Can anyone build a site for sharing startup ideas? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> How about submitting it to this site with the prefix [IDEA]? Mailing lists commonly use [ANN] prefixes for new announcements. There is no reason we can't use something similar. For example:

[IDEA] A web site for sharing startup ideas.

[STARTUP] www.shareyourstartupidea.com. Comments welcome.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is Ok, except some improvement is needed on news.yc. Comments should somehow affect the rank of a post. And it's not the number of comments that matters, but rather the number of people involved, possibly taking into account their karmas.

And of course this should be recursive and should be applied to comments themselves (subcomments affect the comment).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (1) If I have an idea but don't have the time to implement it, let someone pick it up through this site.

(2) If I have an idea but I'd like to "check the waters" before implementing it.

(3) Any brainstorming.

Most of us shouldn't be afraid of sharing ideas openly, because the value of what we do mostly is in _how_ we do it.

<comment><USER3> That sounds like a neat idea - but why don't you just use a wiki?

<comment><USER4> You could just put up a simple forum and people can just enter their "Idea" as a topic on the forum.

<comment><AUTHOR> In fact, YCnews is perfect, except it doesn't take into account voting that's going on inside a post. That is, if there are good comments under a post from many people (the more the better) that post should get a higher rank. Well, hm, like this one :)

<comment><USER5> news.yc doesn't allow searching ideas either.

Also, we need some way to search only 'idea' posts. Perhaps if news.yc had tags that would suffice, but otherwise this may deserve a different namespace. Not something one reads everyday but more of a tool to submit or search for ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Working on something like this right now, kind of a jobs/talent thing. Thought it might be useful.

Will post when I've got something worth looking at (this week)

Planning on making it kind of an 'Ideas wanted' or 'People wanted' or 'Money wanted' site, so people can interface. Putting my money where my mouth is with some distributed karma systems as well.

<comment><USER6> it'll be at <http://jobs.jaggederest.com/>

<comment><USER6> SVN is up. <http://www.jaggederest.com/jobs/svn/>

<comment><USER7> Be careful about your database.yml file :)

<comment><USER6> No database there for that, and pg_hba.conf is set up to not allow outside connections, but aside from that, my host uses mysql and I develop on postgres.

Heh. I'm a bit amped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Guys, I'm building a collaboration application called Wamily that would be perfect for this. I just set up a group for this purpose. It has a wiki, and threaded conversations, and eventually more tools.

Sign up at <http://wamily.com> with invite code ZMYWVX and you will automatically be added to the group

</comment><comment><USER9> You might also want to look into Cambrian House.

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

<comment><USER10> Saw this the other day. Pretty similar to an idea I presented to PG way back when. I still have PG's whiteboard post: "but some startup ideas need be kept secret"

<comment><USER11> I still have PG's whiteboard post: "but some startup ideas need be kept secret"

I have a problem with this - why? And is there a good litmus test?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about having the focus on identifying problems, rather than brainstorming ideas?

<comment><USER5> hear, hear

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Matt Jaynes (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mattjaynes)> had a great idea with YFratinator (<http://groups.google.com/group/yfratrinator)> but went cold on the idea. Have a chat to matt and see if you can resurrect the idea.

</comment><comment><USER14> Who wants to work on this idea?

I may have some free time in a few months if anyone wants to team up and build it :P

<comment><USER7> It looks like there are several different users who want to build this (or something similar).

I definitely think collaboration would work best - if the site is going to be used by the community it needs all of our support. It can't be a one man show.

Personally, I envision a site with several different tools: idea feedback, find cofounders, find shared office space, demo new apps, a how-to resource archive, wiki, etc.

I think one News.YC reader has already built a site that can be used to find cofounders. Jamie, Sumon and Timmmah built a site to demo apps (demomyapp.com). Justin is building a basic idea feedback site. John Leung is trying to organize a shared office/startup hub website. I'm building a resource archive.

What if we all collaborated on one site that did it all?

<comment><USER7> Some of the features could have different URLs (for example, demomyapp.com wouldn't have to move) - but it'd be cool to run we all off the same server w/ the same theme/layout and same user authentication process.

Kind of like google accounts w/ google/gmail/google analytics/etc.

<comment><USER6> if PG put up a facility for openID on here, we could hook it up that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> <http://startupideatr.com/>

With all problems mentioned here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16270>

</comment><comment><USER16> Are lots of meta sites about startups an indication of a bubble? When will we see a site about creating sites about startups?

</comment><comment><USER17> Paul Graham did. What was that site again...

</comment><comment><USER18> In the amount of time you spent talking about this you could have already built the site.</comment>


The PC was supposed to die a decade ago. Instead, this happened - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-pc-was-supposed-to-die-a-decade-ago-instead-this-happened/ <comment><USER2> The PC is an extremely refined instrument with excellent flexibility. Billions of hours have been spent training users in how to type and click with a mouse/trackpad/trackball and navigate operating systems. It will take something vastly superior to replace them.

With respect to productivity and usefulness, touch screen devices are mostly inferior, aside from being very mobile. They have little to no tactile feedback, are laggy, and controls can change even as you are inputting them. I've very often tried to click a button/hyperlink on a touch screen and had it change at the last half second.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mobile devices are locked-down way too hard. From the hardware, to the OS, to the SDK, to the walled-garden store. There's just no room for innvoation, and where there is, there's no way to count on what little bit the manufacturer has provide will even exist next month. And keeping "old" devices around to contiue doing work the way you wanted is near impossible.

</comment><comment><USER4> The real problem with "the death of the PC" is that Apple ruined their own promise of the iPad. It has turned into a great tool for graphic designers (Pencil, Affinity, Photoshop, etc) but merely okay bordering on useless for everything else.

Their sluggishness to bring a mouse, how long it took to get a file browser and support for USB storage, and especially for this forum, lack of support for programming apps. Play.js and Pythonista isn't good enough... it needs to be first class. You need to be able to make an iPad app _on an iPad_.

And with iOS13 it's even gotten worse: the extra judicious killing of background apps they've introduced means it's gotten a lot harder to multitask. Apps like Termius need to track your location in order to keep your SSH connection alive, which is ridiculous.

And the crippled browser doesn't seem to be getting better... I use AWS Cloud 9 IDE for almost all of my work. It's a browser-based IDE and should work on an iPad. But Safari won't let it. iOS12 and prior didn't have support for keyboard shortcuts the IDE needs, and iOS13's third party cookies policy won't allow it to work either.

If you're a graphic designer, the iPad is a dream come true. If you do anything else (especially coding), well... we haven't moved much beyond this article [1] from _eight years ago_.

[1] [https://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my- macbook...](https://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-for- an-ipad)

Beyond that, as the article mentions the promise of the "post-PC era" is actually alive and well in the PC world. The iPad didn't learn from the PC market like it should have, so the PC market learned from the iPad instead. 2-in-1 devices are what the iPad should be by now, but isn't. And since it's being done by someone other than Apple, the user experience is secondary to checklists of features and bean-counting cost savings.

Apple ruined their own vision.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not a typical customer, but I have purchased more PCs in the last decade than in all the decades prior. The cost/benefit of them is pretty hard to beat.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've said this a couple times before, but my hope is that it's worth repeating here. For a device to eschew the PC it must support direct development.

Web development is great and remote compilation is straight magic; I'm not trying to minimize either. However, if I can't build software for my device on my device then I'll need a PC to supplement the device claiming to be the PC replacement.

</comment><comment><USER7> To me a PC is an obvious choice - you can build your own based on your requirements and do it at a fraction of the cost of a laptop.

Having said that, my Linux Mint tower is now gathering dust as I had to make the switch to a Macbook due to the lack of decent design apps. The only reason I went with a laptop in this instance is due to the outrageous prices for Mac towers!

<comment><USER8> which design apps did you make the switch for?

<comment><USER7> The new products from Affinity (designer, publisher) as well as the usual suspects such as Adobe.

