The YC VC Program - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/ycvc.html <comment><USER2> YC is perhaps the most innovative angel/accelerator/VC firm in the planet. Despite all the success the firm has had, _it is still acting like a startup_ \-- constantly questioning, experimenting, tinkering, and gradually optimizing via careful trial-and-error, based on the real-world results achieved with each batch of companies. Clearly, it's run by hackers.

<comment><USER3> I think this change is a definite plus, but I disagree this sort of change is startup-specific.

Trying new things is just how you're supposed to build a company, at least when you care for the long term rather than next quarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great! I always thought the $150k was too much of a runway. It allowed the poor startups to limp along for too long.

And besides, the real value from these investments isn't the money, it is the mindshare you get with the VCs. This will help make that mindshare greater.

<comment><USER5> I get why it's great for investors, but why is it great for founders? Especially when they could use the time to change plans.

<comment><AUTHOR> The office hours help all the startups. Decreasing the amount invested helps the successful and borderline startups because it means less of our time is taken up mediating founder disputes in the ones that are exploding. And yes, that was a significant time suck; Jessica says the majority of her time last batch was spent dealing with founder breakups.

<comment><USER6> PG how much of this attributable to $150k being too much money? Wasn't the last batch the largest by significant margin? Is it not expected that there will be more failure and therefore more demand on partner time as batch size increases?

In another comment, you mention founders scrapping over the carcass of their failed startups; what is it exactly they're fighting over? Surely the money has run out and anything left should be returned to investors in good faith? Are they fighting over Cinema Displays, Aeron chairs, etc, and by reducing the amount of the note you're reducing the amount of accoutrements these fledgling startups accumulate, and thus can fight over in the event of failure?

<comment><USER7> _what is it exactly they're fighting over? Surely the money has run out and anything left should be returned to investors in good faith?_

I assume he's talking about cases where the founders fall out well before the money has run out.

Previously, when there was little (money or IP) left, they'd just go their separate ways and start something new.

But with money still in the bank, founders may believe the company still has some value and a future, and will fight to assume control of it.

<comment><USER8> I wonder how many of those teams were single-founder projects that took on partners to apply. It is surely very rare for organic teams to experience this sort of drama in three months, no? Or is YC really just that stressful?

<comment><USER9> Doing a startup in general will test even the strongest relationships. I've seen old friends break apart.

So yeah, YC can really be that stressful.

<comment><USER10> Point made - but do you really believe that halving the investment is going to change the level of drama involved? What is this - a shout out to Biggy's "mo money mo problems"?

Surely, we can respect the complexity of founder relationships, and yes, at times their tenuousness - and not trivialize them as matters that can be solved by making it easier for a VC to write-off the investment. It just feels like an aspirin for a different problem...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any significance to Ron Conway not being in the group anymore?

<comment><AUTHOR> We certainly didn't kick SV Angel out. They're among our favorite investors in fact. It just didn't make sense with their fund size to keep doing these investments. Unlike the other investors, they are what's now called a "super angel" fund, and those are much smaller.

<comment><USER12> I'm certain there are some companies that need more runway than others. Is it possible for, say, hardware companies to renegotiate for, e.g. 30k per VC rather than the current 20k?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd never thought of that. Maybe in version 2.

<comment><USER13> I'd recommend staying at ~$80k. One of the mistakes I made last year was over- building inventory (possibly because I had access to $150k from Start fund).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 80k may be a little tight for international founders, as flights and legal fees for visas can be very expensive. Also silly things like paying extra for deposits on rent/bills as you have no US credit history. But otherwise seems reasonable.

<comment><USER15> $150K is not enough to secure H1B visas either.

<comment><USER16> Yup, the first thing I thought when I read this: I hope this doesn't end up hurting non-resident applicants to YC.

The "prevailing wages" for an engineering position (the minimum salary the company can pay an engineer on a H1B visa) in CA are about $75K. This means that there is almost no leeway even if only one of the founders needs an H1B: this funding alone would not cover it.

YC is very aware and supportive of immigrant entrepreneurs though, so I am sure they are already thinking about this.

Two mitigating facts:

\- It is prudent to have enough money in the bank to pay the H1B employee for a year, but this is not a requirement before filing for an H1B, especially if you can show that there are other ways the company can continue to pay the employee. Most significantly: revenue :)

\- The H1B is not the only route available to non-resident entrepreneurs: the O1 visa is another option, although the requirements are more stringent.

I have had to cross a few of these bridges myself, so if I can be of help to anyone reading this, please email me: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER17> Question - do you need the $75k lump sum, or just the pro-rata per month? its only ~6k/month salary per fte, of course depending on the runway...

<comment><USER16> The company has to prove that it will be able to pay the employee's salary for the duration of the visa. A lump sum in the bank is the easiest way of doing this. A steady or growing revenue stream per month is another way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think YC has more of a problem dealing with the bad startups than it does dealing with the successful ones. My opinion from Paul's writing is that his goal is to find the AIRbnb's as quickly as possible while relegating things that aren't going to be mammoth. It makes sense when you're playing a volume/numbers game like YC has been doing.

Quite the investor lineup; I think they had their choice of anyone in the world to be honest.

I like reading PG's stuff because these sort of decisions are counterintuitive, but very fun academic/didactic examples.

</comment><comment><USER19> What kind of messy things happen with 150k that don't happen with 80k?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a matter of degree. In the old days, when a startup fell apart, the founders would just go their separate ways. When every startup got $150k, sometimes they'd end up fighting over the carcass instead. Our hope is that now they'll fight half as hard.

<comment><USER20> Out of curiosity, what does the 'carcass' usually consist of? Wouldn't any leftover money go back to investors? Or does that get divided out to founders (seems like that would be a bad incentive). Or is it mostly related to the product (domains, code, etc..)?

<comment><USER21> you have to understand that YC & the start fund has little to no control over the companies, except perhaps moral authority.

YC has common shares (and a small minority at that) while the start fund is arguably even worse off with a convertible note.

so, if the founders decided to, they could just pay out the rest of the money as a bonus. immoral? yes. illegal? i don't think so.

<comment><USER22> Definitely illegal. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_of_loyalty>

Thought I'd doubt it would be litigated, unless the founders are particularly stupid in addition to being immoral.

<comment><USER23> I don't see how fiduciary responsibility holds if the company is in the process of dissolving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not everything scales horizontally and shouldn't have to. YC should just stick to a lower number of startups for each cycle.

1) Maintains the prestige of a team being selected.

2) Keeps investment level at previous level.

3) Spend quality time with each team.

</comment><comment><USER25> THANK YOU! This makes 250% sense, particularly for "no idea" companies. 150k led to several bad decisions at the beginning, and led to our breakup later on. 80k will be a lot more valuable than 150k, and make startups think more carefully about how to spend money.

Perhaps for capital intensive startups that ought to be funded, there can be a separate arrangement.

This shows why YC is YC.. it constantly innovates and is not afraid to change things up as needed.

<comment><USER26> > _"This makes 250% sense, particularly for "no idea" companies."_

I can't decipher the level of exaggeration. If your company has "no idea", maybe that's where the blame should lie, rather than on having too much money.

<comment><USER25> In no way do I blame the money, but it certainly made it easier to make bad decisions. A better way to put it would be that it made us make decisions that shouldn't have had to be made that early.

"no idea" doesn't literally mean we had "no idea", we had plenty of ideas. We just hadn't settled on one yet.

<comment><USER27> I'm curious. Would you mind sharing what kinds of early decisions you made that you wouldn't have with 80k?

<comment><USER25> Sure. Hiring 8 interns, leasing a 7k/month house for starters. Ok, it's probably more relevant that I was an idiot (been a student my whole life). My initial thoughts were the following:

1\. Demo Day was a unique non-linearity. Being especially good by that date would make you overvalued (now I realize that's a dumb thing to aim for, rather you should aim to be of genuine high value).

2\. Spending all 170k by Demo Day would be the optimal way to achieve this outcome. It's pretty hard to spend 170k in three months with no idea, in fact it's a job in and of itself to figure out how to spend that much.

I did manage to recoup all the losses by airbnb'ng out the house and finding other yc co's for the interns, but still it was a waste of at least one month and created an aura of bad feelings that doomed the company for good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've never heard of Maverick Capital -- are they the hedge fund? They seem to be med-tech focused, if that's them.

<comment><USER29> Looks like it: [http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/maverick- ca...](http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/maverick-capital)

Edit: NOT Mark Cuban.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's sad to see SV Angel isn't part of the W13 VC program.

</comment><comment><USER30> As alluded to in the post, I think that the 80k/startup rule is probably not a good one either.

80k might not be enough and "doing more with less" can just as often lead to failure. Case in point is the recent post about the lean startup that only provided the minimum viable product (MVP), but failed to really provide what was needed. If pressure is put on startups to provide a product faster for less, then less of a product will be provided. Granted, YC will provide more support and try not to let such things happen.

I think the funding should be decided on a case-by-case basis instead. Possibly more funding could be given to those with a better idea that have greater need through some sort of point system, and either provide a range of funding from 40-120k without requiring more from the VC's, or provide 80-150k if the VC's are able.

</comment><comment><USER31> What stops other investment firms from making identical blanket investments, or how do you guys plan to stop that?

<comment><USER32> Presumably Conway and Milner did not like how the initial approach was working out either and were looking for a change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here are my thoughts about this:

1\. You have idea, a plan to validate it and a plan to execute upon different outcomes and different startups require different financing. I am just wondering if YC has clear matrices which shows there is a same optimum financing for early stage startups in all the domains (healthcare, edu, consumer web, etc.) I am just curious about this!!! But then I read the following: " it sometimes caused messy disputes in the unsuccessful ones. Switching from $150k to $80k may not completely eliminate such problems, but it will make them at most half as bad."

