T-Mobile will pay a $48M fine for throttling 'unlimited data' plans - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13330158/t-mobile-unlimited-data-settlement-fine-discount-free-data <comment><USER2> Here's the thing, I would much rather have reasonable throttling with unlimited data, then either $10.00 per GB, or worse yet, multiple times that as an overage penalty. Especially with a family plan when the non-bill-payers on the plan don't understand overage fees.

So the way I understood it (at least under the plan that I signed up for before "binge-on" was added), T-Mobile would charge $20 (on top of the regular voice/text plan) for 'unlimited' data. Then, after something like 25GB, they would prioritize data from users that were under that limit if there was congestion. So to me that is entirely reasonable in light of the fact that radio waves have physical limits on how many people can consume high bandwidth at the same time.

Of course, it would be nice if they spelled out all of this in their advertising and product literature (and if this was still the case with their current plans).

<comment><USER3> > Of course, it would be nice if they spelled out all of this in their > advertising and product literature (and if this was still the case with > their current plans).

Which is ultimately the problem here. They didn't spell this out or make explicit this practice.

I agree with you, it makes sense, and I find it acceptable...but they definitely should have made it obvious and well documented.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. As an unlimited customer who has used, at times, upwards of 60GB / month this was never made clear and their representatives have absolutely lied about. When I signed up I was skeptical as any so I spent a good bit of time grilling them, and this was never mentioned anywhere. I've never heard of it in any advertisement nor seen any disclaimer. I've received no warning about their activity. I switched over about four years ago and have been wholeheartedly recommending it as a good carrier, but things like this severely diminish T-Mobile's luster in my mind.

<comment><USER5> They now have _On all plans, during congestion the top 3% of data users ( >26GB/mo.) may notice reduced speeds until next bill cycle. Video typically streams on smartphone/tablet at DVD quality (480p). Tethering at Max 3G speeds._ in the small print.

I wish they would just not say "Unlimited" if there is going to be a disclaimer, but the current situation is at least fairly clear.

<comment><USER6> _I wish they would just not say "Unlimited" if there is going to be a disclaimer, but the current situation is at least fairly clear._

Marketing and sales is the root of all evil.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that 'unlimited' in the case of data/telecom services should be a controlled and regulated word, much like 'organic' and 'natural' are in food.

<comment><USER7> I believe it already is regulated.

You can't falsely advertise.

The only reason that "natural" and "organic" are regulated terms is because they are nebulous. But "unlimited data" is not nebulous, it's clear cut.

IANAL

<comment><USER5> There's obvious limits.

1 month multiplied by the maximum speed of the technology, the actual capacity of the network, the fact that they throttle heavy users, etc.

<comment><USER8> Then you don't use the word.

<comment><USER9> Which word do you use? "The Data Plan Limited By Maximum Speeds, Current Network Capacity, and Amount of Time in a Given Month" doesn't fit on the pamphlet. Do we really need to go full lawyer on everything? I think people understand that "Unlimited Data" doesn't mean infinite speed.

<comment><USER5> Given the disclaimer I posted, you could advertise "25 GB of high speed"...

And if such a small number hurts them in the feels, they could make their network better so that they could say a bigger number.

<comment><USER9> But more like 25 GB of equal QoS prioritization with other customers which may or may not be high speed, followed by reduced QoS prioritization in relation to other customers which still may be high speed but less likely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's bullshit that they can offer consumers an option to buy accessories at a discount (which they probably still make a profit on) as a reparation for this.

I want direct monetary compensation.

<comment><USER11> > It's bullshit that they can offer consumers an option to buy accessories at > a discount (which they probably still make a profit on) as a reparation for > this.

If this were a class action, would the lawyers accept getting paid a truckload of iPhone 7 cases?

<comment><USER12> No they would negotiate all parties included in the class action suit get iPhone cases and T-mobile is responsible for paying all legal fees for attorney representation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a little saddened to see the direction T-Mobile is headed with their plans. When I switched to Project Fi last year my T-Mobile unlimited plan was $70/mo. That included actual HD video, and LTE tethering.

Now the equivalent plan (T-Mobile One+) is $90/mo, and that just gets you "unlimited HD day passes" which you have to remember to toggle every day if you want video that isn't 480p.

What's even scarier to me is that they're not alone. Sprint has opted for a nearly identical pricing structure w/ "Unlimited Freedom" and "Unlimited Freedom Premium." As an aside: the idea of "premium" freedom makes me giggle, I'd love to have a beer with the marketing exec that came up with that mouthful.

<comment><USER14> My inability to "script" my phone is really starting to hinder my hacker-ness.

This seems like something you could build into your phone. Every day when you first interact with your phone, have tasker or something else fire off a job that auto-enables your unlimited hd day passes.

Does anyone have good introduction documentation to either: writing scripts for tasker, or writing your own android applications when you know ZERO java?

<comment><USER15> Scripting Layer 4 Android provides a reasonable facade for a lot of APIs that are available to a ton of languages via a socket. It has out of the box support for perl and python as well as some other languages.

[1] [https://github.com/damonkohler/sl4a](https://github.com/damonkohler/sl4a)

<comment><USER16> And you can use Tasker to launch a sl4a action every day, or when you connect to a certain network, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> $48 million seems like a slap on the wrist. T-Mobile made $32 billion in revenue in 2015 and just posted $479 million in profit. I wish I could feel like these fines actually acted as a deterrent.

<comment><USER18> Comparing the fine to total revenue and total profit is completely meaningless. What's relevant is how much they were saving in infrastructure costs by throttling those users.

E.g. If they saved less than $24 million and had a >50% chance of getting caught, this works perfectly well as a deterrent no matter how large there overall profits were.

<comment><USER19> Cost is only one side of the equation. You also have to factor in the approximate value of the revenue generated by subscribers who were misled into believing that they had unlimited, unthrottled data, and who might have selected a competitor's service had the secret quota been honestly advertised.

<comment><USER20> Maybe, but the revenue has to have the price of its competitor subtracted, and the remainder weighted by the percentage of the service that they would use the 'unlimited' data for.

So if choice 1 is $70/month for 25GB and $10 for 10GB afterward, and choice 2 is $90/month for 'unlimited' with an expectation to use 45GB, then both choices are equivalent.

If the choice 2 then reduces the utility of the service by 50% past 25GB, then the customer has paid $20 for $10 of utility, and so the loss should be marked as $10.

And if you buy choice 2 because it says 'unlimited', but you only use 5GB, then you never actually lost anything due to their deceit.

I'd expect a similar calculation to hold up here: For each customer, sum up the number of throttled hours over the number of total hours to get the "throttling percentage". Also, assign each zip code a 'statistical competitor' by combining all competing services using some model. Then multiply the throttling percentage by the difference in price multiplied by the percentage of utility lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I feel the problem is that marketing terminology is ill-regulated, so companies can make "natural", "unlimited", "fresh", "home-made", "organic", "life-time", "guaranteed", "green", etc. mean whatever they want them to mean and allows enough cover that consumers assume it means one thing while to industry if means quite another or very narrow interpretation.

<comment><USER22> This is rooted in the American culture: Americans are already used to things like this. For example here if you go to a restaurant, you will usually pay 30% more than the price that is displayed (tips + taxes).

<comment><USER23> But that's an example of the opposite. Americans (and really, everyone in modern societies) might be used to assumed, hidden costs.

