Why Most Academics Tilt Left - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/why-most-academics-tilt-left/ <comment><USER2> Why do people who live in low population areas skew conservative? It turns out being an hour away from the nearest police patrol and being far from other people tends to encourage seeking personal freedom, less government (after all you never see them), gun ownership, etc. So if I say that we need more diversity of political beliefs in rural areas... but that seems impossible given that these are rational beliefs for the given circumstances. As the author alludes, likewise for academics.

<comment><USER3> >It turns out being an hour away from the nearest police patrol and being far from other people tends to encourage seeking personal freedom, less government (after all you never see them), gun ownership, etc.

Police response can be low and gun ownership high in urban areas as well.

The reason people in low population areas skew conservative is more likely that conservatives in those areas have successfully branded themselves as the party of Christianity and the sole defenders of traditional American cultural values (particularly gun ownership), and their opponents as the antithesis of all.

And, ironically (given the gist of your comment), those values tend to include _supporting_ the police and the government more so than their urban counterparts. They don't want freedom from government so much as freedom from atheists, liberals and Democrats in government.</comment></comment>


Clojure at Github - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/clojure/clojure

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't realize clojure was in Github. With 1.3 coming out soon, makes upgrading so much easier.</comment>


Disappearing middle class needs better deal on trade - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/03/14/donald-trump-tpp-trade-american-manufacturing-jobs-workers-column/81728584/ <comment><USER2> I recently read the 1886 book by Henry George "Protection or Free Trade"[0], and was struck by how the arguments by Trump, Sanders were more or less in the same form 125 years ago.

It's an astonishing book, not only for the clarity in which it dismantles these arguments in the cause of free trade, but also for how it transcends this, and explains why protectionism remains popular:

"Thus the opportunity of work comes to be regarded as a privilege, and work itself to be deemed in common thought a good... When men are thus accustomed to think and speak of work as desirable in itself, is it any wonder that a system which proposes to "make work" should easily obtain popularity?" (chapter 23)

Remarkable in how relevant this book and its arguments remain.

[0] [http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPFT.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPFT.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> That was suprisingly coherent and well stated. I don't think I understood the currency wars until now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ugh I just agreed with Trump.

<comment><USER5> I understand your sentiment. . . I have to admit framing currency devaluation and product dumping as cheating is rhetorical brilliance.</comment></comment>


Minimum pay at Basecamp is now $70k - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/minimum-pay-at-basecamp-is-now-70000/ <comment><USER2> Good for them.

At ~54 employees according to google search, they're lean, profitable, sustainable and the employees make a good living according to their abilities. They're in control of their growth and aren't beholden to filthy rich investors forcing them to grow like a cancer.

I wish more software companies were like Basecamp.

<comment><USER3> Basecamp is the mittelstand of software companies.

<comment><USER4> There are a lot of software companies that are mittelstand-ish. Honestly, the concept could probably do a lot of good for the us economy; especially its emphasis that not every business needs to be a unicorn

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _This new floor also means that the entire salary range at Basecamp is now around 5x._

So the highest paid employee at Basecamp is earning around $350k. I've seen several estimates that Basecamp's revenue is north of $100M, so even if _every_ employee were paid $350k, their wage bill would be incredibly low compared to their revenues.

<comment><USER6> Are you implying that they should be paying much more just because the company can afford to? This doesn't seem like good business sense, especially when they're already paying above market rate (and based on the highest market rate in the world, at that).

<comment><USER7> I think they're saying that it's not a very appealing place to work if you can get $500k or higher offer from the Googles and Facebooks of the world.

<comment><USER8> How many people can actually get that, though? Those are outlier numbers.

<comment><USER9> Take a look at the engineers at Basecamp. Many with 10+ years with the company, numerous contributions to The Rails ecosystem.

They are the outliers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd be curious to know what portion of their employee base is Benefitting from this "minimum wage" - a couple of admins? I'd imagine all of the front office jobs and most of the back office jobs at an SF software company would command wages in excess of 70k?

<comment><USER11> The article makes mention of this, specifically customer support people are benefiting from this, which according to the article would have a 50k/year salary otherwise.

<comment><USER12> They're also based in Chicago - 70k is right where things start to get comfortable.

<comment><USER13> i think they said none of their employees live in SF and lots are remote. At least half are spread out across the globe. So $70k probably goes a long way in small towns.

<comment><USER12> even better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Richard Wolff would be proud. A company that actually values all its employees. However, he would advocate the company to be OWNED by its employees, in which case this would be a likely outcome already, not surprising. It's only surprising under capitalism.

Here is another take completely:

[https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing- contributi...](https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing- contributions/)

</comment><comment><USER15> While I share most of DHH positions, I still dislike him/his tonality/too dogmatic view/his lame way of doing content marketing--which is the only thing he seems to be doing nowadays.

It is click-baity and doesn't add anything substantial or new to the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER16> wake me up when the people cleaning the office's toilet bowls are also included in this PR announcement.

<comment><USER17> usually that's external companies....

<comment><USER18> That's the point of the statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> To me this sounds like a pointless article. If you have a high margin/high profit company with minimum employees you can pay whatever money you want to pay.

Is DHH just saying they could pay less to earn more and they are just generous ?

Minimum wage especially with distributed teams is really a pointless metric.

The same way Google can pay top dollar and above average for all employees is not the same for most of the companies.

I am not saying the companies struggle.. I am saying companies are competitive entities fighting against other competitive entities like google.

Google extracts the vast majority of the wealth from the world that could have gone to small / medium sized businesses and so does any other highly profitable company.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yet another self-publicity stunt.

Maybe the next book they want to sell people will be about compensation? :-)

<comment><USER21> It's a blog post, on the company blog, about the company. That's not what most people would describe as a "publicity stunt".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I Leave CA or Keep Looking for a Job? - <AUTHOR> Me: I'm a 33 year old professional who was laid off last week from their job as a data scientist. I've found a new job at a Fortune 300 company in Minneapolis. However, I'm having second thoughts about accepting it.
Background:
I have lots of savings (100K liquid)
I have cerebral palsy...walk with a limp and use a cane. Moving would suck as I have cerebral palsy and makes life a b
I'm a powerlifter and have a gym/coach in CA. I really want to stay serious about this and keep lifting.
Option 1: Move to Minneapolis
Pro: It's a job in my field
Pro: I've previously lived there and so the winters are something I can tolerate
Con: Relocation is possible, but my disability makes it a challenge
Option 2: Stay in CA
Pro: Keep looking for a new job
Pro: Get to keep my powerlifting coach/gym
Con: Even though I'll have unemployment, I'll be without a job. And there is no guarantee I'll find a job here
Option 3: Other
grad school, become a freelancer, etc <comment><USER2> Where in CA are you? I'd be surprised if you have difficulty finding a new position in any of the major metros.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's been easy finding a new job. I got three offers in four weeks. The problem is that ALL of them were outside of California

I'm in the SF East Bay

<comment><USER3> That's a bad thing? In [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19122034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19122034) you said you hated life in CA.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do hate CA. But given my disability, it's a lot easier to stick around than move around from state to state

<comment><USER4> What does having CP have to do with moving - I have CP also (mostly my left hand,a very slight limp)?

I couldn't deal with the cold weather though. It makes my CP worse.

Get on a plane and pay movers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Static Type Checking in Lisp (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/static-type-checking-in-the-programmable-programming-language-lisp-79bb79eb068a <comment><USER2> The problem then is editor support. When a language has only one (or two, in javascript's case) static type systems, editors can cover those. But you're not going to get support from the IDE you actually use for your bespoke type macro. ( _But emacs!_ yes, I know, but many in the Clojure world for example use IDEA.)</comment>


Easter Egg in Apple's Paper Emoji - <AUTHOR> https://emojipedia.org/page-facing-up/ <comment><USER2> This post focuses on Apple's text, but it also shows the icons from Samsung, WhatsApp, and LG. These all appear to have their own unique text as well.</comment>


If you're not in a group, you better have a plan. - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201003/if-you-re-not-in-group-you-better-have-plan

<comment><USER2> "Later, the voting records were checked to determine the proportion of people receiving each type of call who actually voted."

Wait a minute. People who have nothing to do with running an election are able to check to see if you voted?

I thought part of "secret ballot" included that it's a secret whether you voted or not. I always assumed that no one outside election officials had access to this bit.

