Short-Run Effects of GDPR on Technology Venture Investment - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3278912 <comment><USER2> I notice Brexit is mentioned only once in the paper, in a footnote mentioning that Great Britain is considered part of the EU for the purpose of their research. Another article currently on the HN frontpage discusses the effects of Brexit on companies [1], blaming Brexit for reduced investment and companies leaving the UK.

While I am absolutely open to the possibility that the GDPR has negative effects on technology venture investment (as their paper suggests), I am a bit disappointed that they did not attempt to correct for the effects of the UK leaving the EU. At the very least it would have been nice if, in addition to graphs for the entire EU, there were graphs for the UK alone, and also for the EU without the UK. That way it might have been possible to get a vague impression of how much these numbers are affected by Brexit instead of the GDPR.

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18431564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18431564)

<comment><USER3> > At the very least it would have been nice if, in addition to graphs for the > entire EU, there were graphs for the UK alone, and also for the EU without > the UK.

That would seem to require that the Crunchbase dataset referenced in the paper (but not discussed in terms of its content or format) was broken down in terms of specific businesses and their host country.

The actual effects of the UK's exit are not yet known (the post-Brexit UK might even grandfather in some EU law like GDPR), and the article [0] mentioned in the other HN story (your ref 1) is not definitive, e.g. for Pfizer it says: "Pfizer's preparations are well advanced to make the changes necessary to meet EU legal requirements after the U.K. is no longer a member state, especially in the regulatory, manufacturing and supply chain areas". To me this isn't a basis for inferring what Pfizer will do with respect to GDPR

[0] [https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/10615540262848348...](https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1061554026284834817)

<comment><USER4> > The actual effects of the UK's exit are not yet known (the post-Brexit UK > might even grandfather in some EU law like GDPR)

By default _all_ existing EU law is grandfathered in, as a new legal category of "retained EU law". Changing or dropping individual laws would be considered on a case-by-case basis. The main legal significance of Brexit is that EU institutions will no longer be able to impose _new_ legislation on the UK.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_(Withdrawal)_Ac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_\(Withdrawal\)_Act_2018)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's fun when people complain about having to handle personal data properly and not to collect more than they need.

Bad luck, be responsible.

<comment><USER6> I'm interested in how the vagraties of the law plays out. I'm working on software that won't use ads or CDNs. All traffic terminates with my system. I will use cookies. I have no intent on putting up one of those cookie notification banner. All data I collect is to run the site. While that is valid under GDPR, I bet the EU will come a knockin for a fine if the site gets big enough

<comment><USER7> >While that is valid under GDPR, I bet the EU will come a knockin for a fine if the site gets big enough

Why would you think so?

<comment><USER6> I don't trust the EU. They seem to go after companies with deep pockets when they need money. Look at the Google Android controversy lately. Nokia, any EU phone creator (are there any?), any EU phone creator that wants to get in the market can all create a phone that is not Android. Google traded the OS for install preference rather than money. It's called bartering. The EU let this go for years. Now Alphabet has money and no one in the EU stepped up to take on Android, so the EU wants its pound of flesh.

Will my project run afoul of the 3rd party rules? No. May I have to spend money on legal protection from the EU when they erroneously come asking for money? Maybe. This is my issue. I don't know. The EU says it has policing power across the globe. If an EU citizen steps foot in the sovereign territory of another country, the EU says that all their privacy laws apply.

<comment><USER8> I find it shocking how quick some people are to denounce government intervention these days. Are you seriously not concerned about Google's market clout and the amount of data they have? Thank god the EU is there to temper their entitlement a bit.

Meanwhile you're sitting here daydreaming about how your startup is going to be so big EU regulators are going to come after you. Well that would be an excellent problem to have, in actuality you are far more likely to be killed by Google sucking the oxygen out of your market.

<comment><USER6> I don't care about Google's clout. I use them for less and less and where I use them I don't care.

I use them for email. My email is essentially a curated spam folder. I seldom use it for anything of value. When I do use it, I could care less if the information was made public.

I use it for online storage,but again for nothing important. If I lost it all tomorrow my only care would be an outstanding, meaning not yet turned on, assignment for my ML class.

Everything else I accept in trade: my data for their service. I use Google Maps. I accept that when I'm driving they will track me. I hope they do. I want to know if I should get off the interstate due to a traffic issue.

I don't watch TV. I have Ad Guard filtering at the network router level. I block Facebook and Twitter there too. I don't use porn. All Google knows is that I'm a particularly boring human being that probably purchased a dobro given my uptick in how to play the dobro videos. They probably also infer I have mild body dismorphia given some Sapien Medicine videos/sounds I listen too regularly.

All this I, a consenting adult, allow them to know in trade for their service. If you don't like them, there are free means to thwart them. Google will provide you the means to figure this out with their search. As a result, no I don't care for this kind of worthless handwringing.

Go after the leaks at the credit agency. I have no choice but to participate with them. No banner would allow me to opt out.

Don't go after some social media company that we all know is going to sell your data that you traded to get their service. We scientifically know that social media is bad for us all. Why regulate straws when that pandora' Box of depression is allowed to continue? Grow up. Be an adult. Take responsibility for your choices and entitlement.

<comment><USER9> > Grow up. Be an adult.

Are you really so sure of your views that you feel that those you disagree with must be less mature than you?

> I use Google Maps. I accept that when I'm driving they will track me. I hope > they do. I want to know if I should get off the interstate due to a traffic > issue.

You may well already do this, but to actually achieve only being tracked while actively using Maps, I believe you'd have to turn location services on and off each time you use Maps, otherwise Google is tracking you all the time, not just when Maps is open. Assuming an Android device, I'm less sure about how this would play out on iOS.

> All this I, a consenting adult, allow them to know in trade for their > service. If you don't like them, there are free means to thwart them. Google > will provide you the means to figure this out with their search. As a > result, no I don't care for this kind of worthless handwringing.

i.e. you are A) aware of what they are doing B) understand that you can intervene and have the skills to put such efforts in place C) hold values such that the tradeoffs doing so implies is acceptable to you.

If everyone was similar to you in these regards, there wouldn't be an issue, but people's awareness of the issues, skills, and values are hugely variable across a population. So while it's worthless handwringing to _you_ , people who hold different values could (and do) disagree.

> Go after the leaks at the credit agency. I have no choice but to participate > with them. No banner would allow me to opt out.

Good idea. However, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the efforts against misuse of personal data online are entirely fungible towards efforts of credit agency reform. i.e. not doing this doesn't mean more of that would happen, or that doing this keeps that from happening too.

> Take responsibility for your choices and entitlement.

AFAIK, telling people this isn't effective, so it can really only serve to make yourself feel superior, not really effect change (since I'm assuming you consider yourself to already follow this advice)

<comment><USER6> > AFAIK, telling people this isn't effective, so it can really only serve to > make yourself feel superior, not really effect change (since I'm assuming > you consider yourself to already follow this advice)

I don't see how any of that follows. You can either a) leave the net of Google by switching browsers, going back to flip phones, going to Apple, etc, or b) say that the cost is worth your inertia.

As for not being effective, please look at Unions (non-government means to counter corporate power). Look at the black community before the Democrats got a hold of them. Harlem had its problems, but was the seat for art and culture that still benefits humanity to this day.

> Are you really so sure of your views that you feel that those you disagree > with must be less mature than you?

Yes. The people that hold the view that papa Government will fix everything are thinking emotively like a child. Reagan, for all his flaws, was right: "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." The EU is going to crush, either through GDPR or the new copyright tracking system all startups in the tech area until the tech companies bootstrap without ads. Maybe this is ultimately good, but it would be a side effect of the regulation, not the government's wisdom.

> You may well already do this, but to actually achieve only being tracked > while actively using Maps, I believe you'd have to turn location services on > and off each time you use Maps, otherwise Google is tracking you all the > time, not just when Maps is open. Assuming an Android device, I'm less sure > about how this would play out on iOS.

If you're a good citizen of the world you should turn off location to save on greenhouse gases. Android is terrible at efficiency with those on. They should lock out when not directly used by an application.

> If everyone was similar to you in these regards, there wouldn't be an issue, > but people's awareness of the issues, skills, and values are hugely variable > across a population. So while it's worthless handwringing to you, people who > hold different values could (and do) disagree.

So because there are dumb and or lazy people, the EU needs to attempt another centrally plan attempt at controlling the evolution of the species? Are we going to get State monitors for using the toilet correctly? Think about how many diseases are from improper flushing and wiping. How about a bathroom monitor that's armed with a stun gun to make sure people wash their hands?

<comment><USER9> >>> Take responsibility for your choices and entitlement.

>>> \- You

>> AFAIK, telling people this isn't effective, so it can really only serve to make yourself feel superior, not really effect change

>> \- Me

> I don't see how any of that follows. ... look at Unions

> \- You

I think you misunderstood me, or are replying to more than what you quoted here, because I'm not sure what unions have to do with the statement you did quote from me.

