Ask YC: Who's your favorite domain registrar and why? - <AUTHOR> Recently I've been hearing my registrar (GoDaddy.com) getting slammed for domain stealing and other horrors.  Though I've never been affected, I figure it's a good idea to become knowledgeable about other best-in-breed services.  Can anyone recommend other domain registrars that are great for managing large numbers of domains? <comment><USER2> I've been using Namecheap.com for years and they've never failed me.

<comment><USER3> I use 1and1.com. They're cheap and I've never had any problems.

<comment><USER4> I used to use 1&1 for domains and hosting, their hosting and support are terrible, and I find their transfer/cancellation process strangely difficult, but they are the cheapest and domain name registrations don't need much in terms of quality.

I now use namecheap and love them. They also have no delays in registration: when I was at a talk by Randall Munroe, he mentioned a domain name he thought was funny. 3 or 4 people lunged for their laptops to register it, and despite me having to enter my CC# (I have to start leaving $10 in my account for such emergencies), I won it, even though everyone claimed to have gotten confirmation of a successful purchase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I currently use Godaddy but I'm moving to nearlyfreespeech.net. Why? Because Godaddy has a horrible track record of shutting people's sites down over frivolous complaints (go see <http://nodaddy.com/> ) and NFS.net has a really awesome track record: <https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/background.php>

<comment><USER6> I can personally attest to Nearly Free Speech being a fantastic host. I used to use Godaddy, but their domain management tools were ugly and over complicated, and being a member of their site made me feel like I was just a number. NFS.net has simple, easy to use domain management tools, cheap hosting (Just like the name says) and anytime I needed help they have been able to respond very quickly. I would recommend them above any other hosting site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I started using GoDaddy when it was fairly new, and even though their prices have risen since, I've never bothered to switch. They make private registration very easy, and even though they spam the hell out of you during the purchasing process, I still just can't drag myself away.

Domain names are so cheap that it isn't worth it to me to risk shenanigans in an attempt to save $2 or $3.

<comment><USER8> I actually choose to pay more. I'd rather pay the extra 55 cents by paying $7.50 to Dynadot (bulk pricing option) than Godaddy's after-discount price of $6.95. That's because there are no hassles in the shopping process, no inbox or snail mail spam, an API, $2 domain privacy instead of $10 or whatever Godaddy charges, and built-in ability to cancel your domain within 5 days for any reason whatsoever. Their user interface is better and cleaner. It's like night and day.

<comment><USER7> Sold. I'll try them next time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have an account at Dynadot. I was an early Dotster user when they were the best alternative to Network Solutions, and then an early user of GoDaddy for many years now. Now, I think Dynadot is the best, and you should, too. :)

It has a clean user interface and even lower prices than Godaddy. If you deposit $500, you get an API and even cheaper prices.

They also have "domain tasting" for everybody for 5 days, which means you get a full refund for your domain name in that time period. Therefore, you can register domain names and cancel them later if you change your mind. I've lost a lot of domain names where I hesitated registering them for a few days.

Oh, and their domain privacy is only $2. It doesn't obfuscate your name, just all of the other parts. However, they can forward physical mail sent to the domain's private address to you, though I'm not sure what the cost of that is.

If you do choose to use Godaddy, always buy with their 20% off coupons found on Google if you're renewing. If you're registering a new domain, simply google "Godaddy" and then enter by clicking their ad on the search results of Google. That will give you 6.95 pricing instead of the 9.99 they currently charge--that's $3.04 cheaper per year per domain!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips, I'll be taking a look at Dynadot.

Re: Godaddy, how do you find the coupon codes for renewals? It wasn't clear to me from your post. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> By googling for "Godaddy coupon" and applying it to my cart.

Anyway, Dynadot is better. Rather than hunt for coupons to get Godaddy's after-coupon price of $6.95, I'd rather pay the extra 55 cents to Dynadot($7.50 bulk pricing) as standard pricing.

<comment><USER9> My problem with Dynadot is this:

In order to get their bulk pricing, you have to prepay $500. And you may not ever get any of your $500 back ever again. So for me, with my half dozen or so domains, that means I have to decide that Dynadot will be my registrar for the next _9 years_ or so.

That's too much of a commitment for me.

<comment><USER8> Their regular pricing is still cheaper than godaddy, you still get 5 day domain refunds (as account credit), and $2 domain privacy. Bulk pricing gets you an extra 1.50 off and an Api.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use EasyDNS. They're expensive, but reliable and never do anything evil.

<comment><USER11> EasyDNS is one of the best registrars out there. I highly recommend them.

<comment><USER12> Thirded.

They appear to be Canadian too -- which I feel is a point in their favour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Definitely Gandi (<http://www.gandi.net/whowe/>), I've been there for almost 10 years.

It's not too expensive and they have a very nice web interface to manage multiple domains (different edition modes, zone versioning system, free primary/secondary DNS). They're also hosting and helping several OpenSource projects.

<comment><USER14> I've been using Gandi for many years. Never a problem and, at least the last time I checked, they had a proper policy saying that your name was yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I use Google's thing:

<http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new>

Since it's only $10, works well, and I get all their apps and other junk with it.

</comment><comment><USER16> NearlyFreeSpeech (<http://nearlyfreespeech.net>). Slightly more expensive, but given their track record and their attitude toward web hosting, you can be pretty sure they're trustworthy.

</comment><comment><USER17> DirectNIC. They kept their systems up during Hurricane Katrina.

<http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/DirectNIC>

<comment><USER18> DirectNIC/InterCosmos are historically the largest abusers of the domain registration system for domain sniping. I still have a few domains with them, but only by accident. They are, in fact, reliable and their service is good. But I'd like to avoid supporting a company that takes part in one of the most dishonest aspects of the domain industry on a massive scale--unmatched by pretty much any other registrar.

<comment><USER19> Really? As bad as InterNIC? I stopped using DirectNIC only because of their prices. I liked them well enough, but with 600+ domains it was getting rather expensive. I've had some great domains, and never experienced any domain sniping with them (GoDaddy and InterNIC are another story.)

I mostly use 1&1 now, but their domain management tools and interface suck. I'd love to find a cheap, non-evil registrar that has a good domain management interface and good customer service. Every time I ask around, I get new suggestions...but the people usually turn out to be shills or to have limited experience with their recommendations.

When is the Y Combinator Registrar launching, eh? ;-)

<comment><USER18> Google "intercosmos domain sniping". I only knows what the Internets tells me, and the Internets have spoken about Intercosmos/DirectNIC.