I'm still blown away by how bad OSX is compared to Mint - much less productive using Finder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I still need my computer despite doing more of my computing on my phone and tablet. I do more consumption on the phone and tablet than on the computer. However, I have moved beyond consumption to more to"work" and productivity with the introduction of split screen and multitasking on the iPad. And I now do short travel trips without the computer.</comment>


UK government changes website guidelines due to buggy screen readers - <AUTHOR> https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2016/07/20/changes-to-the-style-guide-no-more-eg-and-ie-etc/ <comment><USER2> I think a lot of commenters in this thread are missing an important point about accessibility. It does not just mean "works with screen readers". It means easily understood by anyone. A lot of people confuse the terms e.g. and i.e. so it is normally better to say "For example" or "That is" because these are natural phrases that will be clearly understood by a greater number of people.

I try to constantly improve my writing style, where improve normally means "simplify". I am personally guilty of overusing these abbreviations through force of habit, but I edit them out when I can. For anywhere with a formal house style, adopting this seems to make sense, even for things like scientific papers. Excessive use of jargon is a common accessibility problem and in most cases, there's no good reason for it other than dogma.

I am also a big fan of the old Borland "no nonsense licence" for similar reasons. For anyone that hasn't read it, here's a link:

[http://www.osnews.com/story/22342/Borland_in_the_1980s_Treat...](http://www.osnews.com/story/22342/Borland_in_the_1980s_Treat_Software_Just_Like_a_Book_/)

This just illustrates that even something requiring the precision of a legal document can be written in plain, approachable English. There really is no excuse.

<comment><USER3> Many documents and websites produced by government in the UK have the "Crystal Mark for Plain English". Details at [1].

I don't notice the difference, but non-natives have occasionally said they've been surprised when certain information is clear, such as letters from a bank.

[1] [http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/services/crystal- mark.html](http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/services/crystal-mark.html)

<comment><USER4> You probably would have noticed the difference in the 80s and 90s when banks and others still wrote in tortuous, horrifically formal, English. Why take two sentences when a page and a half would do?

Usually the only places you still regularly saw "inst", notwithstanding and heretofore. If you wanted to understand at first reading being a contract lawyer helped.

The Plain English Campaign took out most of the low hanging fruit years back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love what UK Gov is doing, they actually sound like the kind of business that I'd love to work with (I'm totally surprised because it's a Government) and I'm learning a lot just with these articles.

I'd also love to see other governments to take a similar approach, but that seems highly unlikely for most countries including Spain (where I am from).

<comment><USER6> We're hiring back-end developers and web-ops currently, maybe you should apply?

<comment><USER7> How is this relevant to the conversation?

<comment><USER8> Because they are working on UK Government projects, check the profile :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Aside from the quirky interpreations of "eg" and "ie" that triggered this decision, the abbreviations "e.g." and "i.e." are actually problematic, especially when dealing with non-native speakers (or even simply people who had no exposure to Latin).

"e.g." means "exempli gratia" \-- I am fairly confident the majority of readers in an international audience (or maybe even a national one) will not actually know this and come up with their own personal _backronym_ (like "ergo" or "example given").

"i.e." means "id est" (literally "that is") -- I know for a fact that even people with some exposure to Latin get this one wrong and instead think it means something like "in exemplum", which actually leads to people using it incorrectly when they should actually use "e.g.". I know this is what I did as a teenager in Germany (while learning Latin in school) and I know that this is what many of my German colleagues tend to do, simply because it seems like an obvious equivalent of the German "zum Beispiel" ("for example").

In the context of a website that explicitly tries to use simple English when possible, I think it is perfectly valid to preempt this confusion and not use phrases which are not actually English and can trivially be substituted with unabbreviated English equivalents in prose (whereas even the unabbreviated Latin would likely not help the reader).

EDIT: I'm not saying you shouldn't use "e.g." or "i.e." ever. I personally use them all the time. But it's absolutely consistent to avoid them when you're trying to use simple language to be understood by a broad audience with varying levels of comprehension.

<comment><USER10> I don't see what knowing these abbreviations has to do with knowing Latin. They are, to all intents and purposes, English words used in English writing, and people who have had the opportunity to develop a good English vocabulary in other respects will have learned these words too.

(Note, I grew up in England. I have begun to suspect that these abbreviations are used a little less in the US. But there again, if that is the case then the problem still lies with people's unfamiliarity due to not much usage — or perhaps with screen readers' unfamiliarity due to US-centric development — not with Latin.)

(Also, wouldn't the German equivalent of "i.e." be "d.h." which I'm sure I've seen for "das heißt"?)

<comment><USER11> You are right about "d.h." being the German equivalent of "i.e." but I've met a lot of Germans who pronounced it "daher" ("therefore"). I guess that proves a point about avoiding obscure abbreviations when someone else needs to understand what you wrote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > And while 'e.g.' gets read correctly by screen readers, there are better, > clearer ways of introducing examples for all users.

Strongly disagree. "e.g." has its place; it is often clearer than any alternative. Likewise "i.e.". "eg" is unpleasantly confusing even as an ordinary reader and should never have been allowed, but to remove "e.g." too is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

<comment><USER13> Could you explain why it is better than, say, "say"?

(neat, huh?)

<comment><USER14> They could put the e.g. inside a dfn tag or teach the screen readers how to read it.

<comment><USER15> > They could put the e.g. inside a dfn tag or teach the screen readers how to > read it.

I'm afraid not. AFAIK, screen readers don't apply any special processing for DFN tags. Speaking as someone who's using a screen reader to read this thread and proofread this comment, I'm not sure I'd want them to either, and I hadn't even heard of them until today.

Also, screen readers are able to speak through several, possibly hundreds, of different speech engines, so you would have to teach each of those engines to deal with these corner cases separately. Given that many of them were developed ten plus years ago and are now no longer under active development despite continued widespread usage, that's not really a realistic goal.

N.B. AFAIK is spoken by my screen reader/speech engine combo as "uh-fake". As a blind software developer, I have much bigger problems to worry about than memorising how my software speaks abbreviations. I of course don't speak for everyone though and clearer communication is always an excellent goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People will use buggy software, and I think some of the things it might say would be quite amusing:

"If you have committed any crimes egg tax fraud, insurance fraud, theft"

Egg tax fraud anyone?

</comment><comment><USER17> Writing 'eg' instead of 'e.g.' or 'ie' instead of 'i.e.' is just dumb, though. So is confusing the two.

<comment><USER18> 1\. Not everyone is a fluent English reader. If you are providing government services, you have to provide them to "dumb" people as well. "Dumb" in this case includes a lot of smart people who were not raised with English as their first language.

2\. There is no official version of the English language. Pronunciations, spellings and style guides change over time.

Disclaimer: This post is subject to Muphry's Law: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law)

<comment><USER17> > Not everyone is a fluent English reader.

I.e. & e.g. aren't English, but rather Latin. Any educated person in the Western world should understand them, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The comments section of the blog post is a perfect example of bike-shedding.

</comment><comment><USER20> A lot of developers aren't familiar with ADA compliance, it could become something we're (edit all US based developers) all talking about in the near future.

[http://www.technologylawsource.com/2015/06/articles/informat...](http://www.technologylawsource.com/2015/06/articles/information- technology/the-focus-of-the-ada-turns-to-websites-in-the-digital-age-is-your- website-compliant/)

<comment><USER21> This is only a requirement for government entities and non-profits at the moment. For those who didn't read the article, in April of 2016 the Department of Justice, the organization responsible for the Americans with Disabilities Act, has proposed an amendment, which will "require public entities and public accommodations that provide products or services to the public through websites on the Internet to make their sites accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities.". Immediately after, the article says that they were careful not to suggest that currently inaccessible websites are exempt.

So if you have a website currently up and you're providing a product or service, similar to having a wheelchair accessible entrance, you may be required to provide a more accessible website, or an accessible alternative.

