Harvard Economist Is Trying to Kill Cash - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-07/harvard-economist-kenneth-rogoff-is-trying-to-kill-cash?utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-business <comment><USER2> > Law-abiding citizens rarely have need for $100 bills

That's a point of view of someone who has never lived near the poverty line or other economically problematic situations. If you deal in cash without a bank account, $100 bills, while not particularly common, are not rare either. Accusing these people of being lawbreakers simply because they have crappy jobs, are bankrupt, pay their rent in cash, etc is highly offensive (and classist).

> That suggests the bills are circulating mainly in the underground economy.

So what? Underground does not mean illegal.

> If the biggest bill were worth $10, rather than $100, delivering someone a > million bucks under the table would require a 220-pound chest rather than a > 22-pound briefcase.

No, it would require something like a check or money order, creative accounting, and possibly an offshore bank account or two. Bribery, laundering, and other financial crimes are not generally done with cash; they happen on the books, often through _legal_ means. Did this "Harvard economist" miss the SCOTUS rulings that _de facto_ legalized bribery?

> Forcing people to use smaller bills, Rogoff argues, might make crime more > conspicuous and less convenient.

No, it merely moves many types of petty crime into barter and alternative economies. The higher-value crimes (usually) don't use cash.

<comment><USER3> > No, it would require something like a check or money order, creative > accounting, and possibly an offshore bank account or two. Bribery, > laundering, and other financial crimes are not generally done with cash; > they happen on the books, often through legal means.

Do you have a source for this? In the US, transactions over a certain limit have a paper trail; many transactions adding up to over that limit raise tons of red flags.

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

<comment><USER2> Red flags only happen if the transaction was _illegal_. We legalized all kinds of creative accounting when we _deregulated_ entire industries over the last several decades. Reporting requirement haven't stopped offshore accounts and other havens, tricks, and tax avoidance schemes.

The point is that you don't need an anonymous transaction when you payment or bribe is (technically) legal.

<comment><USER3> I think we're going to disagree here. Red flags happen on individually legal transactions as indications that could indicate larger patterns of illegal behavior.

Deregulation of industries (say, electricity [0]) did not happen just to introduce creative or legal accounting fraud. Do you have any sources for your claims, or just hearsay/personal thoughts?

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_el...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation_of_the_Texas_electricity_market)

<comment><USER2> You're still thinking about the wrong kind of transaction. Try "Super PAC" and other forms of paying for access/influence, or the popular practice of giving someone a $250,000 speaking fee or well-paying job they don't have to attend. These are _obviously_ bribes, which would have been a scandal 50+ years ago, but we legalized them.

I'll assume you're already familiar with the legal, quasi-legal, and illegal ways money is moved into offshore accounts. The details change over time as regulators catch up, and I believe there has been some progress in recent years at stopping some of these practices.

> just to introduce

Of course not. There were many (profitable) reasons deregulation happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For someone who is supposed to be intelligent this proposal sounds dangerously inept. They start from the premise that only bad people use $100 bills w/o providing any evidence the claim is true. Incredibly they then use that to support their thesis that both $20, and $50 bills should be phased out as well.

The assumption that a cashless society would give a central bank more control by making negative interest rates viable is also totally nuts. People would just end up buying things like precious metals, low inflation crypto currencies or anything else that emerged as a defacto store of value. In Baltimore for example there is a strong underground market for name brand laundry detergent and as a result you can barter a jug of it for drugs.

[http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent- drugs-2013-1/](http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember back in the late 90's listened to a talk which I dismissed as conspiracy. The key points were

1\. Moving people away from cash to credit so easier monitoring of society and transactions

2\. Moving communications to the "information super highway" with constant listening in

Our grand kids will live in a vastly different society. I fear we may be heading to a reality covered in so many dystopian works of fiction.

The chilling effects of the constant surveillance we currently have.

This was previously posted on HN:

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-07/why-you-should- be-p...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-07/why-you-should-be-paying- attention-americas-quiet-war-cash)

<comment><USER6> Since the goal is total power, our grand kids will live in no society at all. They will be automatons, live in pain/in fear/in despair/not at all, or be Gestapo officers. But they'll be too regressed to even be able to hate their ancestors for their cowardice and hybris, so that's good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If a government keeps monopoly on money creation and all banking system is tightly regulated by the government but at the same time there is no cash in the economy, then government have ultimate power on everybody (since they can't burn cash in your pocket but they can freeze all your bank accounts anytime) and therefore your freedom at mercy of government bureaucrats.

Hard cash (and now also cryptocurrencies) is only little freedom you (still) have.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is that the same Kenneth Rogoff who co-authored a study about "Growth in a Time of Debt" which turned out to be full of faked data? And, curiously, EU/ECB/MMF (the infamous "Troika") and, most prominently, Germany based their "austerity" measures towards South European countries on that very study - which practically and conveniently provided the alibi for their crimes.

"Curiously" only the first sight: This guy is a member of the "Group of Thirty", a group "founded in 1978 by Geoffrey Bell at the initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation" and supported ([http://group30.org/about/supporters](http://group30.org/about/supporters)) by the very profiteers of austerity.

And now he writes about "The Curse of Cash".

Should we believe him this time as well? Do we really know, who's interests he's serving?

<comment><USER9>
       their crimes.

Which crimes have you got in mind? The crime of being outvoted on the ECB board and having to bail out everybody?

<comment><USER10> I guess you're not Greek then or you would know what crimes. I'm not Greek either but I was shocked at what they did to this country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The list of reasons he thinks it's a good idea reads like a list of reasons I think it's a bad idea. Strange how differently people think we should organize society, though I'm not surprised that someone so involved with the system believes that the system should be given considerably more power.

<comment><USER12> I've met a lot of academics that think like this. I find them terrifying in their inability to recognize adverse feedback loops. I'll keep my paper, thank you.

<comment><USER13> Reminds me of the Euro. Was blessed as such a grand simplifying project by academics and technocrats in the late 90s, and critics were often dismissed conspiracy theorists.

<comment><USER14> Various people still love the Euro. Mostly though it is those that can pack up their laptop and credit card and work from anywhere with a internet connection. Oh and the businesses trading across EU's internal borders.

The crazy part is how those nations with the biggest problems right now are those that followed the Euro requirements most closely. While the biggest offender is the one swinging the punishment stick...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On the other hand, the Byzantine Empire as all cash, but the _fiscus_ managed to keep tax evasion at reasonable levels by taxing items where they cannot be hid. The main points of taxation was real estate at village level and wholesellers at merchant fairs.

Getting rid of cash would prevent tax evasion, but only for those that cannot afford tax shelters like Panama or the Double Irish with Dutch Sandwich with profit moved to the Cayman Islands.

<comment><USER16> Next step: destroy tax shelters like Panama either through embargoes or with military action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This sounds great if you are VISA or MasterCard charging a fee for every transaction. The problem with cash is that it is too hard to get 100 and 50 dollar bills. This man clearly doesn't get out. Going for dinner for 80 dollars means carrying 5 $20 bills which is a serious PITA. Groceries, fuel, lightning ear buds, all the same.

<comment><USER10> What's wrong with carrying 5 bills ? I regularly do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Law-abiding citizens rarely have need for $100 bills,

Law-abiding citizens rarely have need for Kenneth Rogoff.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Law-abiding citizens rarely have need for $100 bills

What a bizarre thing to say. While I don't use them frequently, whenever I sell my stuff off, usually I'll receive $100 bills.

People generally don't carry $500+ in cash, so when they go to the bank to withdraw, it'll come in $100 notes.

<comment><USER20> The day before yesterday, an older gentleman in front of me at Tractor Supply paid with a hundred. As far as I know, baling twine is perfectly legal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> >interest rates into negative territory. That's the strange world where you pay to keep money in the bank and get paid to borrow it.

Wow, fuck that. I've already reduced my credit card usage to near zero for privacy-related reasons, but I still use a bank to store my funds. I'll definitely be among those switching exclusively to cash if this sort of thing comes to pass.

<comment><USER22> Serious question: where do you store your cash?

I am privacy conscious myself, and I am evaluating a cash-only life, but where do you keep all the cash? Still at the bank?

<comment><USER21> I have $XXXX in my safe and $XX-XXX in my wallet most of the time. I periodically top up at an ATM, gas stations near me have 0-fee ATMs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Kenneth Rogoff has an interesting résumé: international grandmaster of chess_

So is Gary Kasparov, who doesn't even write any of his propaganda in Russian. So was Bobby Fischer, vicious anti-semite.

This shows that he's great at chess. It doesn't show much else.

<comment><USER24> Or maybe it shows they are right, and you just don't get it, because your no good at chess. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It ia happening in UK already. 50 GBP note is all but outlawed. You cannot get it from ATM, some note machines do not accept it, if you need bigger quantities of it it - you must fill paperwork weighting more than the notes themselves.

I love the 500 eur note, and think we should move to a 1000 soon.

<comment><USER22> > I love the 500 eur note, and think we should move to a 1000 soon.

The 500 EUR note is being phased out: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/500-euro- banknote-being-phased-o...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/500-euro-banknote- being-phased-out-1462381987)

Personally, I have never seen one. I only saw a 200 EUR note once, the ATM don't give then, which is a pity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> We need to go the other way -- introduce larger-denomination bills. Assuming there was a good reason to make the highest bill $100 in 1969, calculating for inflation would allow us to have $500 bills. I'd argue for bringing back the $1000 -- and then indexing it to inflation from here on out.