If you find a good one, let me know, as we provide automatic registration in our product, but we're not ecstatic about only supporting one registrar (Register.com) that is known mainly for being expensive...they are seemingly honest and their tools are fine, but even reseller pricing is too high (and their retail prices are laughably high).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Name.com. I'm surprised noone's mentioned them. $5.99 domains. Free private registration. Easy interface. Account credit balances for really easy domain regging from an iPhone. I've transferred everything I had on Joker over to them b/c it's 1/2 the cost.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been using DynDNS ( <http://dyndns.com> ). They have slightly higher prices than registrars such as GoDaddy, but I trust their brand more and haven't encountered any behavior that looks suspicious. Also, I used to host my websites from home via a cable modem, and their free dynamic IP address services worked very well.

To be honest, I haven't ever considered switching; Has anyone switched to or from DynDNS and have an anecdote about their experience to share?

</comment><comment><USER22> 1and1.com

6.99 domains free private registration i've pushed through 100 domains through them

</comment><comment><USER23> Results returned from whois.publicinterestregistry.net: " If anyone's dns people were going to be threatened, it would be their's. Wonder if you can reserve your own name at other company's so if it is revoked or expires, it is automatically registered to you at a different place.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've used joker.com for the last 4-5 years. Free DNS, mail and url forwarding, etc., too.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I've used joker for a long time as well, they have been great to deal with for pretty much forever.

As a downside, any purchase I make with them via Wells Fargo causes Wells Fargo to pitch a fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I use Yahoo so I'll never forget. Used register fly before and they lost my account.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've used joker.com too for a while now, pretty good. I also use dreamhost.

</comment><comment><USER28> Not directly related but anyone using Webhostingbuzz.com for hosting and domain names? it's quite slow but their shared hosting solution is one of the cheapest one around.. :o)

</comment><comment><USER29> I've been using gandi.net for roughly a year and haven't had any trouble. They don't offer bargain prices, but they're not the most expensive either.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've used domainsite for many years. They've had a couple of annoying email outages, but other than that they've been pretty solid.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have been using lunarpages.com for my site saarr.com since two years. I did not face any major issues with them.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been using Dotster for about 4 years now and they are fine. Make sure to search for discount coupons...

</comment><comment><USER33> netfirms.com used to do registrations for 4.95 and I was an affiliate that got $2 commissions on domain reg so I would essentially get $2.95 domain reg.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm using Dreamhost. They are cheap and easy.

<comment><USER35> I really like dreamhost as a webhosting service, and I am sure they are honest as a domain registrar, but if you are looking purely in terms of domain registration and are handling the webhosting elsewhere, I'd say dyndns.org is one of the best. They have a great feature set for domain management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone used Moniker? I've heard good things.

<comment><USER37> I've been using Moniker, after hearing some of those same good things. I have had no problems with them.

Of course, one of the classic problems with registrars is an inability to get your names _out_ when things go bad. (Presumably the ones that make it difficult to _join_ are rapidly culled by natural selection.) And it's kind of hard to judge that. I'm certainly not going to leave Moniker just to see how easily they let me go...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> register4less.com, on recommendation from the userfriendly.org folks. I've been happy with them.

</comment><comment><USER39> Registerfly? Kidding...

I use Dreamhost and eNom.

</comment><comment><USER40> domainmonger.com - Cheap. Simple to use. No hassles.

</comment><comment><USER41> i use dreamhost

</comment><comment><USER42> AVOID DREAMHOST like the plague they will never release your domain, unless you know how to swim backwards across the Atlantic.

<comment><USER43> I've used Dreamhost for five years, no complaints. They have had a couple of down times, which were annoying to say the least, but were pretty good about letting folks know what the heck was going on.

I'd recommend them for small sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> i used yahoo once - it was a deal to register domain for $1 ... can't go cheaper and better than yahoo.</comment>


Windows 93 (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.windows93.net <comment><USER3> It's pretty amazing how much classic software can actually run, and works pretty well. The Wolf3D clone is totally playable, and you can actually use LSDJ (one of my all-time favorite pieces of software), and it seems to be actually running the real LSDJ, too, which is pretty impressive, considering that it means that the site actually has an _embedded gameboy emulator_

<comment><USER4> This is all HTML. You can inspect it.

<comment><USER3> Wait, so no emulation? Huh. Less impressive, but still quite so nonetheless.

<comment><USER5> No it's emulated: [https://github.com/taisel/GameBoy- Online](https://github.com/taisel/GameBoy-Online)

<comment><USER3> Oh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Old HN discussions here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8507786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8507786)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9162566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9162566)

</comment><comment><USER7> This seems so amazing that I had to close it immediately, scared of how much time I would lose with it.

<comment><USER8> Same just because I'm at work, but I'll procrastinate on it at home later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome site, make sure you play the Castle Wolfenstein game and check out chapter 2 - "Operation Stallman".

It's the most /g/ thing I've seen all day.

</comment><comment><USER10> Solitude even has the victory animation: [http://i.imgur.com/IlSm5pE.png](http://i.imgur.com/IlSm5pE.png)

Funnily enough if you leave the tab in the background, the events queue up and when you tab back there are a bunch of cards bouncing around at once: [http://i.imgur.com/dNObRGb.png](http://i.imgur.com/dNObRGb.png)

<comment><USER11> You mean Solitaire...Solitude sounds so odd...

<comment><USER12> We, the Dutch call it 'patience,' as how it sounds in French.

Personally, I used to call it 'sol.exe.'

<comment><USER13> I noticed a few other French easter eggs, like the names of the city "stive" is visiting during his acid trip, or that "the national train company is on strike, but you managed to reach Lille in less than 15 hours. #WIN".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Clever and artful, with a little nostalgia thrown in.

1993 was the year I started my undergrad and would not see a "web browser" until the following year. It's nice to re-capture a little of the spirit of what computing was like back then.

Tip: Be sure to click on the virus and after what happens happens, fling the icons around. Moments of mindless fun.

<comment><USER15> Old timer here as well. The 'Virtual Girl' brings back memories of the 'personal assistant' fad from way back when. Funny how we've gone back to that now that the technology is more than a gimmick with Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and GNow. Sometimes I wonder about that peroid where so many things were possible (and tried!) but the technology and infrastructure just wasn't there to make it feasible. For all the lamenting about the loss of privacy, the reality is that assistants like these aren't possible without being able to dip into our emails and browse/purchase histories. That's something Bonzi Buddy couldn't do.

We live in an odd time where the promises of the late 90s and early 2000's are coming to fruition. Suddenly VR is amazing and relatively affordable. Suddenly digital personal assistants are here and they work. The promise of a less powerful Microsoft is here and with IE a now discontinued product. Very fast internet is here with many markets having or will soon have 1gbps (note: the first LAN I worked on was 10mbps). The promise of early yet clunky smartphone/PDA revolution has also been fulfilled.

I wonder if, from a networked/social/mobile computing, perspective that period was our 'Mother of All Demos.' So much was tried and promised back then and its only in the fast few years that its really practical.

<comment><USER16> A personal assistant may "dip into emails" but shouldn't phone home. Otherwise the personal assistant metaphor doesn't fit, and other, less pleasant descriptions apply.