I am saying that the literal act of telling people to "take responsibility for your choices and entitlement" isn't an effective way to have more people take responsibility for their choices and entitlement. Your saying it _is not useful_ in furthering your implicit goal of getting more people take responsibility. 99% of the time the only thing that that statement will do is make you feel superior because you believe you're already doing that.

> The people that hold the view that papa Government will fix everything are > thinking emotively like a child.

I mean, the way you phrased that makes it practically a tautology. I'd suggest you consider that there could possibly be other reasons look towards the government for solutions beyond mere naivete.

If you understood those reasons, then you could address them and potentially convince people that they should change their mind. However, I will again point out that it is your approach here that will get in your way. Calling a person childish, if they are not being childish, will result in them dismissing what you have to say because you are insulting them. But calling a person childish, when they _are_ being childish, will result in a metaphorical fingers-in-ears-going-la-la-la-la response _because they are being childish_.

> Government will fix everything

I agree the government cannot fix everything, however I also believe there are classes of problem that a government, or government-like-entity, are better capable of addressing than the alternatives, but you're so busy calling people immature and smugly telling us how you've got it all figured out that I doubt you'd be willing to take the time to try to understand that (I'd love to be wrong about that, mind you)

>If you're a good citizen of the world you should turn off location to save on greenhouse gases.

If you're a good citizen of the world, you wouldn't use a phone containing compounds taken from strip-mines that poison the surrounding ecosystem and then had to be shipped on a pollution belching freighter halfway around the world.

> Android is terrible at efficiency with those on.

How much worse? Over the lifetime of a phone, how much more energy will be used? A ballpark, order-of-magnitude, fermi estimation would be good to have for this. Heck, I'll do it so we can see:

Assumptions:

* 5,000 mAh battery (this is higher than all flagship phones this year[0])

* To get watt-hours assume a li-po battery operating at 4.2 volts (higher of two standard voltages for li-po[1])

* 3 year lifespan (Higher than the US avg replacement cycle length[2])

* The phone battery is completely drained by the end of the day

* The phone battery is fully charged by the next morning

(3 years * 365 days) * (5,000 mAh * 4.2 volts) = 23 kWh[3] which is about 7.66 kWh/yr.

To put this in perspective a kWh costs 12 cents on average in the US, and boiling 1 cup of warm-ish (65-70 degree F) water takes around 150 Wh[4], which works out to mean that a person could offset their phone's energy usage by having one less cup of coffee per week.

But I estimated high on everything, so in practice a phone will use less than 23 kWh over its lifetime, probably significantly less.

This all puts aside the immediate question of why are you bringing energy efficiency into a discussion about privacy?

> controlling the evolution of the species?

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't really understand what privacy laws and evolution have in common. I'd appreciate an explanation.

>> people's awareness of the issues, skills, and values are hugely variable across a population

>> \- Me

> So because there are dumb and or lazy people, the EU needs to attempt > another centrally planned ...

> \- You

First, I'm kind of impressed that you managed to interpret what I said to mean that some people or dumb and/or lazy. Why do you believe that different from you is bad?

Second, assuming your real question is more like "On what basis is the EU passing a law imposing these restrictions about personal data on companies?". I would say the reason is because a majority of the EU constituent country leaders believe that doing so upholds the values and goals of the EU. For example "The goals of the [EU] are... promote peace, its values and the well- being of its citizens" and "Individual freedoms such as respect for private life,... and information are protected by the EU" and "Human rights are protected by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. These cover ... the right to the protection of your personal data"

tl;dr That's the point of the EU [5]

> Think about how many diseases are from improper flushing and wiping. How > about a bathroom monitor that's armed with a stun gun to make sure people > wash their hands?

As long as we're being sarcastic, I'll say that that sounds like a great way to create jobs.

More seriously, I believe the EU does have laws about food workers washing their hands after using the restroom. If it could be shown that enough lives would be saved by extending those laws, and their enforcement, to be worth the expense, I don't doubt the laws would eventually change to account for that.

[0] [https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/which-2018-flagship- pho...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/which-2018-flagship-phone-has- the-best-battery-life/)

[1] [https://learn.adafruit.com/li-ion-and-lipoly- batteries/volta...](https://learn.adafruit.com/li-ion-and-lipoly- batteries/voltages)

[2] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average- smartphon...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average-smartphone- life/)

[3] [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((365+*+3)+*+(5000+mil...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(\(365+*+3\)+*+\(5000+milliamp+hours\)\)+at+4.2+volts+in+kWh)

[4] [https://www.plotwatt.com/2011/05/21/plotwatt-labs-boiling- fo...](https://www.plotwatt.com/2011/05/21/plotwatt-labs-boiling-four-cups- water/)

[5] [https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in- brief_en](https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in-brief_en)

<comment><USER6> The species would be better off if we, in the West, did not have the centralized government. The population would be lower and better off without it. Starvation is a motivating factor. We've removed many people's will to go on by feeding them and housing them in government created slums. We'd be better off if they never existed. Sadly the central government won't require sterilization in exchange for government aid.

As to the general idea of the government figuring things out, I'd rather have a world where humanity comes to a homeostasis due to conflict and pollution than to live in the dystopian world that Merkel and her ilk are bring forward with their new Empire. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/11/12/france- calls...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/11/12/france-calls-eu- empire-warns-euro-break-up-next-crisis/)

However, I don't think we need to go to that extreme. People should take responsibility for their data. They should figure out what they care about and seek means to realize their ends without requiring an Empire to bring its claws to bare by fines.

As to "dumb or lazy" you implied it. I said if they cared about it, they can shut it off by doing a simple Google search. If they don't care about it, they can leave the status quo. If they care and can't be bothered figure it out, which I don't think there will be too many that can't even ask for help, then they are lazy. Your argument is that the bulk of the EU population is in the lazy/dumb camp since the primary reaction you're condoning is regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Otherwise read as "turns out that you make less money if you aren't allowed to sell people's private data off".

What else is new?

<comment><USER11> There are two effects here. One is you don't make as much money from advertising, true. Though even that is still a cost -- that money had been funding R&D and subsidizing access to services for low income people.

But in addition to that, there is the deadweight economic loss from the compliance cost destroying low margin operations with positive externalities, and reducing competition which allows incumbents to become more abusive.

<comment><USER10> I expect the latter to be reduced as the kinks get ironed out and knowledge of compliance becomes more widespread, kind of like the economic loss from the compliance cost of not cheating on your taxes is pretty low by now.

<comment><USER11> That is completely the opposite of what happened with taxes. The complexity was such a problem that the law was changed so that as many people as possible would take the standard deduction, i.e. the tax law basically exempted small players from the complex rules.

And even then the tax complexity still disadvantages small players because their larger competitors have the resources to use the complexity to their advantage and end up paying less tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not everything is about the economy.

<comment><USER13> Considering "the economy" determines whether or not we can eat, have somewhere to live, get access to healthcare etc. (rightly or wrongly), I'd say it's pretty central to everything that we do as a species.

<comment><USER12> Facebook isn't contributing one iota to any of these things, and neither are most tech/internet companies.

Whether or not we can eat is determined by farmers, truck drivers, distribution centre workers, store clerks, etc.

Whether or not we have somewhere to live is determined by construction workers, electricians, plumbers, engineers, etc.

Access to health care is determined by doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc.

All these things existed well before the internet. In other words, we'll be fine.

Not all parts of the economy are equal. Losing 25% of farmers or doctors would be catastrophe. Losing 25% of electricians would be a problem. Losing 25% of software developers would be a bit annoying. Losing 25% of marketers would be a reason for a party.

<comment> Mary-Jane Is this perspective so pervasive on this forum that no one's going to challenge these incredibly naive statements? The economy is intertwined with virtually all parts dependent on or at least benefiting from the others. Software contributes to increased efficiencies all across the economy; from food production to fuel consumption to medical diagnosis the world would be demonstrably worse of without it (and the people who wrote it).

<comment><USER14> I would argue your fallacy is lumping people who work on software that matters (food, healthcare, government) with people who work at Facebook (which is arguably a cancer on society).

Good software engineers are needed to work on problems that matter. Quite the delta from where we are today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> EU is a nightmare for any startup. Instead of developing new products, you have to spend >50% of your time just to comply with all those laws. and it keeps coming. Soon, every company will also be required to build copyright filter for all uploaded media files (content-id)...

<comment><USER16> I trust the EU to respect my rights far more than some startup trying to get an exit as fast a possible.

If they get bankrupted by a GDPR fine then their business model needs a review.

<comment><USER17> > _I trust the EU to respect my rights far more than some startup_

This is an odd statement to continue seeing, given we've now seen GDPR weaponised by an EU member to stifle journalists investigating corrupt politicians [1].