I was wrong?</comment>


Trump accuses Obama of wiretapping him before election - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/03/04/trump-accuses-obama-wiretapping-him-before-election/98734316/ <comment><USER2> Most likely related: [http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443768/obama-fisa- trum...](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443768/obama-fisa-trump- wiretap)

Apparently a FISA request was made to wiretap Trump or people from his campaign. It was denied the first time, but a second one which narrowed the scope of surveillance got accepted.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for bringing an actual realistic explanation for what might be behind this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Where do you guys go to find logical commentary on political articles now that HN is flagging everything political?

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately there isn't really anywhere else where facts are not censored, shadow-banned, or shilled into oblivion. For instance, pre-election, I made an entirely 100% truthful meaningful comment on this site, a story about a Wikileaks email dump, I pasted several links directly to the Wikileaks DKIM verified emails for reference. I had a dozen or so up-votes, then stopped receiving replies. I posted on the other similar story which was very hot, and received no votes in either direction, nor any responses. Upon logging out, realized I had been shadow-banned. Ten or so posts appeared on inline on the stories, but every single thing I typed, would only show up if I was logged in.

After searching everywhere for rules, or anyone anywhere mentioning that hn shadow-bans dissent, or shadow-bans anything for that matter; I emailed hn. I received a reply saying that I was indeed shadow-banned, however, it was in response to a comment I made 300 days prior. In summary I comment with facts and sources in a respectful passive manner in response to a fallacious top comment, get up-voted, and then shadow-banned 15 minutes later for that comment, and everything subsequent, but because of a comment I made 300 days prior. #FreeSpeech

Edit: r/the_donald might be the place for you. Although, some aren't yet mentally equipped to make such a leap in just a single stride.

<comment><USER4> Thanks... I don't think I'm ready for r/the_donald

It doesn't take a very balanced approach to politics... much like hn sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The master of propaganda in a post facts, post truth era: they make an accusation, you throw back a truthiness[0].

It will work as long as there are 63 million true believers blindingly accepting everything he says.

It will take a very long time (maybe 8 years), but eventually reality always break through and the trick looks stale and obvious.

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

<comment><USER7> I think that it's a worthwhile exercise in politics to both

a) not assume that the guy you like is always telling the truth, and

b) not assume that the guy you don't like is always lying

My favorite (recent) reference to how to evaluate a politician's claims is this article[1] from Popehat.

As a politically aware member of neither party, I've found the in _many_ cases, diligence has been the only thing that enabled me to understand the point a political adversary was trying to make, instead of simply parroting whatever clichéd soundbite I read from whichever website that broke the news.

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't be skeptical of a politician's claims. Indeed, I would prefer that more people were more skeptical of the claims of every politician, but that means not giving a free pass to the politicians they like, and being perfectly willing to call bullshit on your favorite political agents, even if you agree with them in other areas, and even if you agree with them on the claim they're making now.

Allowing our politicians the luxury of getting away unchecked with lies is dangerous, but it seems that most Americans are happy to do so if they're okay with the agenda the lie is made in support of. I really hope that changes.

[1] - [https://www.popehat.com/2017/01/19/how-to-read-news-like- a-s...](https://www.popehat.com/2017/01/19/how-to-read-news-like-a-search- warrant-application/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That website has the most obnoxious mobile ads I've ever seen. I couldn't get out of them without clicking on the product or closing chrome.

</comment><comment><USER9> Watergate 2.0

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it would be wise for those who cannot begin to fathom, the possibility that Trump has good intentions and knows how to execute(but not the best communicator) while Obama was a criminal and may very well be arrested in the near future, begin to prepare themselves for a massive shock. It explains the amount of $ being poured in to fund and organize useless protests, or protests with minimal (extremely minimal) chances of any impact whatsoever. It also explains why different media outlets, who are in a financial free fall, continue to "misfire" or "misquote" (lie), while they have record low (and still plummeting) levels of trust among an also plummeting viewership.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Well, if he had nothing to hide then he had nothing to be worried about. "

lol constitution wut

</comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't it be funny if all of Obama's sleazy tricks orchestrating leaks, etc, ended up making Trump stronger and putting Obama in prison?

<comment><USER12> You think the level headed constitutional lawyer was recklessly breaking the law in the last months of his presidency?

If Obama did directly order wire taps of Trump campaign personnel, his ass will be covered 6 ways to Sunday.

<comment><USER13> that level headed constitutional lawyer bald facedly lied to his nation about his inability to pardon Snowden without trial, knowing full well what Ford afforded Nixon. If the wire tapping ensures a Clinton presidency, which most expected, there would 100% be no blowback.

I'm anti-Trump but let's acknowledge Obama was a shady figure

<comment><USER13> I love HackerNews. People are clinging really hard to the idea that Obama was a great guy or whatever. I'm going to take my little -3 point soapbox and lead anyone who wants to understand how bad Obama's presidency was to this reading list by left-wing writer Emmett Rensin:

[http://www.bookforum.com/booklist/17438](http://www.bookforum.com/booklist/17438)

 _The era of Obama is over. Now the majority of Americans may see it clearly for the first time. Over the past eight years, it has become apparent that President Obama 's presence in office was a distortion. His calm demeanor and steady optimism seduced liberals into thinking that they were living in good—if occasionally dull—days, at war with an intransigent Congressional GOP, but blind to the breadth and power of the reaction brewing below. Liberals were often frustrated by the slow progress under Obama, even offended by the indifference and injustice that persisted in the practice of American power, but the White House and its boosters in the respectable media always had their rebuke: Don't worry. We're getting there. Trust the process._

 _That calm is over and for many, the sudden chaos of the political situation comes as a shock. What happened? When did the country become so precarious again? But there is no "again." None of this is sudden. It is only that, in the absence of President Obama, every cruelty that persisted or grew under his stewardship has come fully out into the open. Some of this was the former president's doing. Some of it was not. But none of our problems are concealed by the veneer of steady progress anymore._

Obama was a bad president, Clinton was a bad candidate, and the Democrats are the main group to blame, since their failure gave an odious Trump the presidency, no matter how much saber-rattling tries to pin it on Russia.

<comment><USER14> He wasn't he ranks in the top 10 best presidents US has had. Unlike you I am not just saying it or making it up but talking about a ranking made by university professors and academics who ranked all US presidents according to how well or badly they did.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/france-seizes-france-com-from-man-whos-had-it-since-94-so-he-sues/ <comment><USER2> The courts, in the USA, have found that domain names are not property, instead they are like telephone numbers:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

The court found that under the California tariffs, rules, and regulations applicable to public utilities, and under the terms of the contracts, the debtors had no "proprietary right in the number."

[https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0a84b472-c89f...](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0a84b472-c89f-4e06-be1a-93161aa35804)

Also:

...under Virginia law, the user of a telephone number or domain name does not have a property interest in that phone number or domain name.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Governments have the right to assign to themselves any telephone number they wish, and reserve ranges of phone numbers for themselves, therefore it makes sense that they can do the same to domain names.

If people felt strongly about this issue, the law could be changed, but as of right now, under current law, this does not appear to be theft.

<comment><USER3> The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look things up.

The internet is deeply democratic, maybe anarchic -- whatever rules I want my machine to follow it follows. If people generally disagreed with this decision, a viral hosts file would roll it back.

(I don't think this so alarming a case that it will spawn a movement, but that response is available.)

.onion and namecoin and various others are a wholecloth attempt at this.

But it goes farther than hosts and alt roots. One of the unique properties of the internet is that if it gets overburdened with cruft people don't like, we can just build it from scratch on top of existing systems.

There are infinite namespaces. You could build a copy of the Internet that's the same but with no Facebook. You could build a copy of the internet where all domains are mapped right to left. You could build a copy of the internet that only hosts MUDs.

Adoption isn't guaranteed, or even likely, but maybe widespread adoption is part of the problem you're running from in the first place.

Here's to the dystopia of unregulatable and unusable internet fragmentation. Some pros, some cons.

<comment><USER4> Phone numbers take you to the same phone until...

      - that person gets a new phone
      - a hacker politely calls customer support and asks to have a new phone activated on that number
      - the area code is split and someone else ends up getting the number

The phone system has a lookup table too.

<comment><USER5> In Australia, your phone has zero to do with your number; the SIM card is what "holds" it (not really. And that's an oversimplification but oh well). And there are no area codes for mobiles.

<comment><USER6> And in Australia, for some reason you _still_ get people who change their number when they buy a new phone, so...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Web.com transfers the france.com they registered for their customer (since 1994) to the government of France without explanation or warning.

"on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal notification to Frydman and no compensation."

It is actually just another example proving the warning we have all known/given for years about SaaS / cloud providers owning your digital properties.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I think as soon as he heard any sort of rumblings from those French entities, he would have been smart to transfer away from web.com to a real/first-party registrar. Potentially they would have been less likely to just hand over the domain.