<comment><USER15> Your emails are already at 'home' or a similar cloud solution with questionable privacy policies. These assistants don't actually run on your device, just their front ends are run on your device. I think you're making a distinction that doesn't really exist with common use cases.

As far as what is reported back to the home company, well, that pre-dates personal assistants. What gmail does with your email or dropbox with your files and any analysis your usage is a completely separate issue than personal assistants, aside from both of them having to do with privacy. It seems to me these assistants are just dipping into stuff 'home' has had access to for a decade plus. Instead of using that info to sell to marketers or whatever, its using that info to provide value to you by powering your assistant.

<comment><USER16> The email problem may be solved separately by a yet unknown solution - <USER2> encryption will be part of the next Iteration.

"Personal assistants" that listen in on conversation, waiting for a keyword - that's a completely different dimension than "just" reading email.

<comment><USER15> You can disable the 'always listening' option in most (all?) of these products and just have a press to talk option. I leave mine on for convenience. There's no law saying you need to if you want to use these technologies.

<comment><USER16> \- defaults matter and shape behaviour/expectations \- disabling these options is often difficult \- other people's phones listen to me as well \- ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It has probably been shown plenty of times before, but here is a linux command-line javascript one too.

[http://bellard.org/jslinux/](http://bellard.org/jslinux/)

<comment><USER18> The real question is, how long until the typical web page includes a JavaScript Linux vm running Docker to display (ads or content)?

<comment><USER19> There is really no limit on what can be used to hog a CPU.

<comment><USER20> CPUs are space heaters. Launch some benchmarking software or heavy compilation, put your feet on your tower.

<comment><USER21> I kept a college apartment warm through the winter of 2000 with my overclocked Athlon. Barely had to touch the thermostat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The trick in the "simulator" is to drink coffee, smoke cigarette, smoke weed then take lots of acid and procrastinate until the operating system is finished. Then launch it to finish game. I got 194 #Hero

You can also go to Paris at some point.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is bringing back strong memories of messing around with QBASIC and Clickteam's The Games Factory.

My first game was called "Money 4 Nothing" and you moved a mouse-cursor locked guy around collecting floating cash piles and avoiding guards who usually just shot you on a loop.

</comment><comment><USER24> In the trash, there's a zip that contains a link to this album:

[https://jankenpopp.bandcamp.com/album/poire-c- poire-v](https://jankenpopp.bandcamp.com/album/poire-c-poire-v) :)

<comment><USER25> so good

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it's funny to find an old bytebeat formula I made in this.

<comment><USER27> Ahaha, it has mine too! [http://i.imgur.com/z9Be34t.png](http://i.imgur.com/z9Be34t.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The snake game music when you click to defrag... Felt young and old at the same time.

<comment><USER29> It's actually the snake game, use your cursor keys.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, spent more time than I'd like to admit playing it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The PlayStation boot sound kind of surprised me...

</comment><comment><USER31> This is by hacker/musician Jankenpopp, which is why it links to their music.

[http://jankenpopp.com/](http://jankenpopp.com/)

Music:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7fKoamz0nY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7fKoamz0nY) (for example)

[http://jankenpopp.bandcamp.com/](http://jankenpopp.bandcamp.com/) (full free albums)

</comment><comment><USER32> Pretty brilliant site. Unfortunately it locked up Chrome tight after I ran the 3d program and tried to close it along with running Wolfenstein.

</comment><comment><USER33> If you open the recycle bin there's a zip file that actually downloads through your real browser to your real computer. I didn't bother opening it. It has a filename not everyone will immediately know how to delete. That's really not a funny thing to put out there.

<comment><USER34>
        rm -i *.zip

Apparently, in iTerm2, you can actually copy and paste the name, and do

        ls *.zip
        rm -i cv.zip

<comment><USER33> IF you can actually delete it as cv.zip then that's scary because that's not its filename.

<comment><USER35> HN has stripped the pear emoji from the filename.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I forgot about that hamster dance website! Talk about something that was ahead of it's time...

I love you, Internet.

</comment><comment><USER37> so what's the stack on this? curious how this is done. Is this like the [http://copy.sh/v86/](http://copy.sh/v86/) ?

</comment><comment><USER38> something kinda vaporwave about this

<comment><USER39> I believe that was the aesthetic the author brilliantly went for. The background and tab colors immediately struck out to me. An alternative, yet nostalgic nod to Windows 3.1

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> My eyes and mind were not ready for that! This is brilliant!

<comment><USER41> What about your ears? That startup sound caused some pretty intense flashbacks for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Worth checking out The Old School Emulation Center on Archive.org

> The Old School Emulation Center (TOSEC) is a retrocomputing initiative > dedicated to the cataloging and preservation of software, firmware and > resources for microcomputers, minicomputers and video game consoles

[https://archive.org/details/tosec](https://archive.org/details/tosec)

</comment><comment><USER43> WIndows 93 does not work on Safari mobile :/

<comment><USER44> I had to push the turbo button on my pc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm sure I'm not the only one who created a load of recursive virtual PC's inside one another. PCeption.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is art.

</comment><comment><USER47> Needs sheep.exe

</comment><comment><USER48> I love the "VirtualPC" application. Recursive metahumor for the win!

</comment><comment><USER49> Love that there's an Atari ST and ZX emulator running inside of this.

</comment><comment><USER50> I actually had Virtual Girl running for a few days in my teenage years :)

</comment><comment><USER51> The corgi doesn't work as expected. Can I return this for a refund?

</comment><comment><USER52> You can cheat on the "Solitude game" (that I finished few times already) by double-clicking on hidden cards to add them to the top if they are the matching cards.

</comment><comment><USER53> The Window Manager and opening/closing/dragging/resizing effects were really impressive for 1993. Way more than Mac at the time, or even Linux 3-4 years later.

<comment><USER54> it's a shame it's fiction

<comment><USER53> Seems to have no OLE support, so pretty authentic in my book, as that only came later. Surprised the ancient computer isn't dying under the strain of so many visits.

<comment><USER55> It's not a computer. It's not a Windows release. It's not even old.

It's a recent site that mimics (satrizes) some of the behaviors of Windows 95.

<comment><USER53> > It's not a computer. It's not a Windows release. It's not even old.

Win93 seems pretty olds to me.

> It's a recent site that mimics (satrizes) some of the behaviors of Windows > 95.

How can this mimic or satitise Windows 95? I understand a less complex system can simulate a more complex system, but only slower, or maybe, but _2 years_ between releases with superior Wm functionality degraded???

It doesn't even have Winsock, and that was done in 1992!

<comment><USER56> Your comments are less funny than you think they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> [http://windowsreallygoodedition.com/](http://windowsreallygoodedition.com/)

</comment><comment><USER58> I must be crazy but when I opened this up on my phone, I thought " with a few more tweaks, this could be my go l-to mobile UI"

</comment><comment><USER51> Does everyone else have their Microsoft lottery winner certificate? I'm itching to cash mine in for that € 250k.

