Filecoin: Proof of Storage Systems - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coinlist.co/deep-dive-into-filecoin/ <comment><USER2> I don't really get the point of decentralised _storage_ solutions, where the stated goal is to compete with ≈ S3 [0].

S3 storage pricing, for most users is just a rounding error compared to e.g egress or compute cost. And it has proven to be tremendously reliable, both in durability and access. No sane person would point a CDN against a Filecoin backed origin, right?

For kinda-censorship resistant distribution of stuff like Wikileak dumps we already have torrents right now, where the seeders are aware of the content they spread.

For uses where S3 is not competitive, like storage of my media rips, spinning rust at places like Hetzner exist, or Backblaze et. al for more casual backup uses.

The only point I can see for decentralised "storage" of this kind is for ultra high durability, small data size, almost never read, almost some sort of "stakes". One could imagine something like storing contracts/land deeds, similar to Gwern's timestamping of URL's. The files should be small, the storage model optimised for maximal durability (every node store's almost everything?), and prices high enough to ensure durability.

[0]: Just look at this PR page [https://filecoin.io/store/](https://filecoin.io/store/) [1]: [https://www.gwern.net/Timestamping](https://www.gwern.net/Timestamping)

<comment><USER3> I understand your overall point, but when it comes to

> S3 storage pricing, for most users is just a rounding error compared to e.g > egress or compute cost. And it has proven to be tremendously reliable, both > in durability and access.

It's not like you can separate S3 storage costs from egress costs, though. I _wish_ I could use S3 for storage but pay for my own bandwidth.

Even if you'll to go all the way to their network and plug a network cable in, well... They charge $7.40 a day for a gigabit port, and $54 a day for 10gig. That's on par with what many companies charge for transit to the actual internet, but fair enough. Oh, wait, I neglected the per-byte cost on top. The per byte cost that, for a mostly saturated port, is $210 or $2100 per day respectively.

And that's the cheap option.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it's true, it's not like egress is a completely separate thing from storage.

But I guess it also depends a bit on your use case? E.g if you upload big datasets for heavy computation and then only download small results (≈ machine learning) or have a cheap(er) CDN in front of S3 with a favourable usage pattern, the storage and egress would be somewhat separate.

Still, something like Filecoin is obviously not a resonable solution for the run of the mill "cheaper than S3 file hosting and network" problem?

(I've been on the lookout for something like that, for personal use where I don't all those nines and other S3 benefits. The best thing yet seem to be Wasabi [0])

[0]: [https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/#three- info](https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/#three-info)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> General question:

when somebody will push into Filecoin some "bad" files (anything, from docs needed by the mafia to children being sexually abused, to fake videos/claims/whatever about you, to any other bad things you can think of), how can that be detected and then deleted? (ignoring here the theme related to accountability)

Question based on [https://docs.filecoin.io/introduction/why- filecoin/](https://docs.filecoin.io/introduction/why-filecoin/) :

 _Filecoin resists censorship because there is no central provider that can be coerced into deleting files or withholding service. The network is made up of many different computers run by many different people and organizations. Faulty or malicious actors are noticed by the network and removed automatically._

In this context I'm not a believer of "automatically".

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a serious problem - but probably not for the exact use case you list (mafia, sexually abused kids).

It should be solved by allowing an "expensive" (a) "vote" (b) to override, or delete, or hide for a number of years.

(a): expensive should discourage the option in general (b): proof-of-stake, proof-of-ownership, proof-of-work are some of the many ways in which you can define voting rights.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work easily in practice. Example:

You created a file (say, a CV, or a newspaper article in PDF) to discredit me, but it's a lie. To me, not having that file publicly accessible would be worth $1,000.

You could blackmail me - give me $1,000 or I'll upload the file! But I think you might do it anyway, so I don't negotiate (never negotiate!!). The file is 1 MB, and it costs $1/year to keep it up and running on Filecoin.

I should have an option to ask a voting pool to remove that file for $100. The pool agrees, and the money gets burned (I shouldn't create any incentive for someone to cash in the amount).

However, you can upload the file again; or a slightly different version, and we are back to square one.

It then goes to the "discoverability" of the file. That part is probably going to be decentralized too, so no court could "order" Filecoin to make a file not discoverable.

How do we solve it? I think there will emerge a search system that provides services to censor, obfuscate, etc, a number of files, based on reasonable requests. Whoever builds that company, I bet it will not be poor.

<comment><USER4> Thanks a lot for your brainstorming - some remarks are interesting.

But overall the root problem would still exist and the solutions would have to gather a majority - e.g. asking a "pool" to remove a video would mean for the "pool" to watch that video (to ensure that the claim is valid) and after the first experience (if it's child porn) we would all probably have to call a psychiatrist to help us overcome what we've seen => not feasible, it would actually destroy the pool's mental stability which is, in this concept, needed to evaluate the contents (videos in this example).

Edit:

Being ignored by some search engine would still be a no-go for me. Knowing that some personal data (general files, pics, videos, whatever) exists somewhere would make me feel absolutely NOK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > We created Filecoin because the amount of data humans generate is > exponentially increasing, and we need more efficient ways to store and > access it.

I don't think Filecoin can be MORE efficient than some of the larger, current systems.

I actually think this statement is misleading. It should say that Filecoin's goal is to offer storage options that are distributed (hence redundant), protected from censorship, and possibly removed from absolute control of a single large corporation.

<comment><USER5> There are a lot of nuanced ways a trustless distributed system can be more efficient. The article is pretty light on details but consider the content addressing mechanism. The data can be securely served by any device and independently verified by any recipient. The minimum latency of reads is theoretically much lower than the sever/client infrastructure commonly used today. It's like edge computing with any device that can connect to one another. Obviously a lot goes into ensuring the data existing on a low latency connection to the distributed-client but the there are a number of somewhat nuanced theoretical efficiencies that can be achieved by making content addressing the core of a distributed system (caching, [as mentioned] fault- tolerance, parallel computing, etc).

<comment><USER6> > The minimum latency of reads is theoretically much lower than the > sever/client infrastructure commonly used today.

This is an oversimplification: it assumes that discovery is very low cost and that there's a peer with a copy enough closer on the network that it's faster than talking to server-class hardware in a data center with a high quality network connection. Given the number of assumptions which need to be true for that to be a net-positive I'm skeptical that it'd be easy to hit anywhere close to the best-case theoretical scenario.

<comment><USER5> > Obviously a lot goes into ensuring the data existing on a low latency > connection to the distributed-client

This is admittedly a non-trivial task but perhaps an example can shed light on way it can be more efficient in practice.

Consider the Apple Photos app. It's on your phone, it's on your desktop, it's on the cloud (iCloud storage). Say you have so many photos they don't fit on your phone. When you try to access a photo that is not on your phone it gets it from icloud (these are literally features that are currently offered by photos/iCloud). Now suppose your desktop has lots of storage, you usually look at your photos while connected to your local network, why cant you get the data from there?

The key to the efficiency of file coin is not some magic cryptographic token, it's not even "blockchain", the key is the underlying protocols being unified for synchronizing devices across multiple tiers of networking. Filecoin mostly just makes sure the data doesn't disappear and gives you an optional substitute for cloud storage. Content addressing, p2p communication by default, flexible/future-proof standards for negotiated what data is and how it is formatted, and in modular plug-and-play utilization of many different communication/synchronization techniques is the key to applications being built in more effective and efficient way than conventional client/server architecture.

The word that comes to mind is "flexibility". Want you store to be S3 buckets? Great! Want to host a private network, only your devices can access? Great! Want to joint the public network? Great! Want to ensure persistence of data via a token? Great! Want to just use the address mechanism? Great! Want to run the software in the cloud, on you local machine, in a sandboxed browser tab and have them all seamlessly forming a p2p network over a multitude of network standards (tcp, udp, web-sockets, etc)? Great!

I worked extensively last year with various ipfs techs utilized in a private p2p network consisting of ARM nodes capture time-series measurement devices and cloud based persistent nodes managing the pinset of data and persisting long-term storage. There are definitely some rough edges but again it's open- source built is such a modular way it's almost difficult to develop your self into a corner.

The software coming out of protocol labs is overwhelmingly not new technology. Protocol lab large focuses on utilization of battle-tested existing standards and tech (many of which are relatively ancient like TCP, ssh, git, json, etc) unified, without breaking existing stands, via a common addressing mechanism.

tl;dr Filecoin/crypto-tokens just a side note! The vast majority of software coming out of protocol labs is independently useful and largely focuses on bridging together widely-used battle-tested tech.