With negative interest rates on their way in, people and organizations are going to start stockpiling big piles of cash. The least we can do is try to make it more cost-efficient.

</comment><comment><USER27> Suppressing cash means much less privacy and more state control. Full stop.

</comment><comment><USER3> Take cash away, people will just use something else for currency. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money#Aspects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_money#Aspects)

</comment><comment><USER28> In some countries (like where I live) it's hard to come across US Dollar bills other than 100.

<comment><USER29> What country is that?

It matches my experience in Lebanon, but I was only there briefly as a tourist.

<comment><USER28> I'm in Ukraine, but I guess it applies to any country without a strong own currency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel Well the only reason why cash exists at all today is because banking is a mess. Especially if you're poor. So banning cash isn't going to help the poor at all as others have noted. Wake me up when the same Harvard economists get off their butts and make a standard that will make banking for the poor as easy as it is for the rich. Until then, I'm all for cash.

</comment><comment><USER30> I love living in a country where cash has already been killed. Haven't seen a bill in many years.

<comment><USER31> Spoken like someone who has never had their accounts extrajudicially frozen.

How do you pay your lawyer when the state or bank decides to steal from you?

<comment><USER32> How much do you keep in cash? Enough to pay your lawyer ?

<comment><USER31> I have plenty of assets which I can sell for cash in a pinch - should cash actually still exist.

When everything is a bank transfer, your very right to transact is at the mercy of the government.

<comment><USER32> Agree that makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Assuming this article is serious, exactly how do they plan to phase out the higher denomination bills? Is it actually feasible?

"Rogoff says he doesn't want to get rid of cash all at once. First, he would phase out 100s, then 50s, then 20s, leaving smaller bills in circulation for the foreseeable future. "I want to have a less-cash society, not a cashless society," he said."

<comment><USER34> Phasing out bills is definitely feasible. Bills usually pass through a bank fairly often, at which point they can be removed from circulation. In general banknotes have their design changed every 10-20 years, and very old banknotes are no longer legal tender (though they can sometimes be exchanged at the central bank). A regular bank won't accept a deprecated banknote.

The ECB is currently phasing out 500s, first by removing those it can get its hands on from circulation, and after a few years by declaring the rest no longer legal tender.

<comment> nommm-nommm I've never had problems spending very old banknotes in the US.

<comment><USER35> I don't believe US banknotes change design that frequently. In europe bank notes change design every 5-10 years and quickly stop being legal tender a 3-5 years afterwards...

<comment> nommm-nommm We had a major redesign in about... 2001ish. You still see the old notes circling around sometimes and they are still legal tender. The $100 bill was redesigned about two years ago. We have new paper notes coming out soon... [https://modernmoney.treasury.gov](https://modernmoney.treasury.gov).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have heard that the anti-corruption reasoning is why China's biggest note is 100 CNY (worth less than 20 USD)

<comment><USER36> That's the reason they give. The real reason is control of the masses, not the corrupt few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This will go as well as the war on drugs, poverty, terrorism, et al.

</comment><comment><USER14> Do wonder how long it will take for some "mafia bank" to sprout...

</comment><comment><USER38> And convert it to what? Cash?</comment>


Windows 10 Observations - <AUTHOR> http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/Windows10Observations.aspx <comment><USER2> "Win8 apps that use the AppBar are going to need to be rewritten to avoid it. The AppBar is really hard to bring up in touch mode..."

This was always the infuriating part of making a Win8 app, the guidelines were terrible and you could either follow them to try and feel like a native app (with a sucky UX) or you could tweak them or invent your own, which made your app feel like a one-off with a steeper learning curve</comment>


Medieval Cookery Rolls as Practical Kitchen Texts - <AUTHOR> http://recipes.hypotheses.org/5352

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, when they refer to the red ink coming off the parchment, it's is not an ink, but an illumination.

Inks were historically gall inks that used lampblack for the first few weeks, and the ink gall to dissolve/burn the parchment. That's why inks were black: they were char.

The colors though, were compounds painted on the manuscript to provide color. Malachite, lapis, lead, mercury, arsenic, and copper were all traditional pigments. So, when they say the red ink is flaking off, it's actually a red lead flaking.

And yes, these methods last hundreds of years. And many of them are as vibrant as when they were created.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess I don't really get it. The article starts with the question:

> _" Would the entire roll be stretched out twenty feet just to doublecheck > the ingredients necessary for a dish of blanc manger?"_

To which I can only think _" Of course they didn't do that. Why would anyone use a scroll like that?"_

The rest of the article seems to mostly be _" they didn't use a scroll like that"_.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, the rest of the article looks at the physical evidence for the various different ways in which they did use it.</comment></comment>


Rumor: Google spending $150M to launch 25+ professional YouTube channels - <AUTHOR> http://www.deadline.com/2011/10/youtube-wrapping-up-groundbreaking-deals-to-launch-channels-with-professionally-produced-video/ <comment><USER2> This is a REAL potential game changer and I've been patiently waiting to see how long it would take before a major internet video streaming company made this move.

The underlying reason for Netflix's current woes is because CONTENT producers are squeezing it to them and will be increasing their prices significantly in the next year. The reason Hulu wasn't acquired even though many companies considered it, was because the CONTENT producers (who also happen to currently own Hulu) planned on increasing their prices to anyone who was dumb enough to buy Hulu without long term costs locked in contractually.

With this move, Google is moving to consolidate distribution as well as content production into Youtube. The significance of this can't be underestimated. If YouTube can produce a hit show, there's no middle man to step in and charge them arbitrary licensing fees to host the show.

I don't see any reason why youtube couldn't produce a show like MythBusters or the Jersey Shore. And in a few years, maybe even a show like Breaking Bad.

Once this ball get's rolling traditional cable will be in for a rough ride.

<comment><USER3> Indeed! Especially now since there aren't any practical limits on youtube video size, duration, or quality.

There is already a lot of pretty high quality original content on youtube. Some of that content is more popular than some cable content. There are youtube channels which have weekly updates and see millions of viewers on every episode. They are under the traditional media radar though since they don't have a promotional budget and they don't appear in a program lineup anywhere.

This trend can only accelerate from here. Producing a "show" or a "movie" requires a teeny, tiny amount of effort and resources these days, and can be done without spending more than 4 figures on equipment and whatnot.

We are nearing an inflection point in this process, soon there will be a critical mass of shows and viewers such that word-of-mouth recommendations start exploding viewership and more importantly that it begins to become cemented in the zeitgeist that making an "internet tv show" is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, regardless of how talented you are, and more so is a quite feasible thing to do. That will lead to a spiraling increase in both content and viewership which will likely catch a lot of the traditional media folks off guard. I don't think they realize that there is a bubbling cauldron out there which is poised to spew forth the equivalent of hundreds of channels of content. Content that people will watch. And talk about. And value at the same level as traditional TV content.

<comment><USER4> The biggest potential danger I see is to Google's brand image. Google is respected as producing high-quality... stuff. Television networks aren't respected because they produce... an awful lot of garbage. If google starts being directly responsible for the Jersey Shores of the world then surely their brand image takes a hit.

 _Producing a "show" or a "movie" requires a teeny, tiny amount of effort and resources these days, and can be done without spending more than 4 figures on equipment and whatnot._

Though it must be said that the only way you can produce a movie _really_ cheaply is if you can persuade folks to work for peanuts in the hope of breaking into the industry.

But if low-budget stuff _becomes_ the industry, then the supply of folks willing to work for nothing in the hopes of being the next George Clooney will die up when George Clooney starts taking home five hundred bucks a film.

<comment><USER3> Good point, that is a concern. Maybe google should create a subsidiary brand for just that purpose.

As far as low-budget productions, I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. The key is lowering the cost of entry. What this enables is not just "low-budget" productions but also "start-ups" with members who have decided to defer compensation in exchange for equity in the "start-up". This is the dominant way that bands get started, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the comment section:

"Welcome to the end of middle class jobs in the entertainment industry. These shows will be non-union with corporations using shell corporations to produce them for Google. Everyone (directors, writers, actors, and crew) will be paid pennies on the dollar.

People who think the Entertainment Industry is full of fat cats don't realize that show business is just like the rest the US economy right now. One percent earns a huge share of the profit, while the rest fight for crumbs, and this is another strong move in that direction. This isn't a screed to support unions, it's a screed about the reality of the loss of America's middle class. It's been going on for thirty years and it gets worse every day."

Are good directors/writers/actors/etc that easy to find that you can pay them "pennies on the dollar" and still produce a high quality product?

<comment><USER6> All it takes is for some of them to be out of work and be willing to work for the offered amount. It's like Huffington Post firing everyone, getting people to write for free, and offering to let old writers interview for their old jobs at no pay.

Your product doesn't have to be good, just good enough. The viewers will follow, and soon a new standard is set for wages.

I'm reminded of video game programming, which has lower wages than other fields for programmers. Why? More people want to do it. They're willing to work for less. Now consider how many people want to be famous actors and directors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The very best of youtube for me as a wannabe, spareroom, hacker is the independent channels. You just can not beat them. For instance, the Geekgroup (great channel) which as far as I can make out is very well funded just doesn't hold a candle to the likes of Photonicinduction, bkraz333, Afrotechmods, jeriellsworth, UnknownLobster, et al when it comes to raw talent.

If I was the head of this google project I'd get in bed with the raw talent.

