Abandoned South Dakota Town on Sale for $250k - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/12/01/abandoned-south-dakota-town/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like the owner or the bank are just trying to generate some PR buzz and rip off someone not from the area with more money than sense.

It's a few acres of prairie with some buildings that need to be torn down. I'm not up to date on land prices in western SD, but I can't imagine good pasture land is worth more than $2k/acre, even with the surge in beef prices recently.

It's also worth noting that the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations are located in the poorest counties in America. I've visited a couple times and it really is striking that such poverty exists in America. The one stat I can remember from a volunteer trip several years ago was that an 18 yr old boy had a <50% chance of living to 25. When I was in high school we would play football and basketball games there on occasion - our bus always had police escorts in and out of town.

<comment><USER3> According to Google Maps, it's _on_ the Pine Ridge Reservation. An outsider thinking he'd like to own a small town in the country might be in for a surprise. I went to high school on a different reservation in western South Dakota.

About the poverty: When I was in college in the mid-90s, I went on spring break work trips to the Rosebud reservation, and they cited a 90% adult male alcoholism rate.

<comment><USER4> The alcoholism and poverty on Pine Ridge and Rosebud are no joke. I think there's a genetic component and a cultural component that together almost guarantee it; both drivers are exacerbated by the insular nature of their community.

I volunteered with the Habitat chapter near there. They could not build on the res because any houses under construction would be stripped of their copper wire and plumbing before they could be completed. What they really need is a big employer to set up shop there: rising tide floating all boats, etc.

<comment><USER5> "I think there's a genetic component and a cultural component that together almost guarantee it; both drivers are exacerbated by the insular nature of their community."

You want to explain that, particularly the genetic component?

<comment><USER6> Predisposition for alcoholism is hertiable.

[http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa60.htm](http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa60.htm)

<comment><USER5> Given that, is there a specific genetic study saying the genetic condition is inherited in Native Americans (and I guess specifically the Lakota)?

<comment><USER7> > a specific genetic study saying the genetic condition is inherited

These studies are not really about one genetic condition that causes alcoholism, but genes or combinations that provide higher odds of immunity.

There is an a gene more dominant in parts of Asia that increases short term side effects for alcohol, reducing alcoholism.

Europe is suspected to have similar changes through genes that are less compatible with alcoholism dominating over others that might be better for most things, but not for the pickle that was the middle ages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 6.16 acres is a _really_ small town. That's practically a large lot in rural towns.

</comment><comment><USER9> > even one man from Nebraska who wanted to fill the town with 2,000 Russian > women and 600 convicted male felons

What?

<comment><USER10> Presumably there would be video? There is no explaining the tastes of Nebraskans. b^) I doubt the numbers would favor the felons, however. After a week or so the survivors will have hitchhiked to Sioux Falls.

<comment><USER11> _Presumably there would be video?_

It seems so: "The South Dakota real estate agent said one Nebraska man said he want to buy the Swett ghost town and bring 2,000 Russian women and 600 convicted felons to live in the town. He wanted to build acrylic houses for the new residents to live in and set up cameras to run 24/7 and film the interactions, Syracuse.com reports."

<comment><USER12> Would something like this even be legal? It almost feels like a human zoo of sorts

<comment><USER13> Yep, and it exists right now. There are cam sites out there that'll let attractive people live in their dorm-esque condos for free in exchange for being broadcasted 24/7 (and being pressured into being "interesting").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this is it: [https://goo.gl/maps/HTZMUk4N2Pt](https://goo.gl/maps/HTZMUk4N2Pt)

<comment><USER15> It's just a short drive to Wounded Knee; that would make it a convenient tourist stop all its own. "On your way to Wounded Knee, stop and stay at the haunted bed and breakfast in Swett!"

<comment><USER5> I would caution against using a massacre in advertising particularly while implying a haunting.

<comment><USER16> On the contrary, play it up. Stuff like the haunted house sleepaway camps, where they can drag you from your tents, are becoming quite popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What makes this a 'town' and not just a plot of land? I'm assuming there's zero infrastructure to be managed, so what's left?

<comment><USER18> In the Dakotas, the word 'town' is more of a colloquial term. The requirements to be a town are basically that you have one of the following operating: post office, bar, or church. Really, because its so sparsely populated, it may also refer to an area of many square miles around one of the aforementioned establishments (even if they are no longer operational). It's just easier to say "My farm is in Roseglen" than it is to say "My farm is 30 miles northwest of Garrison" (which would be the closest town with an actual government, and businesses). Everybody from the area knows where you're talking about, and it helps locals preserve a bit of identity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You could buy a whole military Soviet town for $330,000 sans the destroyed mega-radar: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skrunda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skrunda)

The problem is upkeep and finding something useful to do with the place.

I know in Germany some of the NATO military towns have been repurposed.

</comment><comment><USER20> This reminds me of Wilson, Arkansas but that town sold for quite a bit more.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/us/arkansas-towns-new- owne...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/us/arkansas-towns-new-owner-has- visions-of-its-renaissance.html?_r=0)

</comment><comment><USER21> 6 acres? A town? Well that's just ridiculous. Just to convey the size, that picture covers well over 6 acres. The white buildings would be the far edge. Not to mention you would need to haul the trashy buildings off to do anything with it. Must be a slow news day..

</comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of this one in CA in 2013 - [http://www.latimes.com/local/la- me-c1-ghost-town-20131204-dt...](http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c1-ghost- town-20131204-dto-htmlstory.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks to me that the seller is just using Fortune to advertise the property.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm confused. This town is in South Dakota, but the house linked to in the article, from Silence of the Lambs, is in Pennsylvania.

<comment><USER4> Lazy reporter, stock photo?

<comment><USER5> Probably, most of the time ESPN tries to show the North Dakota prairie with buffalos, they actually show stock footage of South Dakota. I would expect this is pretty common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I had a look on Google Maps and there's nothing there except one house. How is this a "town"?

<comment><USER26> It looks like the only way this land could be remotely considered a town is its history -- there was once a post office and 40 people living there. That was apparently enough to get its name on the highway sign. But it's not an incorporated entity, and doesn't appear to have any substantial number of historic buildings left standing, so it really is just a piece of property for sale. You couldn't be your own mayor (as the article implies you could do) any more than I could declare myself to be mayor of my house.

On a side note, I was driving through rural South Dakota around ten years or so ago and stopped to eat at a small town diner. I checked out their bulletin board and was floored that someone was selling a house for $10k. So maybe the area could be a good deal for someone looking to get away from it all. :)

<comment><USER27> As someone who has lived in South Dakota previously, yes, you can buy property for pretty cheap - including, even now, houses for 10-20 grand.

However, keep in mind that at that price point, you're usually forgoing things like reasonable Internet, neighbors closer than a mile away, and any kind of nearby amenities whatsoever. Oh, and the house usually needs a ton of work, and the basement is guaranteed to be damp at best, if not moldy.

$250k for a 6 acre plot of land with only one good structure on it seems overpriced for the region. I bought a 5.5 acre farm with a good house, garage, workshop, and sturdy fencing for $70k. Later sold it for $100k.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> South Dakota might be a good domicile for a fintech startup specializing in credit tech...

</comment><comment><USER29> If I had the spare change I would take it.

</comment><comment><USER30> On one hand, this is a little land with a few building in unattractive location/condition. Not so queer. On the other…

We are at a point in time when the wealthy are extremely wealthy. The billionaire club is substantial but even below that, personal wealth in the tens or hundreds of millions exists. What do people want to do with that wealth? It's more than can really be spent on comfort, entertainment, sex and such. Once upon a time money was power, or could be converted to it. Roman Consuls put personal wealth into political enterprises. They were the system of government and the wealth was intertwined with it. But, the main point was they had social, societal and military ambitions.

Where are the people today who would like to create a 1,000 person community? Where are the wealthy who would like to try a bold experiment in communalism, anarchism, feminism or whatnot?

<comment><USER31> "Where are the wealthy who would like to try a bold experiment in communalism, anarchism, feminism or whatnot?"

Flippant answer is that the two groups—"the wealthy," and people interested in that sort of thing—have almost no overlap.

<comment><USER32> An example of an exception to that rule of thumb: Robert Owen, a successful industrialist who became one of the founders of utopian socialism.

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

[http://www.ushistory.org/us/26b.asp](http://www.ushistory.org/us/26b.asp)

<comment><USER31> I don't think someone who died in 1858 is an exception to the modern composition of the wealthy population.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a Better Kindle (or, Why Buttons Matter) - <AUTHOR> https://kottke.org/18/04/building-a-better-kindle <comment><USER2> This feels simple and powerful for a post about UI. The old Kindles had full keyboards!

I really hate this trend to "Do everything with one button." So many devices have one button and different LED flashing patterns. LEDs are seriously cheap, cheap enough you can just add a few more to make the interface not-garbage; where I don't have to memorize a lot of rubbish.

A great example: The Crafty Vaporizer. It has one button you push to turn on, hold to turn off, double tap to use the boost temperate (which can be changed from the mobile app you pair it with. WTF?)

Compare that to the Boundless CF Vaporizer. It's an exact clone except it has multiple LEDs, all labeled, which can indicate temperate and battery life.