2\. The entire funding decision and amount is changed based on negative thought of a dispute among the founders. I believe this is fundamentally wrong and is against the entrepreneurial spirit. I wouldn't feel good as a person and an entrepreneur if my investor would come up with this. It basically means you don't know what you are doing and I am going to protect you against yourself!!!

3\. Although a 70K difference is a small number, but it will have a huge impact on your startup: \- validating your idea and pivoting: the startups will show a tenancy towards low hanging fruit instead of seeking for the bigger picture solution \- Shorter runway impacts your flexibility and thus deal negotiations for the next rounds considering a 3-6 months funding period. \- Am just wondering how this will impact valuations of companies in post YC. I would think the valuations would go down.

What are your thoughts on this?

<comment><USER34> One of the most valuable things about YC is the pressure it puts on a startup: focus or perish, excellence or death. I've really seen this bring out the best in people, including myself. I think that reducing the "free" c-note from $150k to $80k will increase the pressure a little bit, that entrepreneurs will rise to the challenge, and that the overall outcomes will actually be better. Accountability closes the feedback loop and results in faster learning.

As for (2), potential investors say a lot of things that just make you feel terrible. The best response is to dig into them and try to figure out if there is any truth in the criticism, make any adjustments you can, and keep pushing ahead.

<comment><USER33> There is no doubt about the track of record YC has built over the years. I believe that reasoning behind it as I read it sounds not compelling from an entrepreneur's point of view (kind a putting it like we are going to protect you against yourself). From a business point of view I just don't know if there are any matrices supporting their decision. And that's why I don't want to judge since I don't have the background information. I am just wondering how this move will impact the new type of companies (big picture vs. short gains) & investment climate in the valley: 1\. future valuations 2\. Early stage rounds 3\. product-market fit discoveries & pivots

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> pg briefed Xconomy on the changes this morning, and the interesting part to me was the feeling that too many failing YC startups were feuding internally over the extra cash. He said such disputes have been taking up more than half of Jessica's time recently. Now startups will have less money to argue over.

[http://www.xconomy.com/san- francisco/2012/11/26/y-combinator...](http://www.xconomy.com/san- francisco/2012/11/26/y-combinator-alters-investment-package-to-avoid- contested-divorces/)

</comment><comment><USER36> It is worth reading PG's email from 5 months back about his vision of what the fund raising environment might look like.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fallout-y- combinator...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fallout-y-combinators- paul-graham-just-emailed-portfolio-companies-warning-of-bad-times-in-silicon- valley-2012-6)

</comment><comment><USER37> Really interesting change.

Not sure what metrics YC collects on each of its cohorts, but if "Cycle Length" and "Total Cycles" are two of them (i.e. end-to-end time through build-measure-learn loop), then it would be valuable to see if January's teams deviate, in a meaningful way, from the established average and mean.

Hypothetically, you'd think that "Cycle Length" would decrease as less cash in hand forces teams without product-market fit to tap into higher gear (or sustain that same high level of output), rather than spend valuable attention wondering about how to get a piece of the "carcass" should things crash and burn. Total cycles would then move up and to the right, as teams get a few more in near the end of their runway.

That said, there are at least two additional potentialities.

1\. "Cycle Length" and "Total Cycles" are already running along their respective natural asymptotes.

Consequence(s): A. Awesomely cool discovery re: limits of productivity! B. The number of founders able to remain highly productive while simultaneously squabbling (and providing PG w/ massive headaches) decreases.

2\. The "Starting Date" for raising an additional round of financing shifts to the left (i.e. becomes earlier). With less cash in the bank, and hence a shorter runway, the average starting date for teams w/o product-market fit to begin seriously committing time to fundraising shifts "earlier".

Consequence(s): A. If more time fundraising = less time building, then the average total output of a team, in the 12 months post-YC, could decrease.

Mitigation: Personal access to the best VCs in the world could mean that the length of a "Funding Cycle" (i.e. total time spent raising a round) decreases, thus offsetting consequence 2a.

It'd be great if these numbers were something YC actually collected. If there's a science to building companies, you could certainly glean great insight from those digits.

</comment><comment><USER38> So it has become easier to fail fast. The inertia to prevent death has been halved. Good or Bad?

</comment><comment><USER39> Is this in addition to the $12k-20k invested by YC itself, for a total of $92k-100k?

<comment><USER28> The START money has always been on top of the YC partnership investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is there a particular reason that Maverick were involved? I don't know the guys well enough but they seem like your traditional Wall Street hedge fund.

I'm probably completely wrong but guessing Sam Wyly was perhaps one of the major reasons?

</comment><comment><USER41> Another way to fix the founder breakup problem is to have a pre-nup with a few menu options.

Require founders to choose and sign on to prior to receiving any of the $150K (or maybe prior to acceptance to YC).

</comment><comment><USER42> Does this mean that the outside investment of 150k is no longer available? I don't see whats to stop them from investing (150k) anyway, considering it wasn't part of YC in the first place. In my opinion 80k is a little too low, especially for international founders or those with international teams. I agree, though, that advice from VC would be better in terms of building a business versus just throwing cash at the startup.

<comment><USER43> Then again it lowers the bar for international VC providers to start participating in this kind of model, making US-based funders a little less necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This will definitely reduce the number of startups with H1B holder founders, even if you transfer the visas, the runway will be comparatively short.

</comment><comment><USER45> Pg, are there really many ugly ducklings on demo day, despite the rigorous selection and the subsequent teaching/incubation process?

<comment><USER9> people often switch ideas in the middle of YC, so there are more than a few who get up on stage with just a couple week's worth of work (if even that). By ugly ducklings in this case he means ideas that may not yet be fully fleshed out or well understood - he's making no statement about the teams themselves, which is what the selection process "solves."

<comment><USER39> It's worth noting that in the original story of The Ugly Duckling, the "ugly duckling" is actually a cygnet (baby swan) that looks out of place next to the ducklings it grows up with, and that no one respects until it grows into a beautiful swan. So an ugly duckling would be an idea that will turn out very well even if it looks a little dubious at the beginning.

<comment><USER17> link > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Duckling>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My first thought at seeing the submission title was that YC was offering a program teaching people about how to be VCs. Then I realized that this was simultaneously awesome and nonsensical, since Joe Random probably isn't going to have the scratch necessary to fund much of anything. Still, it would probably be fascinating from an academic perspective.

</comment><comment><USER47> _The new version involves less money and more engagement. The VCs will invest $80k in each startup instead of $150k, and we'll organize sessions of office hours in which partners from the VC firms advise the startups in each batch. As before, the investments will be done as convertible notes with no valuation cap and no discount._

</comment><comment><USER48> $80k or $150k seem like pithy amounts of money to fund any sort of company. What am I missing?

That's one good person's salary for a year. One.

<comment><USER49> At an established company, yes, that's a reasonable salary for a developer.

But when you're starting a startup, you don't take a salary of that size. You live cheaply and take only the minimum that you need as you commit yourself to building your company. It's not a life for everyone, but it is the startup life.

<comment><USER50> Sounds like anyone with a family is pretty much excluded from what you call "startup life" then. $80k wouldn't get me alone through half a year without selling my house and moving somewhere really cheap in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is what will make this work: "and we'll organize sessions of office hours in which partners from the VC firms advise the startups in each batch".

That's the difference between "smart money" where investor(s) contribute more than cash into startups and "dumb money" where investor do not.

Great move YC!

</comment><comment><USER52> Good call, guaranteeing $150K plus the seed money for the given inputs was far in excess of what you could raise elsewhere for comparable inputs. Simply the seed money, social capital, and demo day was attractive enough for me to apply.

<comment><USER50> >Good call, guaranteeing $150K plus the seed money for the given inputs was far in excess of what you could raise elsewhere for comparable inputs.

Which would mean they would have their pick of ideas since everyone would try YC first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Think about it this way, nobody applies to YC for the money, so why part with it?

</comment><comment><USER54> I think this is wonderful... the expansion of VC office hours will be a huge help for future batches. Having investor allies is always a great thing for a young startup.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm not sure if one amount will fit all startups.

Because categorization is important for organization, how about having startup brackets?

base: 80k international: 100k hardware:120k ...

</comment><comment><USER56> YC is treated just like software. Time to scale back and move forward. Those bottlenecks were obviously causing a problem.

</comment><comment><USER57> What equity is given for this (/how has it changed?) and is this pre defined or 'negotiated' ?

<comment><USER9> This is a convertible note[1], just like the previous incarnations. Which means that the amount of equity it is worth isn't determined until a priced round happens (where a valuation is set).

[1]: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/21/convertible-note-seed- finan...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/21/convertible-note-seed-financings- econ-101/)

<comment><USER57> Thanks, i see.. is there a requirement on when to take more funding then? what would happen if the startup didn't take further funding (put remained profitable)?

<comment><USER9> If I remember correctly there's a year long grace period after which the investors can choose to force the note to convert. I don't know much about how that works though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I like the 20k from each. It's always good to have a diversity of opinions.

</comment><comment><USER59> Off topic: did Yuri Milner lose money on his Zynga and Groupon investments?

<comment><USER60> Probably. But then he is also doing OK on FB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> love this move. I've seen first hand the 150k let's startups limp around for far to long.