We need regulation protecting privacy. The debate is whether GDPR does that effectively ( _i.e._ causes the intended effects) and efficiently ( _i.e._ with minimal undesirable side-effects). Saying "if they get bankrupted by GDPR...then their business model [is bad]" is extreme because it assumes without evidence GDPR's efficiency.

[1] [https://www.occrp.org/en/40-press-releases/presss- releases/8...](https://www.occrp.org/en/40-press-releases/presss- releases/8875-occrp-strongly-objects-to-romania-s-misuse-of-gdpr-to-muzzle- media)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I could be oversimplifying this but would the way to defeat GDPR is to make sure an individual cannot be identified through routine web site data collection?

<comment><USER19> Yes, one way to "defeat" GDPR is to comply with the spirit and letter of the law by not performing routine automated surveillance.</comment></comment>


Is Ruby dead? Hell no – Analyzing RubyGems stats for 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://infinum.co/the-capsized-eight/analyzing-rubygems-stats-v2016 <comment><USER2> This says it all, really:

"PHP, Java and Ruby now have one thing in common: despite obvious usage trends, everybody keeps talking about their deaths."</comment>


A Brief Cultural History of the Parking Lot - <AUTHOR> https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/brief-cultural-history-of-the-parking-lot/ <comment><USER2> A good book on how the automobile came to (the American) city streets:

> _Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and > included children at play and pedestrians at large. By 1930, most streets > were primarily a motor thoroughfares where children did not belong and where > pedestrians were condemned as "jaywalkers." In Fighting Traffic, Peter > Norton argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city required > not only a physical change but also a social one: before the city could be > reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its streets had to be socially > reconstructed as places where motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, > he writes, but a bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes > how street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were for. He > examines developments in the crucial transitional years from the 1910s to > the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile campaign that reviled > motorists as "road hogs" or "speed demons" and cars as "juggernauts" or > "death cars." He considers the perspectives of all users--pedestrians, > police (who had to become "traffic cops"), street railways, downtown > businesses, traffic engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the > solution), and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents > campaigned in moral terms, fighting for "justice."_ […]

* [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic)

See also the book:

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

<comment><USER3> This reminds me of a cool video i saw the other day of San Francisco's Market Street in 1906: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_1AdYRGW8&ab_channel=Denis...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_1AdYRGW8&ab_channel=DenisShiryaev)

It's so interesting to see how people, street cars, horse & carts, and cars all seemed to share the road in what seemed like a controlled chaos manner

<comment><USER4> Note that this video was apparently partly staged, with cars circling around to come by the camera again, so it's probably not entirely representative of actual traffic patterns at the time: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_Down_Market_Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_Down_Market_Street)

(The Wikipedia article also has an original scan of the video, without the AI confabulation and added sound effects, or a higher quality version with added sound here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2u4J7Dbouo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2u4J7Dbouo))

<comment><USER3> Oh my! thank you for enlightening me!

<comment><USER4> Of course! It's still a cool view into the past and I'd not seen it before, so thank _you_ for posting it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something I find interesting is whether the better layout for a large store complex is an island of shops surrounded by car parking, or a donut of shops (with street frontage and displays) with interior parking.

Former provides a quick view of accessible parking and minimises in-mall walking whereas the latter means stores can promote their wares to passing cars more easily.

A couple of recent big box store builds in Australia I've noticed (Bunnings in SA) are one-brand warehouses built on top of a single storey of car parking. Once in the store and even in the outdoor garden centre, it feels identical to older ground level stores. More compact footprint, car parking is protected from the elements, and the store has a branded facade on the street.

<comment><USER6> The 'donut' is also _much_ more welcoming and safe for pedestrian traffic, who don't have to cross the parking lot twice to get to the post office/Starbucks/etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Parking lots don't have culture, they take from it.

<comment><USER8>
      Don't it always seem to go
      That you don't know what you got
      Til its gone

<comment><USER9> Exactly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whenever I think of suburbia, I think of larger homes, malls, and highways. It makes sense that suburbia got parking lots while downtowns got parking garages ... but I had never really given the parking lot much thought until this article

<comment><USER2> > _while downtowns got parking garages_

Let me introduce you to pre-condo boom downtown Toronto, Canada:

* [https://www.blogto.com/city/2011/10/that_time_when_toronto_w...](https://www.blogto.com/city/2011/10/that_time_when_toronto_was_a_city_of_parking_lots/)

The rise of lots occurred after the construction of the downtown Gardner highway:

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

Nowadays land is too valuable to be flat, and so most/all parking lots have been turned into towers (condo(minium) and commercial):

* [http://www.mapto.ca/maps/parkinglots](http://www.mapto.ca/maps/parkinglots)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The most horrendous spaces of the US, showing the car lobby successes on PR, ond how they influenced the average mindset</comment>


Ask HN: How do you answer "tell me about your self" interview questions? - <AUTHOR> I'll be taking a technical interview next week. I need your advice for me to prepare. Thanks <comment><USER2> The real question they want answered is "are you interested in things?" People who are interested in things are curious about the world, and curiosity is an arguably critical characteristic of a good software developer.

Curiosity can be manifested in hobbies (width of skills: skiing, running, chess) and in involvement of those hobbies (depth of skills: skies backcountry, runs marathons, president of state chess org and/or grand master).

Curiosity in computers/electronics is a huge plus - you used an arduino to regulate your windows; you wrote an app to automate the rebalancing of your retirement portfolio. If you like working on this stuff even when it isn't work, you're curious _and_ motivated.

And answering this reveals about your personality - tone of voice, inflection, approach - these all let us know you're affable, easy to work with, fun to be around. A cold, one sentence answer reveals a much different person than a warm, passionate paragraph about your interests and feelings on the world.

Talk about your passions, and the rest will work itself out.</comment>


Bitcoin online gambling: Tossing a coin - <AUTHOR>

my friend and I are building an online gambling site for bitcoins. This is our first toy iteration http://www.mangofuzz.com. What do you think? We are deciding what would be the next casino game to implement. <comment><USER2> Flagging as spam. Registered for a new account five days ago and posted a link to a casino. "my friend and I are building..." - maybe so but if it smells like spam, it usually is. Google doesn't even have it in its index which I also find suspicious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you take my word if I say it is not spam?

<comment><USER2> Of course not. You have no history here and you registered under a pseudonym. You have no information in your profile page. You've done nothing to show you are not a spammer at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sad to hear that. I thought it was the right place to discuss about entrepreneurial ideas. I was wrong. I am sorry to annoy you like that. Feel free to do whatever to do you feel it is right. I will bring my discussions to other place. And many thanks to the gentlemen that gave me valuable feedback. Much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A very similar service already exists on the deepweb, I'm not sure of it's success though, have only seen it while passing by.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I just saw it, it is offline

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Super curious to hear about the legality of something like this, have you looked into it?

<comment><AUTHOR> As long as it is not about using real money it is not a problem.</comment></comment>


What is CI and why use it? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rainforestqa.com/2014-07-17-what-is-CI-and-why-use-it/ <comment><USER2> JP, author of the post here - let me know if you have any additions / questions! :)

<comment><USER3> I would like to have seen a section for when continuous integration is NOT needed, and would be overkill. For example, I have a solo project where my workflow is: make changes to code, run the test suite, fix any failures that come up, and then push to heroku. I tried CircleCI but I found that the only benefit it offered me was offloading the testing and deployment to another environment. In some ways it actually complicated my workflow, not simplified it.

<comment><USER4> You're right; CI is pretty much a waste for a single person dev shop. But it's a godsend when working on larger projects: it centralizes processes that should ideally happen automatically, and increases developer confidence in the quality of the codebase by removing the deployment variables from the situation. Any team working on a reasonably large project should be using CI in some form.

For example, if you have a staging environment, and a developer pushes a change to that environment and wants you to make changes and test against his changes, you have to coordinate the deployment to make sure you don't overwrite his changes and vice versa. With CI, all check-ins would get automatically deployed to the staging environment using static scripts, so every deployment is exactly the same. It saves a lot of developer time, and removes the "which developer is a better sysadmin" variable from the equation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the article. I apologize in advance if this is a hijack, but I've really been trying to understand the craze of CI and feel this is a good place to hopefully get answers.

CI is something I have a constant struggle with. I primarily work in small teams and I tend to work with other developers that are diligent about running tests and know that "if the tests aren't green when I merge master into my topic branch, I don't push to master."

When I did work on a larger team, maybe CI was useful for the other programmers that weren't as diligent. Though, the CI box eventually got quite slow and you didn't get feedback until 15 minutes later (this was Jenkins) versus 2-3 minutes locally.

Unless I'm missing something, I guess when you distill CI down to what it does you get:

\- Runs your test suite

\- Lets you know if a failure happens

That's not a ton of value in my eyes, which is why I assume all of these hosted CI solutions are now also doing CD upon successful builds. You could also get CD without CI by using something like git hooks that kick off deploy scripts after certain events.