One button is stupid. Touch screen instead of hardware buttons for the most common tasks is stupid (I'm looking you Telsa Model S) and removing hardware buttons for simplicity is sometimes a great idea, except when it's a horrible idea, which it more often is.</comment>


Ask HN: How do people prefer to pay online in your country? - <AUTHOR>

Based in part on this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569607
In that thread we discussed two countries where credit cards are the exception rather than the norm. It seems safe to assume that there are more places where this is the case.
Part of this is also based on our experience when accepting payments. It seems a lot harder to convert a free member to a paying one as soon as you leave the USA. It seems to me that how we accept payments (PayPal, MoneyBookers) is at least in some part responsible for that.
What do people in your geographical area prefer to use for online payments? Is it the credit card, plain old SWIFT/BIC or IBAN, some national payment system?
Is there a payment processor like PayPal that's very popular in your area? (Especially if customers need an account.) <comment><AUTHOR> Link for your clicking convenience: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=569607>

</comment><comment><USER2> In Russia, most popular online payment systems are probably webmoney.ru and money.yandex.ru

The major difference from PayPal is that 1) these systems are de facto local, and 2) your account is not linked to your debit/credit card, rather, you have to add funds to your account proactively. At least that was true when I last checked it.

Paypal does not work with some Russian banks' credit cards because they ignored this market for so long.

If you want free Russia-specific research, point google translate to fom.ru - there are some quantitative and qualitative surveys on payments via internet.

<comment> andrewl-hn Moreover, people are very reluctant to use cards on the Internet in general there. For example a friend of mine wanted to purchase a domain name for personal use (blog, photos, CV, etc.) but eventually decided not to just because he had to use a card!

Lots of local websites accept SMS payments because of that. I have no idea why people consider it safer. It seems to me that as long as there's a HTTPS connection with a nice certificate (EV or normal) from the issuing company you've heard of you're most likely to be safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In Sweden I'd say we almost always use Visa and to a lesser extent master card. If a website doesn't want to deal with credit cards, I think a local version of paypal <https://www.payson.se> is more common than paypal if it's a page that's only avaliable in Swedish. I'm only really basing this on my own experience and observations though.

</comment><comment><USER4> In the UK, credit cards are very common, and most debit cards are Visa cards too.

I hear that in Germany, credit cards are very uncommon. I think I heard that "International Maestro" is the option that's much better supported there. I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but I'd love to know too!

<comment><USER5> Debit cards (and cash) are much the norm in offline shopping in Germany. Credit cards seem to have taken off somewhat recently, but that may be just my perception. Credit cards also seem to be more common in corporate settings rather than in private hands.

Even for online shopping, one can often get a bill and pay via bank transfer (SWIFT/IBAN or more commonly the national system).

<comment><AUTHOR> How about Giropay? Is it taking of?

<comment><USER5> Never heard of it before. But then --- I am a sample of one.

<comment><AUTHOR> But an Internet-savvy sample of one.

I just learned about it yesterday after researching the iDEAL system in The Netherlands. I bounced upon an online payment system of my bank which accepted the German Giropay. It said it was like the Dutch iDEAL. So I just had to ask :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Videogame Developers Are Making It Harder to Stop Playing - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/wheres-the-off-switch-videogame-developers-are-making-it-harder-to-stop-playing-1534757400 <comment><USER2> Paywall bypass: [http://archive.is/89oNs](http://archive.is/89oNs)</comment>


Tokyo's Lion Cafe in Audio Magazine - <AUTHOR> https://www.dampfkraft.com/lion-in-audio-magazine.html <comment><USER2> Shibuya's Lion Cafe is the absolute best place in the world to work off your hangover on a Sunday morning. It feels sacred, an altar to caffeine and hifi audio.

God I miss this place, and miss Tokyo. Can't wait to go back when the world opens again after Covid.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember being in Tokyo with a friend and we were looking for this famous place.

After looking around, we eventually ended up in the Ginza Lion.

To be fair, this was a much welcome break from being everything Japanese. Here you had meat, beer and a sense of Germany, and it was real nice.

Looking at this article though, it seems we ended up at the wrong place, and I might have missed out on our original famous destination.

Oh well. We had a good meal and a good time. We did that a lot in Tokyo :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have been there several times. That place is magical.

<comment><USER5> I've been there once, but had some language barrier issues (I visited at a weird time of day and as far as I know I was the only guest). Maybe you know: what's going on upstairs? Is that also part of the cafe or a private area?

<comment><AUTHOR> Third floor has been closed for as long as I've been going (since around 2014), I assume that it's in disrepair or can't be staffed reasonably.</comment></comment></comment>


10 Mobile Design Patterns You Need to Know - hash-table http://hash-table.com/home/2012/08/08/10-mobile-design-patterns-you-need-to-know/

<comment><AUTHOR> The Springboard is out of date for Android, and nothing about the Actionbar?</comment>


7.4 Tons of Venezuela's Gold Landed in Africa and Vanished - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-7-4-tons-of-venezuelas-gold-landed-in-africaand-vanished-11560867792 <comment><USER2> > Secret deliveries to a refinery in Uganda expose a global underground > economy many suspect is helping Nicolás Maduro cling to power

How dare the government of Venezuela dispose of its own gold.

[https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-31/store-your-gold- ba...](https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-31/store-your-gold-bank-england- and-you-might-never-see-it-again-0)

<comment><USER3> When they have liabilities that are due?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Gold from AGR has made its way into supply chains at U.S. companies > including General Motors Co. , General Electric Co. and Starbucks Corp. ,

What do Starbucks and GM use gold for?

<comment><USER5> Starbucks probably paint and lettering on coffee cups. GM, circuit boards.

[https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of- gold.shtml](https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gold being transported in brown cardboard paper.

Breaking Bad was not some manual.

</comment><comment><USER7> I applaud any actions that dodge US sanctions.</comment>


C++ and zombies: a moving question - <AUTHOR> http://meetingcpp.com/index.php/br/items/cpp-and-zombies-a-moving-question.html

<comment><USER2> Oh, the destructive move problem. I thought this was about "re-animation", the horror introduced with Microsoft Managed C++, where, if a GC-called destructor saves a pointer to the object being destroyed, the object has to be "re- animated".

No, this is just the destructive move problem for single ownership pointers. It's an use case for "swap" as a language primitive.

The real problem is that you just can't make single-ownership pointers work right in C++ via the template mechanism. I tried a few times, over a decade ago. ([http://animats.com/papers/languages/index.html](http://animats.com/papers/languages/index.html)) It takes a more global look than you have down inside a template. You need language-level support.

Rust does this. It's not inherently hard. It's just extremely hard to retrofit to the C++ model. Look at the history of auto_ptr, and now unique_ptr in C++. The pain. The anguish. The decades of headaches. The unnecessary complexity. The pain.

<comment><USER3> I got into C++ back in 1993, and it has been one of the main languages on my toolbox. So I do like it quite much.

But I am also spoiled by Niklaus Wirth legacy in language design and safe systems programming. As well as ML languages.

C++14 feels quite modern, and I enjoy playing with it on hobby projects where I have full control, but I don't miss those C++98 enterprise code bases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The biggest problem with destructive move in C++ (and one I personally think is unfixable, but I'm happy to be proved wrong), is that in most cases algorithms must be sure to recreate any variable they are not responsible for, as it will be destroyed later. There isn't any way of checking if some memory has already been destroyed, and adding any kind of flag just gets us back to the same position really. In particular I tried writing an exception safe std::sort (so make sure when std::sort exits all variables are reconsructed again), and it is an extremely difficult undertaking.

In general I find the lack of destructive move isn't a serious problem -- designing variables so their 'default state' is very cheap to construct isn't usually a major cost.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it was Dave Abrahams who first brought up the issue of destructors with side effects and their implications for move semantics. For example, a destructor may have the side effect of releasing a lock. If I remember correctly, Dave's advice was to write your move operations in such a way that they always perform at least those destructor actions that have side effects. I seem to remember that he discussed this on his cpp-next blog, but the site appears to be down. Does anybody know if those blog posts are available somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> cpp-next seems to be lost, at least for the web, but you still can access its content at the webarchive.org.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Consider a Movable file handle.

File fh = File(fopen("file.txt"));

foo(std::move(fh));

Using fh after foo() would yield a compile error in Rust. It does not in C++.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, of course accessing the value of fh after foo would be fatal. But how would you then sort a container of moveable-only objects?

An object should be accessible for reassigning a value after its move, as its often needed for algorithms, thats exactly why the C++ Standard mandates this. Move does really only make sense if the class holds a moveable allocation, such as a container, array etc., which makes copying expensive.

<comment><USER7> _> An object should be accessible for reassigning a value after its move, as its often needed for algorithms, thats exactly why the C++ Standard mandates this._

The same is true in Rust. A moved-from value can be reassigned, but cannot be used (compile enforced) until it is reassigned. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel like a complete idiot when I read these articles :-( I can hardly even understand the issues because c++ have gotten to a point where I have to strain myself very hard to even understand the problem (forget the solution). And I have been programming with c++ for many years (but c++11 ignorant).

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, stay away from r-value references[1], and trust the defaults for move will make your live a lot easier.