<comment><USER9> Can you recommend such a registrar? I also had bad experience with Network Solutions / web.com. They seem to blur the distinction between being a hosting company and a domain registrar.

<comment><USER10> easyDNS (easydns.com), based in Canada, has a reputation for not just rolling over.

Their UI though is a bit crappy compared to other places though (like hover). Hover though I suspect wouldn't put up any kind of resistance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So the case came down to violating _French_ trademark law. That's because country names cannot be trademarked internationally ( and why tourist agencies register names like Visit<country> )

So it's not clear why Web.com even responded to the complaint unless they have a presence in France. Or was the risk that it could have been escalated to a European level of penalty?

<comment><USER12> That part of the story seems severely underexplained to me. Web.com doesn't seem to have any marketing content not in English, so their EU business is probably small compared to this reputational hit. Concern that France would eventually get to them through their payment processors and banks, if the EU takes its cue from the USA in applying extraterritorial law? (Link to GDPR enforcement debate here...)

I guess this means we should all ask our registrars what countries' court orders they'll abide by? What happens if Maduro has a Venezuelan court order seizing DolarToday.com?

<comment><USER13> It's because someone screwed up big time and when journalists started calling their lawyers told them to shut up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Somehow, despite domains having sufficient differentiation, it has evolved to the point where the first part seems to be all that matters.

In this case, "something.fr" _should_ be sufficient in France and yet the reality is that if you don't also control "something.<foo>" for all possible values of "<foo>", you might encounter a problem later.

Even worse, it has evolved that we now have to care about certain patterns on certain _sites_. What if you don't control "something.facebook.com", or "reddit.com/r/something" for instance?

It's crazy. We need to be deploying security technologies further so that names _alone_ can stop mattering so damned much. All we seem to have in wide use are certificates, which are still not required and essentially not understood by users (if they don't get an entity name and padlock, they'd probably load the site anyway).

<comment><USER15> .com is a good compromise. i believe the average user assumes the .com domain to be the most legitimate / canonical.

<comment><USER16> I think it's the exact opposite. .com websites are very rarely legitimate, canonical whereas .org, .edu, .gov etc... are more legitimate and trustworthy

<comment><USER17> All of those are US only, making .com the next best thing in this case I guess?

<comment><USER16> All countries have their respective .edu, .gov, .org etc and if you consider them I think my point still stands.

<comment><USER18> What do you mean? .edu and .gov are US-only.

<comment><USER16> E.g. France has .gouv.fr which is equivalent of .gov. All countries have their respective replacements, if needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm surprised the article didn't mention the value of the domain.

I used to work for a domain name marketplace where we sold kittens.com for $6 million dollars. France.com has to be worth a few million.

Painful.

<comment><USER20> I can't detect if you're joking but that seems pretty messed up. I guess from the looks of it today, kittens.com didn't turn a profit?

<comment><USER19> Not joking. Single word domains under the .com tld are worth a lot, especially very common words.

I don't know that kittens.com was ever turned into anything, they may have just bought it betting on it being worth even more in the future.

<comment><USER20> That's impressive. I need to re-calibrate my assumptions about this. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This seems somewhat familiar to me... [https://domainnamewire.com/2009/11/30/paris-wins-parvi- org-i...](https://domainnamewire.com/2009/11/30/paris-wins-parvi-org-in- disturbing-domain-name-arbitration-decision/)

Hopefully it turns out well for Mr. Frydman as it did for me (even though Paris still hasn't paid up): [https://domainnamewire.com/2012/09/17/city-of- paris-ordered-...](https://domainnamewire.com/2012/09/17/city-of-paris- ordered-to-pay-100k-for-reverse-domain-name-hijacking/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Why would the Paris Court of Appeals have any jurisdiction in this case? I'm surprised web.com didn't have their lawyers review the request and then throw it in the trash.

<comment><USER23> If web.com wants to do any business in France, or possibly if its executives ever want to travel there, then the French government has leverage over them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory- names](https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-names)

I have read the entire judgement and beside the fact you can not register the name of a country, he had not also the right to register a trademark from the beginning.

<comment><USER25> Wait a sec, "France" is a trademark?

<comment><USER26> It certainly could be a trademark, just not an exclusive one like Coca-Cola. If you wanted to market a "France" brand of chairs in the US, that'd be allowed most likely, but wouldn't prevent a "France" brand of dish towels from being registered by someone else.

You'd still need to avoid a false impression of origin for your chairs, but it could work if they're actually from France, you provide an alternate association for the word France in your context ("From Mr. France himself, your Kentucky neighbor since 1993!"), or just include in your branding/advertising enough clarity on where the chairs are from.

<comment><USER27> FTA:

> Defendants knew that they did not, and do not, have a right to the word > "France," as evidenced by Defendant Atout France's US Trademark Registration > No. 4027580, filed in 2009, in which Defendant expressly disclaimed the > exclusive right to the word "France."

<comment><USER26> Yup, agreed. Exclusive being the key word there. They were using the word France as a reference to the country, and couldn't prevent others from doing so. That's different from using the word to reference something else like chairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The first thought which came to my mind was "Thanks god I don't have anything registered with Web.com". In case anyone does, right now might be a great moment to consider migration.

</comment><comment><USER29> Germany doesn't seem to care much about [http://germany.com](http://germany.com) :)

<comment><USER30> Or UnitedStates.com - a spam site

Or America.com (a godaddy page).

Could this guy sue Web.com?

Maybe he can win the fight to Web.com on behalf of the WWW.

<comment><USER31> Back in the early 2000's whitehouse.com used to be a patriotic-themed adult site. So I'm told...

<comment><USER32> You are correct. Accidentally went there once when I was supposed to go to whitehouse.gov. Needless to say, there were images of many interns...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A stroll through archive.org shows there was a small business sending people to and blogging about France: [http://web.archive.org/web/20160805122924/http://www.france....](http://web.archive.org/web/20160805122924/http://www.france.com/) as .com is short for commercial it appears the owner was using the domain correctly before transfer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com)

</comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone remember [http://www.nissan.com](http://www.nissan.com) and its long, drawn out legal battle?

</comment><comment><USER35> My memory is hazy now but I recall in the mid-90s Gap (the clothing company) suing Genesis Access Point (an ISP) over gap.com and winning. First come first served is the only fair way to run domain names.

<comment><USER36> Also known as "enabling domain name squatters".

<comment><USER37> Perhaps so. But how would you have the issue resolved? Should the domain go to the most well known party? The product a reasonable person expects to find when they type in the address?

What happens if I register icar.com for product that syncs your car to the cloud. Then Apple decides they want to compete with Elon Musk, with their new Icar. Who will get the domain?

What happens when a large company decides to rebrand it's self and wants the domain?

What happens to Nissan? [http://www.nissan.com](http://www.nissan.com)

<comment><USER38> Going by iPad.com as an example, you'd play a game of chicken with Apple, because the moment you try to monetize that site in almost any way, they'll sue you for trademark infringement. You'll hope they offer you a ton of money for it, but Apple's brand is strong enough that they don't need it.

Mr. Nissan is lucky that he had an existing business that wasn't car related and he only registered his name...

<comment><USER39> Very dumb of Apple IMO. Just pay the guy. So what that he wants $x million?

<comment><USER40> Then they would also have to pay millions for applewatch.com macbook.com ipadpro.com macpro.com iphone7.com iphone8.com iphonex.com ...

<comment><USER39> _> > applewatch.com, ipadpro.com macpro.com...iphone7.com iphone8.com iphonex.com_

UDRP cost a few thousand dollars. iPad.com, IIRC, was registered before Apple came up with iPad. Plus, iPad is an entire product line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think he will win according to US law. At least there's no bad faith, simply a site about "France"

<comment><USER41> I doubt he'll get anywhere by suing the French government. They'll either just ignore him, or assert sovereign immunity.

He'd probably have better luck suing web.com or the new registrar in a US court and forcing them to hand it back.

<comment><USER39> I think a Fed judge can order--US based--Verisign to transfer the name back. At least they were able to...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm pretty disappointed by all the armchair lawyering in this thread that isn't defending the individual/citizen in this case.

.gov, .fr, etc were created for a reason. Trademark law is intended to protect people from intentionally misleading branding.

These two items taken together should make it obvious that France.gov is the only name the government of France 'should' be entitled to. If you are willing to say that France.com should be available to the French government... then it's a slippery slope. Are you going to give them to right to take down critical websites with titles like Francesucks.com or Francegenocide.com.

These lawsuits have played out before between private individuals like Madonna et al.