GitHub showing the status of your CI on the PR screen is cool, but while I do use GitHub, I mostly use GitHub as a code repository. The most I do in the web UI is clone repos and open pull requests. If you merge a branch into master that correlates to an open PR, GitHub automatically closes the PR for you.

I know we're in the era of "Automate ALL the things!" and I'm good about that, but typing `rake|make|etc` into my console isn't a huge pain point in my life right now. Is CI a luxury we've been brainwashed to love by the programming hegemony?

Someone please let me know what I'm missing.

<comment><USER6> CI means knowing that your product is always in a releasable state. Green tests is only one small piece of that.

I have an iOS app or two that I work on independently, as side projects. Even though I am the sole developer on these projects, CI saves me dozens or hundreds of hours of time. My CI script[0] downloads provisioning profiles from Apple's Developer Center, installs them, runs my tests, builds my app, archives the resulting IPA and .dSYM.zip to Amazon S3, uploads the build to Testflight, notifies my testers, then sends my iOS devices a push notification with an ultimate success or failure message.

And it does all of this every day at 4am, while I'm sleeping, and I don't have to think about it.

How much longer would all of this take if I were doing it manually each time? Time is the only infinitely valuable scarce resource. I don't want to spend time mucking with codesigning and provisioning profiles; I want to spend more time coding.

[0] I've open-sourced my iOS build script! [https://github.com/splinesoft/SSBuild](https://github.com/splinesoft/SSBuild)

<comment><USER5> If this is all happening at a set time every day, couldn't it just be a cron job? You do have the script created already, CI is just running it for you.

<comment><USER6> Sure it could be a cron job, but using Jenkins adds some conveniences: a nice UI to browse projects, plus it archives the output of every historical build, locally-archived build artifacts, lots of extensibility with plugins, and so on.

<comment><USER7> Plus: Once you already got everything up and running you can take it a step further and deploy from the CI Server. In my previous job, the Ops Team loved it when I told them how to deploy from the CI instead of going to the "Release Developer" (Which was loathed by the Ops, because she was not the friendliest person :D)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The hosted CI solutions like CircleCI looks good, but letting them control my code and do the deployment, really requires quite a bit of trust. It is another chain who can have a security breach, which could let intruders have access to my code.

<comment><USER9> There's also Buildbox, which is a hosted CI engine and web interface. It uses agents that you run and control yourself:

[https://buildbox.io/](https://buildbox.io/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, will look into it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Is there an easy way of integrating an existing large ansible project with CI to use it for deployment? 2\. With continuous deployment, how do you coordinate multiple repositories being changed all at once and potentially numerous migrations that need to be done beforehand? e.g. say you're changing the schema and the web API and all of its clients. Can you CI the entire system at once rather than one git repo at a time?

<comment><USER11> Do you want to test your ansible scripts during deployment, or do you just want to run ansible deployment after the tests are run?

The basic workflow that we at Codeship tell people is test each repository by itself and if that works push to a staging environment.

Once the push into the staging environment is done you restart the last build on an integration test repository that will thoroughly integration test the whole staging system.

When you build service oriented architecture some backwards compatibility for the time that systems are updated are in our opinion the best way. If there are breaking changes treat every part of the infrastructure as a separate api with specific guarantees and just build a v2 api so you can update the clients, but the old ones still work for a while until you can remove the old clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you are using a CI, you might as well also use something like [http://www.coveralls.io](http://www.coveralls.io) to get history and statistics on your source code's test coverage.

<comment><USER2> I use it for my open source projects, but I personally think coverage % is not worth much for private projects. First, coverage doesn't mean well covered, it just means the code is being run. For new comers, it could be confusing and I find it more dangerous than anything to introduce that principle to beginners. My 2 cents :)

Nice service though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's nice to send a pull request with only documentation changes and then having Travis CI fail.

<comment><USER14> This is why having a solid CI setup is crucial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> PSA: CodeShip just today announced free plans for up to 5 private repositories. Excellent and more than enough for most startups. Get started with CI -today- it's worth it.

[https://www.codeship.io/](https://www.codeship.io/)

<comment><USER2> Actually, they had that plan for a few months I think, they just added continuous deployment for their free offering a few days ago I think?

<comment><USER11> Continuous Deployment was also always part of it. Basically we upped from 50 free builds to 100 and announced it properly. But the basic feature set hasn't changed and you currently get all of the features in the free plan that you would get in a larger plan.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In my opinion, this book[1] is the authority on continuous integration and continuous deployment.

Continuous Integration is fundamentally about creating a tight feedback loop between your developers and your code. When you program in your IDE, the instant you write uncompilable code, you get red squigglies, so you're getting an instant feedback loop on something you just wrote.

CI is the same thing, but at a higher level. The instant you commit your code, some automated process should take over and start analyzing / compiling / testing your code and look for things to give you feedback on. If your code doesn't even compile -- one of the first milestones of CI, you should know that immediately.

Since you just committed it, making the fix is easy. This is compared to a developer who downloads your code the next day, can't compile, comes and bugs you about it, etc...

As far as some real world use cases, we just setup Jenkins for a new Java project we're writing. It does an automated build test that compiles and executes all unit tests automatically on any commit to GitHub on any branch. It's a little slower than I like -- our still growing app takes a full 3 minutes to compile and give feedback.

But, it's been great. For example, the GitHub client on Mac OS X doesn't recognize when I change uppercase letters to lowercase and vice versa, so while my local compiles worked fine, my repo actually had a failing build. Once I committed, I got an automated email within 5 minutes telling me the build failed, and I fixed it. Without CI, I may not have found about that issue for weeks, making the change more difficult.

For production deployment, we're still in alpha, but we've got a 1-button push to deploy. Again, slower than it should be -- in this case 5 minutes -- but the automation is awesome and makes doing any deployment -- whether hot fixes or new releases that much more pleasant.

Regarding the performance, I see it as a win just to get anything automated, however slow it may be. Because once you're there, you can always look for ways to optimize it. For example, our current build process, re-downloads dependencies every single time. This could clearly be cached. When it's a priority for us, we'll do it.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321601912?tag=contindelive-20](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321601912?tag=contindelive-20)

<comment><USER5> > [1] > [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321601912?tag=contindelive-20](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321601912?tag=contindelive-20)

Did you just put your Amazon associates referral code in a link on HN? lol

<comment><USER16> No, I didn't. I don't even have an Amazon associate's referral code, so I must have pasted someone else's. Hoping 1 person on Hacker News will buy a book I linked to in one comment so I could earn $0.25 does not strike me as a great earnings strategy.</comment></comment></comment>


NYTimes.com Apple Ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com

<comment><USER2> How much do they pay for that? It's like they owned the NYT.

Also, you know you're doing something right when people click replay to rewatch your ad.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not hacking or startup related but perhaps grounds for a discussion:

I feel pretty stupid submitting nytimes.com but this apple ad really did it for me. i don't want to spoil it but with each ad they put on the New York Times website, they step it up.</comment>


Ask HN: As a candidate, what attracts/repels you in a job interview? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Culture is so important and sometimes it's hard to get a true read during the interview process. If you can take someone on the team out for coffee and get the real scoop on the challenges of the job it can provide some more insight. Sometimes a mass exodus isn't a bad thing and can help course correct a systemic problem but for that to happen it would take exceptional leadership. I wouldn't shy away from asking about an exodus if one exists and what steps are in place to improve the environment.

</comment><comment><USER3> I usually try to understand if the company is trying to expand their team, replace someone that's leaving or coping with a mass exodus.

Sadly I've seen mass exodus happening, and I've interviewed at companies where mass exodus happened and it's usually a super red flag, usually a sign of very bad management.

Software being crap happens and is part of the job, you can deal with it and it can get better. But bad management is very hard to overcome and often just not worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely agree with your point about bad management. Do you tend to ask those questions openly or try and figure it out throughout the process?

<comment><USER3> Sometimes it is clearly evident from the interview. Sometimes it becomes clear from the current size of a team (the math doesn't add up for some reason).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Culture, job description, how desperate the recruiters are and if they're at all technically inclined.

So much wasted time, energy--- if they sound like a car salesman, I don't bother.

I thought I'd try one, they promised reimbursement and nothing - silence. This was for a prominent Fortune 500 company that deals in Shoe Retail.</comment>


Announcing Rust 1.35.0 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rust-lang.org/2019/05/23/Rust-1.35.0.html <comment><USER2> This update comes with a new version of rustup which has much faster updating, especially on windows [0]. If you'd like to experience this performance improvements, run `rustup self update` before your upgrade!

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/brtec1/rustup_1183_re...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/brtec1/rustup_1183_released/eogpfgr/)

<comment><USER3> Note for others also unsure of this: `rustup update` also does the self-update step, only after it first updates the toolchains.