<comment><USER6> > Consider the Apple Photos app. It's on your phone, it's on your desktop, > it's on the cloud (iCloud storage). Say you have so many photos they don't > fit on your phone. When you try to access a photo that is not on your phone > it gets it from icloud (these are literally features that are currently > offered by photos/iCloud). Now suppose your desktop has lots of storage, you > usually look at your photos while connected to your local network, why cant > you get the data from there?

Yes, what Dropbox, Crashplan, etc. offered a decade ago — it's a neat sounding idea but there are two reasons why this isn't a huge win in practice: people are mobile so the number of times where you need an uncached file and happen to be on the same network is relatively low and increasingly few people have an always-on device with a ton of local storage free (phones are really good at generating high volumes of data so this is a non-trivial problem).

Working on things like this is really interesting but it involves a lot of work to handle unreliable clients or networks and bitrot (hashes don't solve this if your client helpfully replicates the bad sector from your desktop over the pristine copy on your phone). That overhead makes it a lot harder to beat conventional services, especially in cases where the time investment is greater than the possible savings.

<comment><USER5> > Working on things like this is really interesting but it involves a lot of > work to handle unreliable clients or networks and bitrot (hashes don't solve > this if your client helpfully replicates the bad sector from your desktop > over the pristine copy on your phone). That overhead makes it a lot harder > to beat conventional services, especially in cases where the time investment > is greater than the possible savings.

The idea that ipfs/related-project are trying to beat conventional services is big misconception. The overwhelming majority of the tech does not preclude usage in conventional services. For example, IPFS can 100% be configured as server/client offering roughly the same costs/reliability many are used to. The advantage is interoperability with many different "services", conventional and alternative (e.g. filecoin) alike.

<comment><USER6> Can you expand that interoperability thought? It's unclear to me how this could change the main obstruction of vendors choosing not to encourage interoperability - anyone who keeps their API locked down is unlikely to adopt standard IPFS.

<comment><USER5> Essentially it's a separation of concerns. The content "address" (i.e. how we specify the content that is desired) and the content "location" (i.e. the connections which serve the content associated with an "address") are distinct.

An "address" is also self validating. Hash addressing, where a hash of the data is the address of the data, are use to accomplish this. This is useful in many contexts and an [extra few bits][1] on the the front allow an address to represent much much more.

"location" is by default a distributed hash table enabling the fulling distributed routing of content and by uses [Kademlia][0]. But the software could easily be configured to with fixed values for the hash table mapping any "address" to the same location which happens to be a cloud provider.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "anyone who keeps their API locked down is unlikely to adopt standard IPFS."?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia) [2]: [https://github.com/multiformats/cid#how-does-it- work](https://github.com/multiformats/cid#how-does-it-work)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is Filecoin different from Sia coin?

I remember a while ago hearing about both trying to decentralize storage but never kept up with it enough to really suss out the difference

<comment><USER8> Sia seems like a Dropbox/OneDrive replacement whereas Filecoin is an incentivized storage layer infrastructure for apps to use, especially dapps.

If you wanted to build a decentralized SoundCloud you couldn't use Sia but IPFS/Filecoin is the primary building block of such a dapp.

<comment><USER9> Sia released a new version of their product called Skynet[1] which provides exactly the functionality of IPFS+Filecoin today. Part of Skynet is a group of SDKs[2] which you can use to integrate skynet storage as part of your application. I believe that they are even adding the ability for developers to get kickbacks if they build on Sia[3].

If you do want something like Dropbox that is built on Sia, there is Filebase[4].

I am not associated with Sia at all. I've just been following their twitter for a while.

[1]: [https://siasky.net/](https://siasky.net/)

[2]: [https://nebulouslabs.github.io/skynet- docs/#introduction](https://nebulouslabs.github.io/skynet-docs/#introduction)

[3]: [https://twitter.com/SiaTechHQ/status/1291441690008592384](https://twitter.com/SiaTechHQ/status/1291441690008592384)

[4]: [https://docs.filebase.com/](https://docs.filebase.com/)

<comment><USER10> I'm curious to look at filecoin - last time I tried to use sia, it was still fairly rough around the edge (minimum file size, seed based recovery isn't automatic, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article seems like it was written in 2017, not 2020.

Filecoin raised over $200m and hasn't shipped anything that I'm aware of in 3 years. Maybe it will be revolutionary, but the crypto industry has long moved on from white whale projects that don't ship.

<comment><USER12> [https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus](https://github.com/filecoin- project/lotus)

[https://docs.filecoin.io/how-to/install- filecoin/](https://docs.filecoin.io/how-to/install-filecoin/)

<comment><USER11> This is what I'm talking about. It's been 3 years, and they're still doing testnets? What a joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing I'd like to see decentralized storage protocols guarantee is that not only does the data exist on the backend, but is it available enough to be useful, and if so, are the latency and bandwidth good. PoST might be able to solve this if it enforces a strict deadline on the answer and tests availability sufficiently frequently.

The other is some sort of authentication. Encryption of the data itself, IMO, is not good enough. In 10 years time I don't want a nation state or megacorporation with enough entangled qubits to be able to pwn all of my data. But distributed authentication as I understand it is a hard problem, because you probably need to make your authentication proof public, which creates a similar set of problems on the authentication itself.

<comment><USER14> Two thoughts:

One is that frequently verifying availability is going to get expensive quick with iops for coldish storage systems.

Secondly, iirc symmetric encryption isn't really vulnerable to quantum algorithms, as far as we know (and maybe even proven not to be?). It's asymmetric crypto that's at risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That is not what matches my mental model of a "deep dive," but was interesting enough to warrant an upvote

For example, the phrase "decentralized marketplace of storage providers and choose the one" was just glossed over -- through what mechanism does one choose a storage provider? Is there an API that (for example) a container storage interface provider could consume? like that kind of "choose a provider"?

I also would have enjoyed more hyperlinks for terms such as zk-SNARK, and "a storage miner" which is similarly glossed over

<comment><USER16> Ok, we'll swap a prefix for a suffix of the title above.

(Submitted title was "Deep Dive into Filecoin".)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call. I should have thought of a better (submission) title in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This hardly meets the definition of brief description, let alone a "Deep Dive".

<comment><USER18> That's par for the course working with filecoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> By chance, I saw a relevant article over on r/ipfs: [https://www.axios.com/filecoin-blockchain- delay-3b5e6b9a-bcc...](https://www.axios.com/filecoin-blockchain- delay-3b5e6b9a-bcc8-41cf-81cf-563f6cebb2c4.html)

<comment><USER12> Discussed yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24199595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24199595)</comment></comment>


IBM iSeries (AS/400) Architecture [pdf] [slides] - <AUTHOR> http://www.mi.fu-berlin.de/wiki/pub/Tec/ArtLehreSystemverwaltung2008/module03lectureV3.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Whether an IBM hater or UNIX lover, I still recommend you check out the AS/400 or IBM i architecture. It was a very, forward-looking design from very, long ago. I found some slides to make it more accessible to busy or lazy folks. :)

It was also resilient to attack in first form as a capability-based, computer system. This book has many examples with AS/400 predecessor being "System/38" if yall want to check those out:

[https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/index.html](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/index.html)</comment>


Sophie In North Korea - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/ <comment><USER3> I've been lucky enough to have visited NK as well and unsurprisingly everything I read lined up perfectly with my own experience. Most likely tourists from all over the world are always shown the stock tour. Our guides were incredibly insistent that we see everything, too -- that means no suggestions for other activities and definitely no wandering off.

One of my most memorable take-aways was also a visit to a school that we were told was one of the best in the country. We were taken to a room where students had formed groups around several desks, all performing different tasks (one desk had microscopes, the other a pc, yet others had more contraptions, probably for demonstrating mechanical processes). As was mentioned in the story, they weren't actually _doing_ anything, they were just sitting there looking at the machinery in front of them and trying to look like they were about to discover something huge. They must've been the best actors in the school, and probably were very proud of themselves to have been chosen to present to such a prominent audience.

<comment><USER4> Friends of mine used to work in a building that also contained the help desk for external customers. One day when a customer delegation was visiting the help desk, they were all brought in and told to sit at the empty desks and pretend to take calls.

Their headsets weren't even plugged in.

<comment><USER3> It just makes my skin crawl :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was an interesting read and very much in line with other travelers' reports. However, I do wonder about this part:

>Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange.