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

Why should a government be privileged to seize any .com that they deem to be in their interest? There is no evidence that France.com was not being used in a nefarious or misleading way.... in fact it sounds like the government had at least unofficially endorsed the site's usage and contributed. It was being used for a bonafide business.

I really think anyone defending a government's 'right' to seize this domain name is forgetting the underlying liberal democratic principles of the internet. Rights are for people, not governments. I don't see how France acting in this way serves its people constructively.

EDIT: It seems like all people care to comment on is the fact that they (and I) already know that .gov is for the US government, while other countries have their own TLDs.

Let me play Devil's Advocate for a moment to hopefully make you think more critically about this decision.

What if you owned a famous China (dishware, cups, etc) company and registered China.com back in 1994. Do you think China should be allowed to take that domain?

Or another, what if a new country were formed that were suddenly the same name as a pre-existing multinational corporation.... Government wins? Always?

<comment><USER43> .gov is only available to the United States government. There's no way for France to get france.gov.

<comment><USER42> I edited my post. I meant to say that governments have assigned/protected names like .fr, .de, etc.

<comment><USER44> No, they have not. Each country can manage country-code top level donains, but that's just it: a specific top-level domain they are free to use. That doesn't negate them the right of using other domains, just like if you buy a domain name you don't lose the right of using a second or a third one.

It boggles the mind how anyone in their right mind can believe that a cyber- squatter shoud somehow have the right to hold the domain name of a sovereign nation for ransom.

<comment><USER30> Except he wasn't a cyber squatter — he built a business around it.

It's seems uncommon for countries to actually own COUNTRY.com - UnitedStates.com, America.com, Germany.com and many more are privately held.

<comment><USER45> germany.com isn't in the same class as the other examples; France's claim on france.com is arguably more similar to Germany's hypothetical claim on deutschland.com . Why assume that what governments really care about is the English name for their country?

<comment><USER30> Germany doesn't care about deutschland.com either.

So, unclear what your point is.

Mine, is that countries generally don't seem to care about the .com (of any variation) of the country name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This sounds like a case maybe EFF would be interested in backing.

</comment><comment><USER47> He should consult the guy that owns nissan.com.

<comment><USER48> why? nissan.com is owned by Mr. Uzi Nissan so there is a reasonable defense that he has a justifiable claim to the domain. seems a lot more clear cut than this.

<comment><USER49> So you're saying that if the owner of france.com was a Mr. James France, the French government wouldn't have done the same thing?

<comment><USER50> The website claims that Nissan (the guy)'s business existed before Datsun became Nissan. I think there ought to be some kind of prior art for trademarks as well. It is not fair that a business suddenly not be allowed to use their trademark (even if they fail to register it) just because someone else registers it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Some of us remember the issues with mtv.com ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV#Internet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV#Internet)).

</comment><comment><USER52> Is France a company? Wouldn't they want france.gov?

As an owner of worcester.com, this is the argument we had with the city of Worcester, MA in the 90s. They did in fact want worcester.gov.

<comment><USER53> No, they would not want france.gov, since they are not a government entity of the United States.

<comment><USER52> Ah, I did not realize how much of a mess this had become.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Also worth watching [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mevVt5sHDNA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mevVt5sHDNA)

</comment><comment><USER55> How can one sue the French government in a Virgina court.

Should the French government waste tax money in hiring American attorneys and representing itself? I would say no.

<comment><USER56> Since the French government has assets in the United States, yes it very much should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Why is web.com not party to the lawsuit?

</comment><comment><USER58> canada.com is not owned by the government, its owned by postmedia the parent of rogers

</comment><comment><USER15> between this and the various DNS hacks, maybe we should consider a trustless solution.

</comment><comment><USER59> whats messed up is that they now have the website redirected towards france.fr

</comment><comment><USER60> Domains on the blockchain?

<comment><USER61> [https://namecoin.org/](https://namecoin.org/)

<comment><USER62> I was about to get some namecoins and register my .bit domain name but I decided to dig a bit more before going all in.

Correct me if I'm wrong (seriously, please do) but it seems to me that namecoin being (technically) a fork of bitcoin, shares most of bitcoin's problems, in particular regarding mining and exchange.

Here was my doubt: suppose that I get namecoins and obtain .bit domain name, how do i keep it registered? Do i have to mine? Do i have to renew by "spending" namecoins? Can i get namecoins on exchanges? (spoiler to last question: yes).

Here is how it might just fail: given that namecoins has mostly the same cryptographic properties of bitcoin, if namecoin was to become widely adopted then _everybody_ would start mining and selling namecoins, making namecoin price skyrocket at the point where 1) mining namecoins to keep your domains would become super expensive 2) people would burn "real" money on gpu mining and asic miners, accumulating large amounts of coins and keeping them hostage (that is, hoping to sell them for a lot of "real" money).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I transferred my domains off web.com after continually being forced to call to get anything done. They started sending me spam trying to trick me to switching back. Terrible company. They are register.com FYI.

</comment><comment><USER64> I know we are talking about this in the digital realm, but this also exists in the property realm too. Imminent Domain is used be governments to acquire land, generally below its actual valution, for building of infrastructure.

I wonder if this concept will ever make it to the digital world.

<comment><USER65> I am against emi ent domain but at least it is justified by the fact that there are no alternatives. A road between two points must pass through some land, but if a domain name for your website isn't available don't be a bully and buy another one. Also you have to compensate with eminent domain, you can't just take. Not in decent societies anyway. What we have here is maximum statism. A bunch of french bureaucrats had some stupid idea on how to spend stolen taxpayers money to "improve" society, and they used their position to steal a domain name from a guy who was minding his own business. In this case bureaucrats should be condemned as if they were thief.

<comment><USER50> > In this case bureaucrats should be condemned as if they were thief.

I don't think the public gets to go scott free in this. France is a democracy. If the French government does something, all French people are responsible for it. That's what the world says about us, why not France?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Tangential to the core issue, but seems kinda weird to me that he claims he bought it from web.com in 1994 and he's had the domain for 24 years when web.com has only existed for 19. A quick Wikipedia search would've clearly shown this. Further, in 1994, there's only one place he could've registered this domain as it wasn't decentralized until the late 90s.

I guess Ars was sleeping at the wheel when posting this.

<comment><USER2> Network Solutions was started in 1994, and was later bought by Web.com. It is correct to say that he got a domain name from a registrar which is now the property of Web.com.

<comment><USER66> Yes, but he wasn't a Web.com customer for 24 years. Web.com didn't exist until 1999 and further didn't buy Network Solutions until 2011. It's fine for a consumer to not remember, but Ars should do better in their reporting!</comment></comment></comment>


Places to buy datasets - <AUTHOR> Hey YC peops - was wondering what the best spots are to browse through datasets. Am interested in kicking off an AI project and would like to browse for inspiration. <comment><USER2> What kind of datasets? There are a number of websites that sell all kinds of data.</comment>


Investigation of Stalling Characteristics of DC-3 Airplane [1938] [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlQZJcAoERg <comment><AUTHOR> It is always interesting to me to see how they did things before computer simulation (and before giant wind tunnels with high speed cameras, in this case).</comment>


Harvard says "We Suck" (new video, infamous prank) - <AUTHOR> http://www.harvardsucks.org If someone ever tells you to hold up a card at a specified time, be wary! <comment><USER2> Haha! Such a classic.</comment>


Lessons of Demopolis - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/the-marriage-of-democracy-and-liberalism-is-not-inevitable <comment><USER2> The United States is really weird and wonderful.

Geopolitics teaches that whichever group of people that managed to tame the Mississippi river basin was destined to become a world power. The most advanced society in the world at the time of colonialism was Great Britain. Great Britain had no idea at the time of what they had in their part of North America, otherwise they would have fought harder to keep it.

It just so happened that the most valuable region of the world came under the control of peoples hailing from the most advanced society in the world. It was a complete, but happy accident.

Imagine what the world would be like if this part of the world were more like China. Liberal democracies only flourish if they are protected from the rest of the world around them. Native Americans couldn't put up much of a fight against the Europeans because they were geographically stunted, they didn't possess the guns, germs, steel, and horses needed to mount an effective resistance.

Had they, the course of history would have been very different. China has the second-most valuable real estate on the planet. But as it was not separated geographically from its neighbors, it did not have the long periods of peace needed to evolve liberal democracy, so it never did.

Someone posted a question on Quora once that struck me. What would have happened if the Japanese never gave up China after the war? Would the Chinese all be speaking Japanese? The pithy reply was, "if the Japanese had actually tried to rule China, then the Japanese would now be speaking Chinese." Such would have been the fate of Europeans trying to conquer North America had it not been utterly stunted the by lack of horses and other necessaries to a technologically-advanced society.