<comment><USER2> Note that there is an open issue to perform the self-update before the update: [0]. Could be a good first patch for someone looking to contribute :)

[0] [https://github.com/rust- lang/rustup.rs/issues/1838](https://github.com/rust- lang/rustup.rs/issues/1838)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coming from C++, this always throws me a bit:

        if (0..=10).contains(&5) {

I assume we are taking a ref to "5" (and not passing by value) because "Range" is a generic type that might be too big to want to copy (or it may not be copyable at all). But taking a reference to a number for a simple operation like this feels... weird. It makes me worry that Rust is going to be passing around pointers to some stack-allocated "5", but I hope that Rust is actually much smarter than that?

<comment><USER5> what steveklabnik said. if I understand correctly, this is dealing with that 5 as if integers were a generic type. which is the expected "default" behavior (as in compiler design, not programmer daily use). a generic type would be stored on the heap, and references there make sense to avoid copies. what happens here is that integers are special because they are stored in the stack, they are immutable, and always copied, but this special behavior, which makes the reference "absurd" here, hasn't been dealt with (yet).

so yeah, it looks super weird, but when you stop to think about it, it's just that we are so used to integers being "special" that when we see them treated like a generic type it makes us cringe. interesting.

<comment><USER6> This is incorrect. In general, a reference can point to either the stack or the heap, including when generics are used. It _is_ possible in theory for the Rust compiler to implement an ABI optimization where function arguments that are references to small values would be passed by value instead, at least in some cases (see my other post). However, that optimization does not currently exist.

Edit: But in this case the reference will be optimized away anyway, because the callee function will be inlined.

Edit 2: Actually, the optimization does exist at the LLVM level, though it only applies in some cases. See my other comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19997818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19997818)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Coming from C/C++. Is working with the online package manager (Cargo?) mandatory? Or is there a sustainable way of working/developing with Rust while completely offline?

I'd like to start a project, manually import libraries (downloaded manually, no dependency hell), read documentation, etc. Is it possible?

<comment><USER8> You can work completely offline. All official tools support it.

Rust team can't do much about ecosystem though. There are some libraries which download resource (say, large data table) over the network at build time. I consider these bugs, but maintainers of those libraries may disagree.

<comment><USER9> Got any examples? I have some spare time and I'd like to improve that situation.

<comment><USER8> [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/bki8yo/warning_exists...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/bki8yo/warning_exists_in_the_security_risk_of_crate/) was one recent case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just an idea, instead of printing:

      [src/main.rs:4] x == 1 = false
      [src/main.rs:9]

print this:

      [src/main.rs:4] dbg!( x == 1 ) = false
      [src/main.rs:9] dbg!

Easier to filter just your debug messages.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Fn* closure traits implemented for Box<dyn Fn* >

This threw me for a minute. Function pointers not using * is confusing enough without using glob syntax to talk about function types!

<comment><USER12> Your comment was also confusing until I reached your parenthetical, because `+` is used for separating trait bounds :)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I moved it to the top. Funny how I can't talk about the character being too overloaded because it has another meaning to the forum...

Edit: the parent comment was replying to an earlier version of my comment, in which I used + because I didn't know that * could be kind-of escaped by putting a space after it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> RangeInclusive is an interesting API:

1\. How does this handle ranges whose length is larger than can be represented in an integer?

2\. How does iterating a range work for floats? It looks like it just adds one [1], won't this mean that it will loop forever if the next representable float is +2?

1: [https://doc.rust- lang.org/src/core/iter/range.rs.html#297](https://doc.rust- lang.org/src/core/iter/range.rs.html#297)

<comment><USER6> 1\. It doesn't.

2\. The Iterator implementation for RangeInclusive requires the underlying type to implement Step [1], which floats do not. So you can't iterate over a range of floats (although you can still construct one).

[1] [https://doc.rust- lang.org/nightly/std/iter/trait.Step.html](https://doc.rust- lang.org/nightly/std/iter/trait.Step.html)

<comment><USER13> What do you mean by "it doesn't?" For example say I construct a range [INT_MIN, INT_MAX] which should have a length of 2^32. Am I prohibited from constructing this range?

<comment><USER6> I misinterpreted your comment; I thought you meant ranges that were so large they couldn't fit in any integer type (presumably of floats).

But actually, it's weirder than I thought.

RangeInclusive doesn't have an inherent len() method, but one is provided by the ExactSizeIterator trait, which is implemented only when the underlying type is i8, u8, i16, or u16. len() always returns usize, regardless of the original type; thus I believe the reason for that particular list of types is that usize is only guaranteed to be at least 16 bits. But I'm not sure why it's not also implemented for RangeInclusive<usize> and RangeInclusive<isize>...

<comment><USER14> RangeInclusive is inclusive. This means `0..=0` has a length of 1. Therefore `0..=usize::MAX` has a length of usize::MAX + 1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Paul-ish Are there examples of RefMut::map_split? It seems pretty useful if it does what I think it does.

<comment><USER6> The nightly version of the docs properly document that method, including an example:

[https://doc.rust- lang.org/nightly/std/cell/struct.RefMut.htm...](https://doc.rust- lang.org/nightly/std/cell/struct.RefMut.html#method.map_split)</comment></comment>


Linux kernel swear counts - <AUTHOR> http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount <comment><USER2> Its worth looking at the scale of the swear count. Linux has about 16629976 lines of code, and I'd estimate from the graph that it has about 370* swear words (excluding penguin). If you look at the second graph, that is less then 1 swear in 300000 lines.

I checked this on the source tree for 3.8.0. The numbers appear to be inflated by allowing the swear words to be part of other words.

For example, "shit" appears in 121 lines, but " shit " only appears in 10 lines. Looking at the offending lines, there is only one swearword that is missed by excluding spaces.

"fuck" appears 29 times, all of which are some conjugation of the verb (and some lines have duplicates I'm not counting).

"crap" appears 161 times, 20 of which are part of "scrap"

"bastard" appears 17 times, 6 of which go to email addressed hosted at "lazybastard.org" and "you-bastards.com"

"penguin" appears 99 times, two of which are jokes.

<comment><USER3> If you want to check the various words in isolation, surrounding spaces might cost you some matches, e.g. at the end of a sentence ("It's a piece of shit.") or when followed by a comma. Also, did you ignore case ("Shit happens.")?

How about trying \b[Ss][Hh][Ii][Tt]\b and the likes?

<comment><USER2> There were few enough curse words that I manually checked the output of not requiring spaces. Regarding the case sensitivity, it looks like I missed 12 instances of swearing because of that. Also, grep has a "-i" parameter, which makes it case insensitive.

<comment><USER4> Also a -w parameter, to match whole words only, which is generally better than adding spaces :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious about the motivations for coding profanity. I've occasionally included comments like "don't f* with this unless you understand x, y, and z" in an attempt to protect fragile sections of code from careless collaborators. Nearly identical comments without profanity seemed ineffective. Within common conversations I know that profanity often carries an implication of violence, usually for the purpose of intimidation. I also find that profanity is frequently used for comedic relief.

Hopefully these counts don't indicate increasing fragility or violent disagreements within the kernel. Does anyone with kernel experience have any insight into common purposes for kernel profanity?

<comment><USER2> From a quick grep of the source, it looks like a contributing factor is Matsu _shit_ a Electric Industrial. If you are interested, I posted the output of grep to pastebin [0].

[0][http://pastebin.com/MNZF1Vz0](http://pastebin.com/MNZF1Vz0)

EDIT: This is against linux-3.8.0 from Mint's repository.

<comment><USER6> The group's name has change from Matsushita to Panasonic, so this would bring the count down in the future.

<comment><USER2> I doubt they retroactivly change code/comments because the original organization changed their name. The Matsushita references will probably stay there until they bitrot and get removed/rewritten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone explain the inclusion of "penguin"? I know Tux is the mascot and all, but is it some kind of inside-joke-swear-thing?

<comment><USER5> If you look at the grep output that gizmo686 posted to pastebin (see below), you can search for penguin. There are a lot of web addresses, email addresses, maintainer roles (chief penguin), and logo references. There are a few instances of variable names containing penguin as well.

[http://pastebin.com/MNZF1Vz0](http://pastebin.com/MNZF1Vz0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like jwz's classic post about swear words in Mozilla:

[http://www.jwz.org/doc/censorzilla.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/censorzilla.html)

<comment><USER9> I was laughing until I saw the swears in variable names. Now I'm mad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When this was sumitted some years ago there was some discussion. It might be worth comparing that with the comments here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850761)

It has been submitted a few more times, none with comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2070056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2070056)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4045103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4045103)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6307849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6307849)

The last of these was just 14 hours ago - the trailing slash defeating the HN dup detector.