Is it really a good idea to go if you don't have a particular reason (such as this diplomatic trip)? I recall that most human rights groups recommended that tourists not visit Burma until recently so as not to support the regime. For someone like me who would only be going to satisfy my own curiosity, would I not simply be supporting the North Korean regime? I would be giving them money and possibly helping them in their propaganda efforts (see, look, at this American who has come to visit our great country!). I can't think of any ways in which my visit would be good or helpful.

<comment><USER6> I went to Burma for two reasons. First, the country isolated from the rest of the world can be an eye-opening experience. If you are, say, North American, and all you go is Western Europe you will never quite learn to appreciate what you have. To me the biggest surprise was how warm, cheerful and hospitable Burmese people are, in a country where poverty is rampant, infrastructure is almost non-existent and freethinking is oppressed.

And the second reason is that you can try to direct your money more to the people than government by staying and eating in small family establishments rather than pricy hotels that are almost always are controlled by the government.

<comment><USER5> You might have been able to do that in Burma. I know people who have travelled to Burma, Cuba, and other places and made similar arguments that I sympathize with. But you can't do that in North Korea: you can't go stay in small family establishments or choose where to eat. The entire trip is managed by the government and even trying to give money or talk to anyone about politics is probably risking the life of the person you talk to.

That leaves your first reason, which seems like a very self-focused reason -- I could learn the same thing from visiting other countries (or spending time reading up on the many accounts of North Korea, particularly those who have escapes).

<comment><USER7> Burma was never really clamped down like NK, heck, even Cuba isn't really clamped down. NK is probably the harshest state in the world with respect to freedom, and that alone probably makes it an interesting and unique visit. Ya, you are giving Kim Jong Un some money, but...if it would be an eye opening experience neh? If NK ever opens up, you won't have the oppurtunity every again!

<comment><USER8> > If NK ever opens up, you won't have the oppurtunity every again!

Thank goodness for that. The sooner the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not trying to hijack this thread, but I recently spent almost two weeks in the DPRK, and it was one of the most interesting and fascinating trips I ever had.

I took about 5000 photos, and uploaded about 500 of them to my Facebook profile. There's descriptions to many of them. If you're interested, check them out here: [https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151040723772055....](https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151040723772055.428189.754777054&type=1&l=32851643f6)

And feel free to ask any questions. I'll recommend visiting their country if you get the chance.

<comment><USER10> If a visitor was so willing, is there any possible way of sneaking in any kind of communication equipment that the people there could possibly use? Perhaps a solar powered raspberry pi with wifi and satellite hookup? USB drives full of information that could be dropped off on random doorsteps when nobody was looking? Well trained carrier pigeons to relay messages to the south? Did you see any possible opening for any kind of hacktivist way of helping these people gain access to information?

<comment><USER9> Easily. Most in our groups brought some sort of newspapers into the country, they were never confiscated. Our guides would actually ask if it was on to read the newspapers, and our guides knew about what's going on outside of their country. They would know about Assange, Occupy Wall street, Obama etc.

I brought an iPad, my laptop and my iPhone - they only took my iPhone when i entered the country - or, actually, they forgot, and I gave it up later on the trip, as I didn't want to get in troubles when leaving.

I could easily have left many devices there, with information etc.. In terms of communication devices, not so sure. There's absolutely no wifi in the country, and satellite devices are large, afaik.

I was war driving with my iPad in Pyongyang, searching for wifi.. NO wifi was detected, at all. Pretty interesting.

I lend my iPad to one of the guides for a week - the guide saw Breaking Bad Season 1 and heard Beatles and U2 :-) and even brought it home at night.

<comment><USER9> also, guess why they forgot to take my iPhone when I entrered the country? Because the customs guys were busy playing Angry Birds on my iPad, and looking through my photos.. zooming in on the photos of the pretty girls that I had in my Photostream

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone else confused by the layout of the article? In Chrome on a large monitor(27"@2560x1440) it's kind of difficult to intuit the order of reading.

<comment><USER12> Yes, very disorienting. I zig-zagged my way down the page, unsure of where to focus next. Kind of like the Facebook timeline, but without the little ticks to indicate where each section fit in the order.

<comment><USER13> I kinda liked it; Even if you skip something the story is written in a way so it doesn't matter too much.

<comment><USER14> It sure is an interesting concept. I didn't really want to know all about North Korea. And somehow, thanks to the layout, I think that I got the general idea in a better way than I would have if it has been one big column.

It feels with an approximation algorithm that enables parallel processing to an usually linear task. It saves some time to get the general idea.

<comment><USER15> The page reminds me of when my wife and I watched Solaris (2002) without realizing our DVD player was on shuffle. We both enjoyed the nonlinear narrative for a good 45m before we realized what was wrong.

Fixing the problem seemed to make the movie worse for us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This book: [http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable- Odyssey/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.ca/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable- Odyssey/dp/0670023329) is an interesting read about NK's system of gulags. Because they practice generational punishment, there are North Koreans who are born into these camps and die there.

</comment><comment><USER17> So for those curious - Sophie is Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Google chairman Eric Schmidt (the Eric in the first paragraph).

<comment><USER18> FYI the original title of the post explained this via parenthetical, but the title was changed by the powers that be to what it is now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was actually surprised to see Sophie write up her experiences in NK. I'm sure that, being part of diplomatic, friendship mission she had to pick a choose her words and stories, as her write up will be associated with the mission and members to some extent. I have never been to NK, perhaps one day I will have the opportunity. I'm sure such a trip would challenge a lot of my priors about what is normal and not normal and help me to understand more about myself and my own cultural attitudes. For me that is the ultimate point of travel.

As an example, I am an American, but I have not lived in the United States for a long time. And each time I go back I find my own country both intensely familiar / strange and both comfortable / uncomfortable at the same time. I remember a couple years ago going back in Dec 2008. Obama had just been elected president and it was the oddest feeling, as I walked about the Chicago airport waiting for my delayed plane to Boston, to see Obama's face on T-shirts, to see Obama's face on Time (or was it Newsweek?), to see Obama's wife on the cover of the ladies magazines. I suppose all the Obama sign-age didn't seem at all strange to the natives but then again I suppose, pictures of the Great Leader don't seem out of place to the natives in NK either.

I could tell you more stories about the strangeness of seeing flags everywhere months after 9-11 or the horror of the rhetoric that is casually accepted by the audiences during national conventions. But what I am trying to get at is that political and nationalistic symbols exist in every country and the trick is not to do the easy work and point out its baseness or ridicule it when we see it some place else. The trick is is to see what Jung would call our own "shadow"; do the hard work; see where we have let our own institutions manipulate our thoughts and feelings. When we can do that then one has had a successful trip.

<comment><USER20> _to see Obama's face on Time (or was it Newweek?)_

That's what I love about living in America rather than North Korea: we don't have a news media working in lockstep to proclaim the greatness of the Dear Leader.

<comment><USER21> Was that sarcasm?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This was an eye opening article.

It's a strange question, almost science fiction, "What's it like to be in a country that is entirely brainwashed?" It's also a philosophical and ethical question, "Are we morally required to intervene"?

The most interesting piece of the article was noting that computer science students have access to our internet, beyond their closed off version. That means A TON. Their minds won't be closed forever. The idealist says, "They won't be closed forever" and there is a realization there. I think it could take longer than people think - their poverty will be a large cause. What will hurt more is the well educated opening their minds.

It was a very well written article. And the Eric Schmidt political cartoon was great on many levels.

(And yes, every website should be readable on Chrome. It's no longer a one-off browser)

<comment><USER23> >"Are we morally required to intervene"?

I always land on a much eerier question. How brainwashed am I? And if I am, _how would I know_?

<comment><USER22> Indeed! Why are we at the top of the clear thinking food chain?

You are clearly a functional programmer. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For another fantastic travelogue about North Korea, I suggest <http://www.1stopkorea.com/nk-trip1.htm>

It's from 2002, so things were quite different back then, but the dialogue the traveler gets into with his guide is very interesting!

 _The next room contained more gifts from the South, including a Hyundai Grandeur donated by the former chairman of Hyundai (whose family is originally from the North). Mr. Huk asked me if I had ever seen one of these cars during my time in the South. When I said, "sure, my neighbor has one just like it," he gave me another one of his 'you have to be lying' looks. How could such a great gift, a gift implying so much respect, belong to some normal person like my neighbor? This was obviously a car reserved for the elite, capitalist oppressors, not some common car for the masses. When I told him I wished the chairman had given away a lot more so there'd be less traffic in the South he got fed up with my obvious lies, gave me a disgusted look and moved on to talk to someone else._

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been a big fan of a TV show "Departures" (awesome videos by the way) and one time they went to North Korea.