</comment><comment><USER62> It just keeps getting better

</comment><comment><USER63> $80k is peanuts. Apparently these folks haven't learned the lesson that you get what you get what you pay for!

Maybe $80k is enough for some ridiuclous $2 iPhone game or some startup for making a website for adding a single puny feature to an existing social network and having 15 minutes of fame.

But $80k is nowhere near enough money to create an Enterprise solutions startup. I laugh at your $80k and the hubdreds of flight-by-night, gimmicky, bullshit, small businesses that you will burn your money on.

It takes at least $5 million over 5 years to startup a serious business that has any chance in hell of becoming a real billion dollar company. That is the future.

$80k ... it's insulting to people with real ezperience, real ideas, real businesses and real explosive growth potential. You will never fund the next Apple, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, NVIDIA, etc ... You're just going to fund a whole lot of infantile business projects and a whole lot of fail.

<comment><USER64> Apple and Microsoft were both making money before they had spent $80k.

Apple was selling hobbiest boards, Microsoft the license to DOS.

You don't have to build a whole company, just find a market and become sustainable.

<comment><USER63> Apple was created my making devices on breadboards, that doesn't mean that the next Google/Apple/Microsoft will be able to do the same thing. Times have changed, the barriers to entry are slightly higher. $1MM to seed a company, that's the minimum... unless you are only interested in infantile businesses like glorified classified ads, crappy thow-away games, or one-trick pony "cloud" services... $80k doesn't even get you a hot dog stand!</comment></comment></comment>


Why Is The Defense Department Snooping On My Phone? - <AUTHOR> http://www.markturner.net/2011/11/08/why-is-the-defense-department-snooping-on-my-phone/ <comment><USER2> Quick synopsis:

Provider uses IP addresses for their internal network tunnels that correspond to a DOD ARIN allocation.

<comment><USER3> Looks like this was the case.

> Aha! The IP is assigned to my phone's GSM interface, so it looks like it's > benign after all. > That did the tip, Amatus!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A (extremely) large number of usual local network IP ranges are issued to the DOD. Including my local subnet as well. 188.8.131.52/24, if I ran a whois on that IP as well, it would return DOD, but that doesn't mean the DOD is snooping my network, it just means my router has all the routes for 220.127.116.11/24 associated with it and doesn't actually attempt to send traffic over the wire to that IP. I assume your Android phone is listening locally on that address for the VOIP communication, which would in return mean the DOD is NOT snooping on your phone. Much similar to apache or (insert other socket application) listening to 127.0.0.1:80 for local only traffic.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you're saying that providers are using these address ranges where you'd usually expect to see something like 10. _, 172.16-31._ or 192.168.*? That is, purely internal traffic that's not routed over the public net?

If so, I could buy that, but my question is "why?" That is, why not use an actual RFC1918 private address?

Or is your point actually something different, and I'm just missing it?

<comment><USER5> we are talking about an address IP range that happens to be DNS registered..it could be as simple as the DoD has some extra bandwidth/infrastructure that they are leasing out to say Sprint?

<comment><AUTHOR> _.it could be as simple as the DoD has some extra bandwidth/infrastructure that they are leasing out to say Sprint?_

Ok, I get that in principle... but that particular combination sounds awfully suspicious. The DoD just happens to have extra IP space, and they just happen to lease it to cell phone carriers? Hmmmmmmmmm....

I mean, yeah, it could all be totally innocuous, but I'm still suspicious that there might be something else going on. I'm not exactly a card carrying member of the tinfoil-hat brigade, but I trust our government about as far as I can throw it... :-)

<comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addres...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks)

Do a control-f for "DOD". These guys have so much IP4 space its not even funny. Being the government, they'll never give it up. So a total of 200 million IP4 addresses:

[http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/02/13/where-did-all-the-ip- num...](http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/02/13/where-did-all-the-ip-numbers-go- the-us-department-of-defense-has-them/)

So, when the country that starts the internet is also the country with the largest, by far, military and has obscene military spending, well, this is what happens.

<comment><USER7> Wow. For the curious but unmotivated, here are the /8 IPs they control:

126.96.36.199/8 11\. 21\. 22\. 26\. 28\. 29\. 30\. 33\. 55\. 214\. 215.

(omitted the 0.0.0/8 from all but the first for brevity)

<comment><USER8> I just had a LOST flashback.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure it wasn't a... flash forward?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'll guess mindcrime is the original poster. Due to responses to multiple threads, I figure a single explanation should suffice, referenced to related portions.

a904guy is using addresses that are not in the RFC 1918 block for his personal network. While this is discouraged, there isn't anything preventing it. It can cause problems if someone decides to later use 188.8.131.52/24 since he wouldn't be able to use those addresses locally AND talk to external sites on that same netblock without doing some creative NAT.

Secondly, yes, the provider should use RFC 1918 and RFC 4193 blocks. While this can cause problems when provider A uses 10.0.0.0/24 and provider B uses 10.0.0.0/24 and Provider A later buys Provider B, the private address blocks are there and are not supposed to be routed or announced outside local networks. In this case, it appears that Time Warner (or whomever), used 188.8.131.52/8 internally. This probably dates back to the @home network when the providers shared responsibility and grabbed the 18.104.22.168/8 block, then, later split and renumbered. TWC may have just swapped 24 for 28 on their network to eliminate re-engineering. No way to know for sure without someone knowing some history.

shareme: There is a difference between DNS registered (which this block is not), and assigned and registered by ARIN. ARIN delegates blocks to particular entities and maintains that directory. That doesn't mean I can't use those IP addresses locally (I wouldn't be able to announce them to the global internet - well, you could if you had upstream providers willing or negligent in their best practices).

The government is not leasing IP addresses to Sprint. How do we know this? Because the IP addresses are not being announced by anyone:

        HE.inet.0: 42 destinations, 42 routes (41 active, 0 holddown, 1 hidden)
        + = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both
        0.0.0.0/0          *[Static/5] 28w4d 15:04:18
                        > to x.x.x.x via ge-0/3/0.0

        Internap.inet.0: 42 destinations, 42 routes (41 active, 0 holddown, 1 hidden)
        + = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both

        0.0.0.0/0          *[Static/5] 28w4d 15:03:57
                        > to x.x.x.x via ge-0/1/0.0

or, if you don't trust an active routing table that has defaults set, you can look at route-views:

        route-views>show ip bgp 126.96.36.199
        BGP routing table entry for 0.0.0.0/0, version 338718131
        Paths: (1 available, best #1, table Default-IP-Routing-Table, RIB-failure(17))
          Not advertised to any peer
          2905 65524 16637
          22.214.171.124 from 184.108.40.206 (22.214.171.124)
            Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 100, valid, external, best

Now, related to this conversation, but included in a separate blog post, are some traceroutes that show packets vanishing into thin air as they exit networks.

As most networks don't run defaultless - they have a default path just in case they receive a packet for an IP address that isn't in their routing table. This happens when you have a client of a provider that may not have their filters set properly, or, are have odd confederations or community settings that you don't see their announcement. Rather than blackhole those organizations, one normally has a default route pointed to a provider. A backbone provider would more likely run defaultless, a host or Internet Service Provider would normally run with a default route.

So, you run a traceroute on a network that has a default route, and it gets to the border to a provider that doesn't run defaults and the packet is dropped. The DoD isn't filtering these packets or making them disappear - the Internet doesn't know where they should go, and, since there is no default route, the packets are dropped at the first router that doesn't know how to route it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I'll guess mindcrime is the original poster._

Actually, no. But the OP is a friend, and this showed up in my G+ feed earlier. I thought some HN people might either A. find it interesting and/or B. have an explanation.

 _Due to responses to multiple threads, I figure a single explanation should suffice, referenced to related portions. <snip />_

That all sounds reasonable... but you'd think if somebody was going to squat on some IP address space, they'd pick somebody other than the DoD to mess with. :-)

<comment><USER2> Network engineers often make very arbitrary decisions with regards to IP numbering/renumbering.

RFC 4913 suggests using the current timestamp + the mac address of your machine, sha1 hashed and then taking the lower 40 bits to generate your Unique Local Address (ULA). An RFC that is specific about generating an arbitrary number.

I doubt much thought went into it - it was an unused, unannounced block that didn't conflict with their existing 10.0.0.0/8 network.

<comment><USER10> If the author wanted to look, the Via header is actually not a great place to look. It's not the most accurate header in terms of telling you where the call is being handled.

If you look inside the SDP's (usually in the INVITE and 200 OK, potentially 183/180 or ACK) it will tell you where the actual RTP traffic is going. If those RTP ports and addresses are changed something is certainly foul. My guess is they are not.

If you see a Record Route header it means some proxy has inserted itself into the signaling traffic. Or again, if the SDP inside SIP header is changed.

For reference, an SDP looks like this:

v=0 o=- 1996782469 1996782469 IN IP4 220.127.116.11 s=- c=IN IP4 22.214.171.124 t=0 0 m=audio 57076 RTP/AVP 0 101 a=rtpmap:0 pcmu/8000 a=rtpmap:101 telephone- event/8000 a=fmtp:101 0-16 a=ptime:20 a=sendrecv

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Judging by the subsequent posts on the guy's blog, I'm not so sure he is willing to buy into the explanation. I'm with cd34: ISP using unannounced DoD IP space. Happens on networks all across the world, all the time. No secret area-51 voip NSA black ops: just bad network policy.

Of course, that might just be what they WANT us to think. <dawns tinfoil hat>

</comment><comment><USER12> Cell providers are known to break SIP on purpose on thier networks. Sometimes by inserting broken 'via' headers in the SIP packets.