</comment><comment><USER11> A casual search of code in Debian [1] shows that this is not limited to the Linux kernel. Thankfully there's no equivalent to the Parents Television Council [2] or Focus on the Family [3] for open source projects.

[1] [http://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=fuck](http://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=fuck)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parent%27s_Television_Council](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parent%27s_Television_Council)

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

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what caused the peak of shit just before 3.0.9, and what reversed it.

The spike just before 3.2.17 must be a glitch, but if it isn't, it's very intriguing.

<comment><USER13> It seems as if a lot of lines of code were removed or not measured at that particular measurement; despite the drop in the usage of 'shit', its occurrence per line in fact jumps up at that moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love how penguin is halfway between bastard and crap, I'll update my swear word dictionary.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is an area around 188.8.131.52 where the fall and rise of "fuck" and "shit" closely resemble each other. I'm guessing it's a macro which concatenates the two expletives for use in the code.

<comment><USER16> or a variable named 'fuckshit'

<comment><USER15> That's what I'm thinking, they used the ## preprocessor operator to stick "fuck" and "shit". Oh, if this is linux, then the identifier is more likely to be "fuck_shit".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With people like Linus Torvalds at the helm of the project, what else can be expected?

<comment><USER18> That's a little harsh. Yes he has a tendency to be - erm, 'vehement' about the quality of code, but there is no one else anyone would rather have at the helm of the kernel project.</comment></comment>


Secure CGI Applications in C on OpenBSD - <AUTHOR> https://kristaps.bsd.lv/absdcon2016/ <comment><USER2> What does pledge() do here? Apache usually drops to nobody, daemon, or www (eg as a user without privilege on the host at all) after opening a socket. Does OpenBSD's httpd run as root so it can invoke a low-privilege EUID request process? Because running as nobody doesn't include becoming a different user, unless calling a setuid binary, which is kindof possible, if awkward, with Apache (eg. because you'll want that only after auth, hence with a setuid program matching the authenticated client).

<comment><USER3> pledge[1] allows a process to promise the kernel that it will restrict itself to a given subset of system calls. So you call pledge() with the set of syscalls you need, and then if your application does something else then it will be killed.

The OpenBSD httpd is privilege separated and chroot()ed, and each component only pledge()s the syscalls it needs. This reduces to just the syscalls needed to do filesystem operations inside the chroot, log, and talk on the internet. In the CGI context, if your application only needs to read / write to stdio to talk to httpd, then you can limit yourself to just stdio, or if it only needs to read files then it can limit itself to just those syscalls. If your application does something outside of your pledge() (eg. exec(), because it got pwned) then the kernel will kill it.

1\. [https://man.openbsd.org/pledge](https://man.openbsd.org/pledge)</comment></comment>


Why you should build your own NoSQL database - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@marceloboeira/why-you-should-build-your-own-nosql-database-9bbba42039f5#.cntbobyl1 <comment><USER2> Nice article! Does every TCP server have the same syntax for setting/getting data?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, if you meant the TCP read/write, that depends on your languages implementation but usually it is always like that. Regarding the message exchange, the contract is defined by your application.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does one log in to Facebook with OpenID - <AUTHOR>

I've set up (or so I thought) Facebook to use my openid address, but I can't find any details on how to actually login with it <comment><USER2> Make sure you have an open id from one of the providers

<http://openid.net/get-an-openid/>

Link the provider with your facebook account in the settings page.

Any time you are authenticated with your open id provider you will be able to login to facebook. Yahoo is currently an exception.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using my personal wordpress blog as an open id provider (works with other websites so I know I've got it set up correctly) but that doesn't seem to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, that does seem to work if you leave the facebook page to refresh itself.</comment></comment></comment>


$80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/free-apps-interview/ <comment><USER2> I'm not a marketing expert, so correct me if I'm wrong here ...

Let's assume an iphone app gets CPM of about $1 [1,2]

So if their first app grossed $100k, that means about 100M impressions. That sounds insanely high to me - 100 impressions each for 1M users? 10 impressions for 10M users?

When I then see that they're trying to sell books for $99 a pop so you can cash in on their winning techniques [3], it rings of late-night infomercials telling me how to get rich buying foreclosed homes.

I don't have hard numbers, but my impression is that @tferriss took the same approach - making the bulk of his money off of book sales (and his prior supplements business), pitching virtual assistant techniques that never would have made that kind of money for him.

So the real 4-hour work week strategy they're copying is to give the impression of success with little effort, and then sell people books detailing your special technique.

      [1] http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/greystripe-ups-the-ante-in-the-iphone-ad-network-wars-launches-guaranteed-cpm-program/
      [2] http://blog.jwegener.com/2009/07/26/debunking-average-iphone-cpm-ad-rates/
      [3] http://www.freetheapps.com/create-iphone-apps/?hop=tdrone

<comment><USER3> If you go to the freetheapps site it is _so_ used-car salesman. When you go to leave the page it has a Javascript popup that begs you to stay with yes/no dialog.

My already very low view of Andrew Warner just got even lower. slimy get-rich- quick guys give me the shivers.

<comment><USER4> Freetheapps is not Andrew Warner's site. Mind explaining your low view of the guy?

It seems to me he provides a great resource to the tech entrepreneurship community in Mixergy and hardly deserves to be called a 'slimy get-rich-quick' guy.

<comment><USER5> I think slimy get rich quick was referring to the snake oil peddled by the interviewees.

If Andrew can be accused of anything, it is for writing a sloppy puff-piece and not submitting these fantasy claims to any scrutiny.

<comment><USER4> If I recall correctly, in previous interviews Andrew has talked about running background checks and verifications on reported incomes.

Overall I think he's a great interviewer.

<comment><USER6> Thanks Kranner.

When I interview someone who wasn't referred by someone I know or when I'm unsure of the numbers before an interview, I often ask them to log into their affiliate or paypal or bank account to show me activity using Skype's desktop share. Or I ask for their accountant to confirm their numbers. Or I ask to see their tax returns. I always keep what I see private.

In this case, I didn't need to do that because: a) $80k per month for iPhone makers isn't shocking -- as other have said in the comments -- b) anyone who checks out the app store on a regular basis will recognize the apps these guys made because they're often the most popular in their categories. You can check on this right now, and c) the big part of this story was that they outsourced everything and elance confirmed that.

Finally, I can't be 100% accurate with every interview I do -- not even close. I count on readers to point out when I get my data wrong and when I let my interviewee get away with lying.

I don't think that's the case here. But when it comes up, say something.

I respect readers' opinions and feedback. Anyone is welcome to call me "slimy," but there's no need to do that to get my attention.

<comment><USER3> Just to correct the impression. I was calling the interviewee's slimy for their sales page tactics.

My opinion of you (already low) dropped through association. I understand you're trying to keep up the pace, but sometimes the right thing to do is give up quantity for quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know what to think about stories such as these to be honest.

My inner entrepreneur says "Wow, great job guys! I wish you every success".

My inner software developer winces, and fears, both professionally and personally, that the ever-growing number of such low-quality apps will eventually make it pointless for developers to invest in creating a ConvertBot or Instagram.

(FWIW I currently make $15k a month from sales of apps $1.99 or higher)

<comment><USER8> It definitely creates a lot of noise and worries me as someone who is just about to enter the mobile app market.

I just finished some iOS training and am working on my first paid app. What would you say is the key to getting where you are? Apps with true utility–or something else?

<comment><USER7> I would recommend you do two things:

1) Create one app to throw-away - something that's simple, useful to you, and which you are confident you can create. Don't worry about there being hundreds of similar apps. This is your Learner app. Get it together in a few weeks and put it on the app store for $1-$2. Make sure you have some "please leave a review / send email" link that makes it a no-brainer for people to give you feedback. Read them all, but learn to distinguish between genuinely useful suggestions, and comments from people who feel your app really needs their pet feature.

2) Find a need that you think people would pay $3-$5 for, preferably a need that you yourself have, and work on that app using everything you learnt in #1. Get something basic but polished out, then iterate.

General tips:

\- Polish is more important than features. \- Ensure you get 6 friends to buy & rate your app (5-6 is the minimum you need for a visible rating). \- Launch at $1 for a week, and cut the price to $1 for a week for every update. It does make a difference IME. \- Read the descriptions of top apps and see how they sell themselves. \- Read the reviews of apps similar to yours and see what people are missing. \- Make it easy for people to send in-app email for support questions. Be the best support person they've encountered. Happy users recommend your app and leave very nice reviews (particularly if you ask for the latter after helping them).

<comment><USER9> _> Launch at $1 for a week, and cut the price to $1 for a week for every update. It does make a difference IME._

I see a lot of apps cutting their price to $0 for a few days. Does this technique work? What are the advantages of doing this?