If we buy a thing for $10, we expect that to be a baseline, as we may pay tax or gratuity on top of that. If I go to the store and buy something for $9.99, my mental calculation is that it may actually cost $10.70 or so with tax. If I go to a restaurant and buy a $20 steak, my expectation is that will probably cost $25.

But if I go to a restaurant and order a steak and they serve me a soy burger, that will not be acceptable. An "unlimited" plan not, in fact, being unlimited is different than what you've described.

<comment><USER22> The point was that Americans are going through a false advertising fatigue. The tendency is to accept not getting what was advertised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For anyone finding this ruling confusing as I initially did: this isn't about T-Mobile unlimited plans that slow down from LTE to EDGE speeds after a certain amount of data; that was well-advertised, and not apparently at issue. This is about a different, entirely unadvertised process by T-Mobile on unlimited plans of de-prioritizing traffic entirely after a certain point (~17GB), making it appear as though the network is simply more congested for the user after they've used a large amount of data.

</comment><comment><USER25> What is the status on T-Mobile offering unlimited data usage from select sources (Binge On program)? I can stream as much (well, I guess up to 17Gb) data as I want so long as it's from their list of approved sources which allow throttling at 480 resolution. It feels absurd that this is how they operate, rather than just allowing unlimited data at say 3G speeds (rather than the throttled data rate which is at most 2G but in practice is unusable).

[http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/10/28/net.neutralit...](http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/10/28/net.neutrality.chart.jpg)

<comment><USER26> I'm really surprised this hasn't caused more of a Net Neutrality uproar, since it's essentially the worst case scenario. If you don't pay T-Mobile to be one of their approved partners, your service is punished by costing customers more money for the same amount of data.

<comment><USER27> > If you don't pay T-Mobile to be one of their approved partners [...]

Partners don't pay to be included in Binge On. Requirements to be included in Binge On: [https://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/tmo/en-g/pdf/BingeOn- Vi...](https://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/tmo/en-g/pdf/BingeOn-Video- Technical-Criteria-March-2016.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's great that the FCC does this for cell carriers, but they still are letting the data caps apply on home connections, which is going to do nothing except increase profits and decrease innovation.

<comment><USER29> This is completely false.

If you look at how businesses generally work, they're trying to get a certain amount of revenue in order to balance their budget and make a profit. Then they decide how to get it.

Data caps are _fantastic_. Because it means when they're raising their prices, they're charging the users who most use it, rather than just raising the price for everyone.

If you're being asked to pay for overage on a wired line plan, it means you're a 1%er in the Internet world. You're a burden on the system with how much you use, and you're upset you're being asked to pay a little more than everyone else.

Basically, people opposed to data caps are like Wall Street execs complaining their taxes are higher than everyone else's.

<comment><USER13> No. Data caps (and bandwidth limits to some extent) are fundamentally broken.

My water company doesn't shut off my water because I took too many long showers this month. My gas company doesn't shut the valve because I had a few extra loads of laundry to run through the dryer. My electric company doesn't kill the lights because I was working on my car and used the 220V in the garage a lot this month.

Instead they install a meter at the inlet, charge me for _exactly_ what I use (and _when_ I use it!!!) and then they can plan their capacity based around their billings. If I need more inlets (too much current at the mains breaker, not enough gas or water pressure, etc.) then they charge me a fair price for the hardware and installation and bill that new inlet in the exact same way.

It's simple, transparent, and completely controllable by me. (If I don't want to rack up a larger bill this month I just close the inlet.)

\---

Caps and overages are a _very different_ model: they are charging me _much more_ than the normal cost of service once I cross some threshold or cutting off my service. That'd be like my power company saying: "you've used more than the average 901kWH, so you're going to have to pay the industrial rate on the rest of your consumption this month."

More importantly, since private companies are running the show, we have no real insight into what average data consumption for the populace even looks like. You take it on _their word_ that the plans they market align w/ the reality of average use. We can't verify that's the case because they don't legally have to publish it.

Essentially these companies could be telling you "640k ought to be enough for anybody", and you're arguing that it's perfectly reasonable for them to say anyone using >640k is the top 3% and should be billed at a premium. That's not the sort of thinking that pushes the state of the art forward, in fact it's actively harmful and disincentivizes upgrades to the network.

Their pricing model doesn't line up with the reality of a band-limited service, and they don't give us nearly enough information to verify their claims of what constitutes an "above average" consumer of data.

\---

\- Wireline service should be billed as a metered utility.

\- Wireless service should have a fixed access fee to cover the cost of expanding the network (as well as providing E911, etc.) along with a variable access fee that is billed as a metered utility.

Anything else is borderline fraud, and I'm frankly sick of having to navigate the minefield of dishonesty that is consumer-grade ISP pricing schemes.

<comment><USER29> Carriers with caps generally don't shut off your service, they simply charge you more. So your example of the water company shutting of your water is facetious.

I definitely would prefer a more even metering method, and I think it should be granular down to the megabyte. But data caps are a move in that direction, a very positive move from where we were in the unlimited-but-not-net-neutral past.

Generally speaking, you are not getting charged for "much more" than the normal cost of service, if you have picked a good level for your data plan. Should be just over your usual usage, you might occasionally get an overage once or twice, but it should round out to be cheaper than having picked a higher tier every month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I ..... thought T-Mobile's policy was generally well known? Especially in the face of a few years ago, At&t hitting up folks for astronomical bills when iPhones were new, and folks were blasting past their data limits? I've had data with them since they were VoiceStream, and knew what each data plan offered.

Anyone who asked, I told them that T-Mobile's policy was _WAY_ more consumer friendly than the other carriers, especially for someone who absolutely needs a data connection (and doesn't wander outside their relatively weak coverage)

What if the FCC mandated some kind of 'nutrition label' for ISP plans, that specified the technical points of their service offering? Spell out limits, min/max latency, best-effort/guaranteed, fair/shaped and what happens when limits are exceeded? Wouldn't be clearly in their realm of power to regulate how the these plans are marketed, rather than let the ISP's confuses folks with ambiguous language?

<comment><USER31> It is _now_ , because of this suit. The throttling itself is not the issue- as other people are pointing out, it's arguably preferable to overage charges or bandwidth caps- it's the fact that T-Mobile wasn't making this clear to customers.

<comment><USER32> It's also arguably preferable to cutting off a finger!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I see the word "unlimited" on a lot of hosting providers. Give me access to the dd command and we'll see how long that theory lasts.

I honestly find it, always and everywhere, to be deceptive marketing. There is no such thing as unlimited resources.

<comment><USER34> Yes, but there is such a thing as not placing a limit on the usage of a resource. I don't see it as deceptive if that's actually what they're doing. Sometimes "unlimited" is just a marketing term, other times it seems like a genuine statement of intent from the provider. Obviously I could be a dick and try to prove them wrong, but why?

<comment><USER33> Because you can't capacity plan when your provider says "unlimited" and then there is actually a limit, except because they don't tell you what it is, you don't know what it is until you hit it.

I understand that the word unlimited makes people feel good, but it shouldn't. Nothing is unlimited, ever. Just because they're not telling you what it is doesn't mean it isn't there.

Unmetered bandwidth that is capped at a gigabit or is physically incapable of going faster is not unlimited either. It's been throttled to only allow you to download a certain amount each month. It is also not unlimited, unless you consider a throttle to not be a limit.

