8 does, which can lead to other nice problems during conversion.

<comment><USER6> UTF-16 covers the full Unicode space just like UTF-8. You're thinking of UCS-2 (limited to plane 0) as implemented by Windows.

<comment><USER5> Which can create nice issues, especially because stuff like Java is limited to UCS-2...

<comment><USER7> > Which can create nice issues, especially because stuff like Java is limited > to UCS-2...

Not true. Java uses UTF-16, not UCS-2. There are no encoding representation issues.

<comment><USER8> I believe strings in Java are __not __checked for UTF-16, but are just arrays of 16-bit integers and as such used as UCS-2 by most Java code.

<comment><USER9> Most code written in the US/UK does not care about multiple codepoint used to represent one glyph. But that does not change the fact that the String representation inside Java are actually encoded in UFT-16 since Java1.5 (i.e. since 2004).

Actually dealing with multi codepoint characters is hard in any programming language and most people ignore it as often GUI stuff already takes care of it.

By the way any string encoded in UTF-16 is an array of 16bit unsigned integers. It just has variable length encoding which UCS-2 did not have. Just like UTF-8 is an array of bytes just like 8bit ASCII.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like to be able to inject a 'filesystem' object into code for testing, so as not to have to use a real filesystem. This doesn't look like it supports that, which is a shame.

My other tactic is to create a temp directory at the start of a test and do _everything_ within it, then clean it up at the end.

Any other ideas on how to write testable code which uses this filesystem API?

<comment><USER11> _Any other ideas on how to write testable code which uses this filesystem API?_

not nice ones (or I must be missing something). Could either make all code take the API as a template parameter, or wrap the API in your own set of classes. Now often the logic you really want to (unit) test isn't the one directly accessing the filesystem but rather a layer higher? And in case of integration/system tests (or whatever it's called these days) wouldn't you rather use the actual filesystem, like with the temp directory you talk about? Can you provide a concrete example of what would be hard to test with this?

<comment><USER10> It's third party code I worry about, where it hasn't been written to expect a root directory. I can chroot on *NIX, I suppose.

Perhaps I should go and have a look at how code using boost normally deals with dependency injection for testing. Maybe I'm missing something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It looks like most functions have two variants that differ in how they handle errors. One throws exceptions, and the other returns an error_code.

It's nice to have non-throwing variant, although the rationale is suspect: it asserts that the non-throwing variants are for "when file system errors are routine," but many large C++ codebases deliberately disable exceptions altogether: Google, Mozilla, LLVM, etc.

Is there precedent for this two-variant approach in other APIs that are part of the C++ standard?

Oh, and this just seems wrong:

> Otherwise, clear() is called on the error_code& argument

Why clear it on success, instead of leaving it alone (like errno)? This makes it harder to sequence calls and then check the error code at the end.

<comment><USER13> new/delete have done this for a while.

I wonder if this is because it is the boost filesystem v3 library mostly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From glossing over the spec, it seems as if this does not include a file system abstraction. Operations are based on `path` objects; there's no additional state or context that'd allow e.g. implementing a virtual in memory file system without support from the operating system, or an additional user context to be used for a networked file system that needs user credentials, etc.

In effect this looks a lot like Java's java.io.File (modulo some of the design warts in that), which in Java land people are trying to replace with FileSystem and Path ([http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/nio/file/FileS...](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/nio/file/FileSystem.html)). Java's Path is specific to a file system, so that users can implement their own FileSystemProvider ([http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/nio/file/spi/F...](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/nio/file/spi/FileSystemProvider.html)).

I wonder why they went that way? Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> The scope is just to provide a way to write cross-platform path manipulation code. C++ is a much more stable (for better or for worse) language than Java is. Filesystem has been developed for 10+ years, and now that the current version works well, it's promoted to the standard. Whoever will want to write virtual file systems isn't going to bother with std::filesystem anyway.

<comment><USER15> Newbie here. Just curious, why wouldn't someone use std::filesystem to write virtual file systems?

<comment><USER3> Not sure I understand the question - std::filesystem is 'just' a (mostly) cross-platform abstraction of files and directories, it doesn't know or deal with the concept of 'filesystem'. (maybe the problem is in terminology - 'filesystem' in std::filesystem doesn't have anything to do with 'filesystem' as in ext4, zfs etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> By being standardized, it is opening itself up to being the defacto file- system API of-choice for C++ programmers.

This wouldn't be a bad thing if the API wasn't broken by design. It is opening itself up to 'time of check to time of use' bugs because it is completely oriented around paths.