To Quote Eric Niebler: "I want you to fear r-value references, like one could fear god" (last year at Meeting C++)

[1]except things like forwarding in templates, but thats fairly easy.</comment></comment>


How doing too much made a $6k MR business shut down - <AUTHOR> https://phoenixdown.co/focusing-many-fronts-business-shutdown/ <comment><USER2> "Actually, I didn't pay Mubashar as he is my friend. He did all for free and he always does project stuff with people."

Yikes

<comment><USER3> Mubs helped me as a side project because he's a friend, I offered to pay him but he didn't want anything. He works on a ton of side-projects for fun. Think the interview piece in this section definitely came across badly.

<comment><USER2> Appreciate the response on this, I think the wording definitely came across wrong and, particularly in an article related to the economics of this side project, it feels disingenuous as a market rate developer would have eaten up the revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a clickbait title and shameless self promotion. That guy should really pay his "friend" Mubashar now that he has achieved something. Srsly Ben. Pay him.

<comment><USER3> I'm the guy in the interview...Mubs was helping me as a side project for fun. We've done a bunch of things together over the years. I offered to pay him but he didn't want anything, I gifted him stuff that he wanted instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For context, here are the parts that didn't sit well with the other commenters.

> To build the platform, I got a friend of mine, Mubashar Iqbal, who builds > tons of things. He's a technical guy and a prolific maker.

> Actually, I didn't pay Mubashar as he is my friend. He did all for free and > he always does project stuff with people. I was very lucky that was the > case. Otherwise, all of that money would have gone to a developer to build > it.

> But I didn't lose anything because it was literally just me sitting there > creating.

I think the reason why some reacted to this negatively, is that many of us would identify with the developer, and perhaps even been in situations where we invested effort into projects that didn't work out.

It also reminds me of similar situations in other fields, like the music business, or design, where the "maker" agrees to work for free in hopes of future payoffs.

In defense of the founder, what's missing from the interview is that they were friends, and the developer didn't want anything in return - he was doing it for fun. If the project had been successful, I'm sure they would have arranged fair compensation for his work.

<comment><USER3> appreciate you summarising it like this!

yeah we had a 50/50 split agreement and applied to YC on that basis too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> See a few comments mentioning me (the developer :)) so here goes ...

When I started working on newCo I was working on it my spare time. __I __decided it would best for newCo if Ben was able to focus on it fulltime, instead of splitting the revenue with me, then having to supplement his income with other work.

To be clear Ben was willing to share the revenue with me at the time. I was in a place where that wasn't necessary and I thought it would best if it went to Ben until we hit certain milestones which we never did.

MakerPad was something totally new that Ben started after we decided to fold newCo, he did 100% of the work for many years, and deserves all the success it has brought.

Ben is a friend, and I'm happy I was a part of his "startup" journey. I'd be more than happy to work with him on projects in the future.

I go into all my projects with a clear mind, knowing what I'm risking (usually only my time).

</comment><comment><USER7> Valuable nugget for first-time founders: "I wanted to build it in a way that could scale, which was far too early. There was no need to be doing that."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've started showcasing previous failed projects from awesome entrepreneurs, so other founders are more aware that failure is just a step towards their goal.

The first interview is about the story of newCo by Ben Tossell. Ben is the founder of Makerpad, the leading community for no-coders.

Hope you can learn something relevant for your next project!</comment>


New jQuery Techniques For Good User Experience - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/15/45-new-jquery-techniques-for-a-good-user-experience/

<comment><USER2> Your probably better off going here and checking out the plugins yourself, <http://plugins.jquery.com/>

This article didn't really add any value.

<comment><AUTHOR> The official repo is the most comprehensive resource, but that hardly means that highlighting some great plugins is unnecessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would have been better if each example was live and not just a screenshot.

<comment><USER4> True, but can you imagine the loading time with all that Javascript kicking around? We'd have ads plus all the jQuery demos.

<comment><USER3> Yah, a lot of loading - but it's less time than clicking on each and every one of those things one at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was wondering if Apple had written the gorgeous video overlay scripts, but it looks like they used Fancybox.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you post your email address publicly? - <AUTHOR> If you do, specifically on a personal website, how do you protect yourself from getting spammed all the time. Do you have another secret email address or special email filters you use? <comment><USER2> Yes. Years ago I realized that hiding simply doesn't work and now I just assume that any existing email address is known to the spammers. I also assume people's address books get scraped by malware, since I've seen email addresses get spammed that were never published anywhere on the web.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. For years I used a trivial brainpower challenge to prevent automated scrapers from getting it ("My first name @kalzumeus.com"), but I added the actual string last year and have no perceptible increase in spam as a result net of Google Apps filtering.

</comment><comment><USER4> Spam filters have rendered the "Don't post your email in public" advice to a relic from 10 years ago.

<comment><USER5> Except Gmail's spam filters still have false positives and false negatives, meaning I have to go through the spam folder once a week or less to make sure I'm not missing anything important. I still need to avoid how much spam I have to scroll through.

<comment><USER6> False positives? Since years I have not checked my gmail spam folders and whatever I've missed, I did not miss it.

If your email triggers gmails spam filter, you're doing it wrong. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Encoding your email address to hexadecimal may prevent some less sophisticated crawlers from capturing your email address.

mailto: -> mailto:

email@example.com -> abc@gmail.com

Then instead of:

firstname.lastname@example.com

Use this:

 abc@gmail.com

Or this ("mailto:" also encoded):

 abc@gmail.com

source: [http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html](http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html)

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't any decent HTML library, probably already used by the crawler, convert that back to plain text?

<comment><USER9> If you're crawling the web _looking for email addresses_ you're probably not bothering to parse the HTML. You don't need to: you can just grab the email from the raw response from the web server, along with any new links to follow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes.

My strategy is to have multiple, disassociated email addresses for each service, not to keep a single address secret. There are a couple of steps to this.

A) I don't use Gmail. People bring up the + strategy to have multiple emails through Gmail; I don't think that works. I think most spammers will be smart enough to remove the plus, and some sites outright ban it from being part of your address. Treat your Gmail address like you only have one.

B) I do own my own domain(s) and can receive official email there. I use this when I don't care about making my identity known (ie, on a resume, or a publicly facing website, but do want to be able to filter email). The _prefix_ (firstname.lastname@example.com) is the part of my address that matters, and I don't use wildcard prefixes. This means I can generate unique prefixes that I know only some people have access to, which means more public prefixes can get auto- sorted to lower-priority folders (or disabled entirely in the case of a targeted attack) so it's harder for people to spam me.

C) I also make heavy, heavy use of Fastmail's aliases for 3rd-party services. I don't use my own domain(s) to sign up for 3rd-party services, because my domain is a unique identifier that ties all of those accounts together. Fastmail is a shared domain, and lets you generate completely unique addresses, so I can sign up for a Walmart account and give them something like `firstname.lastname@example.com`. There's no way (I know of) for them to tie that back to another account, so if I start getting spam at that address, I know 100% for sure where it originated from. Every 3rd-party service gets a completely unique email address that can't be associated with my other addresses.

The setup is still evolving, I used to just use Gmail, and I'm still migrating some accounts from Gmail. But I've seen a lot of benefits so far, and I expect to see more benefits as I flesh everything out more.

At the risk of straying into shill territory, I really like Fastmail, a lot. For $5 a month I get really good integration with custom domains, all of the aliases I mentioned above, proper IMAP support, a web interface that is pleasant to use, and my data isn't being mined for advertisers or AI.

Yes, they have the whole Australia problem, but my threat model for email doesn't include the Australian government. I use end-to-end encrypted messaging for that.

<comment><USER11> On Fastmail, you should be cautious never to let your Fastmail domain addresses go (deleting them because of spam). Fastmail and a few other email providers recycle deleted addresses within a few months. If someone else snaps up your address, they could end up getting emails intended for you. I've seen companies not having a coordinated system for managing such information. So just changing your address on a company's website doesn't necessarily mean that it's changed in all their internal systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes. I have dozens of domains that I use for email. I create throw-away addresses per-site, per-use-case. If one of them starts getting abused, I either remove the alias, or set up filters to only allow specific content to that address. One of them is in my profile here.

As a bonus side effect, I can tell when a business or organization has either been "pwned" or has otherwise sold my email address to other entities.

Some domains I point to fastmail so that family members have an alternate to gmail. The remaining just point to my VM that runs postfix and drops all the email into virtual mailboxes and I read them from the shell. This has worked great for decades.

</comment><comment><USER13> Although not a direct answer to the question, with gmail you can add a unique identifying suffix/tag after a + in the name part of your email:

eg: email@example.com

And emails to that address still wind up in your inbox.

This can help to identify which source ultimately divulged your email to a spammer (intentionally or otherwise).

While it would be trivial for spammers to strip this tag off, i've found numerous instances of spam eventually being sent to the unique email I only ever used at eg. the sporting goods store.

<comment> 0-_-0 You can also add dots into random places, which can't be stripped automatically. So you can have the email email@example.com as your "official" email, and put random dots when you sign up for something. E.g. email@example.com. Now you can filter out email sent to email@example.com, or to any email that's not firstname.lastname@example.com. The spammers won't be able to discover your original address.