You can check out some of the video clips of their trip:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFJJSx3Vr0c> (some intro..)

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr3lt34bnWQ> (elementary school)

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRZvwaObOXc> (school)

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Moq6ZkKZJm0> (Arirang Mass Games)

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tMoAoFy3JQ> (War Museum)

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqA7pNN2r9k> (Kim Il Sung Burial)

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbUxLAj_k18> (trip somewhere)

</comment><comment><USER26> "Ordinary North Koreans live in a near-total information bubble, without any true frame of reference. "

I always wondered if the North Koreans interviewed really have no idea what is going on or just acting that way out of fear. I highly recommend watching the Vice guide to North Korea to understand what I am talking about.

</comment><comment><USER27> That was a great article, but why did it look like crap on Chrome for mobile? You would think Google would have made it easier to read.

<comment><USER28> It is equally confounding on the desktop. But ultimately, I think it was a bad template choice by the author rather than any particular bug in Google Sites. (Two-column with pictures just doesn't work.)

<comment><USER29> Yeah, I couldn't work out how to read it. Column A first? Flip-flop back and forth. Nothing seemed to line up.

<comment><USER28> Same here. A one column standard blog format would have been fine. Easy to scale down to mobile, easy to read on the desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would like to visit solely because I have family in North Korea, and I would very much like to meet the separated half :(

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a hard time with the light-hearted tone of reports such as this. In one sense the NK propaganda really is comically weird. But in another sense, if you've read 1984 it's all too grimly familiar.

<comment><USER32> +100000.

It is comically frightening. It's so fake that you cannot help laugh about it (just look at this thread: fake center call rooms with people pretending to be talking while visitors noticed their headsets aren't even plugged in. Definitely comically frightening).

But I also hate the way too rosy tone of the "report". She not reporting on NK. She's reporting on what propaganda wanted her to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I try to refrain from making emotional political statements on this site but I cannot resist.

> Go to North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange.

This is essentially advocating a visit to a huge concentration camp which is still in operation. The abuses that go on in this country are beyond belief. This whole article brings about a feeling of sickness in me.

</comment><comment><USER34> It seems like a nice read, but the weird layout distracted me and prevented me from going past the first 3 or 4 paragraphs: I got lost in a mix of two vs one column paragraphs. I tried different browsers with no luck.

In any case, I have planned to go to North Korea at some point :)

</comment><comment><USER35> Here is a set of articles from 2006 written by the founder of one of the leading design studios in Russia - artlebedev.ru. The read is very interesting, but unfortunately only available in Russian.

Part 1 (general): <http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/> Part 2 (military) : <http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-2/> Part 3 (culture): <http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/> Part 4 (Roads & transport): <http://www.tema.ru/travel/north-korea-3/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Can anyone recommend any good documentaries or other media on the subject of North Korea? This was fascinating!

Edit: thanks all :)

<comment><USER36> A few years ago I came across this highly disturbing testimony from a former prisoner. There are no pictures, and no jokes. It gives a glimpse at the dark side of North Korea, and of humanity. It is fucked up and will upset you, so consider yourself warned.

[http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=4f...](http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf&wit_id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf-2-1)

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the warning; I chose only to read the last few paragraphs, but even that provided enough to extrapolate. While we twiddle about in Silicon Valley building SoLoMo apps, this depraved grinding of humanity continues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What mostly strikes me about this post is how condescending she is about the people there. It's not only about the regime, but here post is basically belittling for the people there.

A gew gems of the post:

"How that squares with official NK agitprop that Americans are super-evil imperialist bastards is beyond me. " Like every Korean over there wants to eat Americans for breakfast, sigh. Yes, their official pollicy is very anti- American, but has it every stroke her mind that they are also people? And that they can make the distinction between "the American people" and their government. Just as much as I hope that she can make a difference between a person and their leaders.

"When we asked how old Un had turned (29? 30?), we were told that "Koreans keep track of age differently" than we do. Alright, then." This one kinda says everything about the author.

"No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions."

All in all, whatever she writes down is an accurate observation, but I would have wanted the tone to be much different. No I mostly read this as a rant from someone who believes is superior to them. I would have liked it more if it was written from a more neutral point of view. But hey, it's the internet, ranting is what has to be done :-)

For what it is worth, I've been there a bit over a year ago and what she has seen (besides the official visits) is more or less the same as I have seen. So yes it is all fake of course. But I would definitely visit it again to see other parts of the country.

</comment><comment><USER39> Every time I read about North Korea, part of me keeps wondering:

How many international treaties would I break if I were to sneak in some surveillance tech in there? Just a small robot that looks like mouse and shoots photos, or a small UAV deployed on the South Korean side of the border? Just to get out to the world some photos of how real NK looks like. I wonder what kind of consequences would such an attempt have and why no one seemed to have tried so far.

<comment><USER40> I don't think flying a UAV from the south side of the border would be the wisest move, considering the tension between the two countries.

You might set off a diplomatic incident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Me and a couple of friends want to go to north korea to jump off some buildings with parachutes, any possibility of this ever happening? We've been in contact with the local travelling guide, and while they did not toss the idea out of the window, it seemed as if it was a pretty stupid idea from their point of view. Can anyone here help with any hookups? We're pretty experienced FWIW...

</comment><comment><USER42> > When we asked how old Un had turned (29? 30?), we were told that "Koreans > keep track of age differently" than we do. Alright, then.

They weren't lying: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning#Korean>

</comment><comment><USER43> Very entertaining and interesting article.

One peculiar thing I noticed: Did Sophie photoshop this picture of hers? [https://93fd9190-a-62cb3a1a-s- sites.googlegroups.com/site/so...](https://93fd9190-a-62cb3a1a-s- sites.googlegroups.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home/DSC_0378-1.jpg)

<comment><USER44> To be honest, it doesn't appear to be Photoshopped - at least to my eye. Snow is tough to photograph in general (all that bright, reflecting light!) - <USER2> just looks like a camera exposing for the foreground and blowing out the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is also very interesting. An animator/manager goes to N.Korea to oversee outsourcing and makes a graphic novel of his experience. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_(comics)>

</comment><comment><USER46> Jesus. Each time when I read accounts of North Korean travels, I almost feel ache in my stomach picturing the eerie atmosphere, and then a sense of relief and appreciation of my immensely comfortable life in comparison.

On the other hand, "ignorance is bliss" as they say. And without any reference framework in sight, they may actually be _happy_...

</comment><comment><USER47> Amazing story...

spoiler alert, as these quotes were legendary:

"Not that we were allowed to talk to them, but riddle me this: How do you explain to someone that she's a YouTube sensation if she's never heard of the Internet?"

\- Can you help us with e-Settlement so that we can put North Korean apps on Android Market?"

\- No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions.

</comment><comment><USER48> Visiting North Korea as a tourist is immoral. North Korea is one of the most brutal, repressive regimes in the history of the world. Inhumane conditions abound for the average North Korean and supporting such a vile regime is disgusting. Tourists who go there ought to be ashamed of themselves.

<comment><USER49> The benefit of exposing both sides to one another, in my experience, greatly outweighs the very minor benefits of trade accruing to the regime.

Particularly when we get a travelogue such as Sophie Schmit wrote here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> > [can] we can put North Korean apps on Android Market?" Answers: soon, and > No, silly North Koreans, you're under international bank sanctions.

This is not rally true, Iran is under same sanctions and you can see Iranian apps on App Store and Play Store.

</comment><comment><USER51> a great blog with lots of pics, comments, and insights from her several trips to NorK is "at home in the wasteland": <http://www.lindsayfincher.com/>

</comment><comment><USER52> another rare photoset has been posted in a older hn-thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223>) the original link doesnt work anymore, but i found the same photo's on a russian site

<http://tema.ru/travel/north-korea-1/>

</comment><comment><USER32> Don't forget that it's all fake. I'm not sure the author understands how carefully planned her trip was.

What she shows is not North Korea. What she shows is what the propaganda from the communist party leaders wants foreigners to see. The truth is way less rosy (which, yes, makes it really very scary).

The hotel is fake. The trafic is fake. The shops are fake. She did realize that they do create products that don't have a market but it's worse than that: they create fake malls (well, actually one fake mall, which every single visitor shall see if he wants to see a mall) just to make believe visitors that they have malls.

The entire trip is under supervision and every "delegation" that goes there get to see the exact same things, give or take one or two things.

For example the tramway picture: it's in basically every single movie show from foreign "journalist" who got to get there. I say "journalist" because they're not allowed to do anything on their own: they're constantly accompanied by members from the party.