The DOD IP is in the 28/8 range which is not in the global routing table. So the packets never reach DOD.

</comment><comment><USER13> cd34 answered it adequately. If you want a fairly detailed explanation of how they actually monitor your telecommunications, check out James Bamford's The Shadow Factory:

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

</comment><comment><USER14> Hi folks. I'm Mark Turner, the blogger who discovered this situation.

Thanks to the help of a few folks who commented on my blog, I was able to learn that the 28.x.x.x IP was assigned to my phone's interface. Thus it appears Sprint has "borrowed" addresses from the DoD. Because SIP packets contain the source IP (unlike the other traffic from my phone) the internal IP was leaking through Sprint's NATting, causing my confusion. It's all harmless, though a good argument for moving to IPv6!

</comment><comment><USER15> These posts are mainly good so that someone who actually knows networking will respond and tell them they are correct or incorrect.

<comment><USER16> The problem here is that to be sure I think you'd have to know both networking and internal network layouts of the cell providers.

In other words, there are missing pieces that make all explanations difficult to confirm or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Since the IP address assignment was updated in 2009, it seems unlikely that the address was transferred from the DoD to Sprint or some other intermediate ISP.

</comment><comment><USER18>
      "That's what hackers do, you know."
      "I have my own VoIP system (remember, I'm a hacker)"

Did this irritate anyone else? It really distracted me from the article when the guy just _has_ to make sure we know he's a hacker because he bought a VoIP system and installed Google Voice on his smartphone.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Did this irritate anyone else? It really distracted me from the article when the guy just _has_ to make sure we know he's a hacker_

To be fair, Mark probably had no idea this would show up on HN. I was the one who posted it here, not him. He probably thought his audience for this would be the same regular audience for his blog, which includes a lot of RTP locals who know him in person and know his background. In that context, those statements make perfect sense.

 _because he bought a VoIP system and installed Google Voice on his smartphone._

Nah, Mark's been hacking on Linux and Asterisk stuff a long time; and he's a sharp guy who definitely deserves the "hacker" appellation.

<comment><USER14> Mindcrime's correct. It's my blog: I write for me and nobody else. If you liked something, great. If not, there's plenty of other links here on HN. Knock yourself out.

In this case, I added those comments to my post so that a non-technical audience would better understand the mindset. Believe it or not, not everyone thinks the way we geeks do. :)</comment></comment></comment>


OpenPCR - open source biotech on your desktop - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/930368578/openpcr-open-source-biotech-on-your-desktop

<comment><USER2> I love this idea. Interestingly, they reference Gates and how cheap computers helped him. All those guys, Gates included, started out working on mainframes and minis that they stole time from in University labs.

Probably that's what Gates-of-2030 is doing right now; making glowing mice in the basement of the University of Minnesota, or somewhere similar.

<comment><USER3> A fine point, though keep in mind though that Mini-computers were themselves sort of the PCs of the mainframe era. A story I heard, possibly apocryphal, is that Ken Olsen named DEC "digital equipment corporation" rather than , say "Digital Computer Corporation," as a way around IBMs lock on central purchasing at universities, national labs and corporations for any "computer" purchases.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those unfamiliar with a PCR box (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCR>), think of it as a photocopier for DNA--by creating copies, the DNA can be visualized through other tools like a gel box (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gel_electrophoresis>). I saw Tito and Josh's prototype at Maker Faire and it was truly impressive. Please support them if you can!

</comment><comment><USER4> I am completely behind the spirit of this idea, but I wish they would openly address the cost of running PCR reactions which take enzymes, nucleotides, specific phosphate buffers in or to complete. All of these things cost as do the methods to analyze your final PCR products. I assume this is all covered under their mentioning 'kits', but these accessory components can rapidly become more expensive than the instrument itself.

<comment><USER5> This is Josh - one of the people behind the OpenPCR project. I agree with you that reagents can be a huge amount of the cost.

Part of this depends on the quantity of reactions you're doing. Taking the DNA barcoding of trees example we gave, if you're doing hundreds of reactions the cost can already be quite low as crocowhile pointed out. If you're just learning or doing a few reactions, here's where a kit containing small quantities of the needed reagents and educational information can be more cost effective.

The other part has to do with the exact reagents you need. Obviously if you can use an off the shelf master mix you'll pay much less than if you need to purchase a specialized enzyme and specific reaction buffer. There are cases where that is needed, but there's also cases where people purchase reagents more expensive than what they need, simply because they just want their reaction to work, they've found one way to make it work, and they'd rather spend more time on their project rather than finding the more cost effective ways to make it work.

Here there's a lot of opportunity for software or software coupled with hardware to find the most cost effective way to do a reaction and make it work better. For example, a PCR machine networked with a UV spec and some software could quantify template DNA, present recommendations on enzymes, calculate the best reaction parameters accurately, and tell the user exactly what quantities to add of primers/enzyme/buffer/water. Many users of PCR are not necessarily experts at PCR, so there's some opportunity to help people get better results while saving time and money.

We're thinking about these larger problems, but focusing on getting an accurate and reliable PCR machine working first. Once we have that, we'll have the foundation to pursue these other areas.

<comment><USER6> Going back to the barcoding of trees, how would you do it? I assume you'd use some sort of SNP identification or specific DNA primers, but then you've just got a bunch of DNA in a tube.

The typical way of visualizing DNA is using an electrophoresis gel - most of the components are cheap/easy to obtain (agarose, electrodes, power supply, buffer), but how would you visualize your gel? Typical ethidium bromide stains are probably out of the question, given that ethidium bromide is so carcinogenic - most people probably don't have access to ethidium bromide. Maybe use a safer stain? (googling seems to point to invitrogen's SYBR Safe DNA stain as a possibility).

Then again, you could just use a UV spec to measure concentration, but how many people have a UV spec?

Looking forward to your results! In the future I think it would be nice to have open source enzyme starters (kind of like brewers/bakers yeast starter kits?) so that people could just grow+purify their own enzymes. (after the open source centrifuge that is =P )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While this sounds like a fun project, if you want a cheap PCR machine, why not buy a used one for a few hundred bucks?

Getting molecular biology to work is going to be hard enough without trying to reinvent the wheel and re-do the relatively uninteresting, but highly optimized engineering that has gone into these machines over the last 20 years.

<comment><USER8> Over and above cost, an open PCR machine design may enable these machines to develop in unexpected ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You don't even need a PCR machine. All you _really_ need are three water baths at the appropriate temperatures!

<comment><USER10> You kids don't know how good you have it. Why back in my day...

<comment><USER3> ...you had to purify your own DNA polymerase and then add more of it at each cycle because a thermostable version hasd't been discovered yet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gave you $8 and reblogged. [http://www.thinkgene.com/openpcr-dna- amplification-for-anyon...](http://www.thinkgene.com/openpcr-dna- amplification-for-anyone/)

Btw, if anyone reading this wants to upgrade their OpenPCR setup with a nice PCR hood, I have a beautiful one for sale for $1500.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool! 20 years ago, I tried using PCR quantitatively to study estrogen receptor gene expression in feline uterine epithelial cells for my senior thesis. I didn't end up doing much science though, because I spent too much time hung up on techniques.

</comment><comment><USER12> Instead of pledging money, can I get involved directly, or is this only Tito and Josh?

<comment><USER13> Hey silverstorm -- Awesome, shoot me an email and let us know your interests -- titojankowski at gmail.com

Tito

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey, since you're reading Josh, I have a question: isn't the harder part of this securing the chemicals / reagents / disposables / tools to actually perform PCR? I thought you needed special (patent covered) reagents, 96/whatever well plates, seals, pipettes, etc. Sorry, I'm not trying to be disrespectful of your efforts, but it seems that even if I had a PCR machine, I'd still be a long way from doing PCR on anything interesting.

In any case, best of luck. I used to work on software that controlled MJ Research thermocyclers and on a light sensing / real time pcr system software. It was kind of interesting, but the companies that build these devices move slowly and charge (in my mind) way too much money. This market is ripe for disruption. (I worked on a slightly bigger, since discontinued, version of this: [http://www.bio- rad.com/prd/en/US/adirect/biorad?ts=1&cmd...](http://www.bio- rad.com/prd/en/US/adirect/biorad?ts=1&cmd=BRCatgProductDetail&vertical=LSR&catID=dc07e873-5c02-4fd6-bd5e-1aad973eec08) )

There's actually a used one of the things I worked on for sale for $14K here. Oof.

<http://www.labx.com/v2/adsearch/detail3.cfm?adnumb=402318>

Also -- if you just want a plain thermocycler, here's one for $20 or so!!! (these things started at $10K new.) <http://www.labx.com/v2/adsearch/detail3.cfm?adnumb=415429>

<comment><USER5> The supplies and reagents you need are all readily available on the web. For basic supplies like pipettes and tubes, one of my favorite sources is <http://www.bio-world.com> . You'll also need a taq polymerase and primers - both of which tons of companies sell online, just search Google and look at the ads. Some companies will only ship these reagents to commercial addresses, but there's more than enough that will ship to residential.

We'll try to get more info on the site in the days to come.

<comment><USER13> Hey Earl, MJ Research, cool! I've got one of their PCR machines in my trunk, all taken apart. We used it as inspiration when we were first starting, it's got some nice design features. Keep in touch, Tito

<comment><USER3> I remember when MJ Research thermocyclers were the bargain option. That was nearly 20 years ago.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My New Project, Digital Graphic Novel - <AUTHOR> http://sevenmillennia.com

<comment><USER2> The text that flies up in that video... I read REALLY fast and I missed some of it. I had to rewatch that part specifically waiting for the text to read it.