</comment><comment><USER59> It's tricky to win at SOLITUDE when the first deuce played to a foundation just disappears.

</comment><comment><USER60> Hell yeah! That must have taken a whoooole lot of fun programming time to develop that.

Someone have a guesstimate?

<comment><USER61> Depends a lot on the developer. If it's a youngster figuring out things, we are talking about thousands of hours. A senior developer might "only" take hundreds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I love the individual soundtracks for all the applications. They're so well- done.

</comment><comment><USER63> Pre IE, no simulation levels

</comment><comment><USER64> I love classic software such as windows 95. I love this!

</comment><comment><USER65> That bounce on window open is really annoying

</comment><comment><USER66> Why does it play the PS1 startup noise?

<comment><USER56> Because nostalgia, parody, and creative license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Old but gold.

</comment><comment><USER68> This is pretty amazing.. well done!

</comment><comment><USER69> The sad part is the author did a better than Microsoft did and half of the programming was in turing incomplete languages.

</comment><comment><USER70> I love the Vaporwave vibes

</comment><comment><USER71> Kinda disappointed that Puke Data isn't interactive. ;- )

</comment><comment><USER47> needs sheep.exe

</comment><comment><USER72> Is this magic?

</comment><comment><USER73> I love this!

</comment><comment><USER74> c:\libs has all the javascript you need ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> I love these things.</comment>


Ideas are cheap - <AUTHOR> http://thereliancejourney.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/ideas-are-cheap/

<comment><USER2> Very true

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Read this and find out why ideas are cheap!</comment>


Momo-3 is Japan's first private rocket to reach space - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/04/business/tech/momo-3-becomes-first-privately-developed-japanese-rocket-reach-outer-space/#.XM-C3BYpDYU <comment><USER2> Since the name of founder Takafumi Horie may not ring many bells outside a Japanese audience, let's just say he's a colorful character:

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

<comment><USER3>
      The veracity of the suspicions aside, many smelled conspiracy given the timing of the action. It was seen as a political move by defenders of the status quo to punish Horie for daring to challenge them, and to discredit him and the business practices he had come to represent, which Horie's opponents considered distasteful and "un-Japanese".

I mean, considering we have been hearing a lot of stories about karoshi & the pervasive seniority culture lately, I think I am siding on his side a lot more, given that even people feels like the yakuza did a much better job at welfare _sometimes_.

<comment><USER4> So do you assert that both the district court and the supreme court were part of a conspiracy to discredit an entrepreneur? Or merely that the prosecutor got an accurate tip-off from some hostile party?

<comment><USER5> Not completely sharing the GP's point of view, but I also think there is more than meets the eyes.

It could be a combination of most players in the field being in an illegal state in some way or another (not by accident, just that fraud is the norm) and they decided to enforce the rules on one specific company at a strategic time, while the rest of the industry hums along unscratched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Go straight up until you leave the atmosphere and then fall down" is a radically different proposition than reaching orbit. You could lift an unprotected human being to space with a 700kg rocket. Getting him to orbit would require a 9,000kg rocket.

<comment><USER7> Yes, exactly, amateurs have gone well above 100km (62.5 miles).

[https://rocketry.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/amateur-rocket- tea...](https://rocketry.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/amateur-rocket-team- launches-rocket-to-73-1-miles/)

<comment><USER8> To be clear, only one amateur rocketry team (the one in the link) ever made it to space.

<comment><USER9> And to be honest a reasonable portion of that team was made up of aerospace professionals. You kinda expect to win your local basketball comp if you have a team with more than one NBA player slumming it for the love of the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note that this was not an orbital flight but rather a sounding rocket.

<comment><USER11> Japan has had sounding rockets for ~50 years. So this was the first privately funded rocket to reach space or something?

<comment><USER12> Not sure if the title was changed, but yep. Sounds like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Getting to space for 8 minutes in a parabolic trajectory is not hard, it's the 7800-8200m/s delta v thrusting horizontally to achieve a real orbit that's difficult. I've seen amateurs launching garage built rockets from the Nevada desert hit 80km...

</comment><comment><USER13> Does the rocket drift away from the launchpad right after launch and for the first couple of seconds, or is it an optical illusion? It appeared to me as if the rocket was imbalanced until it gained enough speed.

<comment><USER14> I also thought it had a lot of lateral movement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> While this is awesome, I wonder why we hear a lot about businessmen who score big then funneling their wealth into moonshot projects about space exploration (Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Takafumi Horie, etc), but hardly ever on medical science and life extension. To me that seems like a much more urgent and personally relevant issue - I mean, without advancing the state of the art on those fields, even those rich & powerful men are all going to be dead in a mere 120 years. Why don't they seem to be doing much to address that when they're in the rare position to be able to do so?

*Edit: Richard Branson of Virgin Group, not Charles Bronson.

<comment><USER16> Do you mean Richard Branson rather than the actor known as Charles Bronson?

That said, lots of people are benefactors of health and medicine. Maybe they don't get the same notoriety, but maybe they weren't looking for it either.

<comment><USER15> Ack, you're right, Charles Bronson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can anyone shed light on whatever is going on with the audio in the video? It sounds vaguely like counting if the counting were done by some sort of creepy bunny cartoon.

<comment><USER18> It's Hatsune Miku, a synthesized computer voice.

[https://blog.piapro.net/2019/04/z1904231-1.html](https://blog.piapro.net/2019/04/z1904231-1.html)

<comment><USER19> Never change, japan

<comment><USER20> She does "hologram" concerts.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/waving- glow-sticks-at-hologram-anime-pop-stars-our-night-with-hatsune-miku/%3famp=1)

Not real holograms but interesting still. Apparently some ARkit stuff recently

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The article's title is more clear; this is about a space company.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps biased, but my initial thought when I see the word "launch" (without context, such as this title) is a software product launch of some kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Maybe you should specify "aerospace"...

</comment><comment><USER24> Drats, I was hoping the anime "Rocket Girls" would move to real life.</comment>


Newspipe, a web news aggregator written in Python, version 9.2.0 is out - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cedricbonhomme/newspipe <comment><AUTHOR> A Dockerfile is now provided and the official instance is open ([https://www.newspipe.org](https://www.newspipe.org)).</comment>


Top Deep Learning Projects - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aymericdamien/TopDeepLearning <comment><USER2> A few comments on some of these projects:

Keras is pretty much the best way to do almost anything these days. If you are starting out learning, use ConvNet JS, but after that switch to Keras.

TFLearn is really nice if you are already using Scikit.

There's lot of frameworks on there: TensorFlow, Caffe, CNTK (that's a lot of stars for something no one outside MS uses!) Theano, Torch etc. But I think the sleeper there is MXNet. I haven't used it, but I hear good things about it, and DLMC have good track record in producing some pretty nice software (XGBoost!).