I can't believe that this was approved.

I was a professional file-system hacker until quite recently and this API seems like exactly the wrong thing.

</comment><comment><USER17> So how does this compare to boost::filesystem ?

<comment><USER18> it is boost::filesystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The one boost error I've ever had come out of a program I was from boost::filesystem, but to be fair, I don't think the difference between Windows' "mklink /J" and "mklink /D" is documented properly anywhere

<comment><USER20> The major difference I've found is that /d is more akin to *nix symlinks with few exceptions, and /j is an NTFS-specific, local-only, directory link. Links made with the /d option can be files or directories to local or remote file system.[1] Junction points can only point to local directories, and have a few other limitations in regards to the Windows startup process.[2] As far as I can tell, symbolic links created with mklink /d are just improved versions of NTFS junction points.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link#Microsoft_Windows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link#Microsoft_Windows)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So what's new here? Of course C already has fopen(), chmod() and readdir(). C++ already has fstream.

<comment><USER22> This is about things like path resolution, directory permissions, file permissions, directory iterators, etc.</comment></comment>


Real life F1 car exploded schematic pictures - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.insideline.com/straightline/2011/03/exploded-mercedes-benz-f1-car-is-art-we-can-support.html

<comment><USER2> Excellent good post, something a little different.</comment>


Hearth Stone: How many packs to get a full collection? - <AUTHOR> http://www.liquidhearth.com/forum/constructed-strategy/457873-how-many-packs-to-get-a-full-collection

<comment><USER2> I think it's actually impossible to get a full collection, unless you were playing at a very specific time in the games development (one off cards for certain events etc). But that looks like some solid work on it, people will get lucky with certain RNG chances and spend less, and then there's the grinding up to get the golden variants for the classes.

(It's just 'Hearthstone' by the way.)

<comment><USER3> It's possible to craft a regular version of the promo cards (this is noted in the article) but not golden versions.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, which is why people going for total deck completion need to have been playing for a while, so they can get those very specific cards. They could always have another event where they're up for grabs though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to post a gripe here because it's been on my mind. When a player drops a Naxramus card, I usually concede immediately. A player with those cards will usually win against one without them anyway. Those cards cost $20 bucks or something to get. But thats not the reason I don't upgrade. The reason is I don't want to have those cards and be matched up with someone who doesn't have them. Players with nax cards should be matched with only other players who have them. Blizzard has built in a disincentive for players like me to buy their expansion.

<comment><USER5> The same can be said for legendary cards, too: I don't have any of the great legendaries like Cairne or Sylvanas or Ragnaros, so we could argue that I shouldn't be matched against those people—but, when I _do_ go up against those cards, I find that I have about the same win rate as against any other deck. Probably _slightly_ lower, but not enough for me to really notice.

Some of the Naxx cards are definitely cool, but, like all the other cool cards, none of them make or break the game. Sure, Sludge Belcher is the best taunter in the game right now, but it's only slightly better than the Sen'jin Shieldmasta, which is still a fantastic card and is still absolutely free.

Access to good cards is helpful, but nowhere near as important as strategy and experience. Heck, go watch some of those free-to-play folks who start fresh accounts, never pay money, and still rank waaay up. If you refuse to concede when things look bad, you might be surprised by how well you do.

(Also, the Naxx single-player content is excellent. Even if you choose not the use the rewards, Naxx itself might still be worth the price.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I played a little bit of Hearthstone, but didn't enjoy it. Simulating it, though, was great fun :) And by "it", I mean the game of collecting the cards...

My estimate is slightly lower ~350 packs, but I had to guess a lot of numbers.

[http://play.golang.org/p/-y-2Cv4Bvk](http://play.golang.org/p/-y-2Cv4Bvk)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm usually against the "why is this posted on HN" comments, so can someone just clue me into why they personally find this so interesting? Is it the effort put into the calculation or the revenue angle?

<comment><USER8> Not the OP, but from the numbers you get a view on what playing a "free to play" game to the end will cost you (600USD).

Which is about as jaw-dropping as what people spend on WoW and other pay-to- play games to get to the end game.

<comment><USER9> Incidentally, I ran the numbers on League of Legends a while back, and it was pretty close to the numbers in this article as well. I wonder if that's the magic number for these "not pay-to-win _wink wink_ " type games.

(Even more incidentally, I am pretty sure you can get to WoW's end-game within a couple of years of playing, so $150–$300 seems like a reasonable estimate of that game's TCO.)</comment></comment></comment>