<comment><USER3> I really like parts of your post, but I need to call BS on the strength of "geography as destiny". I think I support something like a "weak geography as destiny".

Like, I believe that China did have periods of peace that would have been long enough to develop liberal democracies. China was the strongest country in their region, sure they had borders to watch but they were just as protected as France or Germany during their conversions to democracy or republics. I don't think that it's peace that drives that kind of change-- it's a cultural change, and people in the country need to want it to happen. France is a great example of this-- they underwent a revolution and faced multiple challenges from their european neighbors, simply because they were choosing to rule with a republic rather than with a monarch.

If peaceful & isolated countries should develop into democracies, what about ancient Egypt?

The US fluorish, and our geographical heritage is part of that, but it's not all of it. I think that the things that helped us were: being cast off from europe (their legacy bureaucracies didn't suppress innovation), being free- market inclined, having a group identity ("American") that all migrants can share, practicing freedom of religion and inheriting the british common law framework.

<comment><USER2> Ancient Egypt wasn't all that isolated. They had threats from the west, south, and north.

> Like, I believe that China did have periods of peace that would have been > long enough to develop liberal democracies. China was the strongest country > in their region,

China was not one country until 220 BCE, and afterwards, they had to adopt an imperialist expansionist policy to shore up their borders. They had a long period of political stability, but they still had to defend themselves from threats without. Democracy only happens after all these are removed so the population can build up the political will to challenge the power structures.

It has a flow to it, the building up of democracy. Power flows outward from the ruler to an aristocracy, which eventually engages in trade, building up the merchant class. In order for citizens to want to participate in a democracy, they need to be economically well-off, this means something like a middle class.

Countries go through these phases all the time, but only in a really geographically isolated place can they actually build to the point where there's a real democracy.

> sure they had borders to watch but they were just as protected as France or > Germany during their conversions to democracy or republics.

France's democracy disappeared quickly with Napoleon and to me is an example of why isolation is absolutely essential to safeguard freedom. French Republican armies were nigh-invulnerable, and this whetted their appetite for empire. Napoleon gave them what they wanted. Again here, the world at large ruined their ability to self-govern.

Germany's revolution was not a democratic one, but a socialist one. The socialism of the day was totalitarianism in democratic clothes, this to some extent remains true. Populists turn autocratic very quickly after getting elected. Germans of the era were every bit as militaristic as the French were after the Revolution.

> being cast off from europe (their legacy bureaucracies didn't suppress > innovation), being free-market inclined, having a group identity > ("American") that all migrants can share, practicing freedom of religion and > inheriting the british common law framework.

These are all outgrowths of geographic isolation.

The reason Europe left them alone was because it they were too busy dealing with each other, America was too far away for it to ever be more than a side- show.

A free market flourishes in the kind of democratic environment that comes from isolation. Remember the Dutch and the British were the commercial masters of the colonial age, both nations were extremely well-isolated.

The group identity aspect Americans took straight from the British, it's a very British idea.

English common law is, again, one of those social innovations that can only come from a long period of time where there is no credible external threat sapping public will to uphold legal freedoms against aristocratic depredations.

You should read the very excellent _Inventing Freedom_ , it elaborates on how British legal and commercial innovations came to be.

[http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Freedom-English-Speaking- Peo...](http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Freedom-English-Speaking-Peoples- Modern/dp/0062231731)

<comment><USER4> My knowledge about this topic comes from a single source[0], but your argument also seems to apply to Venice. It found its beginnings as Rome was being sacked, when people fled the invaders and found safety on the islands. With political knowledge and sophisticated technology, they displaced (and integrated) the 'native' people and built an incredible civilization. Venice went on to become a significant power, greatly aided by geographic advantage.

Also, it's interesting to consider the decline of Venice. Although that's better described by cliodynamics than geography.

[0] Venice (Wonders of Man Series), John H Davis [http://www.amazon.com/Venice-Wonders-Series-John- Davis/dp/08...](http://www.amazon.com/Venice-Wonders-Series-John- Davis/dp/0882250299)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla starts charging $7k to add Full Self-Driving features - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/28/tesla-autopilot-full-self-driving-tiers/ <comment><USER2> This is not a surprise at all, provided the features live up to the claims. Development like this is expensive, if someone gets something for nothing it often seems like they expect the world out of that software. However if they're paying for it they tend to be slightly more forgiving. Also self driving stuff requires changes to the control devices. However, I would not be surprised if the devices are actually standard (more expensive to produce multiple variants).

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is a good thing. If they're trying to make cars on the affordable end, this seems like the obvious direction to go.</comment>


SpatiaLite – A Spatial SQL extension for SQLite - <AUTHOR> https://www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/index

<comment><USER2> I've used this for processing huge stacks of 3d image data. It released me from the constraint of needing to have all data in RAM which other open source packages imposed.</comment>


Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/12/30/lawrence-lessig-how-technology-policy-will-evolve/?mod=WSJ_TechWSJD_NeedToKnow <comment><USER2> > It is really a generational effect. People in law school learned this way of > thinking 10 years ago, and they are coming into their place in the > regulatory space.

As someone in that group, I don't know if I see any evidence of this generational effect. The Internet is just the latest battleground for ideologies that have always existed: consumer protection, national security, business freedom, market solutions. The same sort of thinking guides the people who call for backdoors now, who called for banning encryption in the 1990's, who called for easier access to credit card and other transactions in the 1970's, etc.

Businesses that create technological products are always going to be entities the government can control. And regulators will never be encryption utopians. They'll always be mild pragmatists willing to make compromises whose values fall moderately left or right of center on the authoritarian scale.

<comment><USER3> Politicians/regulators can never be encryption utopians because they always seek more power. However, widespread adoption of secure encryption [0] could turn proposals to ban it from being seriously "debated", to the equivalent of that state senator who wanted to legislate pi = 3. "Physics drives finance drives politics", and all that.

[0] Obviously without centralized database MITM, using software not distributed by a centralized entity that can be easily controlled as you point out.

<comment><USER2> It's not even a matter of "politicians wanting more power." The public wants the government to have power over people, because they are (reasonably or not), more scared of other people than they are of the government. People fall on different places on the spectrum for how they weigh the loss of privacy versus the need for security, but very few are willing to say "we need pervasive unbreakable encryption, whatever the consequences to law enforcement." Even terrorism aside, very few people are willing to give up the power of authorities to investigate, say, the transactions of suspected financial criminals.

<comment><USER3> It's natural for regulators to want more power - since they're _good_ , they can always choose to not wield that power _later_. The motivation is the same at the smaller per-person scale, with democracy encouraging every person to think as a mini regulator - deciding whether a behavior should be prohibited or encouraged and then enforcing the majority's opinion onto the minority, rather than leaving the behavior unjudged.

Encryption is such an obvious target because it enables nothing besides _hiding_. Society/government can never see the value in anything that serves to keep society/government out of individuals' business, even though the former only exists on the proceeds of individual autonomy.

So in essence, the crypto/software war is self-defense against govermment/society. Not in the sense of overthrowing or repudiating the entire concept, but in the sense of holding the Schelling point of freedom of speech/thought versus a society/government that, through the same information technology advancement, would otherwise seek to subject them to totalitarian regulation (even if by the majority).

<comment><USER2> I agree with most of your analysis. That said, between the time the telephone was invented to the time encrypted email was invented, we had a rather prosperous and progressive period during which there did not exist a convenient means of communicating over long distances the government could not access with the appropriate process. I think the whole system is more robust than you give it credit for.

<comment><USER3> That seems like a pretty short time period to claim "robustness", especially with the quantitative trends the entire time. Remote communication was not so heavily relied upon in the past, whereas now it is a staple of modern life. Furthermore, the scale and inhumanity of the system has increased geometrically, no longer limited by actions of individual agents to perform taps/investigations, but instead a court order (in name only) for an ongoing wireline/database dump of millions of people who are then all investigated statistically.

FWIW, your statement could be made even stronger by saying that never before in history has it been possible for individuals to securely communicate over long distances. But technology adoption does not respect a fundamentalist approach - talking in an isolated house with no electronics was a lot more relevant a hundred years ago than today! So we need to judge the autonomy of an individual carrying out his usual day-to-day tasks in both time frames.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that Lessig has it right: people will not fight for privacy if privacy inconveniences them too much. I jump through hoops to get some small level of privacy and still enjoy web properties that track users.