Poverty is hidden in basically every street where, of course, you're not allowed to go.

I speak several languages so I can watch TV from different countries: it's always the same. At one point me and my girlfriend considered going, so we started watching as much movies as we could about North Korea and we started to realize that all the (totally non-connected) delegations were always doing the exact same visits. After three of them we knew what we were going to see in the fourth one.

What about the truth? Well independent reporters have reported famine and people eating roots during cold winters.

It's really frightening to realize what communism does to people from both a liberty point of view and a poverty point of view.

I'm honestly not sure the author understood what happened to her.

<comment><USER53>
      | It's really frightening to realize what communism

Communism is such a loaded term that it's pretty meaningless at this point. China is also 'communist,' but people aren't eating roots to survive the winters. North Korea is a dictatorship under the guise of communism/socialism.

<comment><USER32> I realize that communists don't like the fact that Cuba ain't exactly a place where freedom rules king, the fact that North Korea is an utter failure, the fact that the soviet did sent opponents to communism die in Siberia (when it wasn't downright murdering) and the fact that Che Guevara was an homophobic and racist schizophrenic slaughterer...

Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery and poverty.

And it's only since we can write that China is "communist" between quotes that they're starting to escape poverty. And people in small villages in China are still not exactly living on very high standards so...

<comment><USER54> > Communism, no matter its form, only leads to slavery and poverty.

i don't think you can blame the problems faced by those countries to communism. The idea of communism is a good one, but the execution is always poor - reason being that at some point, someone is going to be able to grab power, and the whole system filled with corruption and/or systemic mismanagement (again, due to some form of corruption). Plus, communism sounds like a better name than tyranny, and so the tyrants call themselves communists.

"real" communism, one which is say, managed my an AI, with no one small group of humans in power, is probably going to be fair and equal. I'd like to see if that could work.

<comment><USER55> > _"real" communism, one which is say, managed my an AI, with no one small > group of humans in power, is probably going to be fair and equal._

Any rational agent, whether biological or artificial, A) possesses a set of preferences, and B) seeks to maximize its preferences. If an AI obtains its set of preferences for maximization from a group of privileged programmers or creators, then a small group of humans is still in power in your scenario. If the AI is responsible for deriving its own set of random preferences, then it is effectively operating as another individual in society with no deterministic guarantees on behavior, and to grant it governing authority is equivalent to unchecked dictatorship.

<comment><USER56> Our AI programs don't need to have their own preferences. Each rational agent can be assigned an assistant AI which will derive its preferences from the agent's already existent preferences.

<comment><USER57> It'll be like everyone has an AI genie, granting them wishes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Whenever one of these "inside NK" articles show up, I am more impressed by the arrogance and the ignorance of the commenters than I am by the stories.

"OMG they're brainwashed, do we morally have an obligation to intervene" says one smug commenter.

Well, my friend, look at Times Square. What is it? It's a fucking AD clusterfuck. Companies, ads, fake artificial and as plastic as it gets. And yet, no ads on NK's streets... That is so refreshing to me.

What is so inviting about capitalism? Go to Reddit and read the first page: booze, artificial and superficial crap and social problems all over the place. People have iphones and fancy cars but they're socially sick, alone... It may be terrible in NK, but who are you to be criticizing them? Just because you have iphones and an Audi in your garage, what we're seeing today is an ever more lonely society whose only escapes are booze, pot and superficial pleasures like buying something and showing a photo of it online.

These comments here...the top one says "it's all fake". WOW good thing it's not as real as silicon tits or mcdonalds sandwich photos! Those are real! And your TV ads, and your promissed dream, those are all real too! Nevermind that you bailed out banks who robbed you and you are now getting sued by those banks! THAT is reality folks, poor North Koreans who live under a terrible fake regime that fools all of them!

How about those North Korean jails eh? Horrible gulags! Nevermind that the world's largest carcerary population is in the United States of America. And the death penalty? It must be terrible to live under a regime that straps people to machines that kill them in barbaric ways? Oh my God, NK is the evil empire!

How about those children faking studies?? That's awful! It's better to live in a country where children don't even fake it! Crack, pot and god awful music prevail in our schools, our children are grabbing machine guns to kill each other and you find it funny to mock those poor North Koreans!

I feel sick to my stomach to see where our society is and how stupid and ignorant and brainwashed YOU are to accept the immoral, indecent and corrupt state YOU live under and then go on to criticize other countries whose people are just as honest and decent as you. Their regime is failed and so is ours - you are no better than them, never forget that. You have an iphone, they don't, that is all you're better at.

<comment><USER59> > You have an iphone, they don't

Don't forget the food, internet, health care, electricity, education, and freedom of speech. What have the romans ever done for us, eh?</comment></comment>


Differential privacy in (a bit) more detail - <AUTHOR> https://desfontain.es/privacy/differential-privacy-in-more-detail.html <comment><AUTHOR> I think this will interest HN as a follow-up to two recent posts and discussions:

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17737148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17737148)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17743293)</comment>


Randy Pausch dies, and the world loses a true hero - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/07/25/randy-pausch-dies-and-world-loses-true-hero

<comment><USER2> An amazing guy by anyone's measure, but a "hero"? Does that word mean anything anymore?

<comment><USER3> Good question. Certainly admirable, and perhaps it took tremendous courage to push on and be so public. On the other hand, the folks I've know to be heroic do not see themselves that way, so it's tough to try to use motivation or mental state to define "heroic".

How _do_ people here define "heroic"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Randy's mother was my English teacher in High School. Small world. Bummer to lose a brilliant professor, but he certainly has left his mark on the world.

</comment><comment><USER5> An amazing man from what I've seen in the video. It is really worth the 1 hour 15 minutes to watch it and I recommend everyone do so.</comment>


Ask HN: Git Hooks, who uses them and for what purpose? - <AUTHOR> https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Hooks<p>Decided to learn more about them the other day as they seem interesting. In a quick search here for past discussions it seems this feature is used in a variety of ways and more-so than I had anticipated. For those of you that use git hooks, how do you implement/enforce their usage for projects, and what are you doing with them? <comment><USER2> A couple years ago, I was designing an XML schema. The document was a mix of the formal schema and English prose explaining each element. I used a pre- commit hook that extracted the RelaxNG schema and confirmed that it was well- formed, which helped me avoid committing invalid versions of the document.

On the server side, I have a post-receive hook in the repo for a website. When I push to 'develop' it runs the static generation script and deploys to my local server as a preview. When I push to 'master' it builds and pushes to production.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use them to reformat code before it hits any shared branch, and we also reject commits that fail linting (unless they're going into a hotfix branch).

Formatting all code using the same strict settings is _hugely_ helpful when looking at change history. It also frees developers from ever thinking about formatting, which takes up many more brain cycles than people realize.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use prepare commit hook to enforce a commit template on myself that includes the github link to the issue. We also use them as a team to format code.</comment>


Party Rounds: How To Get a Crazy Valuation For Your Seed Startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2010/09/party-rounds-how-to-get-high-valuation.html

<comment><USER2> Here's the question that article didn't answer: If I'm currently bootstrapping a startup, with no current connections or previous successful exits, straight out of college without connections at a past employer, and I'm not in a program like YC...

How do I start raising this round? Where do I find these superangels? Cold call/email investors? Present at conferences?

<comment><USER3> <http://angel.co> \-- if you get through that filter, it's a (pretty good) proxy for your chances at currently raising a round. And if you don't get through that, you'll know there's more work to do before being able to raise a party round.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is part of my next blog post - I think e.g. AngelList and YC are two access points....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Do you think Party Rounds are good or bad for the entrepreneur?_

Given the description in the post, how could they be bad?

<comment><USER5> I think they could be bad if the initial terms overvalue the company and follow-on rounds dilute the seed investors in a down round, or if the initial investors invest at such a high valuation that you can't even get other angels interested.

The angel investor is negotiating the best deal for themselves, but they are also negotiating at a valuation which will be appealing to follow-on rounds.

It is my understanding that if you overvalue your company at the early stage, you could do significant harm to either your ability to raise capital later and/or the investors of the seed round.

Also, the title says it 'how to get a crazy valuation', why does crazy == good??