<comment><USER14> They'll probably just spam the non-dotted address.

<comment><USER15> That would require a person looking, or specific code written to handle this case, and knowing where it will and won't break the address.

I also can also confirm that even more obvious schemes are not stripped by spammers, from personal experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My main personal email (permanent address, essentially), I've got on my website with a minimal brainpower test (essentially "[myname] @ [this domain]") --- but I might get rid of that. My email is in its bare form on a number of READMEs of things that I maintain. I've never had an issue with spam because of it. I use Google Apps for hosting my domain's email.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have mine in clear text on HN as well as on my personal site. And honestly I barely get any spam at all. Maybe once a month or so. I don't know where people get so much spam from.

<comment><USER2> You're using gmail which does the filtering for you.

<comment><USER17> I check my spam folder regularly. It's almost entirely false positives

<comment><USER2> For a while now Google has been rejecting some mail they classify as spam at SMTP delivery time. You don't see mail they reject that way in your spam folder.

<comment><USER17> huh, interesting

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a separate public email address that forwards to my main Gmail.

It lets me know that the sender has scraped me from the public directory and I prioritize those messages accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a private email for close friends and family (note, I have no FB account). I had layers of obfuscation on this over the years, which I've since walked away from.

I run a few businesses, and have work email at each. These usually cycle/evolve periodically over time.

And I have a public Gmail account. Few filters, most everything I sign up for goes there. Lots of G logins.

I'm not on a lot of chat apps, but I use Slack for a few things. No telegram, no WhatsApp, nothing else like that.

I was reviewing this recently and I'm pretty happy with it. The funnels for work/business are effective enough to compartmentalize them. On my iPhone and iPad I have a subset of some but not all of those email addresses. On my desktop I use Outlook to consolidate every last email account and Mailplane to cover my most important and active email accounts.

Truth is, few humans email me. It's all business accounts, SaaS notifications, etc.

Email isn't really a daily high priority for me. And most of the important emails are expected... the result of a conversation or initiation. When I know an important email is coming, my attention to email elevates a bit. Otherwise, email is only a medium priority for me anymore. I clear them weekly, but probably pay attention to them 3x every two days.

Edit: the big burden of emails is calendar coverage and invites. For that, my iOS devices are most important. I care more about what lands on my calendar (Zoom conferences) than most other things (save, contracts I need to sign or payments I have to take care of). I also tell everyone to call me anytime. I hate juggling calendar invites for a ten minute phone call. That said, I do encourage people not to leave voice mail. This is where things get a little more... intentional/picky.

</comment><comment><USER20> Using some console tools like echo and sed: [https://mathilde.website](https://mathilde.website)

</comment><comment><USER21> If you use Cloudflare, they'll obfuscate email addresses for you (i.e., from scrapers), while maintaining clickability.

[https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170016-W...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170016-What-is-Email-Address-Obfuscation-)

</comment><comment><USER22> I do. I think it's essential if you've a website/blog or occasionally someone wants to contact you personally regarding one of your comments. I find it extremely frustrating to read a blog post, notice an error or a technical configuration issue with their website and then not be able to let the author know. Please make yourself reachable.

I run my own email server and don't do any spam filtering, so I definitely receive more spam than others (0–2 per day), but Thunderbird always puts them into my spam folder.

I hope to eventually add a spam filter in Postfix to deny at the SMTP level. However, configuring DMARC verification and requiring proper RDNS already cut the spam to a third.

I also recently switched to the hexadecimal encoding explained by u/bitmedley on my website. There's been no perceptible change in spam from that.

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes,I do post my email publically everywhere, Spam is handled mostly by google spam filters and sometimes manually.

<comment><USER24> Same, the filters have gotten good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Right now, I have listed an email on my website above a contact form. To hide the email from scrapers, I just concat different parts of it in javascript on page load and insert it into the html.

I didn't expect that to work but a few years in I've barely seen any spam on the listed email address. All spam I've received on my website has been done through the contact form so it appears bot farms rather solve Google captcha than try to use my email address.

This probably isn't enough for everyone but it might serve as a reminder not to overthink this. The only downside is that users without javascript can't get my email address but as I don't expect many people to visit my personal website that's not an issue to me.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the problem is the "your email address" part. No, I don't post "my email address", but I do post one of my email addresses.

But really, the primary spam problem is not with spammers crawling the web, the primary spam problem is with companies that think because you bought something from them you are keen on them getting on your nerves. So, the real anti-spam measure is giving each and every company their own email address, and just disabling any addresses that start getting spam, and those also are exempted from the spam filter, so you don't ever get false positives on those.

</comment><comment><USER27> I use my "normal" email address to post to a very small number of mailing lists. Even though they're all publicly accessible lists, I get in total about 5 spam emails a day - this is with zero spam filtering (not even SpamAssassin) on my own Postfix instance.

For the past ~6 years, every time I sign up to a new web service (or even in person paper signup), I generate a new 64 hex email prefix. This allows me to know who either a) sold my address or b) got their database hacked. So far, the only website I know of who either got hacked or sold my address was:

        coinmama.com

</comment><comment><USER28> I have numerous email addresses, a couple of which are specifically intended for use if I have to provide an email address that will be publicly viewable. I look at the envelopes of the mail arriving at those addresses, and if one looks not spammy, I'll actually open it. Otherwise, I just let that mail time out (my mailserver deletes them automatically after 3 days).

I never list email addresses I use for real in a public forum, and almost never use them when registering on sites, etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> My email address is posted publicly on my website. It isn't an alias or anything, though my domain uses a wildcard to send every message to every address to my inbox, so I have infinite aliases available to me should I want them.

Surprisingly, I don't believe I've received a single spam message that made it past my spam filter, despite my address being public. However, I think this can largely be explained by the fact that my site receives basically zero traffic.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yep! I have it on my personal site in plain text and I don't seem to be receiving large amounts of spam. I just looked in my spam folder and the last five spam mails I got were:

1\. 25th oct

2\. 22nd oct

3\. 21st oct

4\. 19th oct

5\. 18th oct

so I get less than one per day.

</comment><comment><USER31> I use gmail (too late to change even though I have personal domains). I register it everywhere and it's probably searchable in many places. I think gmail does a good job with spam, I don't get more than 1 spam in my inbox or one non-spam mail misidentified as spam in a year. So I'm completely happy and feel it's a solved problem. This could change in the future of course, but I have had zero problems in the past decade.

</comment><comment><USER32> I publish my email and phone number on my website. Spam is filtered and my phone is in flight mode whenever I'm busy.

It is similar to still keeping a Facebook account, the upside of being found by the right people is bigger than the privacy risk I perceive. I might regret this later though, if the future becomes as dystopian as expected by some people here.

</comment><comment><USER33> Spam just doesn't seem to be much of a problem these days. My emails are in plain text everywhere and I very rarely get any spam.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yep: email@example.com

I use GMail, and basically just rely on their spam filtering. It's not perfect, but it's "good enough".

<comment><USER35> Do you know that SSL certificate for www.fogbeam.com has expired? [https://crt.sh/?q=www.fogbeam.com](https://crt.sh/?q=www.fogbeam.com)

<comment><USER34> Yeah, I forgot to schedule the cron-job to update the Let's Encrypt certificate. Thanks for the reminder, I'll go run the script right now.

<comment><USER36> if you use certbot it automatically schedule cronjobs for you

<comment><USER34> Huh, interesting. I never knew anything about that. That said, I use cert-bot, but not _only_ certbot, as I have a wrapper script which does some other things as part of the process (converting the certificate to Java Keystore format, for example) so not sure if that automation would apply.

Anyway, my script is setup now, so hopefully this won't be a problem going forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Yes; I've been using the same address (firstname.lastname@example.com) for 23 years now. I get ~100 spam/day, and GMail manages to catch every single one. I do a 30 second scan through for false positives once a day - typically there's 1 or 2 a week, and they're never something actually important.

</comment><comment><USER38> My personal email address is publicly available. Fastmail filters about 99% of the spam and the rest is quickly silenced by reporting spam. I receive maybe one or two spams per week. Sadly there are a few false positives but usually it's transactional emails that I don't care about.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have used my email address email@example.com for open source development and mailing list and Usenet discussions for 22 years. It helps make me more memorable.

A few messages each day get through the spam filters, but that's negligible compared to the number of mailing list messages I delete unread.

<comment><USER29> Wow, I love your email address! "Dot at dot at dot at"

<comment><USER40> Even more clever than http colon slash slash slash dot dot org

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Yes.

You can add filters to gmail.

I add filter once a month or if the spams are getting out of hand.

It's not that bad. The political emails are the worst though, they spam you regardless of your unsubscribe option. The second worst for me is unsolicitated job from job agencies.

</comment><comment><USER42> Yes. And I even have a catch all for my domain just go to my inbox. (*@ironhlelmet). It's managed by gmail.

The only spam I get is an occasional email telling me that my page rank could be improved if I pay some seo spammers.

</comment><comment><USER43> Yes, and when i do it (I put in in few of my profiles in text) I'm not getting spam

I guess you can feel safe to do it, and in worst case you will get few emails you will mark as spam right away

</comment><comment><USER44> Yes I do.On my web site. It is a Gmail address, so There are no spammed. As a small company I choosed not to manage a personnal Web adress. And it works fine.