As for the novel itself... Well, I can't really judge it since it's not there, and I don't think that video does a good job showing it off. It's like an RPG that only shows cutscenes in the commercial. It doesn't actually represent the meat of the thing, so it fails to pull me in at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> The project is early in development, so we were not able to put up a better video to show what the product will be. I will definitely push to have it ready ASAP.</comment></comment>


A new protocol for social interaction - <AUTHOR> http://lindsaar.net/2010/9/19/a_new_protocol_for_social_interaction

<comment><USER2> I think this would require a new set of assumptions, a new social contract and the government would have to write new laws to accommodate it. Their would probably be a vigilant "free market-ism" backlash that would crush it all before it even got off the ground. This is assuming the press wouldn't ignore it all together and people are remotely educated enough to understand this "tech stuff" to care. I think their would need to be an extremely thought out tangible template that gets enough people on the side of the idea that it can persuade a large chunk of the "big business" eco-system that it's for the better and there's something in it for them. Otherwise, It will probably remain just that - an idea.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am quite interested to hear comments and feedback about these ideas and the four parts of the protocol outlined in the post.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you worry that your product will be killed by one of the tech giants? - <AUTHOR> Today Google released Google trips https://get.google.com/trips
Not to say it's definitely going to be successful, but it must be a bad news for people building travel apps.
These days big companies like Google and microsoft roll out small products like trips from time to time, with so many resources to spare, they have a bigger chance to succeed than startups.
If you are building a internet product, do you worry that one day a tech giant will crash you? If so what can you do about it? <comment><USER2> Do not worry about things that you don't control. Our job as innovators is to find opportunities that we believe in and give our best, independent of the outcome. Moreover, Tech giants cannot focus and move as fast as a tiny startup.

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree with this more, "Do not worry about things that you don't control."

And I'd like to add that there are plenty of things to worry about. Channel your energy there.

<comment><AUTHOR> In theory you are right, but in reality, when you are faced with multiple choices of startup ideas, shouldn't this be a major factor on deciding which one to act on?

<comment><USER3> No.

The market, and your understanding of it, should be a major factor. The fact that 800 pound gorillas have more resources is just an excuse to not do something.

Besides, those resources could just as easily be used to acquire your idea if you do it better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not at all. It seems these bigcos in their desire to diversify either produce an inferior version of pre existing hit software which will eventually fizzle out (or kept under life support), or simply buy out a viable competitor to the said pre existing hit software. So, unless you are trying to compete with bigcos' A game software products, you shouldn't worry. I don't. One might even look to create a viable competitor and seek a buyout, enjoy the spoils for a while and move on to next idea. Again, I don't.

</comment><comment><USER5> Google releasing their product brings visibility to the market. If you have a travel app, now ou can say "it's like google trips, but we launched last year" and people will have some idea because of the google hype cycle. Instead of saying "it's like yahoo travel trip planner, except we didn't shut down"

</comment><comment><USER6> I do. This may not be popular opinion - but the mere fact that they can build what you can after you have "proved" the market for them is always risky IMO. Ofcourse, bigcos may not be able as nimble as you are - so there's hope. Incidentally, I asked a question today due to the fear of same thing.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wouldn't hold my breath with google. Lets see:

\- Google Wave (dead)

\- Google talk (dead)

\- Google Voice (dead)

\- Google trips (...._

If anything, google may offer to buy you out if they like your product good enough. So if that counts as being killed, then yea may be.

<comment><USER8> Is Google Voice considered dead?

It's been my primary number for ~4 years now, and yes, it's not 100% reliable (spotty forwarding once in a while), it's still serving me well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not in a start-up at the minute, and I should make it clear that I've not yet worked in a senior role at one. That said, I feel like most start-ups would be happy to reach the level of success where this is a problem!

</comment><comment><USER10> The more specific your audience, the less likely that a big company will replicate your solution.

Building a faster database? You're going to get clobbered.

Building a better system for managing small postage stamp collections? You're probably safe.</comment>


Cryptocurrencies and ICOs with Patents - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gaetanconsulting/cryptocurrencies-icos-with-patents-investors-can-leverage-bf87a56d0a99 <comment><USER2> Not sure if patents are the things crypto investors should look out for. Looking at the recommended ICOs/coins in the post I am not sure if they going to be good investments (reason: they are all _utility tokens_ which are the riskiest because they have to survive long enough to service the dominant platforms).

A helpful article which gives a good understanding of the different types of coins (currency, platform, utility) which again creates a solid foundation for any coin investment: [https://hackernoon.com/mastering-shitcoins-the-poor- mans-gui...](https://hackernoon.com/mastering-shitcoins-the-poor-mans-guide- to-getting-crypto-rich-2e469b762ba9)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a terrible idea, that I hope the cryptocurrency communities will reject. Also, why would anyone want to cryptocurrency companies to be "acquired"? Ideally, cryptocurrencies would all be run by foundations.

I was just marveling recently at how nice it is that virtually all cryptocurrencies are open source and thinking that it must be part of a new generation of software where most of it is open source and money is made through other means (like funding through tokens and then continuing to benefit from the increased valuation of the project, which will presumably correlate with the project's progress).

</comment><comment><USER4> TL;dr version - (pending) Patents = value. Ergo, these ICOs are valuable.

This obviously is a terrible idea. Pending patents (2/3 mentioned ICOs) can fall through.

The only ICO which has a patent is not owned by the company. It is also a ML related patent nothing to do with cryptocurrency.

The worst part is the author gives a checklist of things to consider but conveniently omits how the checklist applies to these ICOs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Historically, cryptographic algorithms encumbered by patents have failed to get wide adoption. I suspect the same will be true of cryptocurrencies.</comment>


My New York Misadventure (1932) - <AUTHOR> http://www.winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/23-finest-hour-136/2251-my-new-york-misadventure <comment><USER2> For those of you struggling to identify "RML", its Richard M. Langworth, former editor.

"The Churchill Centre has announced that Richard M. Langworth will retire as editor of its quarterly journal Finest Hour on October 31, 2014 after completion of the Autumn 2014 issue."

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice to see Baruch mentioned on HN. I actually go to Baruch College and don't know much about him besides what's on the Wikipedia page. There's a statue of him sitting on a bench near the entrance and I can't help but wonder what he was like when I walk past it...

<comment><USER4> I'm also enrolled in Baruch to take a few language classes at night - interesting to find a HN commenter as well since it's CS dept seems more IT focused.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately it's not even a "Computer Science" department, they call it "Computer Information Systems". I never even took a CIS class, I'm technically a finance major. Pretty much taught myself how to program by playing with R/C++ and doing the JH Data Science Coursera degree. Also read Paul Graham's book recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Upon such random events the fates of nations and empires hinge.</comment>


Scientists discover brightest supernova ever seen - <AUTHOR> https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2020-06 <comment><USER2> Anton Petrov has pretty decent coverage of this on his YouTube channel[1].

This type of supernova has been theorized, although to my knowledge not previously observed (due to the mechanics, about 50% of the energy is radiated as visible light, which is why they're so exceptionally bright).

We do have a star near us that is theorized to have undergone a pulsational pair instability supernova in the 19th century: Eta Carinae.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhjHs2L4kqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhjHs2L4kqw)

<comment><USER3> Eta Carinae underwent supernova _imposter_ events, not supernova. Otherwise there wouldn't be an Eta Carinae.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what this would look like from less than Galactic distances, i.e. close enough to see but not close enough to incinerate.

<comment><USER5> There are historical reports about supernovae where they were visible during the day for a few weeks. I guess it would look just like another bright star. Makes me wonder what the minimum safe distance is.

<comment><USER6> Yean I was thinking the same thing.

How spectacular of a view could you get from an earth like planet ... and still not have any ill effects?

Could it be a huge spectacular thing reaching across the entire sky, or would by that stage you be in real trouble?

<comment><USER7> Interesting question. My off-the-top instinct would be to say any explosion that looks bigger than the sun is probably delivering more radiation than the sun and that would be bad news. But that's without doing any math.

(Also brings to mind the book Dhalgren.)

<comment><USER8> Somewhat :-) Supernovae are relatively easy to spot because they usually outshine their entire host _galaxy_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With a total energy output of 10^44 Joules, it seems odd to exclaim over "500 times brighter!" I guess supernovae all exist in a very narrow band of energies?

<comment><USER10> One particular class of supernova is used as a standard candle for determining the distances to other galaxies.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, but that uses carefully calibrated relations with the time evolution at different filters to significantly decrease the the observed spread in luminosity.

Also, here they don't report on a Type Ia supernova (the ones useable as standard candles because we ain't got anything else).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a strange press release. Energy measured in ergs, 100 solar masses "incredibly massive" star?

<comment><USER13> Ergs is pretty commonly used in physics. A 100 solar mass star is very massive: 150 solar masses is about the theoretical limit for a star.

<comment><USER14> ~150 solar masses is the Eddington limit[1] where the outward luminosity pressure becomes greater than the inward gravitational pressure holding the star together. Stars probably cannot _grow_ past this size through normal accretion. However, a few[2] stars have been estimated to have masses much greater than 150 solar masses, up to R136a1 [3] with an estimated 315 solar masses.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_stars#Lis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_stars#List_of_the_most_massive_stars)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R136a1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R136a1)</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: appspot.com blocked by ICT Ministry in Thailand - <AUTHOR>

As of a couple of hours ago the entire appspot.com domain has been blocked in Thailand by the ICT Ministry.
I'm guessing this is because they block proxy servers and there are a number running on App Engine.
I'm personally pissed off because I've been using App Engine as a CDN and now a couple of my sites are broken.
Does anyone have a contact at Google SG? They don't pick up their main line and they must have a direct line to the ICT since they censor some search results and youtube videos to comply with Thai laws.
If you have a contact, please ping me at mbenjaminsmith AT gmail DOT com.
Thanks <comment><USER2> well they only blocked the appspot.com domain.