Most cable modems, by the way, can go 3-5 times faster without the artificial throttles put on them by the providers. So even before Comcast started doing their stupid 1TB cap, they were already throttling your internet connection way below the possible speeds of the device.

<comment><USER35> That artificial throttle is not so artificial; they are charging you a lower amount because you are using less resources. The "last mile" is almost always bandwidth constrained, if you use less, then you pay less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> When the government sues for stuff like that, where does the money go? I mean, it's a punishment to have to pay, sure, but why does the government get the money? Shouldn't the people being screwed be the ones getting that?

<comment><USER37> > T-Mobile will pay for those benefits through a $35.5 million consumer > benefit program, with an additional $7.5 million paid directly to the US > Treasury and $5 million in services and equipment provided to American > schools.

<comment><USER36> Thanks. Glad to read that, but even 7.5 mil to the government seems like a conflict of interest.

<comment><USER38> Not much different from traffic citations, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Instead of paying fines they should refund their customers for things like that.

</comment><comment><USER40> Which was known to people a couple years ago. Also for at least the last couple years their plans have actually said something to the effect "unlimited data, only the first X GBs at full LTE/4G data speeds". So if you didn't know this then you were probably living under a rock.

Of course, given that my wife is the one who has to deal with the kids watching neflix on her phone, when you hit the limit, the result is frequently the same as just getting cut off if you have to wait 30 seconds to load google.com or much worse for sites with a lot of content.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm still confused why the largest data plan in Germany is 5gb (with some options to top-up). And all data plans are bandwidth throttled after you use your quota. There's no unlimited options at all.

<comment><USER42> This not true (anymore). Telekom offers its unlimited "MagentaMobil XL Premium" for around 200€ a month.

Plans for more than 5GB have been available for quite some time and if one were calling the business hotline all networks could offer even larger non- public plans.

<comment><USER41> 200€ a month?!

well, it's a start.</comment></comment></comment>


Planets in the Fourth Dimension - <AUTHOR> https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/planets_in_the_4th_dimension/ <comment><USER2> You could also think of this time like dimension as _acceleration_. When above the plane, the planet is accelerating, and it is decelerating when below the plane.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool. Physics is about modeling. If you create a model, and it's consistent with the real world, then it's inscrutable. Cool.

The only time you can contradict a model in Physics, is if the model conflicts with something observable. Isn't that why we have so many coexisting cosmological theories?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is fundamentally wrong and very poorly described. All this unusual article amounts to is "you can rotate things." A planet is not a 3d projection of a 4d object. Space itself contains at least four spatial dimensions but it is not shaped like a hypersphere around every star that a planet revolves around.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not adding a fourth dimension to my code.

[http://www.aretheplanetsaligned.com](http://www.aretheplanetsaligned.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool find. Added spatial dimensions always intrigue when presented visually (rather than logically or symbolically).

Edit: this makes me wonder what other eliptical orbits might look like. Would the 4-sphere have to rotate about the barycenter to give the effect of this: [http://www.polaris.iastate.edu/EveningStar/Unit4/Graphics/Pi...](http://www.polaris.iastate.edu/EveningStar/Unit4/Graphics/PicES4_8.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER8> I noticed sci-fi author Greg Egan in the comments.

Looks like he's still battling against Google using the wrong image for him when you google his name: [http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/ESSAYS/GOOGLE/Googl...](http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/ESSAYS/GOOGLE/Google.html)

<comment><USER9> Google is sometimes doing the same to me, but the picture is of a younger, better looking guy, so I'm not complaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a topic I like to muse on day-to-day - I find visualising hyperspace interesting.

Extending the same notion of there being a time dimension that is less dense the further it is from a gravity well - well, it changes certain aspects of how one might look at the universe, such as, say, why distant galaxies are redshifted, why galaxies rotate evenly throughout their volumes, and why the speed of light is a thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've seen a similar trick in numerical analysis. You add an fourth dimension to a computation grid and it reduces numerical problems with the 3D computation. I dont know if there is a name for this trick.

<comment><USER12> There is also a trick (read: algorithm) in computational geometry that computes (2D) Delaunay triangulation by mapping the points onto a (3D) paraboloid, and then computing the convex hull of _that_. E.g.: [http://i.stack.imgur.com/OuWmZ.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/OuWmZ.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > In fact, they're moving in circles in 4 dimensions. But when these circles > are projected down to 3-dimensional space, they become ellipses!

Um, no. They are moving in 3 dimensions and when they are projected down to 2-dimensional space they become ellipses.

<comment><USER14> I think you missed the point. Planets orbit in ellipses in the regular, 3D world.

<comment><USER13> Are we talking about "orbiting in elliptical paths" or "planets are ellipses"? In regular Height-Width-Depth (3D) space (excluding time) the plants are circling in ellipses. In only Height-Width (2D) space plants are flat circles and when projected onto a plane produce an elliptical path. So why the downvote?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's true, I do that planets go around the sun in elliptical orbits...

<comment><USER16> probably

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm no physics major but I'm pretty sure this is a bunch of horse shit and the elliptical orbits are explained perfectly by General Relativity.

<comment><USER18> General Relativity is not needed to explain elliptical orbits. This is a very clever reformulation of classical mechanics, and certainly not horseshit.

<comment><USER17> I could "very clever"-ly reformulate Newtonian physics as a series of invisible frogs who push things around by jumping into them. It's still horse shit.

This article about a "weird fourth dimension" that's "like time but not time" certainly seems like horse shit to me.

<comment><USER19> The author could instead have used only abstract mathematical language (like "a configuration space with a basis of cardinality 4" and "parameter _s_ defined by _s_ = ..."), but this would be accessible to fewer readers. If you prefer dryer language, read the second half of the article, or the other resources it links to.

Using a configuration space that is a good fit for a specific system is not unusual in math or physics. It's the same thing that astrophysicists do when they work in orbital elements, or that engineers and programmers do when they make calculations in Fourier space. It's worth understanding these concepts even if you're not a physicist.

Configuration spaces are so fundamental and useful that they are introduced in the _very first lecture_ on classical mechanics in Leornard Susskind's excellent series of Stanford physics courses: [http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses](http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses)

(Neal Stephenson's novel _Anathem_ also has a simple introduction to configuration spaces in an appendix, because that's the sort of thing that ends up in a Neal Stephenson novel.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been playing the Kerbal Space Program (KSP) game lately; it's funny how when you actively use orbital mechanics, thinking about them is easier.

This fourth dimension observation is cool and likely very useful mathematically, but it's also kinda obvious (at least after playing KSP) that if you subtract the time/gravity element from an orbit, it becomes circular. It's equivalent to saying that if you subtract out the gravity effects of the planet you're orbiting, your orbital speed is constant, which just makes sense intuitively.

Calling this observation a fourth dimension is useful, but perhaps unnecessarily complicated for the simple concept.

<comment><USER21> I was a little sad to learn that because KSP's orbital model uses conic sections, it's not physically accurate enough to model things like Lagrange points.

Then I remembered that it's still accurate enough to be awesome and stopped worrying about it. :)

<comment><USER22> Actually Newtonian Conic Sections is how we (humans) calculated orbital, and interplanetary trajectories up until the 1980's.

There weren't powerful enough computers to model full Eisenstein N-Bodies Systems until actually very recently (also its complete over kill for inner- solar system travel). Relativity is really complex math, and even modern computer clusters struggle to model very complex systems.