</comment><comment><USER45> Of course, for about 10 years or so. It's a means of communication. Why shouldn't I publish it? Spam is being handled by G-Suite/Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER46> I have this on my websites for years now: name@ __[THIS_Domain.com] __, where [THIS_Domain.com] is <whatever the domain I'm using it on>.

So far, ZERO spam.

</comment><comment><USER47> If you use only HTTP/2 and only TLS 1.3 then most of spam crawlers won't reach to your web site.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've had mine public for years. The spam filters at Fastmail are good enough that it's not an issue.

</comment><comment><USER49> What do you mean by "your email"? Does anyone really have only one email address? I've cut down to three in the last few years. It amazes me that, in the age of free addresses, everyone doesn't have at least one, separate personal email address for friends and family apart from their public and/or company email.

<comment><USER50> Does anyone use email to communicate with friends and family? To me it is almost as quaint as sending snail mail.

<comment><USER51> is quaint a bad thing now?

I like the pace of email better compared to instant-messaging where I usually feel like I have to apologise if im replying a few days later.

email is also better for having multiple topics. if you try to ask somebody about something off topic when using instant-messaging then it can easily get pushed out of view and forgotten about since it's all just a single thread

I wouldn't attempt write any sort of long form communication using IM and I wouldn't be cruel enough to make others read something like that

<comment><USER50> > is quaint a bad thing now?

Not at all, indeed I do like email as a communication form. It was merely an observation that in practice using email for personal communication is exceedingly rare, at least in my social circles.

> I wouldn't attempt write any sort of long form communication using IM

From what I can tell, people have not migrated their long form communication to other platforms. Instead people seem to have abandoned long form altogether, as sad as that might be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I post it in a way that's obvious to humans but not to bots. Like:

Email: dyingkneepad # gmail * com

<comment><USER53> Nice, I'll add the format to my crawler

<comment><USER54> Then he changes it to com # gmail * dyingkneepad

<comment><USER55> And the war is on :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I think having a separate email for business is better

</comment><comment><USER57> I've had mine publicly posted for _decades_.

The spam goes in the spam folder. Not sure what the big deal is?</comment>


Ask HN: How can I make my commercial software open source? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
first things first, I would like to apologize for my bad English.
I just tell a short story of what we've done, but you can skip this and scroll down directly to my questions.
After three to four years continuous developing an enterprise vulnerability scan solution I have to admit "I am done with it". Now I'm thinking to make this solution at least somehow useful, by making it open source.
My previous startup was focusing on detecting web vulnerabilities with an own written scanner.
The main purpose why I have formed this startup and developed this scanner was bit a too big ego which wanted to compete with some big player solutions ( in this case IBM and HP), despite the fact they just bought companies who build those scanners instead of developing them ;).
Unfortunately or luckily? I have managed to establish an OEM-partnership with a well known Web Application Firewall Vendor. They used a new, polished and rebranded version of my scanner now to gain attention in the enterprise market. Especially as most of the enterprise are more interested in security scanner at all than in application firewall solutions. They also had some success selling the scanner to Telcos, Gov's and large retailers. But at the end, far to less to keep the business and support running.
Now I have seen this issue early enough and started to sell the solution as an online scanning service similar to that what you already know from McAfee Secure, GoDaddy or Comodo.
I can't tell how often we have switched layouts and the pricing. We tried everything . Developed online wizards and offline configuration clients, recorded demo videos and so much more but it just seemed that an web application scanner is far too specific for regular users.
We had about 800 registrations and some few sales, but still not enough to keep a business like that running so at this point I started to give up.
I realized selling an enterprise solution to enterprises is very hard but selling it to regular users is almost impossible.
We also had some attempts to sell the company or the source code to great US enterprise security companies and all of them were really excited about the scanning results in comparison to other scanning solutions. But due my chosen program language it became impossible to sell it
I have to say, we've been always a small startup, we were 2 founders and we had some halftime trainees, which just graduated from school. So by all the time I was always the only fulltime developer and did 90 % of the work.
So here I am hating the code and the time spent for a company, a company that didn't brought me forward and stole me years of hard work (15-18 hours every day).
I remembered talking with a friend about why companies don't make stuff open source if they close, after he only found dead links to a mac application, that's the reason why I'm now thinking of making this open source.
I thought if I can't or don't want to sell the scanner anymore, why shouldn't I help other people by making this open source and at least earn some appreciation.
The scanner itself is very accurate, at some point it was almost able to compete with the big players on other even better or worse.
Now some information's which you possible dislike.
The scanner has a 3 tier model, is written in C#, it uses a MsSQL database and for the frontend a PHP solution.
Just some other facts before some people reply with C# hate responses, the top leading enterprise scanners WebInspect and AppScan are both written in C# (AppScan is partial C# and C++).
I'm sorry for the long story.
Before I can make my source code public I need to find some answers, where some people may could help me with.
Because I've been always the only developer, always under time pressure with deadlines and some laziness, I've done some bad things: I wrote code which was partial very, very bad written. A documentation don't even existent (only in my memory).
So my questions are:
Do people even want an open source project which is partial bad written and not documented ?
Over time I gained more coding skills, but that code didn't take much advantage of it. Should I make code public which could put my coding skills in a bad light ?
How could companies react if they bought something that become open source, can they sue me for that ?
If the code is changed at some points, it could break some patents, am I responsible for the code ?
What license (gpl3?) would be the best if I still want to earn some bucks if a company decides to sell or make money with code and where can I publish the code with that license? <comment><USER2> "How could companies react if they bought something that become open source, can they sue me for that?"

This one's killer, but we can't answer it at all, because it would significantly depend on the terms of your contracts and how they might be interpreted in real courts, in the relevant jurisdictions.

I think your other questions are unimportant next to that one.</comment>


Anything is possible if you pay the price (motivational) - <AUTHOR> https://getpocket.com/a/read/1306295532 <comment><USER2> Can't view page without logging in.</comment>


Ask HN: Any mobile site coming? - <AUTHOR>

Any plans? Wish I could read HN on mobile. <comment><USER2> I read HN on mobile a lot & never really had any big issues...

There are some HN apps in the app store if that helps?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will try them. Do you have any specific suggestion that you find good?</comment></comment>


BBC gives children mini-computers in Make it Digital scheme - <AUTHOR> http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31834927

<comment><USER3> Wow. Surprised at the negativity here :( The BBC is giving every kid in the UK a free hackable computer. And we're moaning about the unit production cost or its comparison to Raspberry Pi? Perhaps the backstory of the BBC and its previous role in computing isn't captured here...

Like many other now 30 year olds in the UK, I grew up hacking games on a BBC Micro my school had, my family couldn't afford a decent machine at home so it was my only introduction to computers. And before the BBC Micro, most schools couldn't afford a set of computers either. It allowed us to learn to code in the lunch breaks, after school. It seriously drove many UK kids to code and now having a happy career in computing.

Now kids will get a similar, even more personal introduction to computing in an age of tap-and-swipe computing.

I for one applaud the decision!

<comment><USER4> Got to do something to win public appeal I guess (as for those reading outside the UK the BBC is publicly funded and it is a criminal not civil offence not to pay TV license [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Uni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom)), this isn't an area the BBC should be spending.

How about we skip the BBC, let schools purchase Raspberry Pi's as they desire and claim directly from a government fund (this I would certainly support)

If its anything like their contract IT spending they probably paid more than market rate too...

<comment><USER5> "How about we skip the BBC"

But that would imply the funds come from the Treasury from general taxation/borrowing - which seems unlikely in this age of austerity.

The BBC arguably has a lot more freedom to do this kind of thing given its main revenue source is its own hypothecated tax in the form of the license fee.

Good on them I say - at least they are doing _something_ interesting rather than the usual nonsense we hear about education directly from politicians.

<comment><USER6> While I generally support the BBC, the TV license is the most regressive of UK taxes^ and people are jailed for non-payment of comparatively very small amounts.

^(The "bedroom tax" is much worse in impact but not technically a tax)

<comment><USER5> I agree that the collection of the license fee is often heavy handed - <USER2> wasn't that outsourced a while back?

<comment><USER6> It's outsourced to Capita, yes. If anything that makes it slightly more objectionable. Outsourcing is not a way of avoiding your moral responsibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I got so excited just looking at the picture.

Programming really just boils down to loops, ifs and subroutines. The tricky bit isn't explaining how to construct programs, it's the individual making the leap and working out how to compose it to create new functionality, express abstract concepts etc. Everyone can get the mechanical first bit, not everyone can makes the leap, but it's a great idea to get every young person to at least try.

What's needed is the simplest possible platform that allows the expression and execution of programs, coupled with simple and compelling input and output (everyone loves LEDs). No distractions.

I started programming on a BBC Micro as a child. You got a BASIC command line by default and a simple text and graphics screen. Nothing else to distract you. Nothing to break, and zero barrier to entry, so you could experiment without fear. I think it was the ideal environment to learn on, and I honestly think that they should still make machines like that.