Set your project to use an alternative domain within app engine, it would work fine.

more discussions at [http://groups.google.com/group/google- appengine/browse_threa...](http://groups.google.com/group/google- appengine/browse_thread/thread/62a4ea1552d203fc?pli=1)</comment>


EFF Wins National Security Letter Transparency Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/05/victory-eff-wins-national-security-letter-transparency-lawsuit <comment><USER2> If a thing requires an eternal gag order, maybe we shouldn't be doing that thing.

Kudos to EFF for casting light on the shadows.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every law, and every sealed procedure, should have a (relatively) short sunset clause built in. Before that clause triggers it should be reviewed and extended if necessary.

In the case of NSLs, the proper legal way to do this would be to have a new judge review the need for continued secrecy every couple years.

<comment><USER4> > Every law, and every sealed procedure, should have a (relatively) short > sunset clause built in.

Including the law that implements that policy? Including the Bill of Rights? A law prohibiting murder?

<comment><USER5> >A law prohibiting murder?

Seems like the kind of thing that should have no trouble getting rubber- stamped every few years.

Lets invert that though.

In 1615 Iceland passed a law stating that any Basque that set foot in the Westfjords /must/ be killed. They got around to abolishing it in 2015.

Seems like the sort of thing that probably should have been revoked earlier, no?

More generally, most countries legal codes are a god damn shitshow of strata so dense it takes years to decades of study to understand them even a little.

As a result, rulings are arbitrary and hard to predict, citizens are uninformed on the law and can be blindsided by vindictive police, new laws are disproportionately hard to create due to conflict resolution with old laws being required and parliaments enshrine old laws in tradition and are lothe to amend them.

In general, it's the legal equivalent of that codebase that no one is willing to change because no one remembers why things were implemented in the first place.

Lets not pretend that adding expiry clauses to existing or new laws would lead to a world where murder is legal. That'll get tracked pretty closely and refreshed on the regular. I would expect two outcomes:

1\. A government department is created specifically for the purpose of tracking and ranking upcoming law expiries by importance. We should probably have something like this already.

2\. For the things society holds really dear, murder/rape/assault, taxes, driving laws etc, I would expect to see a regular "refresh the core issues" session at the start of every year. Essentially a formality where the government can go "yep, torture is still bad, moving on".

However, I'd expect most of the random statutes against oral sex that are still all across the US to expire pretty quickly with lawmakers by and large not giving enough of a shit to refresh them, and that's /good/. Those laws serve no meaningful purpose, their only use is as a weapon for corrupt police to threaten average citizens with.

<comment><USER6> A yearly review of all of the laws would be labour intensive (read expensive). Governments will simply say "reviewing all the laws means we have to raise taxes to pay for the review, so instead we're going to do a blanket refresh on all laws"

<comment><USER5> I'm envisioning the average sunset clause being more like 20 years. The annual refresh would be "lets make sure this doesn't expire" done voluntarily for the things that are really important that are currently going to expire in 19 years but everyone wants to reset their timer every year just in case.

I also don't really think it's that big a deal to ask the government to once a year go "we all still think rape's pretty uncool? yep? great, all in favor of amending the Consolidated Sexual Offenses Act 2019's expiry to be 2038, up from 2037? Done! Moving on."

I imagine any politician that objected would get eviscerated in the public eye. Should be a one-hour-a-year process to knock out all the key stuff, particularly if everyone knows first sitting session of the year is the refresh-the-core-values session.

<comment><USER6> That doesn't sound like a review, it sounds like busy work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rule of law, democracy, free speech and dissent are at odds with secret courts, secret processes and secret orders. A democracy is about transparency and accountability which cannot happen in secret.

A democracy loses meaning with these kinds of laws, and the freedom act is a classic example of Orwellian doublespeak.

There are obviously many people who care deeply about democracy but given how long these activities have gone on and get passed without strong public push back betrays a serious lack of organization in the public sphere. Unless a million people are on the roads this won't stop.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you're happy about this, then please [http://eff.org/donate](http://eff.org/donate) :)</comment>


The day I decided to be a Superhero - <AUTHOR> http://www.pilgrimbreak.com/the-day-i-decided-to-be-a-superhero/

<comment><USER2> That's nice, mate. Be sure to get back to us when you've actually done something instead of blogging grandiosely about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will be sure to do so. In the meantime, I have learned a few things when writing this post:

* 'personally' takes one 'n', 2 'l'

* 'deactivate' instead of 'desactivate'

* use blockquotes in markdown

I guess that's a good start!

<comment><USER3> Another thing to look at: what were you thinking when you wrote "eat more than you consume" and can that be expressed in a way which makes more sense?

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea was to say "burn more calories than you ingest", but that was poorly said indeed. It is now corrected, thanks for pointing this out!

<comment><USER3> If you persist in burning more calories than you ingest, then the growing energy deficit will waste and kill you, by the law of conservation of energy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pacman-5.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://allanmcrae.com/2016/01/pacman-5-0-released/ <comment><USER2> Some of the comments here reminded me of another recent post, and in particular these statements...

>Do not start an open source project if you need praise, warmth and love from your fellow human beings. [ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11053810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11053810) ]

>Folks forget that most FOSS work is volunteer & berating the hackers who make it won't help one bit. [ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054809) ]

<comment><USER3> Well, the front page did recently have people complaining about a bunch of paid products (github, twitter, everything IBM does). I'd expect us to treat open source projects like any other, and part of that is by noting their failings. Incentivising fixing those (or doing the fixing) does happen in different ways, but this isn't a development forum :)

I'd say:

> don't post anything publicly if you want only [warm fuzzy feelings]"

<comment><USER4> There is 'total compensation' to consider, though. If you're getting paid big money to work on something, you can probably swallow the criticism fairly easily. But if you're not being paid any money, and there are zero warm fuzzy feelings, it's harder to stay motivated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish the package-query maintainers would stop hard coding the pacman version in their PKGBUILD as requirements. It means that every time there's a minor release of pacman, updating breaks for the 6 hours it takes the AUR guys to catch up.

<comment><USER6> There's tons of alternatives to yaourt, thankfully.

<comment><USER5> But AFAIK they all use package-query (pacaur does IIRC).

<comment><USER6> [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/package- query/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/package-query/)

Only pacupg does, according to this. pacaur, cower, apacman, packer, and all the others ([https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers)) don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Still no parallel download support ?

[https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/20056](https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/20056)

<comment><USER8> Why isn't a XferCommand that by itself downloads chunks concurrently good enough for you?

<comment><USER9> XferCommands are confusing to write. I have one, and it makes my downloads faster, though I wouldn't have a clue how to write it myself. Here's what I have currently:

        XferCommand = /usr/bin/printf 'Downloading ' && echo %u | awk -F/ '{printf $NF}' && printf '...' && /usr/bin/aria2c -q --allow-overwrite=true -c --file-allocation=none --log-level=error -m2 --max-connection-per-server=2 --max-file-not-found=5 --min-split-size=5M --no-conf --remote-time=true --summary-interval=0 -t5 -d / -o %o %u && echo ' Complete!'

It's fast, but doesn't have download progress. I had another one, which printed several lines of output per file (but did have progress!).

My point is, the fact that you _can_ make pacman download stuff quickly as-is, doesn't mean that inbuilt support wouldn't be beneficial for everyone who doesn't know how their downloading program works back-to-front.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone already got an implementation of a hook? No idea how it should be used...

<comment><USER11> It's explained in the linked article and it even links to an examples repo: [https://github.com/andrewgregory/pachooks](https://github.com/andrewgregory/pachooks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one that read the title and thought this was Pacman the game? I am surprised they let you use the name for something else considering it's supposed to be highly copyright-protected.

Sidenote: I am having trouble finding the link to an explanation what this really is. any help?

<comment><USER5> Names aren't copyrighted, they're trademarked. And since:

a) Arch Linux isn't selling pacman. b) I don't believe Namco still own a registered trademark for Pacman. And they probably don't make enough money from it for them to win a lawsuit about it (trademarks require a reasonable commercial interest in order to be protected).

So there almost certainly isn't a legal issue. IANAL.

<comment><USER13> The trademark is also for 'Pac-Man' not 'pacman'.

<comment><USER14> That's why I can get away with selling my home-made "cocacola" without legal issues.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visual Studio Code 1.2 released - <AUTHOR> https://code.visualstudio.com/Updates#1.2 <comment><USER2> I'm not ready for transition (using atom at the moment and considering spacemacs due to elixir), but VS Code is really impressive in terms of speed. Atom is cool, but it's really slow. I thought it was because Electron, MS proved me wrong. Point for them.

<comment><USER3> I switched from Atom a few weeks ago, and haven't back. I do miss Atom's regex support in Find All, but I use it rarely enough that I can just fire up Atom when I need it.

Enough of the keyboard commands are borrowed from Atom that it makes the switch pretty painless.

<comment><USER4> VSCode has regex support in find all (it's the little .* that you see on the right-side of the search box).