Yes we sent astronauts to the moon using KSP math.

<comment><USER23> > Yes we sent astronauts to the moon using KSP math.

I'm almost positive that we did not.

While patched conics would have been used very early on for rough mission analysis and design, we had a very good understanding of perturbation theory at the time. Wikipedia tells me that the restricted 3-body problem was also essentially solved in 1917. I've seen very detailed plots of the free return trajectories that the Apollo missions followed, too.

Using patched conics for the earth moon system would have resulted in an error on the scale of lunar escape velocity upon entering the sphere of influence of the Moon.

<comment><USER22> >I've seen very detailed plots of the free return trajectories that the Apollo missions followed, too.

Free return trajectories can be calculated with patched conics. 3 Body problem was solved, but actually doing all the math involved dynamically was far to complex for mission computers.

You forget that at the time NASA was using IBM System/360's which were struggling to maintain 5 megaFLOPs

<comment><USER23> I get that the idea that we "went to the moon with a slide rule" and similar ideas are appealing, but I'm not convinced that your statements are resting on a basis of fact.

For one thing, I'm not convinced that your mental models of what a "mission computer" is and what a "mission computer" would be doing, or when, make sense from an engineering perspective. I'm also not convinced that you know what an orbital perturbation is, nor how they would be used to plan and fly a mission.

To take an example from aviation, we didn't have practical simulations of general viscous fluid flow in the 1960s, but it would be meaningless to say that we "used Bernoulli's principle" to fly across the Pacific.

The Apollo vehicles had an on-board IMU. A trajectory could thus be pre- planned and flown to using feedback control. That trajectory would certainly have been calculated ahead of time. Thus, while there would be no need to have "[done] the math involved dynamically," that by no means implies that patched conics were used while in flight, nor does it imply that they were in any meaningful way used for the final design of the missions' flight paths.

Further, on any deviation from the planned flight path, numerical integration methods would yield results that would be good enough for later correction, again, by using feedback control.

If you still need to believe that "KSP math" is how we got to the Moon, go ahead. You've certainly done nothing to convince anyone else, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Cntr – Run tools from the host in a container without installing them - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Mic92/cntr <comment><USER2> Oh wow, this is really neat. Pretty useful, and cool implementation, I like that I can also use it with LXC!</comment>


37 Tested PHP, Perl, and JavaScript Regular Expressions - <AUTHOR> http://www.virtuosimedia.com/dev/php/37-tested-php-perl-and-javascript-regular-expressions <comment><USER2> That's not how you validate credit cards.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really helpful set of Regular Expressions for multiple operations.</comment>


More than anything, GitHub projects need a big "active/not active" sign - <AUTHOR> There needs to be a blindlingly obvious statement on each github repo that declares, in the opinion of the repository owner, if this project is active or not.
The comments so far are saying that there are a number of methods to infer if a project is ACTUALLY active.  Indeed there are.
I'm talking about something different though - a statement from the project owner about whether or not they deem it to be active.  Important difference. <comment><USER2> If they do this, they'll need a third option: "Done".

There's a big difference between a project that's not seeing contributions because the author lost interest halfway through, and a project that is feature complete and was built sanely so that it doesn't need any ongoing attention.

Pretty much everything I have up on Github (and elsewhere) falls into that "Done" category. And I get emails several times a year asking if various libraries have been "abandoned".

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea.

There really is a need to know where a given project is at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A repository administrator able and willing to switch its tag to "inactive" can just edit the readme to start with "this project is inactive/abandoned/etc."

</comment><comment><USER4> B2 was once an inactive blog project until someone forked it and called it Wordpress.

See a project you like? Fork it and email the authors if they want to work with you on it. Be proactive and assertive.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looking at the last commit or issue tracker usually makes it obvious. I also don't think repo owners will go and update all repos based on activeness or not manually.

</comment><comment><USER6> OR an "Active X days ago" message somewhere near the name. Where activity can mean a closed Issue / Comment by a contributor or a commit. Will save some research time.

P.S.: Weekend Hack : Build a Chrome extension for the same.

</comment><comment><USER7> You could just look at the graphs section.

</comment><comment><USER8> The only people I see complain about this sort of thing are people that just want to leech off others' work without contributing back.

<comment><USER9> Have you ever forked a repo then made a pull request to later find out the owner wants nothing to do with the project anymore? Your point may be valid for many users but it's not okay to discredit the op's idea.

<comment><USER8> No, I haven't. I don't make a pull request if the project is obviously abandoned, which is trivial to find out: it shows the dates of the most recent updates to each file/directory in the root of the project, you can see the timestamps of the most recent 20ish commits with one click on Github, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Google+ the fastest-growing social network ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gZtrfiXqRNT8u357rvhxmqvfU_jg?docId=CNG.afd2afe06f0a80a6c825347e9cbe811f.91

<comment><USER2> _Google is a latecomer_ so it's quite easy today growing faster than myspace or facebook because people are now used to these networks.

btw the link is a good sign why g+ for apps is really missing: This service is not available -> new incognito window -> works

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how many of the users actually signed up for a Google account to use Google+. They definitely had the advantage of so many existing Google accounts that just needed to have Google+ activated.</comment>


Facebook's New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-new-cryptocurrency-gets-big-backers-11560463312?mod=rsswn <comment><USER3> Is it really a cryptocurrency when it's completely centralized? No. This is just Facebook-bucks. Store dollars. It's has absolutely none of the benefits of a real cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER4> > Facebook-bucks

Missed opportunity to call them "Marks", although maybe only German speakers will get the joke.

<comment><USER5> With all due respect to nations' currency names... can I but recommend "Douche Mark" in this instance ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everyone here is debating is it crypot or not... but does it matter? it's Facebook after all, we are (the typical techy user) not the target audience.

Unfortunately, it's going to sell just because it's the big old facebook, your non-techy friend probably don't know the difference between crypto and food stamps all they know it's points for money, one is a boring piece of paper and the other is cool futuristic out of the matrix Bitcoin like super numbers

<comment><USER7> Didn't Facebook try something like this years and years ago in the form of Facebook credits, going so far as to even disallowing apps from having their own currency?

I wonder how this is different, besides the whole "blockchain" bit, because otherwise it's just a rehashed idea with makeup on it.

<comment><USER6> That was around 2010 iirc, before it was cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So a cryptocurrency that is more currency than crypto? Again, back to the argument that the market is the same as in-game currency, store gift cards, Chuck-E-Cheese tokens, etc.

Let's be honest, most of the hype around cryptocurrency is for speculation and not as a legitimate means of exchange. Normal money works fine for means-of- exchange barring a few exceptions e.g. capital flight, money laundering, generally escaping regulation so the only value left is hype.

<comment><USER9> People are using the wrong term here. Stablecoins (what Facebook has made here) aren't cryptocurrencies in-and-of themselves; they're systems that _expose_ regular fiat currency to smart contracts, so that you can pass e.g. "5USD" from one contract to another without it losing value; or so that exchanges don't all have to have their own relationships with physical payment-processors and banks, instead just allowing you to "buy in" and "cash out" in stablecoin assets, which you can then take to some other service to trade for physical dollars.

As such, stablecoins have entirely different requirements and properties than regular cryptocurrencies; for one, you usually _want_ one big well-known entity backing them, because for the stablecoin to be stable, _someone_ needs to back the coin with liquidity.