<comment><USER8> Wow, thanks for listing all those interesting channels. I've been looking at some of them and they're great! One I'd add is called "Smarter Every Day" by a destinws2. He's an aeronautics engineer, I think, but mostly shoots guns with a high speed camera. He always includes interesting science, though, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm really interested to see what level of audience interaction these "professional" channels will use. TV is by its nature a one-way medium. YouTube allows for much greater feedback from your audience, and it's that sense of community coupled with content that has made hugely popular YouTube channels and celebs.

Will traditional, professional channels simply try to move the content online and not take advantage of the new features that they'll have access to ?

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the differences between tv and Internet is that tv channels have an oligopoly on your attention. There's a small limited number of channels competing for attention across all tv viewers. YouTube has to compete not only against millions of Other things on the net bit also millions of other videos on YouTube itself. It'll be interesting to see if the tv model of taking large million dollar bets on unproven shows works here.

<comment><USER11> there is also attention lockin, once you start watching a show, there are a lot fewer distraction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think many of you have severely misread this article.

This isn't about Google creating content, this is about Google partnering with production companies who will provide the content.

Now, don't be surprised if you see Google make more company related content, but it won't be Google-owned and ran soap operas or anything. At most I expect more meta content, say a promotional guide channel like many stations offer.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great, 25 more channels of the like that makes up 90% of cable television.

Please, Google, give us ESPN. People will literally throw money at you.

<comment><USER13> Sports are keeping the traditional cable model alive. I would love to see somebody negotiate streaming deals with the NFL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think when more traditional celebrities inevitably begin to transition over to content targeted specifically at internet audiences, the revolution will begin. Google has the power to nurture raw talent, as well as attract artists who have already been vetted by traditional media into the new media sphere.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yep, this is true. A friend of mine is producing one of their channels (deal has been signed). Exciting!

<comment><USER6> Very! What I wouldn't give to be in a production company entering into this!

I'm sure there will be some original problems, but by far and large the problems of production are solved ones. I bet it would be like being in a startup with a quarter of the unknowns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a fan of Thisweekin I would like to see how they respond to this move.

<comment><USER17> I'm also a fan and I expect (and hope) they are vying to be a part of it. I watch a significant proportion of my Theisweekin content straight from YouTube. Above all else, this announcement (even a the rumor stage) is a huge validation of the internet as a distribution channel for professionally produced original content. I believe Jason Calacanis bought off on that a while ago with the investment in ThisWeekIn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Google producing creative content? What could possibly go wrong?

It will be entertaining to see how they A/B test the color of the clothing the actors wear for maximum effectiveness.

<comment><USER19> You joke, but I watched "How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?" (a making-of doc about The Social Network) and it blew my mind a little bit seeing the process of test-shooting the wardrobes and makeup.

Ah, here's a clip online: <http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1594268185/> ...skip to 6:45

There's a quick cut in there where there's a table with what looks like a hundred pairs of watches.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for mentioning that. I didn't know about it. Ended up watching the whole thing tonight. I found it fascinating. Great to see what goes on behind the scenes..

If anyone else has documentaries about film-making that they can recommend, I'd love to hear your picks. Thanks.

<comment><USER19> The entire second disc of The Social Network is filled to the brim with making-of stuff of similar caliber. I know I'm never going to be a filmmaker, but I really get sucked into that sort of thing.

The super mega edition of Blade Runner (with the three or four different cuts) also has a very, very expansive set of documentaries, which cover not only the making of the film (hiring writers, chasing down financing, creating the effects, etc.) but the arduous task of making the re-release. The range of people involved that they talk to goes from the riggers and everyday film crew to the financiers who seemingly didn't much care what it was about so long as it made money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How will Google be able to stick to their the "Do no evil" mission statement when trying to dip into Hollywood's koolaid?</comment>


Basilisk was reforked by the Pale Moon team and a new release is available - <AUTHOR> http://basilisk-browser.org/download.shtml
Moonchild productions have decided to refork their Basilisk browser code in form of the Firefox 52 Esr Base code, as their first attempt using a code beyond FX 52 was impossible to use for their reasons because of all the new code (Rust and so on) was too hard to remove.
https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/UXP - the new repository of Basilisk new
UXP will be also coming to Pale Moon -  The old V24 based UI with a more modern engine behind.
But there is a big issue:
TLS 1.3 can not be implemented because Mozilla did a rewrite of NSS in a newer version of Visual Studio and Pale Moon and Basilisk, being created with an older variant of that program are so far not compatible with the requirements for TLS 1.3 related files and a work-around must be found.. if it is possible at all, which is yet highly unsure.
What is present since the first release of the new fork-point:
http://basilisk-browser.org/releasenotes.shtml <comment><USER2> Why not use mingw64 which is actively maintained instead of some ancient visual studio version? It certainly looks possible [1]. Taking a look and Pale Moon's dev page [2] I see that they are using VS2012.

[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Compiling_Mozilla_With_Mingw) [2] [https://developer.palemoon.org/Developer_Guide:Build_Instruc...](https://developer.palemoon.org/Developer_Guide:Build_Instructions/Pale_Moon/Windows)

<comment><AUTHOR> My personal guess is that the Pale Moon/Basilisk team has no clue how to use other compilers.

I mean, what for another reason... logical... reason would be around for staying with an ancient version?

And that is rather sad that they are seemingly unable to broaden their knowledge.

If you maintain a browser project you should have at least a more broad know- how or you should have someone on board who provides you with that if you on your own are missing that.

I value more choice in the browser market away from the Chrome or Chrome clones or almost Chrome clones - but at the same time i think also that the Pale Moon team is way too arrogant and sharp tongued against Mozilla and others seen from their own lack of abilities to find a work-around or being able to get a more complex job done.

<comment><USER3> In that you are right. Moonchild, Tobin and the other ones may be able to solve browser internal issues, but everything which is reaching a certain size is "patches welcome".

And to make it worse, they are rather rude against Seamonkey developers or Mozilla, or Brave or Vivaldi or against guys who dare to fulfill not 1000% the branding rules of Moonchild when creating an own version of Pale Moon/Basilisk.

While i would defend Pale Moon against Firefox trolls as i am in support of minorities, i am less than appalled to see how they are acting towards certain Linux guys or even own users who are insulted for creating forks for XP.

The whole Pale Moon project is a double edged sword.

[https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd- wip/issues/86](https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86)

That says more than anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My personal reason not to use Pale Moon - and instead Otter-Browser. I also would recommend Vivaldi more than Pale Moon.

If you are creating a browser it is pure illusion to think you can also handle engine stuff. That is such a complex matter - HTML5, CSS3, ecmascript - Take a look in the past. Moonchild, Tobin and the others had to re-base Pale Moon to be able to be compatible with today's web.

And now that should be possible when they are basically just doing it another time? Stuff does not stay complex, it gets worse the more time is progressing.

And if they have been unable to implement promises or shared array or whatever on their own.. how they actually could believe they can implement upcoming features?

If you are forking something, make sure the engine work is done by someone else. That is the only valid way to get stuff done and not becoming outdated.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would anyone of you use a browser which is not able to support TLS 1.3?

<comment><USER3> Right now, yes.

Once even TLS1.2 becomes deprecated, it is time to switch if it would be clear that an upgrade would be impossible from the makers side of affairs.

Or the moment you have to learn from the makers that they simply can't do that on their own.</comment></comment>


IBM Watson API Coming Soon - <AUTHOR> https://developer.ibm.com/watson/

<comment><USER2> You know I have a question for HN. What does everyone think the implications for widely available access to AI? I know that I immediately thought of passwords. Could you ask Watson with everything it knows about a person (or feeding it additional info) would you be able to get a list of possibilities? I might make the iCloud situation much more interesting if you could apply that to anything.

Any other ideas?</comment>


Show HN: PouchDB Bindings for PureScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brakmic/purescript-pouchdb <comment><USER2> Totally unrelated: is Purescript good? Does it prevents me from deploying totally bugged code? Does it have good Vim integration? Is it easy to install? Does it require Haskell? How do I start? Where can I get good answers to these questions?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.purescript.org/](http://www.purescript.org/)

The Book (for free): [https://leanpub.com/purescript/read](https://leanpub.com/purescript/read)

Cheers,

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently adding plain API calls. Later I'll take care of proper mappings for various Options (ajax, remote, indexedb, websql etc.).

For now, these APIs are available: create, destroy, put, post & info.

Cheers,</comment>


Firefox Monitor - <AUTHOR> https://monitor.firefox.com/scan <comment><USER2> My email appears in six breaches. Only one of the companies I recognize. I have never done business with the other five.

This pisses me off. Not that the data was stolen -- these things happen. It pisses me off that my data was shared with third parties without my knowledge or consent. And no, a paragraph buried in the basement of a privacy policy does not constitute informed consent.

This system would be more useful if it could report how these companies got my data. I want to know who betrayed me.

It wouldn't be a terrible thing to have privacy legislation that forces companies that sell your data to disclose what information they sold, when, and to whom.

<comment><USER3> > I want to know who betrayed me.

You can run your own email server (or have a company host a private domain for you), set up a catch-all address that only you know, then use a different email address for every site you sign up to. That way you can find out this sort of information.

Using this technique, I know for example that spammers obtained the address I signed up to Stack Overflow with. The email is not shown on my profile now, and I can't rule out that it wasn't ever shown publicly, but evidence suggests they sold my address to spammers. I also know that spammers crawled my website and found a blog post where I stupidly made up a random address using my domain as part of an example for configuring junk filters (the irony is not lost on me).

<comment><USER4> Fastmail supports this natively (and is awesome). You can do email@example.com and it will get delivered to email@example.com.