<comment><USER4> Good points there. It seems like a more entrepreneur-friendly system, but who ever is in control needs to stay sane. Temptation for overvalue and other excesses is there regardless of who's at the helm.</comment></comment></comment>


Tagedit - Plugin For jQuery To Edit Tags From Database With Autocomplete - <AUTHOR> http://blogfreakz.com/jquery/tagedit-plugin-for-jquery-to-edit-tags-from-database-with-autocomplete/ <comment><USER2> The plugin page: <http://tagedit.webwork-albrecht.de/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Love the plugin, actually going to implement tonight! Would love to see callbacks though, so that we can use ajax to save tags on remove/add if need be..

Nice work!

 _EDIT_

Would be better if the names of the elements were the same so that this could submitted as an array, the current method requires quite a bit of processing..

Documentation?

"elementname dows not match the expected format" whats the format expected?

Does it not support standard jQuery selectors? Why are you using a .find() in the example?

</comment><comment><USER4> I first saw this concept on Quora - anyone knows if they were the first?

I suppose using this for tagging stuff has two positive side effects:

1) You can now use longer tags, with whitespace, capitalization, etc.

2) Duplication of tags is much smaller.

Kudos to the author.

<comment><USER5> I first encountered effective end-user tagging over a decade ago in a bookmarking program named PowerMarks (no longer developed).

It would ("instantaneously") generate an automatic set of tags based on page content and metadata. This could very rapidly edited in the form of a simple, comma-separated list of text.

Bookmark search consisted of typing in a simple, comma-separated list (IIRC). The current contents were continuously parsed and partial matching performed to produce a ranked list of matching entries. With thousands of bookmarks, the desired entry could usually be identified and followed within a second or three.

(There were also date fields and some other fields, that could help in clustering and could be used in ranking)

The combination of a tagging categorization, and the very efficient interface, made it a joy to use and extremely useful.

This thread's product appears, from the video, to be moving the interface portion of web-based tagging in what for me would be a "right" (correct) direction. Make the tagging rapid, and the interface painless, and perhaps tagging will really take off as an end-user interface.

Note: I followed vijaydev's link, as the ur-parent's link is currently unresponsive.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2596455>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm using smartTextBox for a project: <http://wayofspark.com/projects/smarttextbox/>

I can't see any immediate differences between the two, how does Tagedit differ?

<comment><USER7> i think the big thing is that this is based on jquery-ui, not just plain jquery. extra dependency, but if you're already using it, then just reusing the autocomplete plugin is a win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow ! This is exactly something I was looking for : adding tags the way you add recipients to a facebook inbox message. Sometimes, Ideas really are in the Air...</comment>


Public Comments on the Proposed Wassenaar Rule to Limit Export of Hacking Tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketBrowser;rpp=25;so=DESC;sb=postedDate;po=0;dct=PS;D=BIS-2015-0011

<comment><USER2> Oh great, another regulation/law to allow government the arbitrary exercise of power, to be used to selectively target whoever they disagree with or believe to be against their interests in maintaining power.

</comment><comment><USER3> People can make an atomic microscope at home. What makes people think that limiting "hacking tools", or basically knowledge about how hackers will attack us, will help?

Is linux a hacking tool? Wireshark? Where is the line drawn and how is it defined. This is something else.

<comment><USER4> Yes, lunix is soviet hacking tool, along with "Comet Cursor", "Bonzi Buddy" and "Flash".

[http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html](http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...technology required for the development of intrusion software;...". Can't Anything be used to develop software?

<comment><USER6> That blanket basically means everything even involved with a computer. This is a completely unenforceable law.

<comment><USER7> No, it is a law they selectively enforce very rarely on targets who they don't have anything else on. Having broken the law has 0 impact on if they choose to try to enforce the law against you; that is instead determined by completely unrelated and behavior they know they aren't currently able to ban.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't see how any limits would be possible without violating the constitution. I mean I could take the source code to any hacking tool, incorporate that into a sci-fi story with a hacker who types it on the screen, at which point the US government would have to prevent me from publishing a fiction story - something that must clearly violate the US constitution.</comment>


Where Should Mobile Developers Focus? - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/12/where-should-mobile-developers-focus.html

<comment><USER2> I'm just curious, can anyone give me a reason why you wouldn't use Appcelerator ([http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile- applica...](http://www.appcelerator.com/products/titanium-mobile-application- development/)). I can understand there might be projects where you need to code natively but I think 99% of companies would be fine with it and could maintain one code base (or have limited deviation based solely around interface issues).

I don't work for them or anything it just seems odd that tools like this aren't mentioned more prominently in these discussions.

<comment><USER3> Three reasons that I wouldn't recommend it after evaluating it:

1) You can't debug it (afaict)

2) It supports iPhone really well, but Android isn't nearly as nice and doesn't look very native (based on the kitchen sink app).

3) It's unbelievably slow to compile.

<comment><USER2> It's not that I don't think your points are valid (except for 2 which is easily fixed through CSS). But I can't see the time taken by writing a few good tracing functions or waiting for a compile to finish coming anywhere near the amount of time it takes to develop for several different platforms.</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Google+ Collections, a new way to group your posts by topic - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/7ZpGWeou2sV

<comment><AUTHOR> Pinteresting...</comment>


Fomo3D's pot (exitscam.me) is nearing USD10Mio - <AUTHOR> http://exitscam.me/play <comment><AUTHOR> Last week it was at around $488k ([http://researchly.leobosankic.com/2018/07/19/blockchain- repo...](http://researchly.leobosankic.com/2018/07/19/blockchain-report- cw28-some-dapps-no-icos-many-wars/))</comment>


Show HN: Mobile app that helps with anxiety and stress - <AUTHOR> https://www.pocketcoach.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

Story: after a long summer and three months of development (1 dev) we finally launched our App today: Pocketcoach

Motivation: stress & anxiety is growing in especially amongst millenials

Stack:

      - Expo (react-native)
      - react-native-gifted-chat
      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>
      - botsociety.io
      - Sentry.io

Development for a few minor hickups was a real blast and smooth sailing for two plattforms.

Let me know what you think and if you find it useful!

Android: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.pocketcoach...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.pocketcoach.app)

iOS: [https://apps.apple.com/app/id1469216793](https://apps.apple.com/app/id1469216793)

</comment><comment><USER4> Good work! It definitely looks friendly, but I checked your site and I couldn't find a FAQ page. I believe your potential users will have questions around privacy, plans for support and expansion, and future monetization.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a good point, haven't thought about that! Guess we were too focused on the product in the last weeks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like it!

<comment><AUTHOR> cool! :)</comment></comment>


The Marco.org Review of John Siracusa's Review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/07/25/siracusa-mountain-lion-review-review <comment><USER3> > "In my testing, reading the 10.8 review took approximately 128 minutes. But > I walked my dog briefly in the middle."

> "At medium brightness, my iPad (3rd-generation) battery fell from 73% to 56% > while I read the review on it."

I... I think I love Marco Arment.

A great way to start my day, thanks for the chuckles, Marco.

<comment><USER4> Funny - I've stopped reading every article from the marco.org site. I can't stand his style and I really can't stand his blind Apple - cult thinking. But to everyone his own's.

<comment><USER5> _I can't stand his style and I really can't stand his blind Apple - <USER2> thinking._

He is leap years better than Gruber and Daring Fireball. His posts are witty without being cynical, and he's frank without being rude.

He also has much more to say on entrepreneurship (given his first-hand experience with the App Store).

<comment><USER6> I agree; I've thought for a long time that as far as Apple Cult bloggers go, he's better than Gruber on a number of fronts: less groupthink, less cynicism, less David Foster Wallace fanboyism, and less irrational Google hatred. The only thing Gruber has going for him now IMO is his continued Stanley Kubrick advocacy.

<comment><USER7> Gruber does seem to have good inside Apple sources which makes some his predictions worth reading. He's almost an official Apple info release channel.

<comment><USER8> "Almost"? He clearly coordinates with Apple people. He's to Apple what a surrogate is to a presidential candidate: an attack dog free to say what the candidate will only think.

(Note: I don't dislike it, I just take him for the biased source he is.)

<comment><USER9> > (Note: I don't dislike it, I just take him for the biased source he is.)

This is the way to handle it. Gruber is what he is. The fact he spends so much time writing about Apple is both why you should read him if you're interested in Apple (because he's got the time, the knowledge and to a degree the access to have some genuine insight) and why you should be slightly sceptical about what he has to say (because it's almost impossible to spend that much time looking closely at something and not end up taking a side).

Plus he's not exactly secretive about his views. Anyone who has read more than 100 words he's written or quoted should be pretty clear about where he's coming from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Marco has perfected the followup blog entry HN spam. Even if it is hilarious and witty.

He jumps on a hot topic and gets the page views.