<comment><USER7> In the early days of the AppStore you could drop your price to $0, then switch to paid, and retain your ranking. Apple quickly quashed this, so perhaps these apps are looking to benefit from word of mouth, or to gain a number of reviews. As I mentioned earlier you need 5-6 reviews before you even get a rating and having more certainly doesn't hurt.

On a similar note, I believe Apple's charts may now be weighted to take price into account, at least in some form. I occasionally play around with app prices to see how sales/revenue/in-app purchases change, and last week I upped the price of one app from $1.99 to $2.99. Sales dropped from ~400 to ~250, but my chart placing was virtually unchanged (I think I dropped once place). I don't believe the ranking is based on sales over a period of days, though it may be a factor, since my ranking does increase/decrease with normal sales fluctuations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> $80k a month in ad revenue by making the following apps for $2k a pop on Elance?

      Record Video for Free
      911 Police Radio Free!
      Battery Box 3-in-1
      Find Sex Offenders Free!
      Dash of Color FREE
      MovieFX for Free
      Convert Units for Free
      FilterFX HDR Fisheye in 1
      Fisheye for Free
      FilterFX for Free
      Flash for Free
      HDR for Free
      Convert Units Free HD

I know people are saying the gold rush is over, but that is _ridiculous_.

<comment><USER6> For me, this interview wasn't about creating another "iPhone gold rush" story. It was about understanding how they could build an app business without coding or designing. They even hire someone to write their descriptions for a few hundred bucks.

<comment><USER11> And they weren't afraid to make a slutty business. For every startupy person trying to 'change the world' and 'make a dent in the universe' with a me-too social network, there's five with a slutty free app business banking it each month.

<comment><USER6> Colin, they didn't say much about their marketing. Do you think they're doing any app store SEO?

<comment><USER12> How does app-store SEO work? I sell some apps on the app store, but I've never tried to market them (and have pretty anemic sales as a result).

Does SEO tend to be black hat (hire people to rate it?) or ad-driven?

<comment><USER13> i think it has more to do with having possible search terms as your app title

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did anyone actually ask them to verify these numbers? Did a third party do so?

Extraordinary claims ($80K a month) require extra-ordinary evidence.

They don't even really seem to _know_ what their revenue is like, but their fairly certain about the large size of the numbers... normally, that's the smell of bullshit.

Tom Vu's girlfriend wants to see the proof of these claims.

<comment><USER15> Ahh, Tom Vu. Whatever happened to him and his late night infomercials? I remember his great quote - "Do you think these girls like me? NO, they like my money!"

<comment><USER16> Curious me googling... Surprised me: he is winning oodles at poker tournaments, [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tom_Vu#Profes...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tom_Vu#Professional_poker_career)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After posting the interview I realized that the guy I was emailing about an interview was probably a virtual assistant. I assumed he was working in their office because he responded to my interview request so quickly.

I wish I asked them about it.

<comment><USER17> they probably outsourced the entire interview

<comment><USER18> LOL! we used indian virtual assistants in costume for the interview =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sounds a bit too good to be true. How many ad impressions add up to $80,000 in a month? What is that in user hours per month for 12 or so apps?

I'd be fascinated to see the financial statements, I bet we never will

<comment><USER18> It's not as outrageous as you think. Although the first month we hit big numbers we were VERY VERY surprised. Check out the paper toss guys that make 500K a month with just 5 free apps!!! [http://www.develop- online.net/news/36155/Paper-Toss-dev-make...](http://www.develop- online.net/news/36155/Paper-Toss-dev-makes-500k-per-month-with-ads)

Now THAT'S something. We're not even close to that!

<comment><USER19> Why do you keep showing their numbers? Why not some of your own?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Regarding the outsourcing thing, it's clear that even they aren't getting high quality. I'm checking out their Convert Units app, for instance, and the drum scrolling and selection is totally broken, although it works just enough to still function.

It's interesting, however, that the poor quality apparently isn't stopping people from using it. Part of it might be that people don't expect much out of a free app, so if it's broken they just deal with it.

<comment><USER21> Even the functionality of the drum is iffy. It seems like maybe a quarter of the time it will somehow mysteriously wind up on something other than what you selected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That guy who was wondering how to spend $3,000 a month to generate income should talk to these guys.

<comment><USER6> I'm actually getting a lot of requests for intros to these guys and I posted the interview less than an hour ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone know any articles from people that run ads in these kind of apps talking about returns? They don't seem like the kind of apps that would drive any high quality traffic. Interesting to see if it's just an advertising bubble where because it's new there is many companies trying it out pushing up prices or there is actually a sustainable business here for advertisers.

</comment><comment><USER24> This sounds like some good advice to help prevent ideas from being taken:

"We get that question a lot. It was kind of concern. So what we usually do in our first bid, in our first description we're kind of vague. We say, 'We're looking for a developer for a simple photography app.' And from all those people we'll choose three to five that look kind of trustworthy, seem like they could do the job and then we'll give them the wireframe bid. So we start off really vague so not everybody sees it. We'll pick three to five people, we'll give them the full details and then they'll give us a more detailed proposal."

</comment><comment><USER25> Scam, scam, scam. The e-book website could be selling anything from stock newsletters to - well - internet get rich quick schemes!

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's a link to the e-book they wrote and mentioned in the interview: <http://www.freetheapps.com/create-iphone-apps/>

It makes sense that they seemed somewhat reserved at certain points of the interview, they don't want to give away too much and make their e-book less useful.

<comment><USER5> Now I know its snake oil, this page has all the wording and techniques of a classic get rich quick scam.

<comment><USER27> It's only a scam if you fail. Hell, most people give up even when the blueprint is right in front of them.

It's time to stop making excuses and realize that there is so much money to be made on this here internets that the best idea is to TRY HARDER.

caveat: Yes, this may be a bit slutty. But I don't know if you noticed this Halloween - slutty is in.

<comment><USER28> _It's only a scam if you fail._

So it's not a scam if you make money off it?

<comment><USER21> I think he means it's not a scam if it actually makes money for the reader. The hallmark of a get-rich-quick scheme is that it doesn't work.

OTOH, this does sound like a get-rich-quick scheme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it me or does it sound like they are just _winging_ the whole business? Andrew had to pretty much coach on what to do, and what to answer.

That said, they still get A+ in my books for just doing it. That's the biggest differentiator between people who find success and people who don't. Kudos.

<comment><USER18> We are and have indeed been winging the whole business. We're no business experts, we've learned a lot going through the process. It hasn't even been 2 years yet. This was our first "face to face" interview. We're not great public speakers either haha. Just going with the flow and we've been very fortunate so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Andrew I love you. I sent you an email a few months ago asking if you could get more videos about the mobile space and you have totally come through. I've seen a hearty amount of mobile interviews this month. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> Thanks.

If you come across anyone I should interview, email me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Let's break it down.

1) Release a bunch of free apps. 2) Take the holiday season - the single month with the highest sales and traffic. 3) Round it up a little bit to get to $80K a month. 4) Find as many people as you can who're willing to believe the story. 5) Don't lie - just let people extrapolate - Say $80K in a month and let people assume that means $80K per month.

Their website is the classic long form sales letter.

Make it long so people get invested. Offer $2600 worth of value for just $300. Then knock another $200 off.

Appeal to the total idiots who think a 'free' ready to go app that is included will start making them $5,000 a day.

Quote examples like iShoot + kitchen table without telling the whole story i.e. the guy's programming experience and the actual number of months spent and the strategy he used.

A fool and his money are soon parted. These two gentleman are taking upon themselves this painful task.

If we set aside ethics it's just a strategy - One guy builds a super valuable product and sell it at high price to smart people who value it.

Another person builds a house of cards and targets people's greed and laziness.

Notice a few things -

1) Their insistence that they spend just 5 hours a week on this. 2) Their focus on showing earnings from a single month - the month in the year that has the most sales. 3) If you were to wish for a easy, no hassle way to make lots of money - You'd dream up exactly what they are claiming. It's absolutely perfect - you don't have to know coding, you need just 5 hours a week, and you'll start making $5,000 a day within 60 days.

<comment><USER32> Right, but as it turns out they didn't just make $80,000 in a month. They made ~$800,000 over a year and a half, and clearly said they have had dud apps as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> FML

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm curious about the ad networks that are used in these apps. I read the interview transcript and it says that AdMob was used at first and then they switched to "AdWorld" (which I assume was a transcription error and it meant AdWhirl). If Mike or Quoc are reading, or if anyone else has any insights, I'd be interested in hearing more.

<comment><USER18> We use Adwhirl to run in this order - iAd, Adsense, Admob. iAd has been making us the most money so we give it the highest priority.

We also use transpera and greystripe in some of our apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It would be interesting to see more people chime in here about using sites like Elance. Have you had good/bad experiences with this approach?

Outsourcing seemed to work great for these guys (good for them!) Is it because the apps were fairly simple, or did they get "lucky" with picking the right developer(s)?