"Liquidity" is something Facebook obviously has more of than most others, so they're an obvious party to build a stablecoin.

(Really, though, the best stablecoin for USD, would actually be run by the US government. There's no reason for them not to do so, and no reason for people to reject them doing so. One could even interpret running a wrapped-USD stablecoin on any popular-in-the-US blockchain as being an _obligation_ of the US Mint, given their mission. They're currently failing to "print money" for these US markets!)

<comment><USER10> Or more cynically, stablecoins are fiat wrappers that people hope will trick regulators into not applying financial regulations to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My speculative take:

Facebook's main product has likely peaked, in terms of users and advertising unit economics. The brand is tarnished, it's not cool for younger people, its value proposition has been heavily eroded by short sighted decisions.

Instagram is doing really well, but by its nature is no substitute for Facebook. It's too specialised, too narrow a demographic, and doesn't have the same appeal all round. It can't pick up the slack from a declining Facebook.

There are real regulatory dangers that Instagram etc will be separated off anyhows.

This is a bet on something that could be big. I'd bet against it working out, but a series of bets like this are probably the best strategy to hedge against decline. We know payments dovetails well with messaging apps (hence perhaps the attempt to unify them, conveniently making it more difficult to break up the company). Payments is a no brainer, the "crypto" spin original but probably irrelevant. For Facebook it does have the advantage of enabling them to accumulate a large fund of "deposits" they can invest.

If the above is right, we should see a few other big bets being placed soon.

<comment><USER12> I think even Instagram is slowly but steadily decaying. The amount of "influencers" are getting annoying even to younger people. I believe soon only people who will remain are influencers influencing influencers, you can even see this in the comments of said posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If Facebook can pull this off they will have brought about the first universal internet currency, which would be a stunning achievement and could revolutionalize the web as we know it. Failed projects give us some idea of what their challenges will be.

Cryptocurrencies right now have a trade off between scalability and decentralization. Bitcoin is theoretically decentralized even though the reality is more complex. But theoretically anyone with a computer can randomly decide to mine the coin and participate in the network. This whole process is made possible by Proof of Work, which was the key brilliant idea that made bitcoin secure and possible. The problem right now is this algorithm doesn't allow very many transactions per second.

Other currencies have experimented with something called Proof of Stake to solve the scaling problems but it's not known if it can be as secure as proof of work. Facebook's currency will probably use this method. The basic idea is that the holders of the currency vote for what happens on the network. It's an interesting idea but it's a very different direction than the key idea of bitcoin.

Another issue is that governments rely on setting interest rates to manage their economies. If an internet currency starts to take off that will limit their ability to do this. At that point you can expect major pushback.

And also, the cryptocurrency ecosystem is a huge target for hackers. Millions of dollars have been stolen over the last decade. Brilliant attacks have been created to exploit the tiniest flaws in code. The phone numbers of crypto enthusiasts have been hacked and their wallets drained. Hackers have even embedded malware on websites or servers to mine cryptocurrency on computers they don't control. Facebook will need an iron clad security process if it wants to succeed.

<comment><USER14> > Facebook's currency will probably use this method...the holders of the > currency vote for what happens on the network

What are you basing this assumption on?

From everything Facebook has ever done to date, I expect Zuckcoin will use the method of "what FB says goes, and if you don't like it, you can pound sand."

<comment><USER15> Which really boils down to 'what Zuckerberg says goes" so you want to put the control of a currency, perhaps used by 1bn real users, in the hands of a single greedy individual who has already shown contempt for users and their data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > It isn't known, even to some members of the consortium, how the coin will > work or what their roles will be, people familiar with the project said.

Such a stablecoin still requires a regulatory approval process before roll- out.

Just as a reminder that there are open alternatives, GNU Taler would offer a more privacy-oriented stablecoin with an already clear specification, but has not yet been adopted by banks that require the regulatory approval. On the mailing list, the developer wrote that they work on the two missing features needed for approval (cross-device synchronization and an integrated backup solution).

</comment><comment><USER17> Why does this centralized stablecoin need to be crypto? It's not like they need to raise funding for this.

They could have made their own boring but extremely well positioned WePay / Paypal alternative ages ago, and instead they waited until cryptocurrencies are past peak hype to launch this. Puzzling.

I guess the only thing they have to sell here is the privacy aspect of crypto, but I doubt you'll get effective privacy from Facebook on any Facebook platform, crypto or not.

<comment><USER18> It's a token i.e. a financial derivative. So Facebook is not giving it's users bank accounts. So there is less regulation e.g. Know Your Customer.

A block chain will make it easier to build trust because (some) third parties can audit it.

<comment><USER19> How is this different from the "digital coins" e.g. gems in pay to win games then? They don't give me a bank account, but it's still digital money, but not a cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER18> Many businesses exclusively accept WeChat and Alipay. So there is a mechanism for paying rent, utilities and tax. Otherwise they would run out of cash.

To replicate that level of success, Facebook must create a mechanism to convert tokens back to cash.

So the tokens are basically just used to get past regulations. Facebook will then gather some hard numbers to show that crime is negligible. Sensible governments will tolerate the tokens because it's replacing physical cash where crimes like tax evasion are rampant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20>
      Facebook Inc. has signed up more than a dozen companies
      including Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc.
      and Uber Technologies Inc. to back a new cryptocurrency it
      plans to unveil next week and launch next year.

This means each of these companies will pay $$$ to run a "node" for this currency and have full visibility into the transactional behavior of the users of the coin.

The term "cryptocurrency" is applied a bit too liberally in the space, but what are the odds that Facebook's coin is censorship-resistant? Will Facebook help enforce US monetary imperialism, or will it thumb its nose at US sanctions? (e.g. allow a US Facebook user to send Libra to Iranian Facebook users)

Now, there could be a surprise plot twist in which these megacorps stand up for individual liberties. There have been stranger things.

<comment><USER21> I'm interested to see the how existing crypto exchanges will handle this currency, if it can be traded on them at all. The market that develops in the cryptosphere around Libra will certainly liberate any attempted sanctions on the coin itself, unless Facebook can prevent free trading of the currency on exchanges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > It has been a decade since bitcoin was born, yet consumers hardly use it—or > the hundreds of other cryptocurrencies—to pay for things.

And why would they? Adding two extra steps to paying someone -- the buyer converting local currency to bitcoin, and then the seller converting bitcoin to local currency -- can never compete with just transferring local currency directly. Cryptocurrency was meant to be much more than just a payment system.

Cryptocurrencies will not succeed until they close the loop: people receive their wages in cryptocurrency, which they use to pay for consumer goods in retail stores that accept only cryptocurrency (because their suppliers would pay their employees in cryptocurrency).

 _This_ is where cryptocurrency would shine, ie. by creating a global credit market, since the unit of account could be the same for e.g. Turkey, Nicaragua and Vietnam. A global cryptocurrency-credit market could arise, in which savers finance e.g. consumer goods on the shelves of retail shops. This would incentivize savers to purchase cryptocurrency in order to earn a low-risk return on their money -- something which is not possible to do in most Western economies with short-term interest rates at zero or below.

 _PS: If anyone is interested in creating the software infrastructure to make this happen, please let me know._

<comment><USER23> As someone with a split existence between North America and the Euro Zone, I was sincerely hoping that cryptocurrency would at a minimum be a reliable medium of exchange: i.e. a way to convert dollars into euros and vice-versa in a matter of minutes with very low fees. I never needed it to be an investment vehicle.