For those of you who aren't familiar with website accessibility, you might want to brush up on the ADA guidelines. [https://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5toolkit.htm](https://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5toolkit.htm)

I tend to test run my websites through Lynx to make sure it works fine without JavaScript, try to navigate with only a keyboard in Chrome and Firefox, and try it out with a cheap or free screenreader like Chromevox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> FFS can we stop spending billions on designing around screen readers and fucking spend billions on good screen readers.

<comment><USER23> How does a screen reader translate FFS?

<comment><USER24> Abbreviations on the web can be expanded using the abbr tag:

<abbr title="Fat Finger Syndrome">FFS</abbr>

This also helps reduce ambiguity about the meaning of an acronym, improving the communication of semantic intent.

That said, it appears that expansion of <abbr> isn't consistently supported[1].

I suspect most screenreaders would simply say "Eff Eff Ess".

[1] [http://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen- readers/labelling/ac...](http://www.powermapper.com/tests/screen- readers/labelling/acronym-abbr-title/)

<comment><USER15> > I suspect most screenreaders would simply say "Eff Eff Ess".

Correct, thankfully. I don't really see a use case for screen reader-specific usage of the abr tag. If everybody else has to read "FFS", possibly having to look it up on Google to know what on earth it is, why wouldn't I also? Although I suspect that as a sighted user, you can mouse-over some text marked up with abr and see the expanded form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it actually officially correct to use "eg" instead of "e.g.", and "ie" instead of "i.e." in English? (UK, US, AU, or whichever else?) Both [http://dictionary.cambridge.org](http://dictionary.cambridge.org) and [http://dictionary.com](http://dictionary.com) seem to show only "e.g." and "i.e." for me?

<comment><USER26> The Guardian style guide is the only one of the newspapers for which I could find an entry on this.

[https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style- guide-e](https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-e)

It recommends dropping the dots. I know we were taught in school to treat them as abbreviations and therefore include the dots so I'm not sure where this new fashion comes from.

<comment><USER17> Maybe that's just the Grauniad codifying their well-known propensity for typographical error, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They could have changed it to their original form: "et cetera", "ergo", "id est"

<comment><USER28> e.g. is not ergo, it's "exempli gratia" (for the sake of example)

<comment><USER27> My mistake, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Would using the HTML <abbr> element with an appropriate title attribute help here?

</comment><comment><USER30> So no more PM, AM, AD, BC, DIY, ASAP, LOL, Dr, PhD, OBE, KBE either I guess.

</comment><comment><USER31> previously submitted [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157284)

</comment><comment><USER32> i.e., "We've decided it would be easier to make everyone who updates a page on the GOV.UK website change their language than to make everyone that makes screen reading software produce a product that reads screens correctly"

<comment><USER15> > i.e., "We've decided it would be easier to make everyone who updates a page > on the GOV.UK website change their language than to make everyone that makes > screen reading software produce a product that reads screens correctly"

See my previous comments in this thread to learn why this is necessary, and why it's unrealistic to expect screen readers to "just work™". It's a nice goal, but it won't happen.</comment></comment>


What are your Top 3 Open Source project sites (like SourceForge)? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Do you want me to list all 10,000 good Open Source projects, or just the ten I like the most?

Seriously, SourceForge alone has 149,257 projects, and that's probably not even a quarter of all Open Source projects. You've really got to give us more to go on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, no problems, SwellJoe. What are your personal Top 3 Open Source project sites (like SourceForge)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you mean projects, e.g. Vim, or sites that host projects, "like SourceForge"?

Also, Open Source only? How about Free Software?</comment>


Chase had ads on 400K sites then on just 5K and got the same results (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/chase-ads-youtube-fake-news-offensive-videos.html <comment><USER2> > _"It's only been a few days, but we haven't seen any deterioration on our > performance metrics," Ms. Lemkau said in an interview on Tuesday._

The ephemeral "brand awareness" provided by most advertising takes more than a few days to fall off. Chase isn't going to get someone to open an account just because they saw a banner ad, their goal is to familiarize people with their name so that when someone wants to open a bank account Chase seems like an option. People are not going to forget about Chase bank...

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm kind of surprised that the editor didn't kill this story.

The cynical thought would be that this story exists to encourage other big brands to be more choosy in the sites they advertise on, and what better site to advertise on than the NY Times?

<comment><USER4> NT's editorial line these days is to push for stories without much peer review if I trust how poorly most of their features are written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is from March of 2017. I couldn't find any follow-up articles talking about results almost 2 years in.

</comment><comment><USER6> What they conveniently leave out is what % of the total traffic on those 400K comes from the 5K remaining. It's a safe assumption that they stuck with the most popular mainstream sites so this could realistically be a <10% reduction in the number of eyeballs.

<comment><USER7> Yes, TFA says that impressions didn't decrease.

<comment><USER8> That should be the end of this "story" (oh yeah, Pareto/power distribution, nothing of interest here).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The existence of Patreon and similar services gives me hope that we can one day have a viable way to fund websites besides advertising. It seems like at present, one or two person teams (e.g. small podcasts and YouTube channels) can survive or even thrive on Patreon donations, mid-sized entities (e.g. major podcasts like Serial, most websites) rely on advertising, while large organizations like newspapers use some combination of advertising and subscriptions with mixed success. It would be great if Patreon-style donations could become a major revenue source of the mid-sized content producers as they have for the small.

<comment><USER10> There's actually a company doing automated "pay to remove Google ads and support the site" — [http://subscriptions.publir.com](http://subscriptions.publir.com) — uses Stripe and proceeds go to the publisher.

<comment><USER11> Actually Google itself does it: [https://contributor.google.com/v/beta](https://contributor.google.com/v/beta)

<comment><USER12> I'd like to use Google Contribute, but to work, it would require me to be logged into Google all the time, and I don't want to do that...

<comment><USER10> In addition to the obvious disadvantage of the Google login requirement, Google Contribute doesn't remove all ads –– just Google ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there any research on the effectiveness of ads? I can't ever remember intentionally clicking an ad on a webpage. I would imagine ads are more relevant or effective on an image feed like Instagram, but does anyone interact with ads on actual webpages? Or, worse, mobile games?

<comment><USER14> Older people and children feed the industry

<comment><USER15> Citation needed. The prime demographic for ads is 18-34. And people in those age groups are most definitely responding to ads even if they aren't clicking them.

<comment><USER16> ° And people in those age groups are most definitely responding to ads even if they aren't clicking them.

Could you provide a source for me to read more?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We are approaching the situation where 51% of Internet traffic is fake.

<comment><USER18> Let's hope the outcomes bode better for society than blockchains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if it's advertised-selective.

That is, a mainstream product like chase works with mainstream sites. While the fake news / conspiracy sites might be good for the kinds of things that end up in my spam folder: get rich quick, penis enlargement, tax scams and the like?

</comment><comment><USER20> > An intern then manually clicked on each of those addresses to ensure that > the websites were ones the company wanted to advertise on.

why is it always the interns

<comment><USER21> Because grunt work can be a valuable way of learning the fundamentals of a craft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Surprisingly, the company is seeing little change in the cost of impressions or the visibility of its ads on the internet"

This is pretty significant.

</comment><comment><USER23> I bet you there's a power law in the distribution of effectiveness.

How much of the results are driven by 1 property (aka Facebook) alone?

</comment><comment><USER24> Wonder if this says more about the effectiveness of ads or the dominant position Chase holds in the US financial system.

</comment><comment><USER25> Given how a lot of New Yorkers feel about Chase, is this really anything to crow about?

</comment><comment><USER26> Branded ads on the Google extended network are incredibly cheap.

</comment><comment><USER27> Mods: please add [2017] to this article.

</comment><comment><USER28> Online advertising is toxic. Everything from the execution (code), the push, the presentation, the stalking, the need for isolation, and the horrid insecurity. I understand that ads are the life blood of much of the web, but so long as that is the case there are many sites I won't visit and just about everything else I will block ads.

The only site I frequently visit where I don't feel dirty and violated by ads are the video ads on YouTube because I know they are screened for in appropriate content and aren't littered with 30 spyware packages. Of course YouTube makes up for that with horrid ad/stalking behavior everywhere else.