<comment><USER11> His site isn't ad supported–I don't think he's trolling for pageviews. Also, if you listen to his podcast, he's stated that he doesn't much care for hitting the front page of HN because we're such cynical dicks (paraphrased).

UPDATE: His site is ad-supported. It was just blending in a little too well.

<comment><USER12> He's on The Deck network, so it is ad supported. That's not to say I think he's trolling... I think he's just having fun.

<comment><USER11> Huh, I can't find The Deck ad on his site.

<comment><USER13> The ads run on RSS only, I think.

<comment><USER14> Nope, I can see it from my browser. You might have to pause adblock to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's just sad that the actual review, which is tremendously interesting and substantial, has noticeably fewer votes than this, the #1 link.

Is the oft-mentioned decline of HN a bunch of tiny cuts?

<comment><USER16> The actual review also is about half the minimum length of a novel[1], and as this review describes, takes two hours to read. In some ways I'll agree that it's appropriate because it "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" or so, but it strikes me that we should amortize across the time spent on the subject. If you compare this to, say, spending two hours watching lectures from online courses, I am not sure the review of Mountain Lion really holds up.

In that sense, the review-of-the-review indeed packs much more density-of- gratification than the review did. If the gratification density is to be reflected in the points value, then the points are justly apportioned.

[1] I am basing this purely on the word count and the fact that NaNoWriMo requires 50,000 words to classify something as a novel; I have not checked to see how actual novels fare against this goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Christ does the HN community give Marco a lot of grief. He's like the LeBron James of this place.

<comment><USER4> If you are not really interested in Apple products - he's not a good source of information.

And this article (without reading it) sounds really like he jumped the shark.

<comment><USER18> Why have you commented three times about an article you haven't read, won't read, and about a topic you admit you have no interest in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "which Apple invented completely on their own." priceless.

<comment><USER20> That one satirical expression was enough to get me a laugh and upvote it. I dont see how so many people here that are calling it, dont see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am honest: I don't get it. Is the reviewed review focused on meaningless metrics or why is this funny? I skimmed through a couple of pages and did not see any of that, in fact it seemed comprehensive if a bit subjective and fanboyish.

<comment><USER22> If you listen to Marco's podcast, he'll occasionally say something like "I want to talk about this topic but Siracusa just talked about it on his podcast and did a great job so I'll be quick about it."

It think this review-review is Marco's way of saying that he knows he's expected to comment on the new OSX and everyone should just go read Siracusa's review. Plus it was funny.

edit: typo

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Love the graph comparing word lengths of previous OS X reviews.

<comment><USER24> Yes. But it kills me that he could present such a graph, and then fail to comment on the peak at 10.4. That'll have to be a big issue when the reviews of this piece come out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Has anyone reviewed this review review yet? I don't want to waste my time over here.

<comment><USER26> Yes: Content-free. Avoid.

<comment><USER27> I'm going to review your review of Marco's review of the review. Light on discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Best review of a review ever. A+++ would read again!

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Has anyone noticed yet in the real Siracusa review that marco.org is the first link in a screenshot of Siracusa's reading list?

Page 8

<comment><USER31> whoa, this totally breaks the space-time continuum!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "There have been a few architectural changes to John Siracusa's OS X reviews as well. Siracusa has detailed the process in his separate explanatory blog post, because the review wasn't long enough and he had more to say." HA

</comment><comment><USER33> It's highly legible!

</comment><comment><USER34> As amusing as the parody is, it's tough to beat the original. Honestly, who cares about an update to Chess?

<comment><USER35> I do. Apple pulled Texas Hold 'Em from the iOS App Store some time back and that was their only iOS game. Likewise, Chess is their only Mac game. I expected it to be removed from the OS.

Finding out that it got Game Centre integration is actually pretty interesting. Providing developers an example of the API in a working program is also a nice gesture.

I bet you anything most OS X devs reading this review that plan on integrating Game Centre in their own Mac game fired up Chess to see it in action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I love the fact that his review included code, just something small and trivial like that. Made my day more than slightly better. Can go to bed with a giant smile on my face.

</comment><comment><USER37> A review of a review?</comment>


Why Blockchain Needs Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://gravitational.com/blog/why-blockchain-needs-kubernetes/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, author here. This article was a bit difficult to write as there is much to be explored between blockchain and K8s, but I tried to synthesize the information out there into a coherent narrative. Would appreciate any feedback, especially critical - this is somewhat of a thought-piece!</comment>


How to Find the Longest Increasing Subsequence of an Array - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/blog/longest-increasing-subsequence/ <comment><USER2> I explained to one of my neighbors, who's not in the industry, job searching in software dev is like the nightmare where you forgot that you had a college final and you haven't studied.

<comment><USER3> I explained to my cousin who does Power engineering, "Imagine I fail you for inability to solve hard calculus problems from sem 1 of college on a whiteboard, even though you don't need any more than basics".

He said, "I'd never subject myself to such crap interviewers"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a dynamic programming problem; if anyone wants a resource, I'd recommend this book [1]. Longest Increasing Subsequence is on page 162.

[1] [http://algorithmics.lsi.upc.edu/docs/Dasgupta- Papadimitriou-...](http://algorithmics.lsi.upc.edu/docs/Dasgupta- Papadimitriou-Vazirani.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting to see this posted as I'm taking algorithms this semester and the homework due in 2 weeks has a LIS question.

I accidentally implemented the longest common subsequence that runs in linear space[1] and it actually worked as a drop in replacement for LIS, for my particular question.

[1] [http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cheung/Courses/323/Syllabus/Dyn...](http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cheung/Courses/323/Syllabus/DynProg/Docs/Hirschberg- LCS-1975.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> I would fail this so hard

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure if you use a sorted map you can do this in n log n time, still with just n space.

edit: [https://www.jdoodle.com/a/pZv](https://www.jdoodle.com/a/pZv)</comment>


Twitter bans and purges links to journalist org for publishing BlueLeaks - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/twitter-bans-journalist-organization-for-linking-to-lea-1844142166 <comment><USER2> I'm definitely interested in how they justify this in comparison to Wikileaks. BlueLeaks certainly had sensitive information about victims and others that are innocent, but the line hasn't been officially drawn there by a statement or ToS policy. I don't see a Twitter statement in the future.

<comment><USER3> From the article:

> The group's account, @DDoSecrets, was permanently suspended, a Twitter > spokesperson told Gizmodo, citing the company's policy against the > distribution of hacked materials. The policy specifically prohibits accounts > from sharing "content obtained through hacking that contains private > information, may put people in harm or danger, or contains trade secrets."

<comment><USER2> I did actually see that, on second thought I worded my OP in a way that sounded like they didn't comment at all, when I was referring to if they would compare it to how they handled Wikileaks in their response.

So I guess trade secrets are not in these leaks, but private information is certainly what Wikileaks is about. I think that the information of innocent people is more than enough reason not to host it, though. Just figured they'd want to clear the air of any accusations of favoritism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yet another tiny cut demonstrating how centralized platforms are intrinsically unsustainable for freedom. How many people will this further discourage from referring to the primary source for themselves? Instead of a democratic in- touch society where everyone is one step away from the files, we get pre- digested articles that vaguely refer to the primary source as if it's some kind of hot potato instead of simply including a link.

Censorship always seems appealing for protecting sympathetic individuals, especially at its start when the cases are inherently worthy. But after the ruling power structure learns which levers to pull, censorship is inevitably used to protect and perpetuate the status quo at scale. This tragic arc was foreseeable over a decade ago when this trend of webcrapps was gaining popularity. Giving one entity power over the communications of hundreds of millions of users is an inevitable target for authoritarian control, and too concentrated to resist. But nobody wanted to listen, and now we're living the results.

<comment><USER3> The argument seems to be that those files contains lots of personal data of innocent people so it falls outside any sort of free-speech debate.

<comment><USER5> The fact Twitter is a private platform places this outside the "Free Speech" debate as it's usually understood. That's the whole point: Twitter, as a private platform, can self-censor expression by destroying _your_ expression without owing you or anyone else even a figleaf justification. Any centralized platform can do that, and will, with sufficient provocation, or no provocation at all.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately however, Twitter and Facebook are the modern day public square. So we can say they're private and they can suppress speech because of that, but it doesn't remove the observation of how much impact that has on the public.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Law Enforcement Appliance Subverts SSL - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/packet-forensics/ <comment><USER2> If a CA is issuing bad certificates then they need to be removed from the default CA list. Mozilla was worried about this with China a little while ago. [http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/mozilla- debates...](http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/mozilla-debates- whether-trust-chinese-ca)

The real news will be if anyone can prove that a default CA has been compelled by court order to generate a fake certificate.