Unfortunately, bitcoin's utility in that respect seems to have gotten worse since I was playing around with it 5 years ago. I haven't been following recently so maybe it's changed, but during the bubble there was a move towards high fees and less liquidity, with plenty of horror stories of exchanges locking people out of their wallets during big price moves.

IMO bitcoin would be much more useful if it had remained a niche tool for people to buy drugs on the internet rather than the pure speculative instrument it seems to have turned into.

<comment><USER22> > As someone with a split existence between North America and the Euro Zone, I > was sincerely hoping that cryptocurrency would at a minimum be a reliable > medium of exchange: i.e. a way to convert dollars into euros and vice-versa > in a matter of minutes with very low fees.

You're not looking for a new currency, you're looking for a regular currency exchange. Whatever fees your currency exchange charges for going from EUR to USD (and back) can only increase if you need to involve another exchange (for the bitcoin-conversion).

<comment><USER23> So the promise of Bitcoin when I started reading up about it was that the fees could be close to zero. It's become less of an issue, because there are some traditional currency exchange services out there which have reasonable flat- rate offerings nowadays, but I would still be happy to pay less.

<comment><USER22> > So the promise of Bitcoin when I started reading up about it was that the > fees could be close to zero.

I don't see why this would be the case. Neither when talking blockchain-fees nor exchange-fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> IMO this is it, the last best chance for a cryptocurrency to take off and actually be used as a currency and not a speculative vehicle. If Libra fails, even with all of Facebook's resources at its disposal, then there is unlikely to be any viable cryptocurrency for at least another generation.

Disclaimer: I hold a lot of stock in FB and no positions in other crypto.

<comment><USER25> Speculative vehicle? We're paying devs salaries in Bitcoin, what are you talking about?

<comment><USER26> and many people are compensated in highly volatile stocks that are subject to speculation, you paying someone in bitcoin doesn't change anything about its speculative nature, it just means your employees are willing to receive compensation in a volatile currency.

<comment><USER27> And they probably liquidate a good portion of it as soon as it hits their wallets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'll be honest, I'm excited.

The biggest hurdle to Bitcoin adoption are on-ramps / off-ramps. Businesses and individuals dealing with Bitcoin frequently get de-risked by banks and suppressed by regulators (e.g: China & India).

Libra if (a) can be interacted with via API, (b) can itself be acquired via bank transfers / credit cards & (c) not geo-fenced, will eventually be adapted into one of the many exchanges and will contribute greatly to solving Bitcoin's on-ramping issues.

Whether consumers want Bitcoin once they've tasted Libra, well that's an ideological choice. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

<comment><USER25> Why would anyone want a facebook coin that is completely controlled by Facebook which can be controlled by the government when with Bitcoin you get complete sovereignty?

<comment><USER29> Because not everyone cares about "complete sovereignty"? There's a reason why all these companies are still successful, most people don't care that much about their privacy or other dignities if it means convenience.

<comment><USER25> Then I see no difference from USD. What exactly is the point? Yet another payment method?

<comment><USER28> Facebook is trying to create a common currency accessible to a global userbase whose transmission bypasses traditional banking rails. It'll be super convenient, even the USD can't do that.

This combined with Whatsapp for Business is going to be game changing for SMEs in developing markets.

Do I want to keep my savings in it? Probably not...

<comment><USER30> You mean like Paypal?

It might be a great project, it just has very little to do with actual cryptocurrencies. It's great to be excited about it, the issue many people in this thread have the project being called a cryptocurrency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Visa MasterCard and PayPal are just there to ensure that they don't get left behind if the FB coin succeeds, payments are their bread and butter, so if they can hop on the train they can be partially insulated. Otherwise they don't care.

</comment><comment><USER32> This sounds like a great way for FB to know even more about you.

<comment><USER33> Facebook's equivalent of Google pay on the sense of data gathering?

<comment><USER34> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can anyone explain how this will be different (from a user perspective) than any other tech enabled payments platform (Alipay, Paypal, Venmo etc)?

What's the rationale?

<comment><USER36> The white paper will be published next week, then we'll know more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The real question here is if there will be a way to exchange this coin with Bitcoin or other crypto

</comment><comment><USER38> I can imagine few things I'd be less likely to do than use a currency backed by facebook.

</comment><comment><USER39> I mean... Are they kidding me with that name?

<comment><USER40> what do you think is weird or bad about it? it's a pretty appropriate name for a currency

<comment><USER41> Sure, but not one owned by Facebook.

It's a sick joke.

<comment><USER42> Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

<comment><USER41> Sorry. If I had explained, I don't think that it would have been unsubstantive. But I didn't. So anyway, to the point.

As the sign of balance, symbolized by scales, Libra is certainly relevant to money. But the name is also a riff on liberty/liberation aka freedom. And that's the sick joke, because Libre will be totally under Facebook control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The only reason Facebook is doing this is so they can track your purchases and mine even more of your data.

This reminds me of what WeChat is doing in China, where most purchases are made and tracked by the government from this app. I don't even know if you can use cash there anymore.

With the amount of information Zuckerberg has on the US population, he shouldn't ever be allowed to run for president while still running Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER44> Facebook has done horrible things, but bad business is not one of them. They already have 2 billion+ people on their platform(s) and if Facebook enables a virtual currency to exchange goods (real or virtual) it may be a hit. Just like mobile wallets have taken off pretty well, this could too. Again, I am not a facebook fan, but they know how to make money. This could be the next billion dollar idea.

</comment><comment><USER45> If it's going to be anything close to what people call cryptocurrency - it'll be deployed outside of fb 3 days later by somebody.

</comment><comment><USER46> I feel like this move will almost guarantee anti-trust actions. Although if nothing has already, who knows.

<comment><USER47> What makes you think that?

<comment><USER48> Printing money has always been under the domain of the government. Wars have been fought over rights to print money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Can't read the article. What is it backed by? Where's this information coming from? I can't find any press release or sources that aren't publishers themselves—this smells like insubstantial technology and bought hype (not that it won't work...).

<comment><USER14> I assume it's backed by faith in Mr. Zuckerberg's sterling reputation as a steward of the public trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> As it's said in another comment, it's not cryptocurrency when it's centralized and by a singe entity

i'm seeing it like all the in-game currency, controlled by the entity convert your local currency to this platform bucks to use it ONLY inside that platform

</comment><comment><USER51> << A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment. >>

Every time I see this kind of news, I wonder, how do journalists get so much information when "an official spokesman declined to comment". Is this mainly just buzz so FB is in the headlines?

</comment><comment><USER52> About the name - <USER2>

IIRC the Winklevoss twins have a Bitcoin exchange called Gemini

Surely a coincidence

brb going all in on tokenized cults

<comment><USER53> _IIRC the Winklevoss twins have a Bitcoin exchange called Gemini_

Gemini = "sign of the twins" (And, according to Wikipedia, is Latin for "twins" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(constellation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_\(constellation\)))

It's probably just narcissism in that case.

I'm guessing "Libra" in this case is probably a variation of _Libre_ \-- free -- rather than an astrological reference. But that's totally a _guess_ and could be completely wrong.

If anyone actually knows why they named it _Libra_ , I would love to hear the explanation. A quick search isn't turning up answers.