A little off topic, but I think it is time for the USA to do a "let's go to the moon" type effort to make digital systems secure and protect privacy. I know this is a long shot though: it would take re-purposing the capabilities of the NSA (and the FBI, etc.) to making digital communication secure. Obviously this requires NO BACK DOORS, and more research into digital security. There are a lot of smart people working at the NSA and it would be good to have them working on helpful tasks like securing the Internet for businesses, the government, and individuals - and not waste time on spying on innocent people. In the 1990s the NSA and FBI did a lot of good work in this direction, but then the bogus 'war on terror' pushed them off course.

</comment><comment><USER5> None of these articles explain why privacy is a good thing. They just assume it to be a fact. I have some issues with this.

What if the entire premise of privacy being beneficial is flawed? What if the actual problem is that we build systems and processes that rely on the unsustainable idea of privacy and the wishful ability to keep secrets? Do people not see that this makes everything more fragile and likely to break?

I don't want more regulations for startups that want to analyze my genome, nor do I want to become an expert in internet security just to browse the web. Writing software is already difficult as it is, and the requirement to protect privacy makes it even more difficult and risky.

The real question is, what can we do to make living a transparent and open life possible.

<comment><USER6> I wish I could upvote this more. One reply mentions how easy anti-sodomy laws would be to enforce if we had no privacy. Considering how much faith people put in democracy and the democratic process, you'd think that people would concede that it's the law and our influence over it that's the problem, not privacy.

One question I like to propose to those who disagree with this sentiment is as follows:

Imagine you live in a hypothetical world where all things you consider moral, just and socially acceptable were legal and societally acceptable and where everything else was illegal and societally reprehensible. What role would privacy play in such a society? What benefits would it provide?

I have yet to get a good answer to that question; if peeing in public was ok with me, everyone else and perfectly legal, what reason would I have not to do it? (You can mention shaming and whatnot, but I posit that in this hypothetical world based on my morality, if I didn't shame people, no one else would either).

tl;dr: the problem isn't privacy, the problem is law and our inability to influence it, for which our best tool for the problems that arise from our lack of influence is privacy.

<comment><USER7> Privacy is a protection and insurance for the future.

Things, like say, recording the religion of someone in an open, embracing and understanding society that has full religious freedom, so you understand what your population identifies seems harmless, right?

It certainly seemed like it to the Jews in the Netherlands in the 1930s.

<comment><USER6> Would privacy protect a black in 1930's Poland? Would it matter to them if they did or did not register their identity or religion with their government of full religious freedom? Where's their right to privacy (of their ethnicity)?

The only insurance against unrestrained power for anyone's future is restraining the power, not privacy. Privacy is what you resort to when all else fails, which even then is clearly not enough for everyone.

<comment><USER7> It is well established that the extended civil records of the Netherlands in the 30s contributed to the high rates of mass murder in the Netherlands compared to other countries with less developed systems. This is a real life example of where a lack of privacy thinking, even though not done with bad intent, led to significant loss of life.

Protection of personal rights is not about a single solution, it is about multiple systems in a Swiss cheese model where privacy is one of those layers. Other layers are a judicial system, democratic elections etc. Stating that there are situations where one of the layers fail isn't proving anything, it is obvious that they fail some of the time. The question is if a layer adds something significant some of the time. Privacy does.

<comment><USER5> Even if privacy successfully protected those people, I would argue that this would make things even worse. Why? Because privacy protecting the majority of people minimizes the apparent danger of the underlying problem (killing Jews), which cause people to ignore the problem as if it doesn't exists, during which the problem grows until privacy proves to not be enough.

Privacy is a painkiller. It gives us the impression that the problem isn't there, but in reality it keeps getting worse until death hits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _[Moglen] said "You mean The United States government is, from now on, going to keep a list of everybody every American knows. Do you think by any chance that should require a law?" And he just laugh because they did it in a press release in the middle of the night on Wednesday when it was raining_

[https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom- of-...](https://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought- requires-free-media)

</comment><comment><USER9> That Enigma project that he bases his opinion on looks rather suspicious for me.

Here is their white-paper: [http://enigma.media.mit.edu/enigma_full.pdf](http://enigma.media.mit.edu/enigma_full.pdf)

I am a bit skeptical on anything with blockchain in the synopsis these days.</comment>


Good Advice on Keeping Your Database Simple and Fast - <AUTHOR> http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2009/03/keeping_your_database_simple_and_fast.html <comment><USER2> Pet peeve: why use a _video_ to convey a couple simple suggestions (one of which is "use S3" - not a huge surprise since this is from the blog of Amazon CTO Werner Vogels)?

The other suggestion is more interesting, and one I been contemplating several ways of implementing: off-loading _very_ large (proportionally) text fields into files (one raw; one html-tagged; etc) simpling _linked_ in in a db field.

Anybody else had a project where that was applicable? effective?

<comment><USER3> Asking out of ignorance: If you move your large textfields out of the database and into a file how will that improve your performance? Yes the DB will be smaller and thus faster, but won't it take proportionally longer to load your text from a file somewhere thus nulling your DB speedup?

<comment><USER4> So the primary reason for moving stuff out of the database in this particular example is not performance, but storage constraints. Relational databases are notorious for being exceedingly difficult to scale beyond a dataset which fits on one server. If you have a giant blob stored in every row, you'll grow out of the database's one-server storage capacity much more quickly than if you take that blob and store it someplace else. If your data row instead includes columns 'server' and 'path', you can easily distribute your blobs across multiple servers.

In the example in the video, the team took the concept a step further and (1) stored the blobs in S3, and (2) served them to the users straight out of S3. That way, they pay for S3 storage, but not for their own machines for storing or serving up those blobs.

<comment><USER5> _Relational databases are notorious for being exceedingly difficult to scale beyond a dataset which fits on one server._

Factually incorrect. This may apply to MySQL, but that doesn't translate to the rest of the RDBMS-world.

I wonder if I should start calling this point of view "MySQLism", as it seems to be a theological dogma, with no basis in reality whatsoever, echoed endlessly in the MySQL world.

For instance: I've managed database servers with mere 8GB of RAM, with hundreds of concurrent connections handling datasets of several hundred gigabytes, and they ran just _fine_. The load wasn't even particularly nasty, with CPU hovering at around 10% and no disk-queueing at all.

Ofcourse I chose to use something _better_ than MySQL, which might explain my success.

<comment><USER4> That sounds terrific. Please provide more details about the setup you used. Which database product? Does that product support splitting tables across multiple servers? Does it let clients transparently query across all of them? Which features did you enable? Did you shard the schema and then made the application layer figure out which server to hit?

It sounds like you did not use a SAN or Oracle RAC or anything else which requires exotic and expensive hardware. Please confirm this, and also, if you used non-open-source software, could you provide a ballpark cost estimate?

<comment><USER5> The complete setup was a 2-node active/passive Microsoft SQL Server-cluster solution with SAN backing, hosting various systems across 5 different SQL Server instances.

For clarity and to avoid confusion, since Linux-clusters and Windows-clusters are quite different: An active/passive windows cluster does not distribute load among nodes. A 500GB workload attached to one instance on one node will only have that node to work on. The remaining node will only be for failover. So despite this being a 2-node cluster, it can easily be pictured as a 1-node setup for all practical intents and purposes.

Also SAN backing is required for Windows clusters, and hence can't be avoided. For perspective the amount of actual disks used in this setup was far from extreme. I'm pretty sure we are mostly talking about a few LUNs running something equivalent of RAID5 and RAID0 on regular 10k SAS disks. Nothing fancy.

No schemas were sharded as that completely breaks referential integrity and is something only done in the MySQL-world and essentially kills the ability to do efficient joins. No special features apart from indexing and use of file- groups was enabled, but if disk IO or CPU had been a problem, you could very simply have setup partitioned tables or distributed partitioned views between linked servers to transparently involve more servers and distribute load.

No front-end load-balancing was used, so no client-redirection would be necessary, although Windows clusters allows client-redirection in case of failover. No client configuration apart from the server's cluster-name is needed.

Products used: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition. Cost of these products will most likely vary depending on what kind of existing licensing deal you have and where you live.

My estimate would be that price for this setup is rather insignificant compared to the amounts of data it can seamlessly handle without any developer effort wasted on scaling. No effort what so ever.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. So you had a SQL Server instance, paired with a failover backup on hot standby (using Windows clustering), serving up data from a bunch of disks attached together in a SAN, right? Which SAN products did you use, and how much did they cost?

<comment><USER5> This was a HP EVA San solution with fibrechannel interfaces and hence somewhat costy, but it was used for the entire organization (file-clusters, VMWare- clusters, Exchange-clusters etc etc), not just the SQL Clusters.