I think was only co-incidence that state-of-the-art was also just-right-for- children (and also sufficiently extensible to to more interesting things), and that's what made the 80s/90s a bit of a golden age (at least in the UK).

I'm not sure what I'd do if I had to teach programming to an eight-year-old child today. Probably a LISP / Clojure REPL (and have to deal with the child being teased in the playground for not having mutable state). I've heard people say "everyone has web browser with JavaScript" but that's already too many moving parts and too much to think about when you just want to talk about if statements without distractions.

This MicroBit looks absolutely ideal. It's also kind of shaped like an owl, which is a brilliant echo of the BBC Micro logo.

<comment><USER8> I was aiming for kitten and ended up with Owl. One of the earlier iterations was slightly more kitteny. :)

<comment><USER7> I think the technical name is 'meowl'[0].

[0] [http://www.reddit.com/r/OwlsWithCatHeads/](http://www.reddit.com/r/OwlsWithCatHeads/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Details of the "Micro Bit" machine: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/makeitdigital/mi...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/makeitdigital/micro- bit) Interesting that it has a built-in display (array of LEDs) and is specifically 'wearable'.

A lot of people will say "Why isn't this a RaspberryPi?", but I think you only have to stop and imagine the power of getting an 11 year old to build a wearable device that scrolls their name or shows a symbol they chose (smiling face, for example) to realize how much that could spark imagination and curiosity.

I own multiple RaspberryPis and have actually used Scratch on one. It's nice but it takes a hell of a lot of set up and the programming environment is restrictive.

The LEDs on this device will be what makes it fly because anyone can suddenly think "Now, what could I make those little lights do". You don't get the same effect with a Pi.

The pictures I've seen show the CPU as an ATMEL Mega32U4: [http://www.atmel.com/devices/atmega32u4.aspx](http://www.atmel.com/devices/atmega32u4.aspx)

<comment><USER10> I am not sure why they compare it to the RPi it looks like a microcontroller board not a small general purpose computer. I feel like Arduino is already doing very well in this space but the LED array is a nice feature.

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately despite their best efforts, the BBC are not necessary as clued up as they could be on the tech reporting front. They likely compare it to an RPi because they look vaguely similar from a distance, if you're short sighted.

<comment><USER12> They don't make any comparisons anywhere in the linked article. The only mention of the RPi is in the context of connectivity with other devices:

> And the Micro Bit can even connect and communicate with these other devices, > including Arduino, Galileo, Kano and Raspberry Pi, as well as other Micro > Bits

In fairness this is really just a press release, not a news item. The tone and technical content of the release suggests quite probably that it is not written by one of their technology hacks (and by that I mean journalists such as Rory Cellan-Jones). Rather it's a management level tech summary or proposal packaged up for PR use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A second there I read it as "BBC gives children minicomputers" and I imagined a PDP-11 surrounded by school children.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/8008.shtml](http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/8008.shtml)

(Not a minicomputer, it seems to take up half a building, but this will definitely satisfy you :)

One of my favorite bits of video ever. I'd love to know what some of those kids got up to in later life.

EDIT: I forgot how great this is. One of the boys wrote his own interpreter!

oh, and their debug routine...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wonder what the unit production cost is and how it compares to a bulk order of Arduino - strikes me that they could have fit the thing in to an existing ecosystem and reduced the support cost. Moreover what't the project cost and expected uptake, and impact, versus something like making n x 10^5 RPi's available to school kids who want them.

Hopefully will be able to pick some of these up to use with my own (younger) kids despite them saying they're not going to make them further available.

 _Der Blinken lights_ though, who would not want one!

>BBC Learning's Gareth Stockdale, who is developing the device, said: "The BBC's role is to bring focus to the issue, and then we will withdraw from the market."

>After the first million Micro Bits go out to schools there will be no more. //

Doesn't sound like the way to build a learning platform to me.

>"With a dedicated season of programming on the BBC, 5,000 digital trainees, one million children who take their first steps with a Micro Bit, and a host of educational activity, we hope to inspire a new generation to get creative with digital," said Jessica Cecil, controller of Make it Digital. //

You can lead a horse to water, as the aphorism goes. One million "Micro Bits" given out doesn't mean the same number of kids will use them unless. Even if they're introduced in to school curricula then you're not going to have a 100% take-up.

<comment><USER6> _After the first million Micro Bits go out to schools there will be no more_

Aargh. That pretty much guarantees it's a platform that's sinking from day 1. Unless they're smart enough to open source the whole thing so they can be freely cloned. It's as if they learned nothing from the Domesday Book (brilliant tech dead-end of the 80s).

<comment><USER16> Yes, it's not a good sign. I guess it's to keep licence fee payers from moaning about paying for it all.

If they could open source it then it could live post Beeb.

<comment><USER17> Dont worry the chineses will reverse engineer and clone it in about 20 seconds, and cheap copies will be everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As much as I like and support the Pi, this is a much simpler device and will be potentially more understandable. Modern OS's add too much abstraction to what is essentially quite a simple device.

I personally learned (in the 80's) on a similar microcontroller-sized machine (z80 & 6502) at a younger age than this is aimed at and reaped the benefits...

Hopefully ARM based rather than AVR, but if not, its still the right approach IMO.

<comment><USER19> > Hopefully ARM based rather than AVR

ARM, Freescale and Nordic Semiconductor are partners of the project. While the chip in the photo appears to be Atmel (my eyesight may be failing me here), the material seems to suggest that the design is still being worked out, so an ARM device seems likely.

<comment><USER18> I would agree... it looked to me like something similar to an STM32F103.

Fingers crossed.

As much good as Arduino has done for the Maker community, the AVR architecture is outdated.

<comment><USER20> The prototype is clearly an ATmega32U4. The Atmel logo is clear, you can just about make out the part number, and it only has 44 pins.

While the Arduino did great things, I don't really see much point in continuing with 8-bit MCUs as hobbyist platforms. ST's Nucleo boards, for example, are far more powerful and very cheap at only $10. They also support the mbed platform with its online compiler, which makes it pretty easy to get started with. There's still a lot of room for improvement in the software, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I may be wrong, but this looks more like an Arduino than a Pi.

Plug it into your computer, write your code on your computer and then push it out to the micro bit, to control the onboard LEDs.

Still, I'll look forward to having a play around with these with my Year 7s in September.

<comment><USER22> It does. The Pi comparison more likely comes from the Raspberry Pi Foundation being an UK-based educational nonprofit with the mission of making computer education more accessible. Sounds like the BBC has a similar goal here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The BBC is also launching a season of coding-based programmes and activities. It will include a new drama based on Grand Theft Auto and a documentary on Bletchley Park._

How does a 'drama based on GTA' help at all?

<comment><USER23> Maybe it's a drama based on the making of GTA, rather than the game itself? Rockstar North is in Scotland after all. Is there an interesting story behind it?

<comment><USER24> There's a book by David Kushner called Jacked[0] about GTA's development. He's also the author of Masters of Doom[1].

[0] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0007434855](http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0007434855)

[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0749924896](http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0749924896)

<comment><USER23> Seems I was right. It is a drama about the making of GTA. [http://www.develop- online.net/news/90-minute-grand-theft-aut...](http://www.develop- online.net/news/90-minute-grand-theft-auto-drama-coming-to-bbc-two/0204263)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article failed to give any attention to what kind of software and hardware the computer will run. While I think that it is important to focus on other aspects, and us techies often focus too much on the technical, this lack of attention to the choice of software platforms is worrying to me. I hope that these children will be exposed to a standard set of tools or an open platform, rather than being lead into a proprietary platform where their skills will be reliant on the grace of a single corporation.

Think of all the children who today learn Microsoft Office. They have been trained, not to be users of computers, but to be customers of a single platform.

<comment><USER10> >Think of all the children who today learn Microsoft Office. They have been trained, not to be users of computers, but to be customers of a single platform.

They are trained to be customers of a single platform that many jobs (all of the ads I looked at recently) specifically require skills in. I am a big open source fan, but until businesses start asking for people proficient in _any office suite_ then I recommend schools stick with MS Office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting device, but as one who had a BBC Micro (and still has it), the Micro enabled you to get programming on it straight away; this does not. You need another machine. Plus, flashing LEDs is not quite the same as the User Port or mode 7 graphics output...

I was saddened to see the plans for a drama based on Grand Theft Auto as being part of it though - surely a drama based on beating people up, stealing cars and shooting people isn't a great thing to be promoting to youngsters? Who thinks these things up? Are they going to be showing this to 11 year olds too? A great future generation we'll have to look forward to then!

</comment><comment><USER16> I was rather excited thinking this was going to be an old BBC Micro in a new tiny form factor. Sadly, looks like I am wrong. Anyone else like a BBC Micro in a credit card sized package? Do they already exist?

<comment><USER27> Buy a RPi and install beebem ( [http://beebem- unix.bbcmicro.com/](http://beebem-unix.bbcmicro.com/) ) or advmess ( [http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=23113](http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=23113) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We played around with what I believe was a prototype version of this at the BBC stall at last summer's Edinburgh festival. The kid loved it.

This is of course nothing like the RPi. You board has a grid of LEDs that you can control by uploading a program which you write on a regular PC. When we tried it, we were coding in a Scratch like environment.