<comment><USER5> You can use the + trick and . trick with Gmail addresses too. I think Outlook as well supports the + trick. The only downside to this is that there are plenty of sites that don't accept a + either knowingly or unknowingly.

<comment><USER6> this isn't a good anti-spam filter though. + addressing (even the fastmail kind) is trivial to parse and I'm 100% sure email harvesters are aware of it.

<comment><USER7> This isn't to prevent spam, it is to identify the original leak. If the unique email address you gave to company X is used for solicitations by company Y, company X must have given it away.

<comment><USER8> Then what?

<comment><USER9> I usually go for <company>@example.com where <company> is the company I'm handing my address to. After a breach I route that address to /dev/null

<comment><USER10> That's trivially easy to guess -- and game.

You want something that is sufficiently random that it can't be easily guessed or gamed, but can be quickly and easily determined on your side.

Salted cryptographic hashes might be a good place to start.

<comment><USER11> Most spammers won't go through the of "gaming" it. There's no upside. There are far easier targets to focus on than sending more mail to a single recipient who is more sophisticated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I checked my email address and it says my data was lost by verifications.io. I've never heard of that site before and going there didn't reveal any clues.

I googled the name and found a report [1] on the breach. They lost control of records on 2 billion email addresses.

[1]: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/03/10/2-billio...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/03/10/2-billion- unencrypted-records-leaked-in-marketing-data-breach-what-happened-and-what-to- do-next/#366401d06b0d)

<comment><USER13> It sounds like this was email addresses only, and they're very shady about how they acquired this information in the first place.

"The real question that the researchers and Troy Hunt, founder of Have I Been Pwned?, want to know is how Verifications.io got its hands on all of this information in the first place. The Estonian-based company has refused to respond to questions from different news outlets and has taken down its entire website as of March 4, 2019. " [1]

and

"Verifications.io ensures third-parties' email marketing campaigns are being sent out to verified accounts, and not just fake emails. " [1]

[1]: [https://www.idtheftcenter.org/763-million-records-exposed- in...](https://www.idtheftcenter.org/763-million-records-exposed-in- verifications-io-data-breach/)

<comment><USER14> The premise of the company explains how they got the information. Marketing teams at hundreds of other companies sending over their lists to the site to see if some of their emails are fake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How does this relate to HaveIBeenPwned.com? Is it a separate effort? Does it have more data? Is it built on top of their data?

I've seen other services (like 1Password) just rely on HaveIBeenPwned because it's pretty solid – seems like it would be nice for the industry to coalesce around it and build these kinds of alerting features on top of it.

<comment><USER16> When you submit your email after the breaches list there's this notice "Breach data provided by Have I Been Pwned", so I guess it's a joint effort.

<comment><USER17> Yes, exactly. It's on the bottom of every breach page too:

> Breach data provided by Have I Been Pwned

I love that it's a visually engaging and simple way of showing breaches. It's going to be a lot easier to share this with family, then get them on a password manager.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Apparently MyFitnessPal had their data breached, and my email address/password was in it.

Checking my emails, I can't see anything from them about this. Loads of the usual marketing crap, but nothing about a breach.

Not cool!

<comment><USER19> Same, for me it was them and Apollo. I can't find anything about either of them in my mail, but both claim to have notified their customers. That's very suspicious. I don't delete anything... Perhaps it found its way into my spam and got auto-deleted (entirely possible with Apollo, seems very unlikely with MFP).

<comment><USER20> Also got mine leaked from FitnessPal and Apollo and them only. No idea what Apollo is or how they got my stuff. Any idea what it is?

A link to each service's website would be awesome in the breach report on FireFox Monitor.

<comment> mh- Had the same. Seems Apollo is [https://www.apollo.io](https://www.apollo.io) \- you were probably entered as a sales lead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Disclaimer: Firefox Monitor dev here.

Note: We just released a "V2" of the site that allows you to add multiple email addresses to monitor, and (then) to have all your breach alerts sent to your single primary email address.

<comment><USER22> Are there plans to monitor an entire custom domain?

<comment><USER23> Just use the site where Firefox is getting their data from, they have a domain feature: [https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch](https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Mozilla and Apple, lately, are the only companies I trust my data to. Nice to see more from both.

<comment><USER25> I find it difficult to trust Apple for security considering their morally bankrupt behaviour in rest of their business. They have proven their sole principle is monetary, so I find it difficult to perceive their recent claim to care about user security as anything beyond opportunism.

<comment><USER26> I can't think of a big tech device company that's any less driven by money than apple. What makes them so unique, in your mind? In my experience I've had less unwanted tracking and advertising, and better support compared to other phone and laptop manufacturers I used to buy from.

<comment><USER25> Not everything needs to be a "big tech company", but you are right big tech companies are quite similar in this respect. At critical mass capitalism seems to cause companies to lose their driving principles that made them unique - their behaviour becomes more of a mindless ecology driven solely by money.

Now look at Mozilla, it's a non profit, look at everything it does, they have never lost their principles. They will never reach the scale of Apple, Google or Microsoft, and that's a good thing.

> What makes them so unique, in your mind?

Beyond the negatives that come at their scale, Apple are doing some systematically deceitful things directly to customers that make them stand out from other companies ([edit] talking about their attitude towards customers with defective hardware). If they think that little of individual customers, how could they possibly care about an individuals privacy?

<comment><USER27> > Now look at Mozilla, it's a non profit, look at everything it does, they > have never lost their principles.

I take issue with this. Mozilla has a corporate arm and they're the ones in control of Firefox marketing and development. Take for example the fact that they were (most likely) paid to install an extension to advertise a TV show.

Apple has yet to display any ads to me on my Mac, unlike Microsoft in Windows. I think your criticisms are well intended, but your conclusions are way off.

<comment><USER28> That's just for legal reasons. Profits from the Corporation are put in to the Foundation. There are no shareholders making money.

Mozilla weren't paid for Mr Robot. Their finances are made public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would be helpful to include a link to the services somewhere. I only figured out this was for apollo.io because of a comment on HN: [https://monitor.firefox.com/breach- details/Apollo](https://monitor.firefox.com/breach-details/Apollo)

<comment><USER30> I agree, it would be helpful. At least Firefox Monitor does give you a way to find more details, by linking to [https://www.haveibeenpwned.com/](https://www.haveibeenpwned.com/). If you click from that page to [https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites](https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites) and search the page for a company name, you will find more details about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Have I been pwned prompted me to abandon my old addresses and switch to a provider that allows trash mails and email aliases.

Originally my address was breached by Dropbox and Kickstarter.

It took me many months to switch over, as I did not have a complete list of all services I had registered with.

So for many average people switching email adresses is often a very difficult task, so people keep them even in light of breaches.

More important for the average user is to have a good password management system and know whether a certain password has been hacked.

</comment><comment><USER32> There are just so many problems.

Traditional authentication methods have failed us. I'm still waiting for a reasonable alternative, but the best we've come up with are things like 2FA and magic links?

Companies insist on sucking as much data out of their users as possible. What are your options? Hand over your personal information and give hackers a reason to attack your favorite services? Create a million different phone numbers, burner addresses, and fake personas? How exhausting.

Then there's the problem of treating data like SSNs, phone numbers, and legal names as private. These things could be public if central authorities could do their jobs correctly, but we've shifted the blame of e.g. "identity theft" to the end user who ultimately has no control over this stuff.

Further, official ID/passport/etc. scans are required of so many transactions and I _guarantee_ my slumlord does not follow good security practices so what can I do other than sit like a duck? Monitors like this are a noble effort, and I'll definitely use them, but it sucks that it's come to this.

</comment><comment><USER33> If it's using the haveibeenpwned service then why does it say my email has been found in less number of data breaches compared to the number on the haveibeenpwned site (11 vs 14)?

<comment><USER21> By default we don't show:

* Sensitive Breaches * "Retired" Breaches * Spam Lists * Fabricated Breaches * non-Verified Breaches

[https://github.com/mozilla/blurts- server/blob/master/hibp.js...](https://github.com/mozilla/blurts- server/blob/master/hibp.js#L142-150)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Apollo whom I've never had any dealings with whatsoever have compromised my details. Absolutely fucking outrageous.

<comment><USER35> Same here, I never heard of Apollo and I have 0 emails from them in my email account. Yet it looks like they leaked both email address and (and this sucks a lot) phone number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Looks like this doesn't include another feature of HaveIBeenPwned. Its cracked password hash database. If you trust their JavaScript, you can type in your passwords and see if they are on the list. If you're a little more paranoid you can download the hashes and do your own search.

<comment><USER21> Disclaimer: Monitor dev here ...

Watch this space: [https://github.com/mozilla/blurts- addon/issues/142](https://github.com/mozilla/blurts-addon/issues/142)

;)

<comment><USER37> That repo is archived and read-only though. Is it still being actively developed elsewhere?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I bought extended car warranty from a company and they subsequently exposed my VIN, name and email on a publicly shared DB by accident, and its still up. I don't want to report this to them directly. Anyone know if I can report this to Firefox Monitor somehow?

<comment><USER39> Send it to Troy Hunt: [https://www.troyhunt.com/contact/](https://www.troyhunt.com/contact/)

He's behind Have I Been Pwned, and Firefox Monitor is an alternative interface for it. I believe he verifies the breaches by contacting a few people in a new breach that have already signed up for HIBP notifications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So basically if I put somebody's email address I could know the sites they have logged in in the past?

And then I can use the leak and get access to their account? Shouldn't this information be mailed to the email address queried rather than displaying upfront

<comment><USER41> As topranks mentioned, all this data is already available and anyone could download it.