Apart from that teenie weenie bit about having an officially supported clustering-setup, I see no reason why you couldn't have used some random Linux iScsi NAS-solution, for instance powered by OpenFiler, which is 100% free.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PostScriptum.js – A new way to manage callback hell without promises - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/post-scriptum

<comment><USER2> It advertises that it's "without promises", but then implements a remarkably Promise-like API:

        PS.create(someAsyncFunction, ['argOne'], callback1)
          .then(callback2)
          .then(callback3)
          .run();

Really the only obvious API difference there is that starting the chain is uglier, and there's a "run()" method that has to be invoked before kicking things off.

Presumably, this also doesn't handle errors as nicely as Promises do either; I didn't see anything about error handling in a quick-skim.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason the run() method exists is to avoid how normal promises automatically run on the next event loop tick after then() is called. It allows more flexibility by separating the definition of a "promise" chain from the actual execution of the chain. Also I consciously excluded automatic error handling, since I personally disagree with how promises consume errors that are unmanaged (can be a debugging nightmare!). I prefer the opposite, where errors are managed by the developer and not the library.

I totally appreciate the feedback though, I don't think this can replace promises but it might be useful for people who want an alternative.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there any mature development platform for Augument Reality? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> For proper AR, Hololens is close to your only bet.

For Pokemon Go style, I think Unity might be the best option, but I don't take my word for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about Android or iOS?

<comment><USER4> Vuforia is great on the technical side. Their cloud API is responsive and their tracking is strong, but their documentation is terrible. Look up Vuforia Swift to see a starter code on how to use it on iOS. They have well structured examples, but it took me a few weeks to understand how everything works. What type of AR are you trying to build, cause there are Marker based AR and SLAM based AR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> meta

metavision.com</comment>


Show HN: Free NLP Annotation Tool - <AUTHOR> https://ubiai.tools <comment><AUTHOR> Hello Hackers,

We just launched a new NLP annotation tool in the beta version [https://ubiai.tools](https://ubiai.tools) and would like to invite beta users to test the functionalities on a larger scale. The tool has the following features:

Easy to use UI for NER annotation

Multi-format document upload: TXT, CSV (each row corresponds to a doc), JSON (allows you to import and modify already annotated JSON files), PDF, DOC, HTML

Dictionary/Regex auto-annotation: input a list of words or regex patterns along with their associated entities. The tool will automatically scan the documents and auto-annotate

ML auto-annotation: Train an NER model to auto-annotate your documents

Bias detection: visualize entity and word distribution across your documents to detect skewed annotation toward specific entities.

Collaboration: Share annotation tasks among team members and monitor progress

Annotation format export: JSON, IOB, Amazon Comprehend, Stanford CoreNLP

If you're interested in joining our beta tester community, please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com to send you your username the testing plan. We are offering free premium membership for 3 months once the final version is launched.

For those of you who are not interested in beta testing, please feel free to use our app for your projects (limited to 500 document and 250 word/doc per user), documentation can be found here. We would love to get your feedback and suggestions to improve the tool!</comment>


How to Get Lucky - Max Gunther - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Lucky-techniques-discovering/dp/1906659982 <comment><USER2> That is a book _everybody_ should read.</comment>


Oral History of Richard Greenblatt - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/chess/related_materials/oral-history/greenblatt.oral_history.2005.102634500/index.php?iid=orl-433440f03cfe1 <comment><USER2> Good ol' Rick. Doesn't look a lot older than he did in the late 70's.

I don't think he ever got enough credit for masterminding the Lisp Machine development at the MIT AI Lab; it was really his baby from start, though there were several key people working on it with him (Moon, McMahon, Cannon, Knight, etc.)

He's a humble fellow and one of the best.</comment>


A Comprehensive Course in Analysis by Barry Simon - <AUTHOR> http://math.caltech.edu/simon/ComprehensiveCoursePreview.html <comment><USER2> I don't feel that a $280 dollar book on Real Analysis is relevant for HN...</comment>


Owning an Electric Car Is Twice as Cheap as Owning a Gas Vehicle - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40517133/owning-an-electric-car-is-twice-as-cheap-as-owning-a-gas-vehicle <comment><USER2> What a strange article. Opens with the fact that EVs are more expensive to buy, yet never touches the subject again, despite it being a key factor in total cost of ownership.

Not to mention the subsidies which are paid for by other tax payers.

I'm excited by the progress EVs have made, and I hope that in the near future they will be truly price competitive with gasoline vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER3> "twice as cheap"

wtf</comment>


Show HN: A Minecraft Forge Mod for Writing Mods in Clojure - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/setupminimal/Cljsh

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a new project of mine that I'm hoping will allow people more freedom in writing Minecraft mods. I would love any feedback you wonderful people feel like giving.</comment>


DeadSwap, a clandestine offline file sharing system - <AUTHOR> http://www.deadswap.net

<comment> a-priori So in other words, all someone has to do is hijack the SMS gateway (or fake an SMS from that number), pose as a "rabbit" and get the information delivered straight to them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, just like real spy rings, if you get infiltrated you are dead. That is rather the point of the game, to teach you how to be clandestine. Better learn now so you're not fumbling the drop when it counts.

<comment> a-priori But unlike real spy rings, this one is centralized. By how they've described it on that site, everyone must trust the SMS gateway to give them orders, so the gateway becomes a single point of failure.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, each ring has their own gateway, just like they have their dead letter box, etc.

<comment><USER2> Right, meaning each ring is centralized.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which is exactly like a real world Dead Drop, and in the same way that a dead letterbox can be changed when the ring fears discovery, so can the deadSwap gateway. I'm not sure what you aare suggesting, if you could suggest a decentralized way a spy ring might exchange a drop, please let me know.

<comment><USER2> I thought that when you said "no" you were responding to the whole adverb phrase, not just to the "unlike" adjective phrase. I was correcting that "no"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> First, it isn't clear how you request a specific item or file from the network. You can request the USB stick, but who knows what will be on it.

Second, SMS traffic is already tracked for billing purposes, and is tied to a phone number with a billing address (most of the time). It'd be even easier to identify the users of this network than most online networks. You wouldn't know what was being traded without intercepting the USB stick, but still.

<comment><AUTHOR> Communication regarding file requests are on the Wiki, which is on the USB stick itself. As for your privacy questions, see the section "privacy" and "handbook," deadSwap trains people to be clandestine, it is the behaviour of the people, not the technology that makes the network work, or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, the contents of the usb are public and thus need to be encrypted, why not trade IP addresses for FTP servers on Tor?

</comment><comment><USER5> _The coordination of the passing-on of the stick is done through an anonymous SMS gateway, meaning that the system does not require Internet availability and also that, with certain precautions, it can be a very private system that is quite difficult to monitor._

Huh?

</comment><comment><USER6> "Hey! Budget renewal time is coming around and we in the cyber-enforcement division haven't made a record number of busts this year."

"Load some USB sticks with contraband and handoff to fallguys through DeadSwap. A dozen arrests should look good."

<comment><USER7> Not only that, you might end up meeting some guy with an axe!

<comment><AUTHOR> The guy wih the axe doesn't really need deadSwap to find somebody to chop up, he could use craigslist

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> aka sneakernet 2.0

<comment><USER9> This seems to be one of the cases where 2.0 has regressed. I can't see any advantage of this over a more standard sneakernet, without any SMS involvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> The advantage is that it you don't know who else is using the network. It is a sneaker-darknet.

<comment><USER9> While it is true that you'd need to know _fewer_ people, everyone would still need to know everyone else indirectly in order to be admitted in the first place. This is a requirement for the security of the network from infiltrators: someone already on the network would necessarily need to provide you with a "secret" of some form.

By contrast, with a more standard sneakernet, you'd need to know everyone you're in direct contact with -- but that number is typically kept fairly low for social reasons anyway. Data would be distributed more widely by passing through several intermediaries: Bob copies all of Alice's data, then Carol copies Bob's, and now Carol has Alice's data without necessarily having met. This is how people used to pirate software before network access was so common, and it actually worked pretty well.

Want to know who to blame for all the old games asking you to "look up this word in the instruction manual"? It's people doing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> That you need to know fewer people is significant, and even more so is that you not meet in person that is why the "Dead Drop", "Dead Letter Box", etc is such a common tactic in espionage. deadSwap is a file sharing system/ urban game based on the concept. When done correctly it is very effective and very difficult to sting, thus it has been a standard in spycraft for decades.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tim Sweeney: Android is a fake open system, and iOS is worse - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/12/tim-sweeney-android-is-a-fake-open-system-and-ios-is-worse/ <comment><USER2> _Epic Games wanted to enable players to sideload Fortnite directly from the Epic Games site, rather than through the Google Play store. Sweeney said that Google put up "scary" pop-ups in front of users about the risks of sideloading (viruses, malware)_

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google- amp/news/fo...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google- amp/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-android-security-problems-is-just- getting-started/)

 _As spotted by Android Central, Google has disclosed a huge vulnerability in Epic Games ' original Fortnite installer for Android, one that could have taken advantage of the Fortnite installer to install and launch a rogue app, and even give that app access to your phone's data without you ever knowing._

<comment><USER3> Perhaps, it still doesn't make Tim's claim false. Surely they can patch the vulnerability.