I even bet Facebook would be an ethical company if not for all the behaviors associated with chasing ad revenue.

<comment><USER29> Except for the folks paying content makers to do ads, as far as i can tell plenty of YouTube content makers have no problem with targeting kids with stuff that is effectively gambling.

<comment><USER28> That isn't the advertisements. That is the actual content people intentionally request. I wouldn't confuse a casino for its billboard.

<comment><USER29> >That is the actual content people intentionally request.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but I'm not really sure any viewers are requesting content makers do ads that target kids for gambling like apps and site.

Either way they are ads, and they are on YouTube. It's hardly a clean place advertising wise.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coding the Matrix – Linear Algebra using Python 3 from Brown (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://cs.brown.edu/video/channels/coding-matrix-fall-2014/?page=2 <comment><AUTHOR> Starts on Page 2 at the bottom and moves up. Half of this course was taught on Coursera in 2013.

Book on Amazon, Kindle version $3: [https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Matrix- Algebra-Applications-Co...](https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Matrix-Algebra- Applications-Computer/dp/0615880991)</comment>


November 15th, 2010: I Opt Out - <AUTHOR>

We abhor the idea of being irradiated by machines that have not had decades of testing, regardless of quantity. We are uncomfortable with a stranger viewing our genitals, or the genitals of our children. We are appalled that the alternative is to subject children and adults alike to groping of our private areas. We believe that the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution is being abandoned.
Michael Roberts protested to a TSA agent: "at this point I'm more concerned with the greater threat to our rights and liberties as a free society."
"Yeah, I know," replied the TSA agent, "But somebody's already taken those away."
I reject that reality and replace it with Michael's:
"I cannot consent to nor accept unwelcome physical contact any more than having images of my naked body being viewed by government personnel as a routine part of my daily commute to work. If I'm not under arrest or a suspect in some known threat to air transportation security, the [federal law-enforcement officers] have no grounds to invade my privacy and personal space in this way. It is an outrage beyond any measure of reason, an assault on liberty, a gross overreaching of the state, and a very significant step on the road back to the sort of tyranny many of our forbears and the founders of this society fought and often died to escape and abolish."
On November 15th, 2010, I will choose not to be subjected to radiation. I will choose not to have my privacy invaded. I will choose not to be subjected to an invasive, humiliating search. November 15th is the day that I take back my right not to be searched without a warrant for probable cause. On November 15th, I will arrive at the airport earlier than required and say, "I opt out."
I shall not sacrifice liberty for security.
If you are travelling on November 15th, I ask that you add your voice to mine.
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dzrgh/november_15th_2010_i_opt_out/ <comment><USER2> These machines mean nothing for security for two reasons:

1\. Not being able to scan body cavities. At least metal detectors cover that aspect.

2\. There is an unlimited number of targets. Terrorists could even hit the queues of people waiting to be scanned. Also, everywhere there are crowds there is a danger. So no matter how secure is made a certain patch of airport, there is no overall security improvement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why only the one day? Isn't this similar to calls-to-action asking people to boycott gasoline stations for a day, which have no noticeable effect? Wouldn't a more effective strategy be to say that you will always opt out? If lots of people did that, the TSA would have to rethink their policies as eventually the number of people requesting the opt-out would exceed the manpower available to administer them?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Thanksgiving. Remember junior high school, high school, elementary school, everybody bringing in cans for the hungry people? Remember that? Just imagine, if somebody, when you were in fifth, sixth grade, if the Principle had the gonads to say on Monday: 'Children, it was the most single, wonderful outpouring of generosity that this school has ever seen. More cans of food feeding a hundred and ninety-three families came to this school than ever before. We only have one problem and we're gonna' deal with it this coming week. We're gonna' cancel our regular classes and what we're gonna' talk about is: what are those people gonna' eat next week?'" ~ Harry Chapin

I ask for one day as a tenacious first step. That one day is when I can take the first step, too. I feel it hypocritical to ask others to do something that I, myself, could not take part. One day acts as a point in time where people can stride together, in unison, to carry a much stronger message than a random smattering of people throughout the months to come.

An act of unity with a definite place (airports) and a definite time (November 15th, 2010) and a definite call-to-action (opt out), I believe is easier to accomplish and coordinate than a call-to-action where nobody is sure of when or where to start, or whether they will be singled out.

It is about saying no... together.

It is about showing people that we can open doors together and, once the door has been opened, walking through it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Couldn't the baggage x-ray and metal detectors that we've been walking through for ages in airports be considered an invasion of privacy also? I think people are getting too upset over this.

</comment><comment><USER5> They're just going to refuse to let you get on the plane. There's no right to fly in the constitution.

<comment><USER2> You can't "opt out" when you are subjected to a legally-enforced monopoly.

Using the air to fly is the same as using the roads. By your argument, there is no "right to walk" or "right to drive" or "right to take a bus", therefore it would be OK to be made a prisoner by virtue of not being allowed onto public land.

It should be the government and not the individual whose freedom of movement is limited.

<comment><USER6> This has been hashed and rehashed, but again, there is no right to drive (in a normal context). It is a privilege that must be earned and can be taken away. I really wish people would stop using that comparison to make the case for the 'right to fly' when it is completely false.

I don't agree with scanning but I also don't see you winning over many rational people with your comparisons. We need to come up with a better argument against the scanning that isn't so weak and easily shot down.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately the real argument against the scanning is much harder to digest for the average person.

But let me try:

1\. The machines are expensive and made by a company with a large lobbyist- budget.

2\. The threat is over stated, these machines are overkill.

3\. The machines grant marginal-at-best security beyond traditional methods.

4\. The slow but steady psychological appeasement to being under closer and closer government scrutiny is a threat to democracy.

5\. The airlines and their terminals are not private enterprises, while the security and regulations are pure government entities. Since TSA agents are government officials they ought to be bound by the constitution which protects against unreasonable search. If Macy's was forcing people to get cavity searches to enter their store, I wouldn't have a problem with it, I just wouldn't shop there. Being searched at an airport is a completely different situation than entering into a contract with a private party.

5a. The risk factor being so blown out of proportion makes a virtual-strip search of an average no-record citizen unreasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately they will just feel up to your nuts/vag instead of looking at them.

I agree with the sentiment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Such an action is unacceptable.

Section eight of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states, "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure."

The U.S. Constitution - Amendment 4 states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Personally invasive searches are unreasonable when travelling by foot, by car, by boat, by bicycle, and, I contend, by aeroplane.

If society agrees that it is unreasonable to be virtually strip-searched or intimately groped while travelling by plane, then the TSA is violating a fundamental right of North American society.

<comment><USER8> They won't though. You are asking people to choose between getting groped/irradiated and BIG SCARY AMBIGUOUS THREAT.

Most people are not willing/able to make the leap you have.

<comment><USER7> It's true that most people aren't willing, however that doesn't really mean people shouldn't be encouraging them to anyway.

Your post reminds me of people who try to convince me that trying to convince people to vote for a third party is dumb/ a waste of time/pointless since most people won't do it.

At this point it's going to take nothing short of a revolution to have a world where leadership, in addition to technology, is actually beneficial to the masses, at this point it's essentially a parasitic relationship. So as far as I can tell, rather people start getting fed up sooner rather than later.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The State of TLS on XMPP - <AUTHOR> https://blog.thijsalkema.de/blog/2013/09/02/the-state-of-tls-on-xmpp-3/ <comment><USER2> Is HTTP 2.0 finalized and approved? If not could we push for it to support PFS by default with ECDHE, which seems to add only 15 percent overhead [1]? That seems like a small price to pay if the security of every session grows exponentially, with each one being encrypted with a new key.

HTTP 2.0/SPDY already makes TLS mandatory, no? So why not make PFS mandatory, too? I'd rather we do it now than wait for HTTP 3.0, and it might force a lot more companies to adopt it by default as they move to HTTP 2.0 (companies such as Microsoft [2]).