Also, DeepDetect! I keep trying to find that and never can remember the name.

<comment><USER3> > Keras is pretty much the best way to do almost anything these days

What makes Keras take the advantage?

<comment><USER2> It's a well designed API for using deep neural networks rather than an API for doing optimized mathematical operations.

Compare how you build some vaguely comparable models in Keras[1] and raw TensorFlow[2]. Keras uses TensorFlow (or Theano) underneath, so there is no performance penalty.

It's like in Python machine learning, most people use Scikit instead of implementing things in numpy.

[1] [https://github.com/fchollet/keras/blob/master/examples/mnist...](https://github.com/fchollet/keras/blob/master/examples/mnist_mlp.py#L39)

[2] [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorf...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/master/tensorflow/examples/tutorials/mnist/mnist_softmax.py#L39)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Your example to explain the differences makes me more leaning towards Keras. It feels like Scikit for Deep Learning.

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's a decent analogy. If you are already familiar with Scikit then TFLearn is worth looking at too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is, frankly, a naive way to rank deep learning projects, because Github stars are cheap. Francois Chollet, the creator of Keras, comes out with a monthly ranking that takes other factors into account, such as forks, contributors and issues, all stronger signs of community and users. Here's his July update:

[https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/753980621823750145](https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/753980621823750145)

Most of these frameworks are Python-oriented: Keras, Theano, Caffe, TF, neon, Mxnet, etc. The space is saturated. If you look at deep-learning projects by language, then Torch stands out -- it has a Lua API. And Deeplearning4j is the most widely used in Java and Scala. You don't have to crowbar it into a Spark integration, like you do with TensforFlow. [http://deeplearning4j.org/](http://deeplearning4j.org/)

MXnet is not talked about a lot, but it's growing fast. It was heavily used by Graphlab/Turi, recently bought by Apple, so the question is what will happen with it now.

</comment><comment><USER5> No metrics are perfect but I highly suggest following francois chollet (fchollet on twitter and hn, creator of keras) for his monthly updates.

He does a pretty good job of showing actual activity on github: [https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/753980621823750145](https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/753980621823750145)

I point this out because drive by stars of a project are easy...but it doesn't reflect actual user activity.

<comment><USER6> This is true. Stars in this context are also more indicative of projects that are attractive to a more mainstream audience. Examples like Deep Dream and Neural style, where laymen visit the Github page and star the project because it's "cool" are prominently featured, while projects like Torch and Theano have had massively more impact on the deep learning world today.

<comment><USER3> > Stars in this context are also more indicative of projects that are > attractive to a more mainstream audience.

"Popular Deep Learning GitHub Projects" would have been a more accurate title. It is mentioned in the text but the title mentions "Top" which gives a different impression than the word "Popular".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's impressive how fast TensorFlow has become this popular (judging not only by the number of stars it has but also by the number of other projects in that list related to TF)

</comment><comment><USER8> What about Spark MLlib?

[http://spark.apache.org/mllib/](http://spark.apache.org/mllib/)

<comment><USER9> Not a Deep Learning project, also doesn't seem to be a real focus for Databricks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Adding a programming language column would be great!

</comment><comment><USER11> Torch is split across many different repositories. Many of the relevant issues occur in `torch/nn` or `torch/cunn`, for example. Only considering `torch/torch7` underestimates the popularity by quite a lot.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wander how many people still implement their own networks as opposed to use these prepared frameworks. Or do you guys stick to single framework or use some sort of mixture of tools?

<comment><USER13> Implementing a basic neural network is a lot of work, to be honest. I tried in C, in fact even made it parallelizable. It was hell. Lots of hair-pulling. I thank the gods for Keras and keep my head down.

<comment><USER14> Unsurprising. Normally, you at least have something like BLAS to do linear algebra work.

It takes maybe 15 minutes in Python / numpy for something basic like a 2-layer net, but backpropegation is a little annoying to get right. Thus, tensorflow (or theano or caffe or whatever).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Based on number of stars, this project should be on its own list

</comment><comment><USER16> This list is old :)

<comment><USER2> It was updated on 9 August. That isn't too old.

<comment><USER16> Nop, check the stats of Caffe for instance: [https://github.com/BVLC/caffe](https://github.com/BVLC/caffe)

This is much older than the 9th of August.

<comment><USER2> [https://github.com/aymericdamien/TopDeepLearning/graphs/comm...](https://github.com/aymericdamien/TopDeepLearning/graphs/commit- activity)

It is 20/11819 = 0.16% stars off. It isn't old, just not automatically updated.

<comment><USER16> Ah, it was when it got posted to HN! Count was ~9K.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Watch me work: Video of me building a new Rails app from scratch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.firmhouse.com/watch-me-work-building-a-new-rails-app-from-scratch <comment><USER2> Just for reference, 'michielsikkes' posts are all showing up 'dead' - if you check 'show dead' you'll see them.

Appears to be the original author, somebody should probably unban him.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is more about HTML/CSS/jQuery coding than about Rails. Nevertheless, insightful video in a typical development process.

</comment><comment><USER4> 9 minutes in and I wanted to cry that this guy isn't using twitter bootstrap...

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing, the shadow-box trick it really enhance the page. I don't know if you use it, but LiveReload (livereload.com) can help speed up the refresh page each time that you change something (html, css).

</comment><comment><USER6> Really enjoyed this video, one tip I could offer though is to setup snippets for HTML when creating divs. Speeds up development time a lot when you just have to write div+tab and then add your class/id.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a shame the video is too low res to actually read the code!

<comment><USER8> Thats a limitation of the embedded player, if you go direct to youTube you can bump it to 1080p: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYrbc-g6R-U>

Edit: Seems you can actually bump to 1080p in the embedded player also, my mistake.

<comment><USER9> I can bump it up in the embedded player... It also helps to enable fullscreen on the player.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Love your music choice - are you streaming from a service or do you just have an awesome music library?

<comment><USER8> One of his tabs is <http://nederland.fm>

<comment><USER11> Rather beautiful website dont you think ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> any other videos like this?

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know of videos like this for Clojure?

<comment><USER14> Here's Chris Granger building a Clojure/ClojureScript application that plays sounds via overtone: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcRQFGtFiyE> .

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this the new trend of overcoming procrastination? I like it!

<comment><USER16> I'm doing something similar with all my personal projects, but not quite a live video, more a time lapse style so a picture every 30 seconds. It's not for overcoming procrastination for myself, but to focus me & stop me instinctively browsing my regular sites when a difficult section arises.

It's also prompting me to become more efficient as I know when the project is finished & the video compiled it will be watched by my peers who will hopefully provide some insightful feedback!</comment></comment>


Really Slow Site for Testing HTTP Caches. - <AUTHOR> http://reallyslowsite.com/10000

<comment><USER2> <http://reallyslowsite.com/-1>

Apparently time travel is out of the question.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://cache.historious.net/cached/662705/>

Your site just revealed a bug in historious, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice.