</comment><comment><USER29> While I'm excited for these kids, the title does not deliver. There is a distinct lack of minicomputers:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer)

I was totally expecting something more like the video where they take kids born in 2000 and show them a VCR.

</comment><comment><USER30> I love this idea. One of the hardest parts of teaching kids to lean coding is giving them a reason to do it. With the led's and bluetooth there will be plenty of fun projects to do. I've been helping out at our local code club and would love to get my hands on a box of these.

</comment><comment><USER31> Any idea of the power source for this beastie ? It's not very 'wearable' if I have to plug it into a computer (via) USB to power it....

<comment><USER8> Prototype uses a 2032 battery (as seen in some photos) and can run the display continuously for several days. If you run it more realistically with the device going to sleep you gain alot more run time.. When taken to production, battery life is very much a consideration. Worth bearing in mind that the version being shown is a prototype, and the partners involved have a lot of experience in low power computing.

</comment></comment><comment> Slippin-Jimmy Minicomputers? Great. What are they on, PDP-11? VAX?

</comment><comment><USER32> Why are these not Pis? Anyone know?

<comment><USER33> I think something like this would be better than a Pi to get people into electronics, as theres no OS to concern yourself with.

If you want to make a small electronic gadget, something like a microcontroller makes more sense, as it'd be _much_ lower power than a Pi.

And additionally you could generate more accurate timing signals for things like VGA etc, than with a Pi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I look forward to buying mine on eBay, at a slightly-inflated price.

</comment><comment><USER35> A drama based on Grand Theft Auto? Aimed at 11 year olds? Umm...

<comment><USER36> It's a drama based on the production of GTA, not the game. Likely because it's made by Rockstar North who are based in the UK. It's either them or Codemasters who have become a bit of a sweatshop from what I've heard from ex- employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe this is cool for some and not so cool for others, but it bugs me that they are calling them "coding devices". Feels somewhat degrading to encapsulating software engineering and development into "coding".

<comment><USER20> Why is it degrading?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best iOS resource for non-iOS-developers? - <AUTHOR>

What are the best resources for an experienced programmer looking to pick up up ObjC and iOS? I'm specifically <i>not</i> looking for 'in-24-hours' or 'without-writing-a-line-of-code' type things, nor screen casts or video lessons. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I learnt a lot from the Stanford online courses on ITunes U. Granted they are video lessons, but you can also grab all the lecture notes and sample code from this link:

[http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi- bin/drupal/download...](http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi- bin/drupal/downloads-2011-fall)

Other than that I just googled the hell out of things, Stack Overflow was, as always, a valuable resource. Chances are that whatever you're trying to do, particularly when learning, somebody else has already done.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kochan's "Programming in Objective-C" is decent [http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Objective-C-Edition- Develo...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Objective-C-Edition-Developers- ebook/dp/B006GFZ288/) and I'm a big fan of Erica Sadun's "iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook" [http://www.amazon.com/The-iOS-Developers-Cookbook- ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/The-iOS-Developers-Cookbook- ebook/dp/B007CAXLA2/).

If you've never programmed in C, you may want to seek out a good C tutorial. You can get pretty far in iOS working only with Objective-C objects, but plenty of C-isms leak through so it helps to be familiar with pointers, structs, functions and memory management.

Objective-C isn't too hard to get up to speed with, especially if you've ever worked in both C and a dynamic language like Python or Ruby. Wrapping your head around Cocoa Touch is a little more daunting, but Sadun's book does a good job of building up the basics step by step, then providing chapters on specific frameworks you can page-fault in as needed.

Apple recently added "Start Developing iOS Apps Today" [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#referencelibrary/Ge...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#referencelibrary/GettingStarted/RoadMapiOS/Introduction/Introduction.html) which is probably worth taking a look for a beginner.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.bignerdranch.com/books>

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems to come up a lot lately. See my answer here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4050665></comment>


From Unix sysadmin to brutal separatist suppressor to president of Sri Lanka - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/18/ex_unix_sysadmin_elected_president_sri_lanka/ <comment><USER2> "Gotabaya Rajapaksa, younger brother of former president Mahindra"

humble sysadm, lol

</comment><comment><USER3> "tamil tiger terrorists" the article says. I dont believe I am a terrorist at all :(

for everyone who wants to learn about the chilling end of the first civil war:

channel4 documentary [https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtIXCzway-dZzi7Hf- jzAwMGPVQg?e=XYipjW](https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtIXCzway-dZzi7Hf- jzAwMGPVQg?e=XYipjW)

<comment><USER4> The group that invented suicide bombings aren't terrorists?

Please don't try to spread misinformation.

<comment><USER3> I suspect this can turn out to a heated politics discussion so this is my final post about this:

we never threw people off buildings. we never stoned people to death. we never drowned people in cages or beheaded.

We fought with uniforms, we tried to follow the geneva convention as much as we could being a seperatist group. we had the support of the people, in fact, we were the people. Much like the kurds in Syria/Iraq.

obviously there were collateral damage and there were some nasty incidences. Even the US with the technical capability and all the surveillence technology cannot avoid collateral damage, bombing of red cross hospital or abuses of Abu Ghiraib.

The fight for independence is not over for us.

<comment><USER5> Keyword here being _we_. Why can't people live in harmony and instead _fight_ for a separatist nation inside a tiny little island?

<comment><USER6> Why we cannot have two drivers in one truck, who will drive in harmony? Truck is tiny, so it should be easy, right?

As we know, we can have two or more drivers in truck, but only if 1) driving wheel is still single, 2) drivers are swapping each other at regular intervals, 3) they all share the goal, a final destination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After "ReiserFS kills your wife", here comes "administering Solaris kills Tamils".

<comment><USER8> It's every BOFH's dream come true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a tone-deaf article. "Isn't it funny that this murderous national leader once ran Unix? ha ha"

</comment><comment><USER10> $CITIZEN is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported to the secret police.

</comment><comment><USER11> (I know the civil war was terrible, and there was a lot of pain and suffering. I do not want to make light of what happened in any way.)

My first question was: I wonder if, when people don't listen to him fast enough, he tags on "sudo" before a command.

"I want a report on the economy asap."

"Well, that might take some time. We have to do a field study..."

"Sudo I want a report on the economy"

"Okay, we are on it."

<comment><USER12> Incidentally, Sudo is an actual name on Sri Lanka. I have a friend who was teaching me surfing in Unawatuna, and his name is Sudo.

<comment><USER13> If he has any sense of humor at all (which I doubt) he'll hire a personal assistant called Sudo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> ah, so there is a good career ladder for us IT folks :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only old fart around here who immediately thought of the old BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell) series?

<comment><USER16> I don't think the BOFH is the kind of person to jump in the spotlight like this. He prefer to let others to take the lead and the blame. Or even make them take the blame to anything that had gone wrong. Or blackmail them (and publish everything once they've caved). Or make them disappear from the company's systems. Or submit an expense form for a roll of carpet, a shovel and some quicklime. Or lock them in the lift during a bank holiday.

Incidentally, the BOFH episodes are published on the register.</comment></comment>


Serious safety lapses led to Uber's fatal self-driving crash, new docs suggest - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20951385/uber-self-driving-crash-death-reason-ntsb-dcouments <comment><USER2> There is some serious issue in the programming if it has ~5.6 seconds and only decides ~1.8 seconds before to stop.</comment>


Reward-Seeking Might Make You An Entrepreneur, Or a Psychopath? - <AUTHOR> http://www.vitabeat.com/7200/psychopaths-brains-may-focus-solely-reward

<comment><USER2> One could argue that there is some overlap there, considering the stunts some businesses pull to make a buck... =/</comment>


How to Make Sure Your Idea Doesn't Suck Before You Waste a Million Dollars on It - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@danaspiegel/how-to-make-sure-your-idea-doesnt-suck-before-you-waste-a-million-dollars-on-it-b8eb93266a3a <comment><USER2> Interesting read, it contains some good stories that I didn't know before.

"Remember a few years ago when Netflix thought it would be a good idea to change the name of movie-by-mail division to Qwikster? It was a move criticized by Mashable as perhaps the worst product launch since New Coke. More than 23,000 people commented on a blog post by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announcing the change, and most of those comments were ruthless in their criticism. After massive backlash, Netflix decided to abandon the changes."

<comment><USER3> 23,000 comments at that time is huge, wondering what was the product? i live outside the states and never tried Netflix, so i don't understand "Qwikster".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The current startup ecosystem and culture promote move fast and break things, and while doing so you won't be able to see the big picture and you most likely required to burn more than few millions to have an understanding of the market and the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you know if your idea sucks?</comment>


Python profile, cProfile, and pstats – Explained step by step - <AUTHOR> http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/profile/ <comment><USER2> cProfile is awesome, but profiling is only good as its visualization. At IMVU we wrote a tiny but extremely useful web-based pstats viewer: [http://imvu.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/imvu/imvu_open_source...](http://imvu.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/imvu/imvu_open_source/tools/pstats_viewer.py?revision=2&content- type=text/plain)

You can sort by inclusive time, exclusive time, drill into call graphs, etc.</comment>


How Purism Works Upstream and Gives Back - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/how-purism-works-upstream-and-gives-back/ <comment><USER2> It's great they're being open about their efforts, and I am very excited about my preorder.