<comment><USER3> 1\. A lot of businesses comply with law enforcement requests without a court order.

2\. If you are capable of doing this, you are also capable of attacking the automated verification methods that low-assurance/domain-validated CAs use. For example, if you can spoof DNS for a domain, you can send the CA MX records that direct all validation email to the domain to your own server. Or, if you're a government, you can work with the target's email provider and/or domain name registrar and/or anybody else willing to help; then they could get forged certificates without the cooperation or knowledge of the CA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The appliance itself doesn't seem that important. The big thing I take from the article is law enforcement needs to: "persuade one of the Certificate Authorities — using money, blackmail or legal process — to issue a fake certificate for the targeted website." If you can get a forged certificate from a trusted cert provider, then there is a bunch of ways to do this. The box is just a convenience.

<comment><USER5> Yes - I thought this was a cryptographic breakthrough, but it's just people breaking promises.

<comment><USER6> That, and it demonstrates how bad the default SSL trust model is. If the gmail.com certificate came from Thawte yesterday and comes from the Department of Defense or CNNIC today, your browser will happily accept it without warning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shouldn't it be possible to detect when this is happening, and who's issuing the certificates? We need a plugin that snarfs the certificates as they hit your browser, and a web service to log them to (send the SHA256 of the cert, and if it's not already there, send the complete contents of the cert).

I'm game if someone else is.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/firefox.html>

<comment><USER9> A nice idea. But isn't the path from you->notaries still vulnerable to man-in- the-middle attacks? You would have to use CA authentication to verify the "notaries" you are talking to aren't fake.

<comment><USER8> It comes with a list of the notaries and their public keys. So, the only concern is if your initial download is MitM'ed.

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/notary_list.txt>

<comment><USER9> Or the attacker could just block those servers and then spoof that file with new URLs and public keys.

<comment><USER8> Hard to spoof a file that you've already got a local copy of...

<comment><USER9> If you can't connect to the servers because the middleman blocked them, a user might assume that the servers were updated, and then proceed to use the spoofed file...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The technology we are using in our products has been generally discussed in internet forums and there is nothing special or unique about it."

I hope I never suffer a brain cramp and say that about my company to a reporter.

</comment><comment><USER11> There was an article on HN earlier talking about how certificates have never actually protected anyone from fraud (fraud cites don't try to forge certificates in the first place, or so the article said). Now it gets worse -- not only is it not protecting you, but it's luring you further into a false sense of 'security' and potential government surveillance? No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Authentication is hard. It's not a new problem at all. You can go to a great deal of trouble performing secure key distribution, but if you don't have a way of knowing you're doing it with who you think you're doing it with, you're basically screwed.

PGP is nice in that it bundles key distribution together with authentication, so you can at least be sure that the person you spoke to first is the same person you're speaking to now, assuming nobody's taken a $5 wrench to their knees. Unfortunately, PGP and all other factoring based key distribution methods are only secure for a limited time. People often say things like, "Secure for 1000 years assuming..." What they don't tell you is those assumptions (e.g. crackers only use classical computers with Moore's law scaling resources and currently known algorithms") are ridiculous. In general, advances in algorithms alone accelerate things greatly. Messages you send in PGP today will probably be trivial to crack within a decade, and that's not even accounting for quantum computing! Note: If you are interesting enough, this translates to messages you send today _will_ be logged, archived, and cracked within 10 years. This is fine for credit card transactions. Not so fine for government secrets. (If you ever hear of a government employee transmitting state secrets using PGP, you are well justified to freak out.)

Quantum Cryptography promises to at least get rid of that problem, since the impossibility of cloning quantum information means that keys cannot be archived and cracked at a later time. However, authentication with a party you have not physically met remains a bit of a pickle.

</comment><comment><USER13> _Christine Jones, the general counsel for GoDaddy — one of the net's largest issuers of SSL certificates — says her company has never gotten such a request from a government in her eight years at the company._

Wouldn't she be required by U.S. law to say this if that's what the government told her to say?

[Edit: Seems I'm out of date; the gag-order provisions I was thinking about were ruled unconstitutional a couple of years ago: [http://www.aclu.org/national-security/court-rules-patriot- ac...](http://www.aclu.org/national-security/court-rules-patriot-acts- national-security-letter-gag-provisions-unconstitutional)]

P.S. God, I hate this copy/paste Read More crap.

</comment><comment><USER14> So to counter this kind of MITM attack the browser (or other SSL-app) should allow the user to store the certificate/root certificate for a certain site, and then provide a warning when it doesn't match the stored one. Doesn't sound that hard, maybe even an extension to Fx could do that?

</comment><comment><USER15> Could it be possible that GoDaddy was under court order to say that they have not had any requests? My recollection is fuzzy, I think there was a hub-bub a while back about librarians being ordered to lie about Patriot Act requests.

<comment><USER16> "The government has not had us sign a MITM certificate yet. Watch closely for the removal of this notice."

<http://www.librarian.net/technicality.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always assumed that the government possessed the capability of creating false certs, but it is perhaps more troubling that boxes like these could be available to _anyone_.

</comment><comment><USER18> Cool. So as long as I'm my own CA and I use self-signed certificated (distributed off-band) then I'm safe.</comment>


Ranking the popularity of programming languages - <AUTHOR> http://www.dataists.com/2010/12/ranking-the-popularity-of-programming-langauges/

<comment><USER2> Some interesting outliers that confirm what I noticed generally -

\- I always wondered why there were so many Delphi questions on Stack Overflow, despite seeing very little Delphi activity elsewhere

\- F# developers don't ask many questions

<comment><USER3> > very little Delphi activity elsewhere

So that might explain why the Delphi questions have aggregated on SO.

<comment><USER4> influential people in the delphi community promoted the use of stackoverflow partly to raise the profile of the language. Delphi is not dead and all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is an interesting comparison, but it is most likely just a high overlap between their userbases - people that use github also use stackoverflow, and vice versa. This also doesn't include the number of people programming with a language in a corporate environment whose work is not public nor on external servers.

Megan Squire posted in a comment this link to a collection of multiple source code repository websites datasets, although it is only open source projects: <http://code.google.com/p/flossmole/downloads/list>

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. I'd like to add some options like that for <http://langpop.com> . Some charts that let you look at jobs vs search engine hits or books vs projects, that kind of thing.

I wish I could find a way to make a bit more money from it than the ads provide, though.

<comment><USER7> have you considered a job board?

<comment><USER6> I tried some affiliate links to some job site, but there was zero traction:-/</comment></comment></comment>


The Departed Queen (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://magazine.storycollider.org/2012/features/the-departed-queen/view-all/

<comment><AUTHOR> For those that want to watch the game as the article unfolds, here it is: [http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1648780](http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1648780) (arrow keys advance the game)

</comment><comment><USER2> I didn't imagine that one can write an article about chess so _fascinating_ , that a laic like me can get completely immersed in the story.</comment>


Ask HN: How many components does your React project have? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Excluding any third party components used via npm, we have about 60-70 components for one of our apps.

This is a tool to design signage systems, so each 'widget' that could be used is a separate component- so that counts for about 20 of the components.

The rest are used for the core app.

This is excluding 3rd party open source components we use for drag-and-drop and the color picker.</comment>


ICE Revealed How Much Its New Contract with Peter Thiel's Palantir Is Worth - <AUTHOR> https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/ice-palantir-contract-amount-revealed/ <comment><USER2> Surprisingly little really.

I was expecting it to be in the $500m region, on the basis that not having fancy AI to decide who to search or deport would lead to daily terrorist attacks, and infinite funding is available to stop terrorists.</comment>


UCLA researchers create exceptionally strong and lightweight new metal - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-researchers-create-exceptionally-strong-and-lightweight-new-metal <comment><USER2> Perhaps not so pleasant for cutting tools.</comment>


Finding a Marketing Partner - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> So you have built the dream machine and your up and running. What steps do you take to find the business guys who can hook you up with other companies who sell accessories for your widget. Say you want to include coupons, introductory material for accessories, or some other insert in your package, for a fee. Where do you go to solve that problem. Is this an inhouse executive job, or a partnership arrangement with marketing companies who sell in this space?</comment>


Seaweed on Your Dinner Plate: The Next Kale Could Be Kelp - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/06/05/480346509/seaweed-on-your-dinner-plate-the-next-kale-could-be-kelp <comment><USER2> Sounds tasty. Just be careful of hyperthyroidism from iodine.</comment>