The "copyright" line is _really_ tiny. Your twitter usernames are there, and I assume you want people to see them, so I'd make it larger.

<comment><USER5> I rarely notice copyright lines. The fact that you did makes me suspect that they succeeded.

<comment><USER3> In his defense, the page is three lines long, one of which is the copyright line.

<comment><USER5> If it's important to them, perhaps they could... A/B test this? :-)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps after reading two relevant articles :P I just posted a third, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1824959>, but not on the same series.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one of the things that node.js is really good at, and it's interesting that the sample code on the front page of nodejs.org was pretty similar to this app. Here's the rough equivalent in node:

      require('http').createServer(function (request, response) {
        response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
        var time = Math.max(0, Math.min(60000, parseInt(request.url.slice(1)) || 0));
        setTimeout(function() {
          response.end('This page load took ' + time + 'ms\n');
        }, time);
      }).listen(8124);

(They have since changed it, and I suspect that it was because new users were confused as to why their supposedly "fast" server always took 2 seconds to respond to requests)

(edit: code formatting)

<comment><USER7> _> This is one of the things that node.js is really good at_

Why does every simple task motivate people to show some kind of "hello world" code in their favorite language and framework?

This web service is just a tiny exercise that is easily realized with a few lines in any language (even C or Bash) using any web server. In particular, I don't see in how far this code demonstrates the strengths of node.js.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps because, though Sinatra is actually one of my favorite frameworks, it doesn't work very well for this. The author comments that it's limited to 10 seconds because each connection is handled by a blocking Thin. Eventmachine could also solve this problem, in a similar amount of code.

And I was just pointing out that this happened to _be_ the official hello world for node.js.

<comment><AUTHOR> shmeedog wrote a server in eventlet that solves the blocking thin problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, the original implementation used microseconds it now uses seconds (with a max of ten).

<comment><USER8> Maximum's 10 seconds?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there are a limited number of thin processes running on the server and they block (making them non-blocking is work for another day). The code's on github, if you need a longer delay feel free to fork: <http://github.com/rconradharris/reallyslowsite.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://github.com/rconradharris/reallyslowsite.com/blob/mast...](http://github.com/rconradharris/reallyslowsite.com/blob/master/server.rb#L13)

One of the "slower than" expressions has an unnecessary "than."

<comment><USER10> Fixed, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This site is slow :)

I don't know Ruby, but how does this work:

        get '/', :agent => /curl/ do
          (slow_thing, time) = slow_down(DEFAULT_SLEEP)
          "SLOWER THAN #{slow_ting}. Putting the brakes on for #{time} seconds.\n"
        end

It binds slow_thing and then references it as slow_ting (without the h) in the interpolation? What?

It appears twice so it must be intentional?

<comment><USER10> Oops, that's a typo in code that hasn't been deployed yet. Our regression suite missed it ;-)

<comment><USER11> Ah, makes sense, you just get the empty string instead of "turtles marching through peanut butter".

I am used to Perl where your code won't compile if you reference an undefined variable in a string interpolation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hello, I have no doubt that this tool is really usefull. But as a non techie I dont understand the purpose. Can somebody explain me or refer me to an article that can explain why test HTTP caches and what is it?

<comment><USER10> reallyslowsite.com is designed to be a tool that developers can use to simulate how their application responds to expensive HTTP requests.

You could use this, for example, to test that your mobile application is properly caching HTTP requests (it would be noticeably slower, even with a fast connection, because the request is guaranteed to take at least 2 seconds).

The specific use case I had in mind when I created it was testing the HTTP caching that will be used internally by the OpenStack "glance" project.</comment></comment>


15 Entrepreneurial Blogs worth reading - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/06/13/15-entrepreneur-blogs-worth-reading/?mod=rss_WSJBlog

<comment><USER2> Nice post. I'm familiar with some of these, but some are new. I especially like Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. For the next week or so, I'll sample all of them, and then update my home page. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if you find some better ones too!</comment></comment>


Starfucker – A GitHub API exploration - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/starfucker/starfucker <comment><USER2> I guess this is the software nerd equivalent of buying Twitter followers?

</comment><comment><USER3> aaaand it's gone

<comment><USER4> What was it?

<comment><USER5> README Contents:

Starfucker - A GitHub API exploration

Star this repository

I will programatically star all your repositories (up to 10)

I will programatically follow you

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2FrjiB...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2FrjiBbNPS0J:https://github.com/starfucker/starfucker+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is just another example of why I'd like to see some kind of platform that requires "skin in the game" to make these kinds of actions.

For GitHub, I'm not quite sure how that would work, but perhaps for a Medium type platform, you'd have to verify that you've read someone's writings before you can follow them.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is great! I can imagine this repository will be quite popular as it feeds into the developers ego (including mine). I wonder how much development is not fueled by ideals about giving back but instead about chasing stars.

Edit: Removed already, I did wonder how Github would allow this!

</comment><comment><USER8> Hmm, My observation is that it only stars one repo (instead of all)? Looks like it...

<comment><USER9> Didn't star anything of mine as far as I can tell

<comment><USER8> Well, it did star one of my repos after a few minutes I starred it (and followed it as well). I guess waiting might help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> LOL! people are staring this repo as well. So they are not wrong with their idea.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like the name, it reminds me of the lyrics of Starboy by The Weeknd.

<comment><USER12> The song "Star Star" by the Rolling Stones (released in 73) was originally titled "Starfucker" and the words are used throughout the chorus.</comment></comment>


When machines know sin: the algorithmic bias of technology - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/when-machines-know-sin-the-algorithmic-bias-of-technology-82402b70dfd0 <comment><USER2> > Anima Anandkuma, a Professor at California Institute of Technology who has > previously worked on Amazon's AI systems says, _"Diverse teams are more > likely to flag problems that could have negative social consequences before > a product has been launched."_

I would love to see proof that this statement is true.

Oh, next paragraph:

> There is arguably no other industry that is more impactful to society than > the technology sector. If the firms that comprise this industry are almost > entirely represented by white male populations, it is hardly surprising that > their products end up being biased against other ethnicities.

I don't know how asian people who work in tech in the Bay Area can read these two paragraphs next to each other and not have their brain explode. I'm white/hispanic, and my brain exploded. Tech is "almost entirely represented by white male..." Yeah yeah yeah, white males = evil. Good job, author.</comment>


Show HN: Find Quality Written Content from Across the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.readory.com <comment><USER2> I saw your launch on PH a week or two ago. Looks like a nice idea. Best of luck

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Let me know if you have any ideas for feedback. Trying to figure out if quality content on front-page will increase as user size picks up or if I need to add some invite tree/deeper moderation</comment></comment>


Actual Innovation Returns  - <AUTHOR> http://innovatorinside.com/2014/01/28/actual-innovation-returns/

<comment><AUTHOR> = Make an announcement first to win.</comment>


Former Goldman Options Trader Becomes Argentina Taxi King - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-27/former-goldman-options-trader-moonlights-as-argentina-taxi-king.html <comment><USER2> So what if this guy wanted to improve quality/tech in his cabs, make them connected like ubers, he could give uber a crazy run for their money in this market. Taxis are notorious for ripping people off in BsAs (I've been 7 times I know).