The point is, the world is pushed back into prodigy land of closed systems. Sure, it was completely wild west during the period when everything was open and that, the current state is defacto consolidation... however, innovation has its limits once kept in a sand box. From an ecosystem perspective, there are ways in which, closed systems and open world can exist.

Google and apple have for better or worse decent ecosystems, but, have they not stiffled competition in subtle yet effective ways for years?

<comment><USER2> The fact that they can patch their security vulnerability is poor consolidation for someone who gets hack.

People don't understand how the Wild West where every program you install has full access to your computer and the consequences of it - adware, toolbarware, viruses, ransomware, etc makes people a lot less likely to install software.

And again we have two ecosystems - one where you can sideload and one you can't. Where are all of the innovative apps that are only on Android?

<comment><USER4> Android makes sideloading difficult and scary enough that it's not really an option for the majority of users. Hence this article, and the lack of sideloaded apps.

<comment><USER2> It _should_ be scary and the Fortnite vulnerability is a perfect example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thank Tim for all his contributions to gaming and 3D technology but I'm not inclined to listen to this kind of nonsense without a solution to the specific problem he's addressing. Yes, there's financial incentive for Google and Apple to have closed store ecosystems but, for the majority of people, those closed, walled gardens are worth it. Tech savvy people do not make up the majority of customers and I think he's being extremely disingenuous to suggest that most users would want to be able to toss away the convenience of these App Stores in exchange for being able to install Fortnite directly from Epic. He only wants that because then he doesn't have to lose money to those companies to do so.

<comment><USER6> The Google - Epic thing aside, having an open market is important.

Before App stores became acceptable, the PC market was wide open and there was robust competition.

Developers could create any kind of software they wanted. They were free to distribute and sell however made sense, and there was no need to ask for permission. This advanced the state of the art exponentially for decades and decades. Customers reaped the benefits.

<comment><USER7> And with the App stores individual developers have access to even more customers than ever before without having to deal with publishing and distribution. In most cases they even gain an easy upgrade system that ensures that their customers will be working with the latest version of their software.

<comment><USER6> That might be true, but sort of secondary to the issue.

The developers would have more opportunities if there no barriers to publishing and distribution.

For example, if the developer type you are speaking of had access to two app stores, he would benefit from the competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Meanwhile, also from Tim Sweeney: [https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698...](https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698?lang=en)

I agree that the industry needs to be more open and shouldn't be beholden to the platform owners. But the Epic Games Store is probably the thing that now threatens gaming on desktop Linux the most, with its paid exclusivity that ends up forcing developers to drop their Linux releases.

And Linux is one of the most open platforms available, so... practice what you preach? They're _making_ themselves reliant on the platform providers.

</comment><comment><USER9> This part really made me think:

 _He drew a comparison to Visa and Mastercard and the global credit card payment system, where vendors charge 2.5% to 3.5% fees for transactions, while store vendors such as Steam, Apple, and Google charge 30%. He said the global payments industry is proof that highly profitable companies can arise from just taking the 2.5% to 3.5% cut._

He makes a very good point - tech companies do charge very high fees for using their app stores. Do regulators control how much fees payment gateways can charge?

<comment><USER10> A payment gateway isn't a channel for discovering a vendor, though. You don't go to Visa or PayPal when doing your shopping.

You go to a vendor, and the vendor has a choice of whether or not to accept a given method of payment. That's what effectively limits the fees on payments.

<comment><USER9> > _That 's what effectively limits the fees on payments._

And competition. When India launched its own payment processing gateway and card, branded RuPay, that charged 23% lower fees than Mastercard and Visa, they too were forced to drop the exorbitant fees they charged banks and vendors.

-> [https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking-finance/ru...](https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/banking-finance/rupay-shines-from-limited-presence-in-2013-to-capturing-half-of-market-now-3-reasons-behind-phenomenal-rise/1378445/)

-> [https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/sme-sector/vi...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/sme-sector/visa-slashes-fee-on-debit-card-payments/articleshow/64565741.cms)

-> [https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/financ...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/banking/finance/rupay-forces-mastercard-to-call-for-fair-competition/articleshow/49574972.cms)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Epic game store is a fake game store, propped up by giveaways and bribing developers for exclusive rights.

I would never have gotten into it if The Outer Worlds were on Steam, but, eh, at this point I've spent $60 and picked up a couple hundred dollars worth of other titles that for free. Otherwise, it's fine, but there's nothing special about it and no compelling reason to switch.

</comment><comment><USER12> In my mind, the minute locked bootloaders became the norm for android, and firmware source files became unavailable for devs, android became a closed- shut system. There used to be an entire ecosystem of mods and custom roms, which now have mostly dried up. The number of hoops needed to jump through to actually make an android phone your own in 2020 is completely absurd.

<comment><USER2> Android's "openness" has always been bullshit. From day one what made Android Android to most non Chinese consumers was the proprietary bits that Google included and the drivers were always closed source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apparently the solution to Valve, Microsoft, Apple, Google and gog.com online game stores charging too much is to create yet another online game store.

<comment><USER14> and one that has brought back the scourge of exclusivity to the PC

essentially the opposite of openness

<comment><USER15> As a software producer I welcome a variety of platforms for distribution, even ones own website. It reduces fees and increases competition. And as a gamer I don't mind having more than one place to shop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _Android is a fake open system, and iOS is worse_

 _Symbian OS_ is open system now.[0]

JFTR, _Symbian is alive!_ [1,2,3]

[0] [http://web.archive.org/web/20100926094915/http://www.symbian...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100926094915/http://www.symbian.org/news- and-media/2010/02/04/symbian-completes-biggest-open-source-migration-project- ever)

[1] [https://github.com/mrRosset/Symbian- Archive](https://github.com/mrRosset/Symbian-Archive)

[2] [https://github.com/EKA2L1/EKA2L1](https://github.com/EKA2L1/EKA2L1)

[3] [https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=symbian+OR+s60+OR+pys60&s...](https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=symbian+OR+s60+OR+pys60&s=updated&type=Repositories)

</comment><comment><USER17> 30% is high. However - I don't see any competitive reason to lower the take rate (it's not going to realistically lead to people switching to another device, the way price might).

The best they can do is wage a PR battle, and hopefully lower it to ~20%.

<comment><USER2> As opposed to 60% for physical distribution?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The hypocrisy of arguing for openness when Epic also has a store, and it all boils down to their profits.

If Epic would get their "Visa/Mastercard" discount, then Android, iOS or even Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft wouldn't be so bad after all.</comment>


LearnSearch: User Curated Learning Feeds - <AUTHOR> https://learnsearch.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks! I just spent the past few days building LearnSearch, a web app where you can share learning resources and upvote the ones that help you or are valuable in someway. I asked a lot of people what they wished they knew when they started self teaching or learning something new, and the feedback was always that they wish they could tell the good resources from the ones that lead them astray, and that others were vital in letting them know about this. I wanted to make this same interaction scaleable, so I built LearnSearch! LearnSearch is still in its early, early infancy, and I'm going to continue to build out different feeds, comments, and other cool features. I'd love for you guys to take a look and let me know what you think!

It's my first real crack at a web app, and it took me a few nights, so i'm gonna take a quick snooze ;)</comment>


Pixel Ping: Minimal Pixel Tracking with Node.js & CoffeeScript - <AUTHOR> http://documentcloud.github.com/pixel-ping/

<comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: It's a little pixel tracking server that aggregates hits in memory and flushes them to your web application with an internal REST call. Useful if you have lots of traffic on static pages, and need tighter integration with your application than Google Analytics can provide.

Some more links, for the curious:

Annotated source code: [http://documentcloud.github.com/pixel-ping/docs/pixel- ping.h...](http://documentcloud.github.com/pixel-ping/docs/pixel-ping.html)

Announcement blog post: [http://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2010/09/code-drop- pixel-p...](http://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2010/09/code-drop-pixel-ping/)

ProPublica's reference implementation: [http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/pixel-ping-a-nodejs- sta...](http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/pixel-ping-a-nodejs-stats- tracker)</comment>