<comment><USER5> wont match \n though [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/313](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/313)

<comment><USER6> The last comment on that issue from alexandrudima makes it look like it'll be in the next release, if we're lucky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been a vi person for over two decades, and switched to VS Code a few months ago. It's really fantastic for a lot of modern development especially web stuff (and golang.) As they add features, I hope they continue to drive the UI latency down and keep it snappy.

<comment><USER8> Hi. I've been looking for someone that uses vi seriously. I have struggled to use it quickly. Can you give me or do you know of a short screencast of someone using vi at their comfortable speed. I can't understand yet how it can be faster than autocomplete.

<comment><USER9> What is faster than autocomplete? vi is an editor just like vs code. You can use autocomplete and other features in vi too.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I don't mean autocomplete. I mean other editors that do not rely on a large number of keyboard shortcuts. I have never seen someone use vim quickly.

<comment><USER10> I've been using vim inside of VS for a while (ViEmu and VsVim) as well as in Emacs (Evil) and straight vim for light editing. Of course typing a word out will be faster with autocomplete - it's less keystrokes. Where I find speed is navigating around lines, changing/deleting stuff (like changing inside parens or a string, deleting multiple lines, etc). It's small stuff that really adds up.

The real killer is quick macros. If I have to transform a bunch of lines, it's just a "qa<work>q" and a "@a" away. It's pretty amazing.

At first vim doesn't seem that great, but after using it for a while it's indispensable. Somewhere along the line you go from having to think about all the strange keystrokes to just getting a feel for it. Doesn't hurt that it makes you feel like a wizard, too.

Comparing with Emacs is a hands-down win - having to press Ctrl Alt whatever just to move around is silly. Emacs+Evil is sweet though. Comparing with VS's editor (Windows style, with Ctrl+Arrows for things) is also a huge win. Windows editing just isn't amazing.

VSCode's lack of full vim support is very disappointing.

<comment><USER11> I really like spacemacs as it seems to bring the best of both emacs and vi. If you like evil, I recommend checking out spacemacs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What kind of environments (software, hardware) is everyone running this one? I tried it once, and I found it much more sluggish and unresponsive compared to my X11 Emacs setup.

EDIT: I should add that I have all the bells and whistles like excellent fuzzy input selection via ido and even live preview of Markdown rendering via markdown-mode plus eww (requires Emacs to be built with libxml2). Plus on the fly error checking if I need it, auto completion, terminal emulators, etc. Just saying, before anyone argues Emacs doesn't support modern amenities.

<comment><USER13> I run it on a Macbook Pro 15 2015, a Macbook Air 11 2011, and a frankenbox with an i7 from 2013.

On the Air it takes 10 seconds or so to launch. On the others it's less than 5 seconds. Compare to PHPStorm, which is kinda useable in less than 30 seconds, and takes a minute or two to index a relatively small codebase and be fully useable. (Of course, PHPStorm does a lot more than VS Code, but I find that I don't use it anymore anyway; testing startup time just now was the first time I'd opened it in months. I guess I should stop paying for it.)

<comment><USER12> I'd go nuts with such long launch times, regardless of daemon mode.

<comment><USER13> When I use a command line editor, I tend to launch a new editor for each file, edit, save, and quit. For GUI editors, I tend to just leave them running on some desktop and add files to them, so I rarely start them and wait; instead I just open a new file or a new window and continue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The UI has always held me back from using VS Code, though the performance and new features look great. Glad that tab support is coming, and it's cool that they have a detailed iteration plan for June publicly available: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/7253](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/7253)

<comment><USER15> I'm stoked they're going to add tabs. When they first launched code, they said they didn't want tabs. I guess they thought the document explorer thing was the best option. But it totally turned me off from using Code.

<comment><USER16> Personally, I like the document explorer more than tabs. It's very clear which files have been edited. I use IntelliJ IDEA and periodically I have to stop and clear out unused tabs as it gets too crowded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love their focus on user requested features. Within a few releases (probably 4-6 months) they will add tab and terminal support.

Really cool!

<comment><USER18> Terminal is already in there and mentioned in the root link. Just press Ctrl+` and it will show up.

<comment><USER19> Need to change that key binding... thanks to the US-centric take we've had on keyboards since the TTY days, that key combination doesn't make sense on a Portuguese keyboard.

<comment><USER20> It's Ctrl+ù on French keyboards. Maybe they customized it for Portuguese keyboards too.

<comment><USER19> They did, they're using Ctrl+ç, which is a nice way to use an otherwise useless key for programming, but hardly memorable or ergonomic for me - I'll go and use Ctrl-Shift-T as well, which is what I use in Openbox ;)

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't recommend. What if you use VScode in openbox?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can't recommend this enough. Especially if you do react/react native work. Thank you so much microsoft for this. Do not be prejudiced against the technology just give it a try and see for yourself.

<comment><USER23> I just opened a project in VSCode, closed the VSCode, deleted the project, and now when I try to open VScode the program won't load. Did I break it?

Also, how do I autocomplete using suggestions from other files within the project directory?

<comment><USER24> Do you mind filing that issue? [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/new](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/new)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One thing I liked so much about vscode is it's default 'VS Dark' syntax scheme, so much so I modified a copy of it for intellij which makes things a lot less jarring when jumping from one to the other.

Each release is much better than the last and the momentum behind the releases is incredible.

</comment><comment><USER26> What's the state of vim plugins for VS Code?

I would love to use it for Go programming but I'm so used to vim key bindings that it's hard to switch. I can use IntelliJ because their vim plugin is pretty good; anything of similar quality for VS Code?

<comment><USER27> It's pretty poor; expect only the basics of moving. I don't think this is a technical problem though, just a plugin maturity problem.

<comment><USER28> Sounds like they should use IntelliJ to write a VSC plugin so they can switch to VSC :)

<comment><USER29> I'd really like to see them use neovim to interpret commands. IIRC there's an Atom plugin for just that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't help but notice how difficult it is (still) in both Visual Studio and Visual Studio code to add syntax highlighting/intellisense features for a new language, whereas Notepad++ can do it so easily by just adding a simple XML file of commands and their parameters. I tried writing an Extension in Visual Studio for the "Scheme Programming Language" and tried to understand all of their infrastructure for it, but the complexity involved just turned me off.

<comment><USER31> That's because Intellisense is not about regexp matching.

Consider how in Emacs there are usually simple packages for a language (say, ruby-mode), and complex ones for live-analysis (say, robe).

<comment><USER30> Yes, I would expect a similar 'limited support' by Visual Studio proper (may- be by simple regexp matching). I think Notepad++'s implementation is not very smart, but it does the basic job of syntax highlighting, function name auto- completion, arguments hinting etc. You should need to write a detailed extension using Visual Studio's Format Specifiers and Classifiers etc. only when you need a deeper integration IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is the status bar themeable yet? It sticks out like sore thumb relative to beautiful themes available.

</comment><comment><USER33> Visual Studio Code looks nice, the feature set is impressive and I can't figure out how to use it.

Honestly I find it to be way to confusing to setup. The whole configuration via json files is fine, except they don't seem to be well documented. If fact the whole thing is really substandard for a Microsoft developer tool, they are usually much better at documentation.

It might just be me, but I find there to be almost zero discoverability for... well anything.

</comment><comment><USER34> The automatically inserted whitespace always bothered me in VS Code. When writing code without an auto-formatter I always end up noticing the extra whitespace in the diff before committing and end up hunting it down. Automatically trimming the automatically inserted whitespace sounds like a somewhat complicated solution. It makes me wonder how other editors handle this, because I never had this problem with other editors.

<comment><USER35> Could you expand on why you don't like to use an auto-formatter? I'm genuinely curious.

I'm pretty addicted to them; they add consistency without me having to think about it (killing off bike-shedding in the process), and in practice it works a bit like a visual semi-linter: if the auto-formatting doesn't produce the expected pattern (and your mind very quickly picks up the pattern subconsciously), it usually means there's a bug in the code somewhere around the area where it goes wrong.

<comment><USER34> I do like to use auto-formatters, but sometimes they are not available. For instance, until recently I didn't have anything for rust-lang. But rustfmt is pretty good now and VS code has good support for rust-lang through the RustyCode extension.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> visual studio code has been amazing so far. Lightweight compared to the good old Visual Studio but still has the powerful feature of great debugging, already an awesome extensions marketplace and the best part: cross platform.

I have been using it for PHP development and loving it. The only nitpick if I may is that their Git integration is a bit plain. By this, I mean that I cannot see individual commits within the editor yet.

</comment><comment><USER37> I really like VS Code, but I can't use it for my primary work, which is in Vue.js, right now. There's an extension for .vue files, but the author claims it is currently not possible to leverage VS Code's JS features like highlighting and intellisense from within <script> blocks inside these files, which I need before I can make the switch.

</comment><comment><USER38> Somehow about a month ago r/powershell convinced me that I needed to give VS code a look. There aren't any free / cheap multi-purpose editors that handle Powershell IntelliSense worth a damn, so given all the effort Microsoft has been putting into the Poshtools extension for Visual Studio I figured maybe we'd see something good in VS Code.

I was horribly wrong. It is so comically bad at Powershell that I took screenshots. It has some coloring... and everything else it's doing is broken.

[http://imgur.com/a/whluQ](http://imgur.com/a/whluQ)

Makes me wonder why VS Code even exists. There is no shortage of first-class editors for every other language that VS Code supports. The one language with a genuine need for a great new editor, a language from Microsoft no less, is supported in a manner that doesn't even rise to the level of half-assed.

#smh

</comment><comment><USER39> YES! finally they are starting to add tabs. I switched to vscode from sublime, really the only annoying thing is lack of tabs.

> it will take numerous iterations to get it right.