<comment><USER52> The joke (maybe, maybe not) in drawing the presumably intentional astrological connection has to do with the fact that the Winks and Zuckerberg have some ... shared history.

<comment><USER53> Well, I have no idea what you are talking about. Care to elaborate?

I just find how things get named interesting. I did realize it was a joke, but that doesn't preclude actually discussing why these things got the names they have.

<comment><USER52> Too long and getting OT to explain here, but in The Social Network it was explored pretty... <dons shades > dramatically

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I've met a hell of a lot of authoritarians in the crypto scene over the past decade. Blockchain technology is a centralized datastore so of course it's a tool for global authoritarianism; think IBM in the 1930s selling slow databases to the Nazi's so they can keep a universal ledger of the Jews.

P2P distributed architectures such as Holochain which actually decentralize data and control are far more positive paradigms for humanity.

<comment><USER55> You wrote: "Blockchain technology is a centralized datastore". care to explain?

<comment><USER56> I think they're talking about the blockchain working by a single global (hence, "central") consensus. It seems Holo avoids that somehow.

<comment><USER30> That's not what anyone in the space calls centralized. It's actually called "decentralized" by everyone because the way this consensus is kept and changed happens decentralized (to some degree).

Right now it seems: If you don't have central consensus you can't have digital currency. Since everybody needs to be on the same line regards to who owns what. This is different from cash in the current world. Where nobody needs to agree to how much I have because I can physically store it and it's impossible to copy my dollars.

<comment><USER57> They are calling it decentralised but it really isn't. Transactions with physical cash are fully decentralised, anonymous (save for finger prints etc.) and asynchronous. In terms of convenience credit cards, apple pay and PayPal are hard to beat. I do not know of a single use case for consumer facing crypto currencies that is compelling to me.

<comment><USER30> > I do not know of a single use case for consumer facing crypto currencies > that is compelling to me.

Try buying something you are not allowed to buy. Personally I use it a lot while traveling abroad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Thanks, I hate it.

</comment><comment><USER59> Dear god. I find China's approach of the social credit system less threatening.

</comment><comment><USER60> I remember a Blockchain related story here in HN some days ago where someone said that he did not believed in blockchain because there were no big-name Engineers working on it, specifically nobody from FAANG.

There you go...

</comment><comment><USER61> Any suspicions on how this will differ from the last decade of crypto coins?

<comment><USER32> Deeper integration into the most popular social network meaning more people have exposure to it. In terms of functionality, it won't be any different.

<comment><USER62> It will far more likely be a database under the hood than a cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER63> If you keep the default settings and use it to buy anything it will spam your 'friends' just like Farmville. "Joe Wilson just used Libra to remove the ransomware from his Dell, how will you use it?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Yeaaaah, Facebook doesn't give a shit about privacy and love to sell our data for $$. What makes them think we will trust them with our banking info? Lmao.

</comment><comment><USER65> Finally! A cryptocurrency with the ethics of Uber, the censorship resistance of Paypal, and the centralization of Visa, all tied together under the proven privacy of Facebook. Just what I've been waiting for.

<comment><USER66> And the magnanimousity of Oracle. And the carbon footprint of cow farts.

[https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/02/16/exp- gps-0217-ga...](https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/02/16/exp- gps-0217-gates-on-cow-farts.cnn)

<comment><USER22> > [https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/02/16/exp- > gps-0217-ga...](https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/02/16/exp- > gps-0217-gates-on-cow-farts.cnn)

> Bill Gates explains how no one knows how to stop bovine flatulence, a major > contributor to climate change.

I doubt we need to prevent cows from farting. As I understand it, all we need to do is stop killing naturally occurring methanotrophic[1] fungi[2] with pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

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

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

<comment><USER67> Or have fewer cows in the first place by eating less meat.

<comment><USER66> And we could reduce foul gas emissions by eating cryptocurrency shills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> [http://archive.is/roYY9](http://archive.is/roYY9)

</comment><comment><USER69> Will this be a centralized currency?

<comment><USER70> It's Mark "I'm CEO B!t(h" Zuckerberg.

Do you think he'd start a currency he wouldn't be able to use to spy on every user?

<comment><USER69> I'm not really interested in the spying aspect of it, since most cryptocurrencies make all transaction information public in their blockchains.

My interest is in who controls issuance of the currency itself and if that control is decentralized or controlled by a central entity, like Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> This is good for the ecosystem. Next phase would be a crypto backed by government(s).

<comment><USER72> If govts actually introduced crypto, it would be completely isolated from existing ecosystems. Unlike other players, govts. (western specifically) have a mandate to protect user privacy on their systems.

<comment><USER71> I believe some crypto currencies provide privacy(i.e monero) so a gov fork could work.

Currently most of the governments share the data with various corporations(usually US based such as Visa and Mastercard, SWIFT, plus various national or foreign banks) and US gov agencies so the level of privacy is not that great.

Crypto currencies could also provide transparency and open protocols so I believe a gov backed crypto would be successful in many areas(i.e public procurement)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Is this a brutal, final, swing at the Winklevoss twins?

<comment><USER52> Heh. You know their Bitcoin exchange is called ... wait for it... Gemini, right?

They've wallpapered the DC Metro system with ads for it... calling it the first safe regulated Bitcoin exchange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Has everyone already forgotten KODAKCoin [0]?

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

</comment><comment><USER75> What's in it for Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER76> Is there an official name for these tokens yet?

Facebucks?

Zuckbucks?

Cuckbucks?

Facecoins?

</comment><comment><USER25> Ugh. This will pass too. The value of Bitcoin is in the fact that nobody can control and censor it. It's black market money. If it didn't have this quality, it'd be useless. Nobody (meaning customers) cares about Facebook launching a coin. Facebook will not be the champion of freedom. How do I know? Ask yourself, if Facebook Coin is going to be available in Crimea (currently under sanctions) or Iran (currently under sanctions) or China (where facebook is banned). The answer is of course not. Bitcoin is available in all of those places and not a single government was able to do anything about it yet.

<comment><USER49> You're forgetting how much credit card transaction suck. As I see it this is the main problem facebook could solve through sheer volume of use: microtransactions.

Granted this is about the worst way this future could come about....

<comment><USER77> If Libra is a threat to credit cards, then why are Visa and MasterCard investing at least $10M each in it?

<comment><USER78> Isn't this a lot like asking why Tyson invested in Beyond Meat when BYND is a threat to Tyson? Maybe you could call this defensively "investing in the future" of your industry (if this turns out to be anything at all).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> and in the meantime real crypto projects like ICON is ignored by all.

</comment><comment><USER80> literally printing money

</comment><comment><USER81> What I find hilarious is that Zuckerberg has probably been trolling the forums of bitcoin.org and reddit crypto groups for many months.

And like any good crypto "expert", he spent his time sharing opinions and copying other peoples source code versus building anything real.

<comment><USER42> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

<comment><USER81> Which part of my statement is "unsubstantive" the joke or the fact?

<comment><USER42> The comment lacks information and repeats common preconceptions in a snarky way.

<comment><USER81> Okay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Whether this succeeds or fails it is very good for crypto.