EDIT: Links

[1] - [http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2011-ssl-perfect-forward- se...](http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2011-ssl-perfect-forward-secrecy.html)

[2] - [http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/06/25/ssl- intercepted...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/06/25/ssl-intercepted- today-decrypted-tomorrow.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this post before the latest of Snowden's revelations and Bruce Schneier's comments on them[1].

"Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA influences when they can."

I'd rather have some smart people take a thorough look at the curves we use before we make ECDHE mandatory. If we need to choose between computationally heavy DHE or possibly backdoored ECDHE, I'm afraid many companies will still pick ECHDE.

[1] - [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to- rema...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain- secure-surveillance)

<comment><USER3> Be careful with traditional Diffie-Hellman, which in practice also has problems: if your server software doesn't let you specify your own parameters, it's probably using 1024 bit parameters. All versions of Apache are guilty of this[1], as are (at least the versions I checked) Dovecot and Postfix. I would not trust 1024 bit DH in the face of an adversary like the NSA. It would be interesting to check how XMPP server software handles DH parameters.

[1] [https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=49559](https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=49559)

Edit to add: Prosody allows you to specify dhparams, though the documentation is vague[2]. Don't see anything in the ejabberd docs for this[3].

[2] [http://prosody.im/doc/advanced_ssl_config](http://prosody.im/doc/advanced_ssl_config)

[3] [http://www.process- one.net/docs/ejabberd/guide_en.html](http://www.process- one.net/docs/ejabberd/guide_en.html)

<comment><USER4> Yes, Prosody does allow it, but you're right that the documentation is vague - it's because it's a bit awkward at the moment.

We're planning to release 0.9.1 on Monday to address this issue (or you can grab one of our nightlies at [https://prosody.im/nightly/0.9/](https://prosody.im/nightly/0.9/) (build 160+) ).

Should have docs up in the next couple of days, but for now it should suffice to say that you can simply add a 'dhparam' field to your existing 'ssl' option in your config file that is a path to a DH parameters file created with something like:

 _openssl dhparam -2 2048 > prosody-dhparam.pem_

Hope this helps!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> Note that ECDH and DH are different authentication mechanisms: these require special certificates and offer no forward-secrecy._

I contacted the author about this, but I don't think this is correct.

The OpenSSL ciphers documentation[1] says "DH" is simply all suites using Diffie–Hellman, not necessarily _authenticated_ DH, which is "aDH". I actually couldn't check if it does include aDH since `openssl ciphers -v 'aDH'` tells me I don't have any aDH ciphers!

Unfortunately there's no documentation to explain the difference between EDH (ephemeral DH?) and DHE. Are they synonyms? I'm assuming DHE is ephemeral since using a string with DHE Will get you Perfect Forward Secrecy "points" on an SSL Labs test[2]. (Run the test! Secure your web servers! You can get at least a B rating easily enough.)

[1]: [http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/ciphers.html](http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/ciphers.html)

[2]: [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I clarified that I mean to refer to those with OpenSSL names that start with "ECDH-" and "DH-", which is not the same as what the shorthand "DH" gives you. As far as I can tell, EDH is an older synonym for DHE.

I like the ssllabs test and I hope this sort of testing gets more common for TLS usage that isn't HTTPS. However, I think a B is still cause for concern. You can only obtain a B if you have a) SSLv2 enabled (which is broken), b) cipher suites enabled with <128 bit symmetric keys, c) a RSA private key with less than 1024 bits or d) if you don't mitigate BEAST. I think only d) is a valid excuse under some circumstances.

On the other hand, a 1024 bit RSA key with SSLv3 and only RC4 will give you an A, but I would not call this very secure anymore.

<comment><USER5> I indeed managed to get a B without trying to mitigate against BEAST (d). The trouble does seem to be that RC4 isn't vulnerable to BEAST, but it's not desirable because of its other vulnerabilities.

Since BEAST was fixed in TLS 1.1, I _think_ you can require 1.1+ and get an A, but the test suggests you might break things for a significant chunk of users.

Even if you get a B because you're vulnerable to BEAST, if you prioritise 1.1+ ciphers, you'll still fail to get an A but you'll mitigate against it. It looks like Qualys themselves have a post on this, actually: [https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2011/10/17/m...](https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2011/10/17/mitigating- the-beast-attack-on-tls)

<comment><USER6> In my opinion, it's irresponsible of Qualys to put so much emphasis on BEAST. It's been mitigated in every major browser and most other clients. RC4 is not a better alternative (as it shortcomings can't be overcome unilaterally in client implementations), and it's dangerous to give it so much weight in the scoring.

<comment><USER7> First of all, I think it's perfectly reasonable to not get an A if your security is not perfect. Thus, BEAST does not carry "so much weight". For a lot of weight, look at SSL 2 or insecure renegotiation -- if you have those enabled you get an F.

I know that everyone assumes the BEAST had been addressed, but that's not actually the case. Safari continues to be vulnerable. BEAST is actually still exploitable (against Safari), because the Java Same-Origin Policy bypass that was used originally still remains (in a slightly different form; they appear to have failed to fix it).

But you won't hear about this, because people have moved on to the next exciting thing and no one bothers to check.

There is one positive change and that is that the Java plug-in does not appear to have access to httpOnly cookies, making BEAST less interesting. Still, other cookies, HTTP Basic Authentication, and URL-based sessions remain vulnerable.

Some might say that supporting TLS 1.1+ deals with the problem. It might, but it might not, because most browsers are susceptible to protocol downgrade attacks. An active MITM might be able to force TLS 1.0 and then exploit BEAST. I have so far determined that all browsers downgrade connections in case of failure. I am soon to test if they have some sort of rollback defense.

I am well aware that RC4 is not a good cipher, and it pains me to continue to indirectly encourage people to use it. I am sorry I cannot move at a faster pace, but researching these things takes considerable effort, and thus time.

It's actually pretty likely that next week, after I finish with some further tests, SSL Labs will stop penalizing for the BEAST vulnerability.

[Note: I am the guy behind SSL Labs.]

<comment><USER6> First off, let me say thanks for an awesome tool. Just because I disagree with the preference of RC4 over AES-CBC doesn't mean I don't think SSL Labs is incredibly useful (I use it all the time to test TLS configs).

In my opinion, if being vulnerable to BEAST means you aren't 'perfect' and capped at a B, then allowing RC4 should have the same effect, as there are very real attacks against TLS's implementation of RC4 as well.

I look forward to the day when we can shut off TLS 1.0 altogether... We disabled SSLv3 a month ago (once it dropped below 1% of our traffic). Alas, TLS 1.0 is still almost 2/3rds of our traffic. The good news is, with the release of Chrome 29 Stable, we've seen a _huge_ spike in TLS 1.2 traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Part 1 & 2 of the series:

[https://blog.thijsalkema.de/blog/2013/08/26/the-state-of- tls...](https://blog.thijsalkema.de/blog/2013/08/26/the-state-of-tls-on- xmpp-1/)

[https://blog.thijsalkema.de/blog/2013/08/28/the-state-of- tls...](https://blog.thijsalkema.de/blog/2013/08/28/the-state-of-tls-on- xmpp-2/)

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Handy tip: If you want to use ssllabs.com server test against a non-HTTP based SSL service on your host which runs on a different port, you can temporarily add this rule to iptables so that any connetions from SSL labs on port 443 get redirected to it:

iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -s 18.104.22.168 -p tcp --dport 443 -j REDIRECT --to-port 5223

In this particular case, I turned on legacy SSL in my XMPP servers (Prosody) configuration so that an SSL on connect service existed on port 5223.

Of course, in the results that SSLlabs displays, you'll get some strange information as it's expecting HTTP, but the majority of the information is useful.

</comment><comment><USER9> Somewhat off-topic: What are some alternatives to XMPP? I haven't found much about messaging protocols.