Would be an interesting experiment to see large capital groups coming in to big cities in LatAm and overhauling taxi fleets etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Becomes Argentina Taxi King" is very misleading...

He only owns 30 licenses... there are players owning several thousands, through shell companies or straw men, but the legal limit is 200... And more importantly, the mayor owners are the managers of the Taxi Driver Union... and the unions have a LOT of political power inside the main political party of the country. So, it's impossible that this man would be able to become "a King"... Just a minor player, perhaps...

But I bet that he will leave in just a few years, after realizing that he won't be able to work here without "associating" (that is, handing over) a large part of his company to a powerful local sponsor (probably a powerful politician or Union leader)...

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd be worried that Uber and the like are going to destroy the value of a taxi medallion.

<comment><USER5> It is more likely that Uber will end up having to pay for a taxi medallion or equivalent to maintain government revenues.

<comment><USER6> Taxi medallions usually are private assets, government doesn't see any cash on them except ordinary sales tax.

<comment><USER2> I thought the medallions were issued by the government agency?

<comment><USER7> The normal way is that initially, when the taxi commission is formed the agency sells them, and then after that the medallions are in private hands, and are a resell-able asset of the company that owns them.

Here's an article on such a resale in New York a couple of years ago: [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/2-taxi- medallio...](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/2-taxi-medallions- sell-for-1-million-each/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Experimenting with same-provider DNS-over-HTTPS upgrade - <AUTHOR> https://blog.chromium.org/2019/09/experimenting-with-same-provider-dns.html <comment><USER2> > DoH would prevent other WiFi users from seeing which websites you visit,

This is _false_ , and downright dangerous information. A network attacker can still see that you are visiting pornhub.com even with DoH, since you are sending the hostname in cleartext as part of the TLS handshake.

Google isn't a snake-oil security solution - they shouldn't be making such false claims.

<comment><USER3> > This is false, and downright dangerous information. A network attacker can > still see that you are visiting pornhub.com

This won't be true as soon as ESNI gets implemented. (Chrome: [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=908132](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=908132) and Firefox nightlies have it already). However, ESNI is pretty meaningless if you're making plain-text DNS requests, so DoH is a pretty important part of the puzzle.

<comment><USER4> ...and you think the sequence and timing of IP addresses your machine connects to alone can't be used to easily infer the website you're browsing? Neither DoH nor ESNI will make you more secure/private, but DoH will definitely make some companies more powerful. That's not the Internet as we knew it until now.

<comment><USER5> Thankfully, today's Internet is definitely not the Internet of the early 2000s I remember – it was highly insecure and infested with virus/worms everywhere. Thanks to efforts like this Internet has gradually evolved to become more secure and more useful for real-world applications.

Both DoH+ESNI will make me more secure and private. Here's why:

Today my home ISP has deployed middle boxes that inspect my traffic to profile my browsing habits and serve me ads. They serve ads by doing click hijacking on plain http websites. yeah, it's nasty and they do it at a huge scale.

Obviously, we have some legislative gaps to address here.

Irrespective of the legal gaps, I can make it more expensive for them to do this by ensuring all of my traffic is fully encrypted (TLS 1.3 or wireguard).

They can still see IPs and do IP reverse lookup and traffic timing analysis etc. But the information leaked this way is far lesser than today and definitely not actionable immediately the way it is today.

Now, w.r.t making some companies more powerful – that is not inherent to DoH. DoH makes it possible for anyone to operate a secure and private resolver and any client is still free to choose who should be their upstream dns resolver. Client auto configuration protocols will evolve to support the ecosystem as more DoH resolvers show up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Long story short: Chrome will do DoH DNS, but only if your current DNS provider already supports DoH, and, for now, only as an experimental feature.

People are upset about Firefox's new default of routing DoH to Cloud Flare, and I understand why. But it's useful to keep the issues distinct: DoH is a good thing (your ISP should not be able to see your DNS queries), even if routing them to Cloud Flare isn't.

<comment><USER7> DoH is a good thing when I configure it on a system level. Each individual app bypassing the system DNS settings to implement DoH within the app is not a good thing.

<comment><USER8> As a thought exercise: why is the OS level the correct level for DNS configuration? Why would the LAN not own this?

It seems interesting that the article and many comments here identify the application level as inherently wrong and the OS level as inherently right.

What if you were running docker containers on a server?Is it incorrect for the containers to set their own resolver settings?

<comment><USER9> > Is it incorrect for the containers to set their own resolver settings?

For generic containers, it is. If you build your own very customised app, then sure, you can control what it does. But if you build an app, you don't know where/how I deploy it. It may be without internet access. It may be expected to use private DNS zones. It may be expected to query mdns. The container should not guess or assume those things.

<comment><USER8> I think I agree with you, but also I think I feel the same way about generic computers. I'd say that outside of specialized use cases, the OS is the wrong layer to define DNS settings: the network is the correct layer. Because that means that as computers move between networks, they handle things like private zones.

That said, I also think that there's no absolute truth for what constitutes a "specialized use case". I think if I'm the operator of a network, or a computer, or a container, or an application, having it use custom DNS settings is up to me. And Firefox/Chrome enable that: the operator can change the setting to whatever they want.

Speaking to the default case, Firefox/Chrome moving towards DNS defined at the app layer smells painful to me as a network operator, but ISP DNS interception also smells to me, and for the normal consumer threat model and network topology, Firefox/Chrome using CloudFlare DNS is essentially pure win. Most consumer users aren't on networks with split-horizon DNS, and most consumer users aren't at risk from CloudFlare logging their DNS requests, even assuming they're violating their published privacy policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On this topic: I recently learned about [https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/kb/configuring-networks-di...](https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/kb/configuring-networks-disable-dns-over-https)

Is this just a Mozilla one man show or are there plans by anyone else to support this? Maybe make this a standard? Some googling revealed nothing... Now the way Google does it sounds somewhat reasonable but who knows what the future will bring, or what other software will adapt DoH.

<comment><USER11> The text on [https://use-application-dns.net/](https://use-application- dns.net/) says that it will be attempted to become a standard through the IETF. But only time will tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google make this point which I haven't seen in any of the arguments so far:

> In particular, we are aware of how DNS can play an important role in ISP- > provided family-safe content filtering.

Lots of families with children use their ISP's safe browsing facilities which is usually implemented via alternative DNS servers.