Still, this is awesome. Atom was pretty good, except it straight up crawls sometimes. Often, you have to disable syntax highlighting. I flagged an ussue a whike back where it took > 56 seconds to open a .json file.

Surprisingly, as a mac user, i really like vsc. it has drag drop sidebar, decent configurable settings, intellisense & syntax highlighting are pretty good, and some other pretty sane features. Top shelf tab support is the only major thing it really lacks.

</comment><comment><USER40> I just noticed this in the blog / release notes:

        >Comparing files
        > We have added a new API command that allows you
        > to use the diff-editor on two arbitrary resources
        > like so:
        > commands.executeCommand('vscode.diff', uri1, uri2)

does anyone know where I can enter commands so I can try that out?

Reading that, it seems like I can use VSCODE to diff two different web pages?

That'd be really cool if I could (for example):

          commands.executeCommand('vscode.diff', "http://www.google.com", "http://www.google.ca")

<comment><USER41> The F1 keys opens up the command palette [1], I'm assuming it's accessible through there.

[1]: [https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/editor/codebasics](https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/editor/codebasics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Can anyone speak to the difficulty of creating a repl in VS Code?

I'm already using it for all my front-end work but if I could use an integrated Clojure repl the same way I use CIDER in Emacs it would be awesome.

<comment><USER43> There is an F# REPL for VS Code[1], so it's possible at least. Can't say how hard it is though.

[1] [http://ionide.io/](http://ionide.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> A decent light-weight editor, with the newly added terminal (early-stage, for me UTF-8 is not shown correctly) it gets close to what geany provides.

I'm now switching between geany and vscode daily.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is it me or VSCode is having a new release right after Atom? hehe

<comment><USER46> They usually release once a month. This is not the Microsoft of yesteryear with 1 monolithic release perfectly tested, and released once every other year.

They're making incremental progress, and releasing often. The software is noticeably better than it was even 2 months ago.

I write C#, JS, PHP, and Python... and I can do development for ALL of those languages in the same IDE. It's kind of great.

<comment><USER45> Indeed I prefer that kind of "rolling" development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Can't wait until they port it to a native language and don't have to include chrome and node.js.

<comment><USER48> So, like never? Also, if it's fast at what it does, what is it to you if it uses v8 and node?

<comment><USER49> It's not fast as what it does though. Opening files takes ages.

<comment><USER50> You don't use it to open a single file for editing, though. Think of it as a lightweight IDE. Use it to open you folder project, which I do once every few days or even per weekly reboot. Once it's up and running - which takes about 5 seconds for my project folder to open on a MBAir - its plenty snappy for editing code.

For one-off file edits, like my .bash_profile, nginx conf etc., I still use a terminal-based editor, which is what I'd use on a remote machine anyway.

<comment><USER49> So I would have to use two different editors, customize both, get used to both? That doesn't make sense to me (to be fair, mostly because I rarely have the need for IDE). But if I had, why use a lightweight IDE instead of a "full" one (say Visual Studio, JetBrains *, ...)?

<comment><USER51> If you don't need a 'full' IDE there's a lot of mental complexity you can avoid by going à la carte (editor+plugins). It's easier to add features you care about than learn about a bunch of stuff you'll never use. That's very subjective, of course.

<comment><USER49> No, I see what you mean and I guess I agree. But learning how to invoke a feature or installing it should be equal I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why they don't implement file-icons, everyone is asking for it... [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=robertoh...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=robertohuertasm.vscode- icons)

<comment><USER19> Actually, I've been using it since the beginning and have no interest on file icons - I like it just the way it is, without colored baubles festooning an otherwise monochrome and distraction-free file tree.

(I prefer reading the file extensions anyway, since they stick out on the right hand side)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Will it someday merge or integrate with visual studio?

<comment><USER54> doubtful, seems to me that the whole point is to provide a light weight cross platform editor that supports asp.net core, typescript etc... in order to drive adoption of those technologies.

Merging it with VS would either require making VS cross platform (massive undertaking I would think) or a massive rewrite which would have dubious value to MS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Python?

<comment><USER56> Better than sublime, not as good as pycharm. I find it good enough.

<comment><USER45> People need to stop comparing text editors (vim, emacs, Sublime Text, VSCode, Atom...) to full featured IDEs (Visual Studio, Intellij Idea/PyCharm/PHPStorm, Eclipse...). Of course, an IDE is going to have way more features for its language. For a text editor, VSCode has an excellent Python support.

<comment><USER51> There's no clear line that separates an editor from an IDE. Editor + language plugin is basically = IDE.

There's nothing magic about an IDE, it's just a very, very, bloated editor.

<comment><USER57> True.

If you look at notepad, emacs, atom, vscode, sublime, vs, webstorm and such, they're all somewhere distributed on a continuum between IDE and editor.

VSCode has a superb Git integration, but what has this to do with an editor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My work-flow involves containerized development environments that sit on a remote server. I spin up a new container for each project and login over SSH to work on the projects using tmux/vim.

With this setup I can work on all sorts of resource intensive projects on a lightweight laptop because everything is built and run remotely.

Now I could SSHFS every project and open it up with VS code, but unless I'm sending commands to the server some other way, it's going to be built locally, which is very inconvenient, especially when working with multiple projects.

If VScode can one day operate in a terminal over an SSH connection it might replace vim, but that's not going to happen.

Vim has a TUI, GUI, tabs, and is still much more responsive than VScode, even over an ssh connection.

Lastly, MS has been really bad for developers and end users. Their latest OS comes with spyware (telemetry) and adware (candycrush), so I tend to stay away from MS products in general because I don't think Microsoft has done anything to deserve my support.

I can see why VScode is preferred on Windows though, I've never seen a decent terminal emulator with good font rendering on Windows so vim must be a pain to look at.

<comment><USER58> It seems like I see you commenting on every single article posted about Microsoft here and you always seem to have something negative to say about Microsoft.

What's your point in commenting? Do you really think you're adding to the conversation and deserve upvotes or are you on a mission to let everybody here know that you hate Microsoft and that you don't think anybody should be doing anything with Microsoft?

Honestly - what do you expect to accomplish and what did Microsoft ever do to you?

Did Microsoft kill your pappy? - [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx)

<comment><USER23> Microsoft is a branch of the NSA and makes an OS that comes with spyware (telemetry) and adware (candycrush).

No, I don't like Microsoft very much.

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

MS hates freedom. Should we forgive Bill Cosby too?

>What's your point in commenting?

Read the comment. VSCode doesn't have a TUI. I have a legitimate criticism. All my criticisms of VSCode and Windows are legitimate.

<comment><USER59> You've been breaking the HN guidelines by posting uncivil, unsubstantive comments. We ban accounts that do that, so please stop doing that. Instead, please (re)-read the following and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Electron overhead :(

<comment><USER18> How else would you port a typescript/javascript editor to the Desktop? They do state they are working on decoupling the core Monaco editor but where else would you host it to make it faster?

<comment><USER61> You wouldn't write it in Javascript to start with!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Not installing until I don't have to reload the entire app after adding or removing an extension. Not to mention the weird `lineHeight` setting.

<comment><USER63> How often do you install extensions? Seems like one of those bothersome things during setup, but I doubt it would be impactful once you have it the way you wish to have it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Every time I try VSCode I find that it's still missing text editing features that have been in Visual Studio 2015 since forever. Like bookmarks. How can you use an editor that doesn't have native bookmarking ability? It also didn't have code folding for the longest time. I think they got it now...

So, I don't know why anybody who is running Windows would choose VSCode. I get why people running OS X and Linux would choose VSCode (obviously they have no access to the full Visual Studio) but does anybody on Windows actually use this?

<comment><USER64> Search and Replace in multiple files. That's among the top 10 features that should've been available since release 0.0.1 in any code editor. They're at 1.2 now and still no cigar. Who's the project manager who keeps saying "nah, don't need it"?

Then again, it's a good litmus test. If you find yourself opening your old editor to do something so basic your new editor can't do: what the hell are you doing in your new editor?

<comment><USER65> Same for me. The lack of "search and replace in multiple files" is the main issue preventing me to switch (and maybe an offline spell checker). I hope they fix this soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Let me guess... it still can't just automagically auto-complete, auto-param infos and jump-to-definitions, based on requires in nodejs projects (and, no, not for TS, for plain JS)?

Seems like a pretty low bar... but at 1.0 they were still not there, and Javascript is obviously one of the languages they focus on...

<comment><USER67> It does with a simple jsconfig.json file: [https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/javascript](https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/javascript)

Has pretty decent autocomplete, param info, jumps to definitions and references.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Android intents pass 2SV codes to Play Services, or I just hacked 2SV? - <AUTHOR> If clarification is needed: I just signed into a gmail account on an android device <i>without</i> typing in the 2FA code. Can intents pass on the 2FA code to Play Services, or did I just find a bug? (Edited title for accuracy based on 1st reply) <comment><USER2> You probably mean 2SA, not 2FA.

Also Google 2SA allows you to 'trust' or 'remember' devices to circumvent multiple queries for a code. Is this what might have occurred ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Upon digging, you're correct, though it seems I found more references to 2SV, but point taken.

I am staunchly of the 'don't allow my machines to remember anything' variety, so likely not. If this 'remembering' is flagged in an app default, I'd be happy to clear it out and re-test.

I went to retrieve the 2SA/V code, and when attempting to switch back to the dialog, it failed/crashed to the launcher. The dialog was still present in the application switcher, but repeatedly failed. But directly starting gmail bypassed the auth request and logged me in.</comment></comment>