<comment><USER10> SIMPLE [1], mostly. There is also IMPP [2], an XMPP competitor which has a bunch of RFCs behind it, but never gained any implementations, as far as I know.

Alternatives such as the MSN, AOL and Skype's IM protocols are shoddily defined, cruft-ridden ad-hoc protocols that people have been mostly able to reverse engineer, but they are not useful except for interoperability with existing networks.

SIMPLE has not been deployed to any great extant, that I know. The benefit to XMPP is that it's not just well defined (a bunch of RFCs with a working group behind them), but also a proven protocol that has years of production use under its belt. The problem with the IM protocol landscape is entirely political. Everyone wants to own the network, nobody wants to be compatible.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_Messaging_and_Presence...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_Messaging_and_Presence_Protocol)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the author's concern about AES128?

      "The best cipher offered is 128-bit AES. So far, this has been the only client that doesn't support 256-bit encryption that I've seen."

      "Surprisingly AES128 takes priority over AES256 here."

      "Surprisingly AES128 is first, followed by 3DES and only then AES256."

      "128 bit AES/Camellia is preferred over those with 256 bit, but at least RC4 is at the very bottom here."

Etc...

In my opinion, preferring AES128 over AES256 is a feature. AES128 is more than sufficient in terms of cryptopgraphic strength, it's faster, and it isn't susceptible to the key schedule weakness that the higher key sizes have.

<comment><AUTHOR> The key schedule weakness in AES256 that I know of only applies to related- keys, which don't affect TLS as far as I know. If there's anything else I'm missing, I would like to know.

I don't have a specific concern with AES128 (compared to the concern I have about the usage of (EXP-)DES and RC4). It merely surprised me that some clients prefer AES128 over AES256 and I think it's important for server operators to know that there are clients that will stop working when disabling all <256 bit ciphers.

Personally I don't find speed a concern when using IM, it's not full-disk encryption or a large download where speed is noticable.

<comment><USER7> All Java installations support only up to 128-bit AES by default. Oracle calls that "strong encryption". You can upgrade to "unlimited strength" by changing some policy files, after which 256-bit AES will be possible.

I don't know if that's what you're seeing, but there's definitely a class of clients that do not support 256-bit AES.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're looking for encrypted OTR/decentralized/p2p messaging, also take a look at [http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/](http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><USER12> Has anyone done a cryptographic audit of this?

<comment><USER11> As for me, no. Mail the devs for any questions, they're very available.

The application itself is open-source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> What about Moxie's TextSecure? I think it's going to be integrated into CyanogenMod ROM's soon, so I'd like to see an evaluation of that, too. An evaluation of Surespot would be nice, too, even though it's not using PFS.

<comment><USER13> It's SMS, not XMPP.</comment></comment>


Restoring accidentally deleted files on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://sabotage-linux.github.io/blog/6/ <comment><USER2> If you are using ext4 there is extundelete that simplifies the process, it requires to remount the filesystem read-only, though.

      mount -o remount,ro /dev/sda1
      extundelete --restore-all --after $(date -d "-1 hours" +%s) /dev/sda1
      find /RECOVERED_FILES -name accidentally_deleted_file
      mount -o remount,rw /dev/sda1

</comment><comment><USER3> Another fast way to search for text in binary files is to use "grep -abo" (treat all files as text / print matches only / print file offsets).

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone checked if that is actually faster than just using grep on the blockdevice? I've used grep the few times I've had a need for it, and just copied the source off the terminal when its found something. (Tell grep to give you some lines before and after a match, and tell it to treat the blockdevice as plain-text).. You usually get some trash before/after the matches, those could be terminal control characers, but a those can be trimmed with, drumroll: tr.

</comment><comment><USER5> Last time I had this happen (thankfully a long time ago) I just used Perl against the block device and used a regex.

Forensic tools also work well for this.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks, this will come in handy. Needed it a bunch in the past.

</comment><comment><USER7> shouldn't that be (addr1-addr2+1)? Or does dd copy the first byte _plus_ the count?</comment>


An Elevator in the Great Pyramid of Egypt? The Hidden Tomb of Pharaoh Khufu? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYBYGV0OKMU <comment><AUTHOR> >"There are in fact two different hypotheses out there that claim that there is at least one elevator shaft within the great pyramid.

One theory says that elevator shafts were used for construction, something that Bob Crielly has done a great deal of work on, but another is that a hidden elevator shaft hides the elusive remains of Pharaoh Khufu, and this is the hypothesis I'll be focusing on in this video."

[...]

Sources:

Russian website: [http://cheops.su/](http://cheops.su/)

Bob Crielly's book: [http://bit.ly/BobCrielly](http://bit.ly/BobCrielly) "</comment>


Air France Ramps Up Flight Schedule as Restrictions Ease - <AUTHOR> https://airlinegeeks.com/2020/06/16/air-france-ramps-up-flight-schedule-as-restrictions-ease/ <comment><AUTHOR> Air France will serve passenger flights to nearly 150 destinations in the summer. The dramatic uptick will correspond to 80% of the usual network of the flag carrier of France.</comment>


Give HN: Beta Invites to Glass, a Social Annotations Service - <AUTHOR>

Reading HN in college, I became excited about the start-up atmosphere. Because of you, I moved across the country and started working full-time as a Firefox extension developer. I've been having a great time, and it's all your fault :)<p>The project I'm working on is currently in Beta, and I want to share it with you. The first 100 people to use the code "erdos" on http://www.writeonglass.com can try it out. <comment><AUTHOR> Update 2: 18 users used "erdos" to register, which means more of you are finding this page longer after it left /new. Rock on!

Something that's made me a little sad is that I don't have a way to talk to the people who used these invitation tokens, so I can't tell how you feel about it.

To any intrepid searchers who find this in the future: I'd love to hear how you feel about this service. If you send a friend request to <http://writeonglass.com/ryan>, you'll have the ear of one of the developers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: approximately five HNers read this post and decided to try it out.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable url: <http://www.writeonglass.com></comment>


Ask HN: What web development communities are out there? - <AUTHOR>

I only know of HN, which isn't really geared around web development, sitepoint, and r/webdev. Are there any good web development communities geared towards professionals? Like HN but strictly web? Or programming for that matter. <comment><USER2> Local meetups are a good resource. Most have mailing lists and they're often quiet, but from my experience questions are generally answered within a couple hours.

</comment><comment><USER3> StackOverflow.com

webmasters.stackexchange.com

www.reddit.com/r/programming

</comment><comment><USER4> forrst.com

It's a little poor in content, but the spirit is there.

</comment><comment><USER5> www.teamtreehouse.com www.udacity.com</comment>


Why Choosing a FIDO2 Security Key - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@0x0ece/why-choosing-a-fido2-security-key-8cb0e5a1a71e <comment><USER2> In re "In terms of platform support, FIDO2 devices work on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, and on all major browsers with FIDO2, WebAuthn, or U2F like Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and very soon Safari."

As I wrote in another thread today:

I thought with webauthn and the new Firefox, U2F keys should work with Google Services.

Has anyone been able to log in using a Yubikey and Firefox to Google? Because I haven't.

<comment><AUTHOR> It works for me. I just tried logging in into Gmail in Firefox 61.0.2 on Mac. I've tried both Solo and a U2F key (Digipass Secure Click). What yubikey are you using? I can give it a shot.

<comment><USER2> The blue one.

In another thread I asked this question a user told me that I need to register the key using Chrome, not Firefox, and after that Firefox can be used for logging in.

Haven't tried it yet, but it sounds promising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. To be fair, I've added my keys with Chrome. Ping me via email (or comment on medium) if you can't have it to work, I'm happy help debugging more.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My "Get Started with Arduino: A Hands-On Introductory Workshop" video - <AUTHOR> http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920027973.do

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pleased to be able share with HN my first video course created in collaboration with O'Reilly Media.

It's a little more traditional take on "passive income" than a website or similar products but taking up the opportunity was inspired in part from my hanging around on HN...