</comment><comment><USER83> All I care for is the end of the fiat system and the beginning of freedom for humanity.</comment>


Ask HN : Where Does VC Money Really Go? - <AUTHOR> In the last few years, we We numbers like 81 million for Box.com, 11 million for enterproid etc, 100 million for foursquare.  I have no experience with startups, or operation sides, but I am curious as to where this money goes? Hardware costs for servers? Salaries/wages? Legal fees? Understandably it is different for different startups, but on average what is the breakdown look like for a software startup (web-based). <comment><USER2> It might differ based on the company, but the #1 cost by a fair margin for virtually every funded software startup will be the costs associated with employment: wages, benefits, and taxes. That could be 50~80%+ of expenses. (One engineer costs you about $15~20k per month.)

Companies with noteworthy other costs include Zynga/Groupon, which both spend absolutely gobsmacking amounts of money on advertising (and, depending on how you count revenue/expenses, their revenue share deals with Facebook and merchants respectively).

Server/hosting expenses tend to be heavily sensitive to what you're actually doing: Zynga and Dropbox pay a lot relative to their revenues, but at a 37Signals-esque company they're chump change.

Legal fees are typically rounding error. Ball up all administrative overhead and that's in handful of percent region.

Your physical workspace can be a fair chunk of change, depending on where you are, how you came by your space, and to what degree you optimize for having a prestigious address or office space.

<comment><USER3> In my experience wages are at least 80% of all costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the beginning, people costs are where most of your money goes, by far. Whether you have employees or contractors, human capital will cost you the most.

For a typical $500K seed round, here is my breakdown for 12 months of expenses. Feedback welcome.

2 founders + health insurance + taxes = $10k/month

2 engineers + health insurance + taxes = $20k/month

1 p/t designer = $5k/month

...and you've burned through $420,000 of your $500,000 in 12 months.

As for the other $80K?

Legal Fees: $10K (or $800/month); Space: $30K (depending on where...around $2500/month); Accounting/Finance: $10K ($800/month); Server Costs + Hardware: $12k ($1k/month); Miscellaneous Expenses including random contractors here and there, marketing expenses, SWAG, a party if you want, some travel to a few conferences, food, etc.: $18k ($1500/month)

Hope this helps.

<comment> DanI-S Is ~50k/yr a typical founder salary? How much does it vary from this kind of number?

<comment><USER4> Founder salaries vary wildly depending on amount raised, whether the company is profitable or even generating revenue and the stage of the company. Some people pay themselves $1k/month and some pay themselves $15k/month. I figured $4k/month was a good benchmark based on a pre-series-A seed-financed tech startup that is generating minimal revenue and is not profitable.

<comment><USER5> While mocking up salaries with an adviser, he said that we should earmark $60k for founders "so people think you're stable."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Generally employees' salaries are the biggest expense in almost every startup and at every stage. Hence the saying that "overhead walks on two feet"

</comment><comment><USER7> Some of the cash in these mega-rounds never hits the balance sheet and instead goes directly to founders and early investors.

</comment><comment><USER8> Based on my experiences in the UK, different start-up's get funding of 30 million etc. but the money is over X years as long as Y objectives are met. In actual fact the company is getting a fraction of that 30 mill each year therefore far less cash rich than the press release indicates.

<comment><USER9> Milestone-based fundings like this are pretty rare in the US and usually in troubled or very high risk situations. Most vc fundings that you would hear about are straight up equity deals (cash received at closing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Try making a simple spreadsheet for a startup, for example for 18-36 months. Before I ever did that, I always underestimated how far the money would go. Most will be people. The examples you name have hundreds of people working for them. That really ads up.

</comment><comment><USER11> Somewhat depending on the business. Mining is different from social networks is different from clean tech :-) For software, something like:

1\. Salary/Benefits. 2\. Marketing/PR/Sales. 3\. Rent/Utilities/Facilities.

Everything else is likely a variable cost you can pay with customer money, aka "revenue." (Anything from direct sales to ad-based monetization) Once you can in addition pay the above three from revenues, you should probably stop taking investor money and look for liquidity.

</comment><comment><USER12> For mega-rounds:

\- SaaS companies like box flush it all on customer acquisition. Billboards on 101, google Adwords, telesales teams. See Jive's S1: $60m rev run rate and losing $2 for every buck of revenue.

\- groupon, living social: customer acquisition also: web ads. Plus salesforce to call on local businesses

\- four square plus everybody above: "secondary" I.e. into the pockets of founders, early shareholders and, once in a blue moon, employees.

</comment><comment><USER13> Strippers and blow.

<comment><USER14> Are you hiring?

<comment><USER15> Are you a stripper?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1) People. People are incredibly expensive.

2) Promotion. Especially in winner-take-all markets, where it's especially important to be the first player to reach scale, and in markets with high customer lifetime values.

3) Capital expense. Sometimes a business model requires huge warehouses (amazon) or massive R&D, or some other huge capital expense that serves as a meaningful investment.

4) Acquisitions. Sometimes it's spent buying other companies to help achieve goals that they might not otherwise be able to achieve in the required timeline, using only internal resources.

5) Miscellaneous. Accountants, lawyers, bankers, travel, telecom, that great domain name, hosting, internal infrastructure, SaaS products, conference attendance, catering, and other miscellanea.</comment>


Reaction captures carbon, generates electricity, makes a cleaning product - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/reaction-captures-carbon-generates-electricity-makes-a-cleaning-product/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but mining Bauxite does a lot more damage than just produce CO2, and Aluminum would start to get scarce and expensive as all hell if this actually worked on an industrial scale.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm 99.99% sure this doesn't make sense. But I can't understand which is the global reaction. What are all the input molecules and what are all the output molecules?</comment>


The Way I Work: Paul English of Kayak - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/the-way-i-work-paul-english-of-kayak.html

<comment><USER2> That just depressed me. No way I think I could match that energy level!

He's right about the hallway test : I never liked working in teams where people didn't greet each other in the morning, where they never said hello in the hallway.</comment>


Birdkage – Instant notifications when your Twitter account gets hacked - <AUTHOR> http://getbirdkage.com/

<comment><USER2> Is it me or is that site lacking in any information what-so-ever?

How does it work? Even vaguely?

What is your privacy policy?

Where can I learn more about who you are (without going to Facebook)?

Edit: Formatting

<comment><USER3> In all likelihood, it doesn't exist yet. The domain was registered today, and these sorts of landing pages are commonly used to validate ideas before committing to actually building a project.

...not that I think thin, content-free pages have any business on HN, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Built to be acquired. Unfortunately whatever they implement Twitter could do the same in half the time.</comment>


Author pinpoints racism in science: Naive scientists plus strategic racists - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/why-racism-in-science-never-really-went-away/ <comment><USER2> That author also declares her ancestral homeland "The Smartest Country on the Planet"

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/06/india- lavasa-c...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/06/india-lavasa- computer-technology)

</comment><comment><USER3> It is not enough to simply not be racist, to simply know that humans are genetically similar, to know that humans are all closely related, to be decent to people regardless of their skin color. We must actively work to recognize that we are today not dissimilar from how we were 10 or 100 or 1k or 100k years ago, and that we are more broadly divided by our individual circumstances than by any facet of our genetics.

</comment><comment><USER4> So racists are behind racism?! The title is oddly circular in its logic.</comment>


Sega MegaDrive/Genesis DevKit [video] - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> This is the project homepage: [https://hackaday.io/project/1507-usb-megadrive- devkit](https://hackaday.io/project/1507-usb-megadrive-devkit)

The cool thing about this, IMO, is that he has an FPGA with some kind of cpu core running a gdb stub. What a hero!</comment>