<comment><USER36> When I started 39 (my company) I was outsourcing my iPhone development via Elance to a firm in Ukraine. We got some good simple apps out and made some money. But quickly they weren't reliable; they fit your job in a pipeline with other jobs, so you can't just tell them "today just stop whatever you are doing and work on this important stuff". Also you need to be very lucky with the people you hire.

<comment><USER37> I hope it didn't come as a surprise. What you do when you outsource is not only you hire cheaper workforce from the other end of the world but you also spare on not having a permanent employee/consultant. It's cheaper because you only pay for what they do and not their availability (i.e. you don't pay if you don;t have anything to assign to them). Now on the other end of the business there are people who can only make a living if they are highly utilized. So they'll have a pipeline for sure. (I.e. they won't pay what you don't pay, the availability.)

So if you want an employee or permanent contractor then hire one, even from the other end of the world. Most freelancers will be more than happy to have a longer term contract with a fixed income. But you have to pay the bill...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Hey Andrew! Curious why your podcasts don't show up in the iTunes feed until a few days later. I'm having to manually download this one because I'm so excited about it. :)

<comment><USER6> I didn't know that was happening.

For some reason keeping my itunes up date has been a struggle. Thanks for telling me.

<comment><USER4> The RSS feed as it shows up in Google Reader is also delayed, just so you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm a little surprised at the relatively negative responses on this. Is this story not consistent with hacker culture and working smarter, not harder? [Pointing out to a bunch of programmers they can be outsourced is unlikely to be well received though]. The execution and success of their apps was brilliant. Sure they lose marks for immaturity, which is even more of an achievement, and their contribution low-quality apps which now plague the internet.

</comment><comment><USER40> I call BS - I don't believe they are making 80k a month. The numbers don't add up and their responses seem very ill informed and shaky on specifics.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why is the screenshot on the ebook page Adsense? Are they advertising in their mobile apps using adsense? Is that possible? I thought Apple disallows this.

</comment><comment><USER42> Who is this Ed Turner guy? Sounds pretty awesome

<comment><USER41> He's some type of guy who sends emails to all app developers advertising his services. I've got at least 10 emails from him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Damn outsourcing viz Chindia is destroying American Dream and Confidence. <http://goo.gl/2PGOE></comment>


Xobni brings Google Gadgets to Microsoft Outlook - <AUTHOR> http://www.xobni.com/blog/2010/05/18/google-gadgets-in-microsoft-outlook-yes-thanks-to-xobni/

<comment><USER2> This announcement means that a developer can build a gadget for gmail using Google's APIs, and Xobni will fully support that Google API to bring the same gadget into Outlook. Build once and deploy to both gmail & Outlook

More here: <http://www.xobni.com/developer>

And feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to learn more

<comment><USER3> All 600 million outlook users... bit of a stretch eh? Having a few million Xobni installs is pretty good, why not just advertise that?

<comment><USER2> Yikes dude - you are all over this thread.

the total addressable market of gmail is around 120M mailboxes. Building a gadget won't get you all of those users, you'll still need to convince them to add your gadget.

Same thing goes for Outlook, yet it the market is bigger. There are 600M Outlook users, and over 5M xobni downloads, but you'll still have to convince users to add your gadget. Xobni will just make it super easy for you to take the gadget you made for gmail, and provide the same functionality to your Outlook users. Some of those users will be provided by Xobni. And some of those users will be introduced to Xobni & your gadget by the gadget developer. The point is this provides access to a huge market with very little effort.

<comment><USER3> Spent a few weeks building a gadget so I have a few opinions on the matter :-).

The point of the post was to clarify that you guys are enabling people to plug into _your_ plugin. So the addressable market is the few million people who are actively using Xobni. Not all 600 million outlook users.

Now if you guys provided a redistributable that allowed me to package up my Gadget and ACTUALLY sell to all 600million outlook users, that would catch my attention. But one caveat is it would need to allow for the actual Xobni mining stuff (the memory/cpu hog) to be toggled on/off, but still allow for the contextual gadget to show up.

I like what you guys are doing, and will probably participate. However, just had to let out a few gripes first ;-)

<comment><USER2> Awesome - We definitely make Xobni redistributable by partners. Email me matt at companyname. We'd love to help make this a success for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried Xobni (post yahoo acquiring) in a 'corporate setup' and found it to be a memory hog, The startup time is ridiculous with increasing mailbox size. I am better off searching outlook based on filters than using Xobni. And now adding more gadgets to outlook will just make it an obese guy in designer clothes.

I wonder who uses Xobni? Any genuine Xobni users here?

<comment><USER5> Really? I haven't noticed it to be a resource hog and I find the search to be worlds better than Outlook, which some how manages to miss the obvious yet find the obscure every time I search.

My mailbox is a pretty good size, but perhaps I haven't reached that threshold yet.

<comment><USER6> _Outlook, which some how manages to miss the obvious_

I've noticed a quirk in Outlook 2007 that if I add an extra character to the search then hit backspace, it will find items it didn't find before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like Xobni, guys. I'm seriously thinking of dropping Gmail for my day to day use, and using Outlook + Xobni. Gmail's contact management sucks after you pass 200 or so contacts. Your contact management is really really cool.

If you guys built an Android app, I'd eagerly pay $15 bucks or so for it, and I'd happily make the complete transition from Gmail to Outlook + you guys. Just a thought.... Feel free to ping me if you are interested in talking to a motivated customer.

</comment><comment><USER8> one step closer to googol-sized acquisition. make it so brezina.

</comment><comment><USER9> How is this different from using the Outlook Social Connector ([http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c87...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c87e257c-d76f-4785-a09b-af36babd6e32&displaylang=en)) - and why would you want to use a layer in the middle (Xobni) other than for portability? Will there be performance issues?

<comment><USER2> You should try the outlook social connector and report back.

but here are my answers: 1\. OSC isn't compatible with google gadgets 2\. OSC isn't very customizable for developers - the presentation layer is super limited 3\. OSC requires a special install on Outlook 2003, 2007 - so for those users it will be a choice of one plugin: OSC or another Xobni 4\. OSC doesn't improve Outlook search 5\. OSC requires seperate installs if you want to get twitter, facebook, linkedin, salesforce, sharepoint, etc inside it. Xobni has that all with one install. 6\. This is our business. OSC was a msft afterthought to respond to Xobni. Users that compare the two prefer Xobni (actually, good idea, i should run a formal study on this)

Performance issues? I've heard some people complain about perf issues with OSC ;) but seriously, we've worked really hard on performance. Installed software is tough. And for most users, they have zero problems.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the response, Matt! Unfortunately, it seems that documentation is really sparse for OSC and Xobni already seems to have solved quite a few of the challenges for Outlook.

Suppose I'll try it for myself and see how it goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thats great, but the devil's in the details. Are you using the same Extractors API so it'll inspect the messages and provide matches?

<comment><USER2> Yes. We support the exact same google Extractors API, so you'll have all the info you need to show relevant context to the message.

<comment><USER3> Umm, not according to your docs. <http://www.xobni.com/support/?view=192>

Recipient extractors are a tad bit important. No doubt its coming soon on your dev roadmap though.

<comment><USER2> We support the most important recipient extractor RecipientEmailExtractor - which gives you all recipients in both the to and cc field.

We don't support RecipientToEmailExtractor and RecipientCCEmailExtractor right now, but we will with tonight's release.

<comment><USER3> Ah, cool. That'll work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Germany just guaranteed unemployed citizens $330 per month indefinitely - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/german-supreme-court-adopts-basic-income-policy-2019-12 <comment><USER2> Not indefinitely.

Only until the EU goes bankrupt.</comment>


Show HN: Debate Trump's First 100 days - <AUTHOR> https://civate.org/debates/10 <comment><USER2> The TPP countries all got together at APEC and have signaled that they will likely go it alone without the US, potentially with the inclusion of China, whether or not it's all talk we will find out. And it could be that the US will want to stay involved just to keep China out.

The main thing I hope Trump changes his opinion on is climate change, he can do what he wants in the Us - after all the people elected him and it's his mandate. But if he's wrong about climate change he's going to make things hard for the whole planet. We're very close to having to abandon countries like Kiribati, whole countries will be lost within decades if we don't change.

Otherwise, saying you wont hire people and will downsize through attrition is all good and well, but what happens when indispensable people that you can't get from within the organisation leave?

And how is he going to get Mexico to pay for a wall? If you compare it to two properties side by side in a street then both owners should pay halves at least, and the owner who is instigating it may pay more if the other side doesn't really care. Arresting people and putting them in prison for illegally crossing just adds costs, here it costs something like $50k a year to keep a prisoner, I'm guessing the US is similar.

</comment><comment><USER3> > on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security > and the constitutional rule of law: FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional > executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama

Will he go back on something that he'd supposedly do in the first day? Let's hope so, it's crazy.</comment>