However I have to say it feels odd that their chat app is a rebranded Matrix, and that much of the software offering seems to be the same. Why not just use the original?

I don't mean to be dogmatic. After all, it's open source, do what you want with it. But it seems superfluous and confusing.</comment>


A visualization of the world's population - <AUTHOR> http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/population/world/seven-billion-plus/

<comment><USER2> Cool. Colour code based on countries?</comment>


Myanmar was off the grid for decades, is catching up fast - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/myanmar-internet-revolution-startups <comment><USER2> I've run a tech startup in Myanmar for 3 years, and it's true. Facebook is literally synonymous with Internet for many users, and the web gets a lot less use.

Most of the cell towers and infrastructure has been built in 2 years - it's been incredibly fast. Once the telco licenses were awarded, the two telcos (Ooredoo and Telenor) didn't waste any time revving up ops.

Together with Android devices falling rapidly in price, it has been a complete transformation in connectivity.

There are some really positive outcomes, like a group of CS students in Yangon being able to follow Harvard CS MOOC's, and a lot of people working as devs being able to learn from stackoverflow etc. Internet connectivity will empower people to educate themselves but it will take some time.

In terms of commercial opportunities for tech companies, I'm not sure they exist in the scale the article depicts. There are between 50 and 60 million people, but most of the population live in the countryside, with very little spending power. The total market size for internet connected people with some (not very much) spending power is probably around 10 million.

The main challenges are with governance, and physical infrastructure, which are decades behind where they need to be for a functional country, and these are things internet connectivity unfortunately can't fix.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks sharing. what are some opportunities u see there?

<comment><USER2> Happy to have a conversation - ping me at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the headline does a poor job of capturing the content of the article. The real story here is summed up by the graph that shows Myanmar's cell phone penetration going from 12.8% to 60.7% in the span of _two years_. That's just insane, even taking into account how fast cell phones have spread in other countries.

Of course, Facebook is well positioned to take advantage of this, given that it is well adapted to mobile. But so are others, and there's no reason to think that Facebook's monopoly will be permanent. Facebook has the advantage of being the first entrant in an entirely new market, and they have the branding muscle and name recognition to enforce a temporary monopoly. Long term, though (as the article itself acknowledges by pointing to the prevalence of Viber), there is no reason to believe that Facebook's will have a sustainable monopoly over Burmese cell phone users. If something else comes along that handles the use cases that Facebook does, but even better, then people will switch to that.

<comment><USER4> I am a Burmese(Myanmar) guy living in the country. I could say that majority of the people use Facebook when they use the Internet. One of the thing that has been bothering me is that Facebook is cooperating with one of the local telco (Telenor) and did a program called Facebook zero[0] where the users of the aforementioned telco can use the Facebook freely. It is good and bad, I would say. Users would love it, no doubt but I don't want to see that Facebook is dominating the market and there won't be any other advantages to others, even to local startups.

[0] : [https://www.telenor.com.mm/pages/facebook- zero/164](https://www.telenor.com.mm/pages/facebook-zero/164)

<comment><USER5> Yes. Facebook has been trying to get telcos to foist this on us Indians as well. It has kinda blown up into a big debate about net neutrality in the country. Here is the latest hn article on it : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10931750)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just got back from 2 weeks in Myanmar and it's a fascinating country.

I was very surprised that many of the Buddhist monks you see walking around carry smart-phones and tablets! It threw me for a loop when I saw a monk inside a pagoda playing Candy Crush on his iPad.

Edit: one of the monks on his iPad [http://s11.postimg.org/y473yqjk3/12486068_10205302771587155_...](http://s11.postimg.org/y473yqjk3/12486068_10205302771587155_4597910328568174882_o.jpg)

<comment><USER7> Do you happen to have an itinerary you could share? I have been planning to visit for a while.

<comment><USER6> Here's what I did: Flew into Yangon via Bangkok and got my bearings. Then I took an overnight bus (~11 hours I believe) to Bagan and stayed there motor biking around the temples for a few days. From there I took day-bus to Inle Lake (~8 hours). If I would have had more time I would have stopped at Kalau to do the popular 3-day trek to Inle Lake instead. I stayed there for a couple of days (boat rides, bike rides, enjoying the scenery). And then from there I went to Mandalay (not much to see in the town proper but lots of good day trips). And flew back to Bangkok from Mandalay.

It's more expensive than a lot of the rest of Southeast Asia but I still managed on less than $50/day (staying in hostel dorms).

<comment><USER7> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Related discussion from a couple months ago: Millions of Facebook users have no idea they're using the Internet. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9995043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9995043)

</comment><comment><USER9> "Worryingly for digital publishers, there's a trend towards 'Facebook prosecutions' – several people have been jailed in the past few months over what they have allegedly posted, or even shared, on the site."

Doesn't that just mean it's becoming like every other country? Even America has those. Perhaps the internet is bound to end up controlled by laws just like the real world.

<comment><USER10> I regularly (once a month or more) deal with substitutional service orders in the Master's chambers. I have had Kik, Facebook, Snapchat, and even XMPP used as sufficient service.

All you have to do is prove you failed at attempts to contact via traditional methods, which isn't too hard.

My take on the internet is that it is an invention of DARPA, a military organization. That makes everything you say/do on it public, even if (temporarily) obfuscated by encryption schemes. Don't like it? roll your own BATMAN mesh network. Otherwise, sit up straight when you're being watched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My wife is in Myanmar at the moment, in a place called Taunggyi, she was there a few years ago too and it is amazing the change. Now she can reliably Facetime from there to the east coast of the US, whereas a few years ago she couldn't even get internet!

<comment><USER4> Taunggyi is a lovely place and it's one of the cleanest (and large) city in the country. There are a small town near Taunggyi called 'Kalaw' and it's be great if she could spend sometime there too. It's such a nice weather right now, too.

The change is very quick as you mentioned. The SIM cards became so cheap and the speed became much faster than before. So, even to local people like us, it's amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We changed the title from "In Myanmar, Facebook is the internet" to that of the article.

Submitters: please follow the HN guidelines, which ask you to use the original title except when it is misleading or linkbait.</comment>


Ask HN: What is a simple product that you would pay a monthly subscription for? - <AUTHOR> I am planning on creating a new online business for a simple product which people would pay money for. Would love to hear your thoughts. I have a few ideas:
1. A simple service which notifies you about tips through various channels (slack, email, telegram). It rotates through a list of your tips that you've created. These could be programming tips, quotes etc,.
2. A service which sends you a kindle document containing all your pocket links every week.
3. A service which converts an open source code repository into a readable ebook which can be read on a Kindle like device.
4. A service that allows you to create a private website and share it with only a few users (authentication via email).
5. A simple blogging engine driven by a Dropbox folder and Markdown. <comment><USER2> A service that tells me what profitable product I should build.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a bit recursive :) Now that I think about it, there are many websites where users post their ideas. I should probably check them out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A news curator that learns what news and articles make me happy, productive, and wealthy, maybe allows me to select certain websites (e.g. HN, NPR) as preferred sources, and then sends me a separate email per news story/article. I can rate whether the news story/article was worthwhile or not and the system learns and improves.

<comment><AUTHOR> That seems like a really nice idea. There is already a curated newsletter which sends you a bunch of good links from HN [http://www.hackernewsletter.com/](http://www.hackernewsletter.com/). However, you are probably thinking of something more personal which learns things every day. Thanks for sharing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1 - I don't think I'd use.

2 - Instapaper has offered Kindle bundling for a long time.

3 - This sounds interesting. I'd like to hear more.

4 - I don't have a use case for it today.

5 - I think this kind of thing has been done for a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback.

For 3, I really think we as developers don't spend as much time reading source code of others as we should be. So, this solves 2 problems:

1\. Give repo creators ability to define the order in which people should read source code using a simple manifest which just lists the source files in an order. We can also default to an order based on the framework/language. E.g. Rails apps have a structure vs Elixir apps which have their own structure.

2\. Build an epub/mobi/pdf which can be sent to Kindle or to any other device where the user can browse through the code at their own pace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Succinct analysis of upcoming ICOs that conveys the team/credentials, viability of the product in question, with some kind of grade that summarizes all the above

<comment><USER6> There are already a handful of sites which aim to analyse and grade ICO's.

They can be good for gathering information quickly, but the issue's in the confidence for the site itself. Nothing beats your own research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> TBH none of the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those were just some ideas that I had, do you have any idea/product that you'd pay for which is not currently available in the market?

<comment><USER7> Yes many. IMO it's not really important if it's already available. "How" is more important than "What".</comment></comment></comment>


Slowing Down a Stock Exchange with 38 Miles of Cable - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8BcCLLX4N4 <comment><AUTHOR> Related paper:

Edwin Wu. "Intentional Access Delays, Market Quality, and Price Discovery: Evidence from IEX Becoming an Exchange." SEC. Feb. 7, 2018. [https://www.sec.gov/files/07feb18_hu_iex_becoming_an_exchang...](https://www.sec.gov/files/07feb18_hu_iex_becoming_an_exchange.pdf)</comment>