To accompany this blatant self-promotion (you can blame HN for that too :) ) I'd like to mention you can get 50% off with the discount code "VDWK" if you'd like learn how to get started with the Arduino.

The opportunity to create the video occurred after presenting a well received workshop at the last three O'Reilly OSCON open source conference events: <[http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23941&...](http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23941>);

If you've thought about playing with an Arduino before I can really recommend them as a great way to start creating something tangible.

For me--as a software developer--the big difference the Arduino made is that it turned what used to be a 100% hardware problem into a problem which is 90% software and 10% hardware. Chances are you already know most of the 90% software side of things and you can learn the 10% hardware side as you go.

Happy to answer some questions if people have them.</comment>


Are You Ready to Consider That Capitalism Is the Real Problem? - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40439316/are-you-ready-to-consider-that-capitalism-is-the-real-problem <comment><USER2> Every system has problems. Capitalism is the best we have found at managing resources at scale. The problem of course is that wealth tends to create wealth, which causes wealth to accumulate at the top. This leads to a completely distorted economy, civil unrest, and eventually a crash. The usual solution is to task a government with making sure that wealth is taken from the top and reinjected at the bottom to keep the system from crashing. It's an ugly hack, but it's the only thing that has worked. The big problem with this is that wealth also tends to accumulate political power which weakens this check on capitalism. There's no easy solution, but the first place to start would be strengthening campaign finance rules and conflict of interest rules. The legislators should never be cozy with industry. In fact the heads of industry should be angry with government pretty much all of the time, if they are not then the government is probably not doing its job. Apple should be on a massive propaganda campaign about how cruel and unfair it is that all of the world governments are taking away their profits and giving them (indirectly) to poor people. They should be crying about how greedy governments have stolen like three quarters of a trillion dollars from them. Hedge fund managers should be angry about how the government is always there when they make huge windfalls. It should seems super unfair what the government is doing, because what capitalism does to the poor is just as unfair.

<comment><USER3> Oh, but business interests are always complaining. They face no price or consequence for griping. They set up TV networks to do 24 hour pissing & moaning, and they call it "news."

What blows my mind is that the middle class and the poor who should know better, are simply to damned lazy to stand up for themselves. And many of them simply want a strongman to tell them what to do. That is, when they're not fantasizing that they'll be allowed into the club of the rich if they only provide enough fealty. It's a completely warped populace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The big danger, IMO, is the sheer _frustration_ that the modern social and economic system puts on the demographic mentioned (18-29 year olds). "Maybe we should start smashing stuff until things are better" is really unappealing when you have a meaningful job, a spouse and children, a house, or are otherwise invested into the system. And when you're frustrated enough to have a negative view of _markets_ , well, the field is ripe for extraordinarily dangerous mass movements.

Millennials are infantilized until later in life and, by and large, haven't been allowed to hold real responsibility until 22 or ever later. The affordability of passing gate-keeping milestones - such as owning a home, or getting a degree, or affording a stay-at-home wife and children - in terms of available opportunities has risen drastically. The divorce rate has risen tremendously, having an unprecedented rise in adults raised in broken homes.

Like, congratulations Baby Boomers, you successfully made housing and education expensive enough that your loans and real estate let you retire off the proceeds of people working to pay off their crushing debt. That just means a generation of angry single men in their twenties working pointless jobs, living with their parents, and frustrated with their inability to fulfill their social needs. If you're not scared of creating this demographic, you haven't studied history and psychology.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the deeper problem is that labor has no pricing power. Capitalism works for more people when people who earn a salary can buy things that increase real demand for companies. But workers are strapped for money, and have no real political assistance or prospects for a better future. Earning a living is increasingly a sucker's game.

Unfortunately, America's political system doesn't allow for a nuanced solution that gently puts the brakes on rampant globalization. Instead, talking heads who only play for ALL THE MARBLES see this as an either/or situation. I believe in the inevitability of globalization. The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we need to get there next week? Can we get there just a tiny bit slower? Can we create an economic space where people not living on space station Elysium (the 2013 movie) can have a life not defined by exasperating financial anxiety?

<comment><USER2> Aren't unions the way to give labor pricing power? Of course the problem with Unions is that they are a big Prisoners Dilemma game. You need everybody in the union or the people outside of it undercut the whole system.

Globalism makes it extremely difficult to maintain unions without significant government support. Can you imagine a scenario where every textile worker in the world was a member of a union? How horrible would it be if they couldn't be kept as wage slaves and paid pennies per hour out in Bangladesh? Your clothes would cost more for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Socialists/Communists not satisfied with 200 million+ deaths, must want to hit an even 1 billion.

Blows my mind people can even be calling for socialism while we have a real time implosion going on in Venezuela right now. It's ending like every other socialist regime in history, cannibalism, famine, riots, and murder. Meanwhile one of the United State's biggest problem is obesity due to being so prosperous.

Actually I'm not surprised, just look up Yuri Bezmenov's talk on ideological subversion he foretold everything 30+ years ago

<comment><USER6> The news must be covering up the ongoing massacres in Norway.

<comment><USER5> 1\. Those countries are all capitalist economies, some with more economic freedom than the US. They can't be used to defend socialism/communism

2\. We're on HN so we all now about scaling. There's a big difference between 5 million and 300+ million citizens.

3\. The US subsidizes those countries in terms of defense and innovation in health care. Pharma makes their profits off us while they have price controls in those other countries.

[http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking](http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking)

<comment><USER7> I think you meant to respond to me, but accidentally responded to someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article reads to me like a long list of problems caused by government and blamed on capitalism.

I'm biased though - I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and I've spent orders of magnitude more time considering these sorts of questions than the vast majority of people who are not so politically involved.

<comment><USER7> Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you has spent less time considering these sorts of questions than you have?

As a counterpoint, I'd suggest the thousands of political-science, economic, and philosophy scholars who all disagree with you (as do the vast majority of humans who have ever lived and appreciate the social contract).

You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong, but I don't think it's accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as you have.

<comment><USER9> Overall you make a good point. In the context of this article, I tend to think the OP comment has thought about it harder than the author. These articles like "Down with capitalism, didn't you hear 51% of millennials don't like it! And what about that fire in london?" are invariably written by radical left- wing disciplines where the authors have no evidence of deep understanding of the issues - here anthropology.

<comment><USER7> This article is not scholarly or deep. I'm not sure we could (or should) expect more, given its medium. It's a pop-politics article, so I found the scope to be appropriate. I also felt the implied intent was to inspire people to read deeper dives written elsewhere.

As for "radical left-wing," I don't disagree with the terminology. But I do disagree with the implication that the radical left-wing is a niche in the US. I'd say that it's quite mainstream, which you yourself support by suggesting that it's popular among Millenials (almost half the US population).

The author of the article also suggests that radical left-wing ideas are now mainstream, and I'd propose that that's the whole point. These ideas have become mainstream, so let's start calling them what they are: socialist ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a quip in the show "Archer" (forget exactly the words) where Mallory tells everyone something along the lines of "move up to my tax bracket and see if you keep spouting that socialist propaganda". I found it hilarious because it is true for many out there that if you suddenly find yourself moved from your minimum wage job with Obamacare insurance into a position of making a huge salary with legit benefits, you suddenly shift your position on the fairness of Capitalism and whether or not people are getting too much from the government and how they should do what you did to get ahead.

Additionally, while it certainly appears that the richer get richer and it does nothing to help those that are struggling, you have to ask yourself whether or not you'd do anything different if it were you in the position of wealth and power to change how people earn money for the work they contribute. Then you'd have to wonder if people could truly come together and share everything under extreme government over site, but why wonder when there is decades of data to prove that it doesn't work?

<comment><USER11> yes, people are always motivated by self interest, even for what seems like altruistic actions the underlying motivation is that it makes them feel good about themselves.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure there's a name for this but a modern day label could be the "Facebook Syndrome", where seemingly endless goals of altruism is at its core, motivated by self interest and feeling good about oneself, to the detriment of the people you profess to be helping.