However, in most leaks, you can't just use the information as the passwords are (hopefully) hashed/salted. That said, it is trivial to crack md5 if passwords are stored using that method.

Also, not all leaks contain passwords, some might just be lists of email addresses or other information.

<comment><USER40> This is about making is easier to attack a particular person, but privacy concern. Breaks the anonymity on internet.

<comment><USER41> The companies that were responsible for the data in the first place are ones to blame for breaking "the anonymity on internet".

Anything that anyone does after the fact is moot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't understand what the point of this is. HaveIBeenPwned exists, they acknowledge (and use) their service, and offer the same exact services as they do. What's the point? It's just a reskin.

</comment><comment><USER43> So, an email address I use for messaging only has appeared in an "Apollo" breach. It's nice to have your data floated around by some dick companies that specialise in "sales intelligence".

Wtf?

</comment><comment><USER44> Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if we just start anew. I cant go back and change every single password with that email address that I didn't use KeyChain before.

</comment><comment><USER45> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18067049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18067049)

</comment><comment><USER46> Isn't this the same as [https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)?

<comment><USER47> Yes, that's their data source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Tried my email address. Only leak was due to Warframe (which I've played a total of 15 minutes of back in 2014). Tried my parents email accounts and both had zero breaches. I know for a fact my mother's email account has been in at least one data breach so I'm questioning the comprehensiveness of this tool.

</comment><comment><USER49> Out of curiosity, is there a list somewhere of utilities like this that are run by Mozilla/Firefox? I don't think I would've heard about Monitor or Lockwise if I hadn't been on here when someone had posted it, so I'm curious if there are other useful services by them that I have missed.

<comment><USER50> Not sure if there's a full list anywhere, but Firefox Send is another nice one

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> If you really want to avoid this, use a different email address for every service you sign up for. Here's something I made earlier that helps with this: [https://idbloc.co](https://idbloc.co)

</comment><comment><USER52> Does this have an API? I would pay a nominal amount to have this tied to my 1password DB to crosscheck all the emails I use. Since I use a different email for each site, I'd like this automated.

Also do you think this is the same value as LifeLock?

<comment><USER53> The footer of the results list says "Breach data provided by Have I Been Pwned" and it looks like Have I Been Pwned has an API here [https://haveibeenpwned.com/API/v2](https://haveibeenpwned.com/API/v2).

I personally don't see a benefit to Firefox Monitor, aside from a new channel of exposure and branding for Firefox, if they are providing the same data Have I Been Pwned is.

<comment> frosted-flakes Trust. Mozilla is a relatively well-known trustworthy entity. "Have I been Pwned" sounds like some shady website that will steal your data. I've certainly never heard of it before, and Random Randy definitely won't have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> would be a lot more helpful if it clarified if it's hashed passwords or plaintext, also if they were hashed with a site-wide salt or per-user salt.

imo, this distinction is too important to be omitted from a short summary.

<comment><USER55> Why is it important? In either case, the correct course of action is to treat the password as insecure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Looks like Mozilla is starting to break out again, and it seems they're making the most of it with recent headlines.

I say they should capitalize on it with the ultimate announcement. Bring back Firefox OS!

</comment><comment><USER57> 31 breaches on my Gmail account that I've had for close to 15 years.

I'm actually surprised it's not more given how many sites/forums/services I've shared this with over the years.

<comment><USER58> That's only the big ones you know about; it's safe to say there have been many many more smaller ones; especially if the site was small or desperate enough to consider a coverup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> It looks like they don't have the Onliner Spambot database, as my email is not flagged but when I look at the haveibeenpwned website it flags for this spam list.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is basically a frontend for haveibeenpwned. Creating it costed Mozilla money. Why did they do this instead of linking directly to the original page?

<comment><USER61> Because the Mozilla brand is more trusted than a random website with 'Pwned' in its name. Also, it's being built into Firefox so having a website for it too seems like a good idea.

<comment><USER23> Well the have I been pwned website is also pretty trusted and is integrated into 1password. I don't know why Firefox wouldn't just integrate it into the browser like 1password did with their password manager. Would make more sense than just being a different front end to an existing site.

<comment><USER62> Pwned is not a standard english word. The vast majority of non-tech non-gamer non-under 40s are unfamiliar with this word but are familiar with firefox.

<comment><USER23> You think people of that age are familiar with what a "Fire fox" is? With all the people I've helped most don't even know a browser outside of the default on their system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I really wish Firefox would focus, and I don't mean Firefox Focus. If they focused on making it simple, fast, and reliable, it would have a much better shot at taking market share from Chrome. On top of that, I wish everything on top of a browser was truly optional - that they didn't have reminders of sync spread throughout the app, and that they didn't have a Pocket button in the toolbar unless I logged in with Pocket.

"Find out what hackers already know about you." unnecessarily grinds my gears, as a hacker (programmer) who wants Firefox to succeed.

<comment><USER64> > If they focused on making it simple, fast, and reliable, it would have a > much better shot at taking market share from Chrome.

imho, they've already achieved this and have a great browser that's at least comparably-competent against Chrome.

The battle Mozilla has with Firefox isn't in improving its tech specs, it's in winning over hearts and minds, and that's a complicated, somewhat costly game.

(I say this as a long-term Firefox user who encourages it with all my friends and family)

<comment><USER63> There are only four major browsers, so it isn't about being _a great browser_.

Many try to switch and then some scandal happens, or it just seems as cluttered as any other browser, and they give up. I think the people who think Firefox Monitor is a good idea are probably the ones who thought the Mr. Robot promo was a good idea.

A good browser should stay out of the way. Chrome did for a long time. Having a "Save to Pocket" button in my toolbar is intrusive.

<comment><USER58> Browsers have tons of feature; you don't need to use the ones you don't care for.

It's trivial to remove the pocket button - right-click and select "remove from address bar".

If I might ask - how is a "save to pocket" intrusive? This isn't like any of the billions of social media buttons you'll come across on the web; it's not a tracker or anything (and if you do click it, you're going to need to make an account first; and it's only going to save what you ask it explicitly to save).

<comment><USER63> It's intrusive because it takes up space on my screen, and because it's completely useless without a Pocket account. Thanks for the tip about removing it from my address bar. Done. It still shows up second in the dot menu, but it's an improvement. I'd rather it were an extension that was installed by default that I could uninstall.

<comment><USER58> This isn't at all discoverable, but... [https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-po...](https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-pocket-for-firefox)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> My data was leaked in Verifications.io's breach and I don't think I have even heard of this company...

</comment><comment><USER66> This is fantastic work, and sets the problem out with high resolution and clear contrast.

Pity the stand costs so much.

</comment><comment><USER67> I was on 8fit, a fitness app. Was never notified of any breach. Lame.

</comment><comment><USER68> Oh damn, I thought, based on the name, that this would be a better firefox task manager .. you know, one that actually functions. Nope.

</comment><comment><USER69> Are they doing anything with the email addresses beyond checking they appear in breach databases ? Are they anonymizing things, for example using some kind of one-way hash to match email addresses ? Is it GDPR-compliant ? There is not clear explanation of how they're processing that data as there should be as email addresses are personal information.

<comment><USER21> [https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/06/25/scanning- breach...](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2018/06/25/scanning-breached- accounts-k-anonymity/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> firstname.lastname@example.com in 7 breaches email@example.com in 14 breaches

</comment><comment><USER71> Mozilla really wants your information these days :(

<comment><USER72> How do you mean? All they are collecting is your email, and the whole point is to show you that your email (and much more) is already in the wild

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> "This email appeared in 17 known data breaches."

How does this help at all? What can I do about it? Some of the breaches are years old...

<comment><USER74> First, if you know you've reused a password on one of the services listed, then you know to go change that password everywhere. Everyone should be using unique passwords and a password manager, but some of these breaches are so old they're before that was a commonly-used practice.

Second, you can look into each incident to see what exactly was breached -- personal information, payment info, and so on. It's good information to know.</comment></comment>


Reddit "Community Points" being built on Ethereum - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/fyda25/update_reddits_blockchainbased_points_system/ <comment><USER2> I hope that this is indeed true, but sadly, I believe that the images are doctored. We have not heard anything from the Reddit team regarding this subject.</comment>


New bill to end the federal tax credit for electric cars and tax them more - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2018/10/10/republican-bill-end-federal-tax-credit-for-electric-car/ <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that this was introduced by Republicans.

Obviously, any action that increases the cost of electric vehicles in relation to gas vehicles is a fucking stupid thing to do, regardless of "well... this is for road maintenance". They can tax EVs for road maintenance when they start taxing gas vehicles for damage to environment.

(As a side note, heavy trucks account for almost ALL wear and tear on roads. Your average Prius isn't exactly known for eating up asphalt with its snow chains.)</comment>


iTunes Has Slowly Destroyed My Will to Collect Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/05/will_apple_music_complete_itunes_destruction_of_my_will_to_collect_music.html <comment> UVB-76 In recent years iTunes on OS X has managed to achieve the feat of becoming more bloated, sluggish, and yet also losing important features.

I've spent most of the last five years hoping Apple are re-writing the thing from scratch, and have been neglecting any meaningful updates to the current fork in the meantime, but I'm losing hope.

</comment><comment><USER3> I dunno. Reading this I can't help but feel like maybe the author is doing it wrong? I'm going to be charitable and admit that Apple has made iTunes incredibly difficult to use effectively, especially since the store is awful and they really, really push the iTunes store on you. That the interface is so slow and inconsistent doesn't help either.