Yes it is not terribly difficult to defeat, but it is cheap and effective for small and non technical children.

This does at least seem like a more sensible experiment than Mozilla's which will break the above scheme for every Firefox user.

<comment><USER13> They address it in [https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/07/31/dns- over-...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/07/31/dns-over-https- doh-update-detecting-managed-networks-and-user-choice/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> They say it will be enabled only for providers supporting this. Do they mean DNS servers supporting DoH?

If a network DHCP server publishes a local DNS server that is not on the list, DNS traffic will not bt encrypted?

So a network operator wishing to continue spying on its users just needs a local DNS proxy?

<comment><USER15> > _They say it will be enabled only for providers supporting this. Do they > mean DNS servers supporting DoH?_

No, they say providers, and mean providers. They are starting their experiment with a whitelist:

* [https://www.chromium.org/developers/dns-over-https](https://www.chromium.org/developers/dns-over-https)

If you're already using one of those then Chrome/ium will change from "plain DNS" over to DoH. If you are _not using_ one of them already, then _nothing will change_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Archived copy that can be read without JS enabled:

[https://archive.is/59JCD](https://archive.is/59JCD)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd be interested to know if this will affect the ability of things like Pi Hole to block advertising and user tracking via DNS?

<comment><USER18> I'm sure Pi Hole will have DoH support, so it should be fine as long as you can still change the server (in the browser and/or OS). The only snag might be mobile apps, in case they hardcode a DNS/DoH server instead of using the system config; that may be hard to change without rooting the device.

<comment><USER15> > _I 'm sure Pi Hole will have DoH support_ ...

We'll see.

Pi Hole uses DNSmasq as its DNS (and DHCP) server, and the few DNSmasq mailing list threads I've seen on the topic seem to indicate that the DNSmasq developers are not interested in either DoT or DoH. One said that it would be difficult to implement because of architectural issues IIRC.

It may be necessary to use a front-end proxy:

* [https://dnsdist.org/](https://dnsdist.org/)

<comment><USER19> Pi Hole already has documentation on how to use DoH with it, and it already works:

[https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns-over-https/](https://docs.pi- hole.net/guides/dns-over-https/)

Note: this is using cloudflared but that's just a DoH, it can and happily will query whatever provider you tell it to.

<comment><USER18> That's for upstream queries, I think we're talking about the connection from the devices to the PiHole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The only thing DoH gives anybody .. is even more of your private data to a centralized provider with questionable ethics, and the only company more ethically questionable than Google is Palantir. Run your own local resolver and move on with your life.

<comment><USER3> > ... private data to a centralized provider with questionable ethics

What, like your ISP?

<comment><USER21> Not everybody lives in the US. I trust my ISP. They are cool, and their handling of my data is regulated under the GDPR and other laws. CloudFlare? Not so much.

<comment><USER3> I am also not in the US. However, everywhere I look I see large ISPs with questionable ethics who are centralized providers of DNS.

I'm struggling to see why DoH means "is even more of your private data to a centralized provider with questionable ethics", which is what the OP said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know how much money Mozilla gets from Cloudflare? Do they get any? I've tried to find something in Mozilla financial declarations but haven't found anything.

<comment><USER21> Might sound like a conspiracy, but yes, I think they are getting money. They are definitely not sending the entire browsing history of users (DoH) and even the contents (VPN[]) to CloudFlare and getting nothing in return... right?

[] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20927832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20927832)

<comment><USER22> I'm not in the business of data, so I don't know what the browsing habit of millions of people are worth.</comment></comment></comment>


Doesn't the Social Web Realize that People Talk? - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/etel/2007/02/22/doesnt-the-social-web-realize-that-people-talk.html <comment><AUTHOR> I think this article is mainly relevant to mobile web. If you've got myspace on your mobile phone why type in comments and messages when you can send a quick voice message instead? I know livejournal already offeres a similar feature with a voice posting phone number. Users can add a text transcript later when they're at a keyboard.

Theres also companies such as spinvox who offer the ability to do voice messaging and voice to blog. With spinvox you record your voice message and it converts it to text. This way you can post/message using the easiest mobile medium (voice) and others can either read or lsiten to it depending on what is easiest.

</comment><comment><USER2> What? I thinks the author goes a bit far with his idea that people need to talk. Does anybody remember how and why BBS' were so popular? It's because you had a voice, an anonymous voice, and you could share information without being judged. I don't know why the author thinks that people on sites don't communicate (maybe I missed the jist of the article entirely), but just because people aren't doing VOIP doesn't mean they have no 'voice'.</comment>


React Indie Bundle report, or how we made $31k in a week - <AUTHOR> http://swizec.com/blog/react-indie-bundle-report-or-how-we-made-31k-in-a-week/swizec/6762?dedup <comment><USER2> That's a shit ton of work for $4K per author on launch.</comment>


Apple Used Front Company with Clever Name to Grab iPad Trademark - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/briancaulfield/2010/10/28/apple-used-front-company-with-clever-name-to-grab-ipad-trademark-in-2006/

<comment><USER2> Actual article: [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4e10735e-e1f3-11df-a064-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4e10735e-e1f3-11df-a064-00144feabdc0.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not an uncommon practice when you need to grab real estate either. You also sometimes use multiple front companies so people won't see the pattern.</comment>


Step Outside Your Own Head (includes insights into DHH, Gmail, and Quicksilver) - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2007/04/step-outside-your-own-head.html <comment><USER2> I keep get the feeling that we (technical folks) are doing a great job of solving _our_ problems while most of the non-technical folks get left behind.

It seems as though if we better understood the world from their perspective, there's a lot of value yet to be create by us for the needs of non-technical people. Generally speaking, creating value is profitable.

Good article.

<comment><USER3> I started getting technical when I realized that life was more fun when I can outsource the boring parts to a computer.

This isn't especially rare, either: Excel/VBA wasn't designed to be a financial modeling language, but it's one of the standards in quantitative finance because so many traders kept track of information in Excel, and ended up getting really good at it. As languages proliferate and integration between web apps gets more common, I think moving along the user-developer continuum will get easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Folders are a good tool, but once you create more than one level in your hierarchy, you are lost and you end up searching documents by text patterns. Still, a single level folder system works, especially if all folders somehow fit your screen so that you can see all at once.

Leaving only search/tagging is an extreme and I think developers will eventually come to the idea of one-level folder system combined with optional tagging (i.e. you tag only if a word can't be found in the document but you feel it's relevant).

</comment><comment><USER5> His point about cross-polination of fields leading to innovation is also made extensively by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his two books "Flow" and "Creativity". I'd highly recommend them to anyone who is interested in the process of creativity (he looks at it in a number of different fields), or who is interested in human behavior (especially one's own).

</comment><comment><USER6> I have never hated any feature so much as tagging...

Alternatives?

<comment><USER7> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Arg, my roommate shows up yet again on news.YC yet again :P</comment>