<comment><USER11> I think it's called virtue signaling. and yeah, it's rampant on social media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Everybody knows that capitalism has problem. The trick is figuring out what the next better bad system would be. And as far as I can see the richest, smartest and most powerful people are currenlty all thinking hard exactly about that question. So far nobody has found the answer, but suggestions are welcome.

<comment><USER7> No one has a concrete answer, but capitalism could work better if the market were freer -- and by "freer" I don't mean less regulated. I mean that people have more freedom to make choices.

For example, we don't currently have a free labor market because it's extremely expensive (in terms of time and money) for a low-wage worker to find a new job. Those people are trapped. If we had a better safety net for people at the bottom, the labor market could be more competitive.

Another example is lacking knowledge. The market could (and should) stop buying products that harm them, but sometimes the only party who knows the product is harmful is the producer. Cigarettes were an example for a long time because the tobacco companies buried their own research. The government now forces health disclosures on cigarettes, which makes the market work like it's supposed to.

There are tons of examples where a "socialist" policy actually leads to more personal freedom, more efficient markets, and less need for government intervention into individuals' decisions.

(I would include universal basic income as a social policy, but it's actually not! It's supposed by both libertarians and socialists. It might be the "next better bad" adjustment to our current system.)

<comment><USER13> The problem is if you're priced out of decent healthcare and/or education options it really doesn't matter how much extra spending money you got.

<comment><USER7> If you're arguing that health care and education should be free, then I agree with you.

If I were running a society, my goal would be an even playing field. Everyone has the same access to health care, education, and any other opportunity that affects their happiness. Beyond that, they would have the choice to pursue whatever they wanted.

My society could not exist now, nor could it exist in the past. Miserable, oppressed people were required to support everyone else (e.g. coal miners).

We're getting to a point in history where that may change. Robots might be able to do all the bad, boring, dangerous jobs.

Basically Wall-E.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Everyone complains about capitalism. Is there an actual solution? Is there an alternative that benefits the community as much as Socialism does? And then, what do we do with the crap parts of Socialism? Do we just TRY it and hope it works? There's never been a real plan set forth other than "Capitalism sucks!" or "Capitalism is the root of all our problems!" How do we solve for it?

Then... how do we get people to buy into it on a global scale without it falling apart under the weight of social discussions?

<comment><USER2> The experiments you're looking for are the socialist democracies of northern Europe. Look at the Netherlands for an example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm pretty sympathetic to the ideals behind Distributism[0]. I just don't know, particularly, how to make it work usefully with sectors that benefit from economies of scale (like ISPs)

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

<comment><USER16> You should look into various flavors of anarchism, like Syndicalism, that have tried to answer that question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how much of it is the system's fault and how much is human nature's fault. Regardless of the system, there is always a group that will want more, be it money and/or power. Many of the problems cited in this article wouldn't be a problem if not for pure self interest and lack of empathy for the society as a whole. The JP Morgan reaction to the attempt of raising wages is the perfect example for that.

</comment><comment><USER18> Consider that vast amounts of capital come from pension funds that invest in companies which have a duty to provide returns to shareholders. Would pension fund stakeholders agree on having lower pensions when they get old so that current workers earn more? Economics is far more complicated than altruism supposes.</comment>


Cars That Talk to Each Other Are Much Easier to Spy On - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/10/cars-that-talk-to-each-other-are-much-easier-to-spy-on/ <comment><USER2> Interesting read. Collaborative data could revolutionize how humans interact with the world. A cooperative model can eliminate redundancy and optimize the finite resources we have. Predictive medical diagnosis and personalized treatment, less roads and infrastructure, nations pooling resources and information and a united growth strategy.

This comes with privacy concerns. I don't want to wave my hands at them, because they are very real, but our world is very very public already. Vehicle data is much less likely to be the linchpin in an exploitation and tracking model. Cellphones, employment information and social graphs can paint a much more granular picture. I am really long on sharing DNA information as it has the biggest upside, but as one would expect, has the biggest risks.

People use cars much differently than they used:

* ride sharing

* less younger people owning vehicles

* urbanization eliminating regular driving

* real-time communication limiting travel needs

* everyone being broke as fuck (me)

So I imagine it will be non-trivial to do this soon if society begins to share cars on the grid Uber/lyft etc, and more privately among family members. The upside would be less need for infrastructure, ability to predict and deploy infrastructure, repairs and improvements and the holy of all holies:

Routing traffic sanely on the 405 in LA or the LIE in NY and evenly distributing it as much as possible.

So, I am not worried about it. It is net worth it in my opinion. The new VPN is going to be a 64' classic without even a tape player.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "The vehicle is saying 'I'm Alice, this is my location, this is my speed and > my direction.' Everyone around you can listen to that,"

So, basically like the cellphone everyone already has in their pocket.</comment>


Relic - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newrelic.com/2014/05/23/alerting-new-channel-notification-levels/ <comment><USER2> Excellent product I'm excited to see what it can do for my astrology business</comment>


Ask HN: When was the last time you were surprised by something with a low price? - <AUTHOR> Have you ever bought a product or use a service that is "cheap" (ie very low priced) but is reliable and better than a higher priced alternatives?<p>For example: computer mouse, car, hosting provider, a food brand, etc. <comment><USER2> I've owned a lot of great guitars but I find myself picking up the Squier Strat more than any other guitar I own. It did take some setting up and pickup replacement, but it plays so beautifully now. I'm willing to bet that nobody can tell the difference between the Squier and a proper vintage/boutique Fender Strat in a blind test. I know I can't.

</comment><comment><USER3> 2019 leather bound calendar for $1.80 at barns and noble. Originally was $25. Beautifully bound. Mind you its now Feb 24th.</comment>


Nature is a Brilliant Engineer  - <AUTHOR>

Primates and the success of Internet Social Networking - what's the connection?
Short Answer - Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc are all examples of virtual 'grooming'.
Most mammals only scratch with the back foot, but a monkey or ape can use either back of front. Its front limbs are ideally suited to the cleaning tasks. The nimble fingers can run through the fur and locate specific trouble spots with great accuracy. Compared with claws and hooves,the primate's hands are precision `cleaners'. Even so, two hands are better than one, and this creates something of a problem. The monkey or ape can manage to bring both its hands into play when dealing with its legs, flanks, or front, but cannot really get to grips efficiently in this way with its back, or the arms themselves. Also, lacking a mirror, it cannot see what it is doing when it is concentrating on the head region. Here, it can use both hands, but it must work blind. Obviously, the head, back and arms are going to be less beautifully groomed than the front, sides and legs, unless something special can be done for them.
The solution is social 'grooming', the development of a friendly mutual aid system. This can be seen in a wide range of both bird and mammal species, but it reaches a peak of expression amongst the higher primates.
In other words, social grooming is a co-operative, non-aggressive activity.
If two animals wish to tighten their bond of friendship, they can do so by repeatedly grooming one another, even if the condition of their fur hardly warrants it. Indeed, there seems to be little relationship between the amount of dirt on the coat, and the amount of mutual grooming that takes place. Social grooming activities appear to have become almost independent of their original stimuli. Although they still have the vital task of keeping the fur clean, their motivation now appears to be more social than cosmetic. By enabling two animals to stay close together in a non-aggressive, co-operative mood they help to tie tighter the inter-personal bonds between the individuals in the troop or colony.
Equate that to human activities - we are simply behaving very much as our compelling urges and genes have molded us to be. There's no escape from it - we are simply Naked Apes, acting on our basic instincts, no matter where today's technology takes us.
And the point of this dissertation?
To figure out where Social Networking is next headed, or to develop the next 'internet sensation' - spend a week taking notes in the primate house of your local zoo.
Mike Francis 'Nature is a Brilliant Engineer' <comment><USER2> Mike nice thoughts? have you got a blog?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't yannis. But I do have lots more thoughts on nature's brilliant engineering abilities - lets see if the Ycombinator Team agrees on October 26th !</comment></comment>