My advice to anyone who has any desire to use iTunes is: acquire your music from elsewhere as actual mp3 files, tag them using something like Mp3tag[0] and then drag and drop them into iTunes. Make sure you check the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" options in the advanced settings. The only control you're really giving up then is the exact naming scheme of the files in the folder. But "<library directory>/Artist Name/Album Name/01 Song Title.mp3" is a pretty sane convention in my opinion. I have close to 18,000 albums in my iTunes library that I've added this way over the last decade and a half. It works pretty well and I have no problem reasoning about what music I have.

I totally agree with his complaints about Apple Music though, it's pretty inscrutable. But I wrote my own music streaming server with Sinatra and iOS app to go with it so I always have access to whatever is stored on my hard drive at home in a way that makes sense to me. If I'm not at home that's what I'd rather do, no syncing or anything weird.

0: [http://www.mp3tag.de/en/](http://www.mp3tag.de/en/)

<comment><USER4> I would definitely argue that "make sure you have these advanced settings configured or you're screwed" is a sign of hostile software. I'm totally unwilling to use iTunes or Apple Music for my collection.

That said, if you're particular about your music collection, it's basically always going to take some curation. Giving up because Apple didn't make that easy isn't entirely Apple's fault.

<comment><USER5> > make sure you have these advanced settings configured or you're screwed

However, those very settings are on by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone has to say it: why do people keep using it? If it's not doing the job it's supposed too, or worse, actively deleting your music it's time to scrap it!

<comment> UVB-76 There's still nothing better than iTunes, at least on OS X.

It's the best of a bad bunch.

<comment><USER7> In the "don't delete my music" category - google music is pretty good. You can upload your files without deleting them and then stream from web or mobile app. I haven't tried playing offline from the browser, but caching on my phone is fine.

<comment><USER8> _In the "don't delete my music" category - google music is pretty good._

It makes me sad that's even a category for consideration. wtf

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From what I've seen of iTunes ability to keep album art that I've added or automatically download ones I'm missing, there's no way in hell that I'd let it match my music collection.

Some of the cover art is ok, some is meh (special edition banners), and some is in the WTF range (one zydeco album especially).

Not that I have that much that's not mainstream, but I'm kind of particular about the stuff that's in there.

<comment><USER10> If you're looking for something to organize, tag, and locate album art I recommend musicbrainz. They have an app for osx. It's not incredibly intuitive at first but I'm currently cleaning my collection up with it

<comment><USER11> They also have an API that you can use if you're programmatically inclined to automate the process. It does have limits, so be mindful of including delays between requests.

[http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Development](http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Development)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I was a young teenager in the early nineties I dreamt about having all the worlds music available to me via the internet.

This is more or less the reality today.

Access beats ownership anyway IMO.

<comment> UVB-76 A lot of people repeating that line will change their tune when Spotify finally goes out of business in a couple of years time.

<comment><USER12> Streaming Music in the cloud is not going anywhere.

Not sure why that would change that?

There have never been as much access to music as there is today. It's a good thing.

<comment><USER4> Price conflicts. The streaming system is obviously worthwhile, but we haven't negotiated a price point where users, streamers, and artists are all willing to play ball.

At the moment, it seems like someone always has to take a loss, and the rationalization might be ugly.

<comment><USER12> [http://www.businessinsider.com/spotifys-growth-has-gotten- fa...](http://www.businessinsider.com/spotifys-growth-has-gotten-faster-since- apple-music-2016-5?r=UK&IR=T)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was thinking about this while driving recently - both the iTunes / Apple Music approach, and the way I go about organizing and sorting my things.

As a guy who grew up with Mac until playing catch-up with Win95 (and some DOS to fit in), being familiar with digital storage techniques has formed over time. I get the concept of certain files being certain places - system files versus personal files versus program resources. This kind of structuring appeals to me.

Thus, rather than totally embrace the "OS as Helper" technique that Windows likes (put everything in "Music") or going the iTunes route (behemoth management program with hooks to other stuff), I maintained some of my fencing habits. Sure, I use the "Music" folder but that's only for purchased music. In a separate folder - which makes things easier to back-up I think - I have my "Music Projects" folder.

In my workflow I've got my DAW projects and output separate from what I'd consider the 'commercial music' area, and this might have saved a lot of stress that Pinkstone went through. Maybe not, but my hunch is it might have helped. iTunes can't touch what it can't see, and letting it anywhere near a collection of bootlegs and/or "less than legal" origin files is something I would avoid out of general suspiciousness. That applies to original works that don't fit any standard cataloging function either; I don't think that would help me.

Personally I'm still satisfied with Winamp, a couple skins and visualization things (it does help me ID3 tag my music as well), and honestly can't recall if I've ever installed iTunes in the past 10 years. I genuinely don't think so, and while my own process has flaws and issues (overlap of versions, DAW files are big, etc) there's some protection I kind of like in a way.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've purposley avoided Apple Music for this reason. I still use it as my main library, but i've starting using Google Play Music for their radio stations, which I have found superior to iTunes.

Anyone have advice for moving off of iTunes completely? Do you backup to S3 or a external disk?

<comment><USER13> I just spent a while offloading a bunch of music from a Macbook Pro that had to be returned to an educational institution after years of use. I was able to get to the music files directly and copied/pasted them over to large flash drives. I did the same for photos on that machine. From there I uploaded them to a network storage device where they've just been chilling until they're downloaded to a new machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I loved iTunes back when I had an iPod. Used it a lot, and made managing playlists a lot easier than what I had before, which I think was MusicMatch player, or something.

iTunes could rip my CDs, it could make playlists, and I could sync the whole thing to my iPod. I honestly don't see what other features it would need, but if I understand correctly, Apple managed to turn it into a horrifying monstrosity.

Nowadays, every once in a while, I accidentally launch iTunes on my Mac, and I have no idea how to use it anymore.

</comment><comment><USER16> First, having an alias to the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder on my desktop has helped quite a bit with adding non-Apple ecosystem music (primarily from Bandcamp) to iTunes. It doesn't seem to make too many wrong choices, but then again, likely the people who package the mp3s do their best to work with the ecosystem.

Second, I've stayed the eff away from iTunes Music. It likely doesn't have what I want anyways, but compared to their hardware, it just seems more like some executive's idea of how to improve Apple's income from iTunes rather than an actual music lover's platform. And iTunes is kind of a hot mess trying to do too many things while execs decide to keep tinkering with it rather than doing the multi-product rethinking they would need to make it work again.

Third, a few times a year I make sure to backup everything that isn't on Apple, and most of everything that is. And not via "Time Machine" either, which you should be doing, but actually copying the iTunes music folder or any other downloads onto external media.

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://beets.io/](http://beets.io/)

beets has done an amazing job helping curate my music. I'm sure it's been covered here before.

<comment><USER18> Has it gotten better at tagging classical music? I used it for a while a year or two ago and back then it was pretty bad for tagging classical music.

<comment><USER19> I tag everything the same way, no matter what I use to listen to the music, the OS I use, tag app, music source etc. Just Artist, Album, and track number. Clear all the other fields. For classical, I appreciate that there can be different labels releasing different masterings of the same recording, or different conductors of the same piece, or a given conductor conducting the same piece with different orchestras etc but for me I'm happy sticking that info as part of the Album. For example: Gurrelieder (Boulez). I don't see any point in getting anal about it all. You can stick the notes in the folder you store the music in, or have filenames with extra details but as long as the music player lets you drill down from artist to album, and plays the tracks in the album in the correct order, that's good enough. I don't waste my time with cover art etc because if I want to look at it I can do that on a pc or in real life; i'm never going to be staring my my phone while it's playing, and it's never going to be quicker to wade visually through cover art to find what you're looking for (although I guess it might aid lazily browsing through your collection if you're not sure what to play).

<comment><USER20> Very sensible advice I think. Your system insulates you from things outside your control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> To chime in on my workflow here, I used to be a heavy user of windows media player, until streaming became big and I bought into the Zune system - <USER2> which the software was incredible.

You could download media from the online library and it'd count as part of your local library, and you could create auto playlists that filtered all of your music (streaming and local) into those playlists. Then, you'd just auto- sync those to your devices.

This method isn't possible on any service anymore, and I believe it's because of increasingly more restrictive licensing. The closest I've found, and what I use today is google music. I upload all of my local content to them, and then mark songs that I 'like' as liked. GMusic has an autoplaylist of all my likes that I then sync to all my devices, including my car which has an android stereo.

I encourage everyone to step outside the Apple/Spotify walled gardens every now and then and resurvey the offerings - iTunes is just such an awful bit of software that it makes their service a non-starter for me. GMusic has a great mobile and web client, with download support which is all I need.

</comment><comment><USER22> I dislike iTunes as well as the built in music player on my iPhone just due the bad UI and some difficulty downloading songs to my phone. I also use it with iTunes match for all my music and I listen many hours a day and do curate my collection with it.

It's not perfect, but it's not exactly clubbing baby seals. It's always respected my metadata changes even when things start out wrong. I think I got boned a few times when match mixed up explicit/non-explicit versions, but that is it.

I still very much enjoy collecting music and I don't think iTunes is getting in the way of that. I really have to wonder what the author did to delete their entire collection in iTunes? That isn't a thing that is supposed to happen easily on desktop. The stuff I have synced with iTunes match is even harder to delete and there is warning when you try to delete the cloud copy.

On phones yeah it's just a brain dead disaster with multiple ways to have it wipe.

</comment><comment><USER23> My belief is that iTunes is purposefully broken and will likely be broken up into separate apps.

On the music side it forces people to use streaming services instead which the music industry prefers to digital ownership, and Apple's own service is doing well. They've (Apple) always played ball with the music industry as everyone must, they've just managed to get better deals than most when working with them.

Where it really hurts is in podcasting. I think podcasts & audiobooks would be much bigger if syncing worked worth a damn on iTunes.

On the i-device side, syncing should be be removed wholesale from the media player. Honestly, it should be relegated to a little task icon like Caffeine. The only reason this isn't the case is because the storage capacity of these devices is so (needlessly) tiny, again perhaps purposefully in order to prevent day to day users from keeping a lot of downloaded music/videos locally.

</comment><comment><USER24> 10 years I had 10,000+ songs on my iTunes - their version updates and switching computers (prior to / not fully utilizing Time Machine) slowly decayed my library down to ~150.

Then along came Spotify, Soundcloud, etc and I haven't returned to iTunes. No Apple Music either. Not sure what would get me back to my iTunes habit of 10 years ago...

</comment><comment><USER25> This is why I still use iTunes 10. After that point, the program no longer had the organizational features I'd been depending on ever since iTunes 4 or maybe even earlier. It's unfortunate that there isn't a similarly feature-rich music organization app for OS X available (and I've tried them all).

<comment><USER26> I updated at some point and regret it. Do you know if it is possible to downdate my iTunes and go back to 10?

<comment><USER25> I used this: [https://awesometoast.com/downgrading-to-itunes-10-7-from- itu...](https://awesometoast.com/downgrading-to-itunes-10-7-from-itunes-11-on- osx/)

<comment><USER26> Thanks, will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I haven't (willingly) used iTunes in years. When I do, it's only to reset a frozen iPod.

Shazam: music discovery while mobile

KEXP Twitter feed: music discovery while streaming at work

Amazon: one-click purchase

Clementine: Linux media manager including iPod sync

AllMusic: artist research

</comment><comment><USER26> In 2016 Apple insists on wiping my iPhone's mp3s clean if I connect it to any PC or Mac other than the main PC or Mac that was used to transfer mp3s on to it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Golden rule of owning your own (purchased or created) content: only use 3rd party content organization applications. I don't use iTunes for my music. I don't buy things from amazon for my kindle.

Regarding UX: iTunes is proof that bad UX doesn't matter as much as "location". Users somehow figure out how to use apps if they matter enough to them.

<comment><USER29> The other golden rule of owning: never buy DRM-enabled content, even if you can break it, because doing so only encourages the actors pushing for DRM.

And bought content needs backup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been using Subsonic because it was free software but since it moved away and is now closed source I stopped paying and am now using Syncthing to sync all my files in between my computers and my Sailfish OS phone, I have to say that this is the best way I can enjoy my music yet.

</comment><comment><USER26> I know a few women who tell me they're horrible at using computers. When I asked why, they said "because I can't even figure out iTunes."

Between dodgy iCloud and bloated iTunes, Apple has destroyed the "computer self-esteem" of a generation.

</comment><comment><USER31> iTunes is the reason I got rid of my iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER32> I highly recommend Vox [1] as a lightweight alternative to iTunes.

I've used it as a compete replacement for iTunes with the exception of when I want to add music to my iPhone.

[1] www.coppertino.com

</comment><comment><USER33> iTunes is working as designed, enslaving users to Apple's "cloud". A few power users might not like this, but they're a small fraction of the user base and don't matter to Apple. That's the reality.

</comment><comment><USER8> The new UI designs in iTunes are almost as bad as the new UI designs in xCode.

</comment><comment><USER34> iTunes has a simple solution they could employ — simply don't delete the original music from the device they are "cloning to the cloud".

</comment><comment><USER35> Same.

</comment><comment><USER36> Wasn't that claim determined to be a hoax?

<comment><USER37> I know _something_ has deleted several dozen MP3s from my collection. The end result of which is iTunes would refuse to sync my phone. Because those two features belong in the same app, and all. In the end I had to delete my entire iTunes music library and start fresh, _just so my phone would sync_

<comment><USER38> That was the experience that moved me from an iPhone to android several years ago - not only that I had to wipe my phone to sync, but that

* I couldn't back up what was on the phone (without first wiping the phone) * that iTunes wouldn't let me re-download any music I had bought (this was pre-iCloud) * this was the second time it happened to me - the first time was with an iPod pretty early in their existence, so I was willing to accept incomplete options. (I'm rough on laptops, which is what I had been syncing to)

Seeing that they had no interest in improving this situation after years of being aware of it, I bailed. I'm told that Apple is now better about repeat downloads from their store and have stopped considering the PC as the source of truth for the device but they still are terrible for families with multiple accounts but not one Mac/PC per user.

Frankly, I'm glad Apple is out there pushing boundaries, but I've not missed anything from my iPhone. (my Macbook remains a great Unix-ey device)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yeah iTunes is long past it's prime, Vinyl or CD is really the only way to collect music now I suppose. I would discredit CD a bit due to quality of mp3, but whose to say you cant buy a collection of FLAC CDs

</comment><comment><USER40> I hate to be rude but this author is a dumbass. In big bold letters he has "On a basic level, I don't have a music collection anymore because Apple made it too hard and frustrating to maintain one." when instead it should read "I didn't take care of my own music library and instead left it to a third party who didn't do what was in my interest."

<comment><USER41> I have 30,000+ songs in my music library. I've taken the time to meticulously tag each and every song when adding music to my library.

I currently use MusicBee and love it. It's somewhat lightweight and its tagging tools are great. I've also used Media Monkey for a few years and that also has great tagging tools, but it's not as lightweight as MusicBee.

I only ever use iTunes for purchasing songs I can't get via other channels such as b-sides or whatever.</comment></comment>


Feds: 6 died as a result of overdosing from Silk Road-purchased drugs - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/25/feds-6-died-as-a-result-of-overdosing-from-silk-road-purchased-drugs/ <comment><USER2> If the government wants to get into the actual harms of online drug sales, then the defense should go into the benefits to society of the Silk Road.

Ulbricht and the defense should get people from the Spanish drug testing lab to testify: [https://medium.com/backchannel/inside-the-deep-web-drug- lab-...](https://medium.com/backchannel/inside-the-deep-web-drug- lab-9718cd0fe504)

Their results show that drug quality is much higher from darknet sales and has fewer impurities that cause health risks. Given that the original Silk Road did $1.2 Billion in drug trades, the total number of people who died from their drugs is substantially lower than if those people had bought their drugs from the streets (e.g. if cocaine in Spain is only 30% pure, and the other chemicals raise the probability of overdose by 5% per use compared to purer cocaine, then 5% increase times the expected amount of cocaine sales from the SR should amount to a decent estimate on how many fewer people were actually harmed).

Similarly, how many fewer people were robbed or killed due to SR vs traditional gang based drug sales?

<comment><USER3> Sometime purity _is_ a health risk.</comment></comment>


SoftBank's investment fund dumps entire $3.6B stake in Nvidia - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/06/softbank-vision-fund-sells-nvidia-stake.html <comment><USER2> There is more to this sell off than simply Nvidia earnings report. With such a large investment, this is a fairly short duration to sell after, especially considering the gain for Softbank isn't as large as your would expect. Its difficult to speculate on why but losing faith in the long term potential of Nvidia being one of the leaders in compute for machine learnings seems shortsighted at this point.

<comment><USER3> They look at enough companies that I think they're qualified to make this assessment

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From an outside perspective, this seems really really short-sighted. Deep learning applications aren't compiled to run on AMD GPUs, and Google TPUs are still a pretty niche category AFAIK. NVIDIA is selling pickaxes during a gold rush, I can't help but feel NVIDIA's deep learning initiatives are gonna pay off, even if Chinese markets may be waning this year.

<comment><USER5> Possible that the hype around deep learning will dissipate as highly anticipated applications turn out to be more challenging than expected, technologists settle in for a long trek, and investors flee the space in search of easier returns. We've seen this happen before.

The real growth opportunity seems to be with Tegra. If we see a boom in autonomous vehicles and robotics, they're well positioned to profit. But we may not.

It also appears AMD has finally arrived at the correct strategy to challenge NVIDIA's datacenter moat with HIP (basically API compatibility with CUDA modulo trademarks). Does not mean they have mindshare or a desirable product line, but when you have a completely dominant market position that's baked into the stock price you have to consider every threat.

NVIDIA is a great company with great products that will do well regardless, just positing some reasons one might be short the stock apart from Chinese market considerations.</comment></comment>


The Pontoon Bridges That Carry Millions at Kumbh Mela - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/11/the-pontoon-bridges-that-carry-millions-at-kumbh-mela/576823/ <comment><USER2> Trivia:

\- The Kumbh Mela's periodicity of 12 years is based on Jupiter's period of revolution around the sun

\- It's called _Kumbha_ mela, because _Kumbha_ is the name for Aquarius. Jupiter spends an Earth year in each Zodiac, and the year in which it is in Aquarius is the year of the Kumbh in Haridwar

\- Apart from Haridwar, the Kumbh is also celebrated in Prayag (which is the festival this article is talking about), Ujjain, and Nasik. The years of these Kumbhs are offset from the one at Haridwar. In particular, the Kumbh at Prayag occurs when Jupiter is in Taurus (rather than Aquarius). So it should actually be called Vrishabha Mela...

\- The Kumbh that's happening in 2019 at Prayag is actually called an _Ardh Kumbha_ Mela, or Half-Kumbh. It occurs half-way between two full Kumbhs, i.e., 6 years after (or before) a Full-Kumbh.

\- Prayag also hosts the _Maha Kumbha_ mela, which occurs once in 12*12=144 years. The last Maha Kumbh happened in 2013.

\- The article erroneously mentions that Prayag is the meeting point of 3 rivers - the Ganga, the Yamuna, and the (mythical) Saraswati. This is incorrect. The Saraswati was not mythical - there is evidence for a Sub- Himalayan Saraswati-like river flowing into the Arabian Sea until 10000 years ago through the Rann of Kutch (see [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-05745-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-05745-8)). Also, the Saraswati is not described as having a confluence with the Ganga/Yamuna at Prayag in the Rig Veda - this is a later legend which does not seem to have any basis.

<comment><USER3> You are right that Kumbha is Aquarius but the kumbha in kumbha mela is from its' primary meaning of pot. Specifically the pot of amrta (the nectar of immortality) that the Devas and Asuras got together to churn and then fought over. In the ensuing tussle, four drops fell at the various places on Earth where the kumbha mela is celebrated.

The zodiacal sign is also associated with this story though probably both the Greeks and Indians got the zodiacal concept from the Babylonians and added their own interpretations afterwards.

Your point about the Saraswati is a bit nit picky. Yes there was a real Saraswati (that dried up by the end of the Vedic age) but the mystical Saraswati that flows at Prayag is not related to that

<comment><USER2> Yes, I'm aware of the pot-of-nectar legend - just didn't have the time to check primary sources for the origin of the legend, and did not want to put out something I was unsure of. If you have a primary reference for the origin of that legend, that would be helpful.

As for the Saraswati, you are mistaken. The sangam (confluence) at Prayag being referred to as "Triveni" (three rivers) is a recent invention (1860 or thereabouts) and is first referred to in written literature in 1873. And it is the same Saraswati river. See [https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/The-story-of- Tri...](https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/The-story-of- Triveni/article14553336.ece)

To quote:

"...the word Triveni was used for the first time in 1873 to convey the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati in the six-volume Sanskrit work Abhidhan Vachaspatya of Taranath Tarkvachaspati, who was associated with Government Sanskrit College, Calcutta (now Kolkata). Otherwise, according to its etymology, it meant triple-braided. Whether it is Valmiki or Kalidasa, no Sanskrit poet has used the word Triveni to denote the confluence of rivers at Prayag (Allahabad). Whenever they referred to it, it was always as a confluence of two rivers Ganga and Yamuna."

</comment></comment></comment><comment> saiya-jin Anybody experienced this festival first hand? It had been my dream to witness this as an outsider, having very special memories of few days spent in Varanasi hanging around burning ghats.

But maybe I am romanticizing the event and actually its much less pleasant for foreigner.

<comment><USER4> I was at the 2012 Kumbh Mela, in Allahabad. (some of the pictures are from that event).

It was the craziest event I've ever seen, and after 3 months in India I thought I'd seen some stuff.

Nope.

Naga baba's, doing their tricks and proving their holiness (beating their penis and using them to pick up boulders).

Sat with the guy who's been holding his arm up to god for, I don't know 20+ years.

Anything extreme and devoted is considered holy. So this festival brings all those people together, to show in their own way, their devotion.

It's so loud and chaotic, 24x7. It's like Times Square meets a music festival, but in every direction, for as far as you can see.

It's a whole temporary city constructed on the banks of the river, for this festival. Each guru / sect has their own campsite.

Any camp site will feed you, get you stoned, put you up for the night and send you on your way in the morning. (Or you can stay for the rest of your life).

I would recommend it for anyone. But if you get tired of a 3 day music festival... this is going to test you.

It's everything I loved so much about India.

<comment> saiya-jin Thank you, you motivated me even more :) (spent 6 months in India backpacking around and in the Himalayas, it is an universe on its own)

<comment><USER4> No worries, it's a unique experience.

I would recommend starting your stay at one of the "foreigner" camps. These are usually the camps of leaders from that are based in, or have a major following from, a developed nation. (We stayed a Brazilian buba's camp). It was a good base camp, to escape the festival when necessary.

From there you can explore as deep into the festival as you want. It goes for 2 months, so you've got plenty of time.

It can eventually become overwhelming and you'll need somewhere to recharge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just to put scale into perspective, since sometimes it helps to better visualize, only 14 _countries_ ([http://worldpopulationreview.com/](http://worldpopulationreview.com/)) have a population more than 100M.

Also, 100M is almost 1/3rd the population of U.S., more than the entire population of Vietnam, almost the same at the entire population of Egypt, roughly 1/2 the population of Pakistan ...

</comment><comment><USER6> Part of me says that is surprisingly good pontoon design and fabrication all things considered.

Part of me says that labor is cheap enough relative to material so why don't they dot all their T's and cross all their I's with the design and construction.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt since it's just a temporary structure.

<comment><USER7> I was going to say that this looks like massive over-engineering, but I don't know how long they're used for or what kind of maximum loads they require. You could build pontoons out of bales of bamboo or plastic drum barrels and still drive a tank over it. But with steel pontoons, the weight of all that steel is actually countering some of the displacement. Probably part of why they have to be so big...

Edit: It looks like the pontoons are actually sitting on the river bottom in a lot of places, so I guess that's why they need to be so strong.

<comment><USER6> I was thinking more along the lines of they should spend the extra 10min per bulkhead to build a proper "node" with the L-channel at the center of each bulkhead. That would let them use lighter (cheaper) material and have equal or greater strength. This is more important for a pontoon resting on the bottom because than one floating. When the guy cutting the channel is making $15USD/hr it's cheaper just to buy overkill material. When the guy cutting the material is making whatever they make in India it's worth it to have him spend the extra few minutes to put the proper angles on the ends.

I mean yeah, it probably is all overkill but I'm used to having to build things that have to withstand high dynamic loading so when it comes to mostly static objects I tend to over build things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone provide a Google Maps satellite link?

<comment><USER2> [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Prayagraj,+Uttar+Pradesh/@...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Prayagraj,+email@example.com,81.6614988,49520m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x398534c9b20bd49f:0xa2237856ad4041a!8m2!3d25.4358011!4d81.846311)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Aaaand it will also be the dirtiest water you will ever walk over.</comment>


If you want to keep something private the best place to keep it is Gmail - <AUTHOR> https://charlierose.com/videos/28222 <comment><AUTHOR> (Eric Schmidt to Charlie Rose at 37:38 in the video)</comment>


N-dimensional sequential move puzzles - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-dimensional_sequential_move_puzzle <comment><AUTHOR> I discovered and enjoyed some of these puzzles many years ago and had a blast with them. Very fun for after you've solved many of the 3D spatial puzzles and variants.</comment>


IPhone 5 liveblog - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/12/apple-iphone-5-liveblog/

<comment><USER2> I know it's marketing, but still:

"We used limestone from a local quarry to restore it and modernize it. Nobody would have done this but Apple... it's absolutely gorgeous."

It seems the RDF works inward as well as out.

No, no-one would ever build a store which incorporates local elements and / or recycling/reuse.</comment>


Google launches Endangered Language Project - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/google-launches-endangered-language-project/

<comment><USER2> Who else thought this was going to be about dying programming languages?</comment>


Malware attack hits thousands of Yahoo users per hour - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/05/tech/yahoo-malware-attack/

<comment><USER2> Adverts as an attack vector is one of many reasons why my DNS server also resolves 13,697 distinct domain names to 127.0.0.1

$ sudo cat /etc/bind/ads.conf | egrep yahoo| wc -l 55</comment>


Remembering When Driverless Elevators Drew Skepticism (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-driverless-elevators-drew-skepticism <comment><USER2> Another idiotic comparison.

Elevators existed. Driverless car do not.

No company has yet to demonstrate a driverless car to a skeptical audience without an NDA (no, PR videos don't count).

<comment><USER3> Did you read the article?

It's a very reasonable comparison: A mindless machine that can pose a mortal danger if it doesn't function as intended.

Cars are used much more complex environment, and the mechanisms needed to automate them are substantially more complex than those used in automating elevators, but it doesn't mean it's an idiotic comparison. Nobody is saying "automating a car is as easy as automating an elevator"

At a certain point in history, manual elevators exited. driverless elevators did not.

People are initially skeptical of most automation, but often times these things become commonplace and we take them for granted. That's what I took away from this. Keep up the good fight tilting at windmills sir.

<comment><USER2> > Did you read the article?

Unfortunately, I did. Did you?

The article claims that even after all the safety mechanisms were installed, people were still irrationally afraid of automatic elevators, and that a PR campaign was required to help people to stop fearing automatic elevators.

The implication is that people are similarly irrationally afraid of self- driving cars.

I claim that this is an idiotic comparison because people should be afraid of self-driving cars until they are proven to safe and reliable. So far, all we got is PR.

As you so sensibly pointed out, building a self-driving car is orders of magnitude more difficult than automatic elevators.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Best way to parse wikipedia summaries? - <AUTHOR>

There are many approaches to getting wikipedia summaries that I've heard of. Many involve using the official Wikipedia API, and then parsing based on patterns (there is no "getSummary()" call).
What are your approaches? Any other API's out there?
If you use the official APIs, what are the rules that usually work to determine where the 'summary' is on the page?
Thanks a lot! <comment><USER2> As far as i know, there is no official way to grab it, but basically all you have to do is scan the output till the first heading (i forget if it outputs in the A.P.I. as h1 or ==) appears and that will generally be your summary.</comment>