Ask HN: What did you learn in 2019? - <AUTHOR> What was the process like? How long did it take? Any special methods you used? Would you do it the same way if you did it over again? <comment><USER2> That no matter how good you are at the tech. You need to mature professionally (comms, etc.) in order to avoid undermining your full career potential.

\- source: I manage a small team of senior SW engineers

</end of rant>

</comment><comment><USER3> \- setting up a minimal static site on AWS S3 with Bootstrap

\- setting up a minimal serverless ecommerce back end in Go with AWS Lambda, Stripe, Easypost, and Parcel2Go

\- video editing with Blender (for a presentation, about a week)

\- 3d modeling with Blender (for a book cover, about a month)

Blender would have been impossible for me to learn by any other means than watching video tutorials with Blender open in another window and trying out every little thing as it's demonstrated. Go and AWS required taking baby steps for months.

</comment><comment><USER4> Electrolyte levels matter! If you're getting cramps or muscle pain look into sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, zinc in your diet.

Oh and if you cook at home all the time it's pretty easy to not get your RDA of sodium.

</comment><comment><USER5> Corporations view coding as grunt work, the real challenges/money are in selling strategy. 2020 will be the year where I act on this insight.

<comment><USER4> Could you provide an example?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Exercise needs to be fun. Otherwise you won't stick with it. (At least for myself)

</comment><comment><USER6> NEVER EVER EVER SIGN A CONTRACT WITHOUT READING IT FIRST.

EVER.

From anyone.

Seriously, anyone. If your best friend in the entire world hands you a contract, read every word. If your mother gives you a contract, READ EVERY WORD.

<comment><USER4> It's a great rule but what about eulas? What about mortgage docs? Credit card agreements? You could spend a lot of time reading all that stuff.

<comment><USER6> > eulas Fair point on this one. It's pretty difficult. I don't have a good > solution here.

> What about mortgage docs?

Yes. 1000% yes. What kind of insane person wouldn't read their mortgage agreement in full? I read the entire PDS of every lender I was considering.

> Credit card agreements?

Yes. Jesus, yes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How to utilise python as a replacement for C# in a heavy Microsoft/Azure enterprise setting where powershell and Python play a larger and larger role.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've learnt basics of Godot game engine. It still a ongoing process but managed to learn it for like a week in my spare time.

<comment><USER9> Interesting, I went for Defold instead

<comment><USER10> Both a good choice

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Always learn. Even if you think you know it all, you don't.

</comment><comment><USER12> Carbs are poison, including fructose.

</comment><comment><USER13> i learn javascript. i regret.

</comment><comment><USER14> I learned javascript</comment>


Guide to cryptographic hashes for content-based addressing (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://valerieaurora.org/monkey.html Good reading about hashes with spot-on examples of widely used open-source software. <comment><USER2> This is a very old writeup (2007, revised 2009) and one of the things that it misses is the difference between pre-image resistance, second pre-image resistance, and collision resistance. Yes, if you are using a 64-bit hash, it only takes 2^32 tries to find a collsion via the birthday paradox. This is a problem if you want to protect against random corruption.

But an attacker who is trying to subvert a system generally wants to replace a specific node in a content-based addressing scheme. For example, they might want to replace a commit in a git tree. In order to do this, you need to be able to carry out a 2nd pre-image attack. That is, given a message m which hashes to h, you need to find another message m' which hashes to the same value. In this case, the birthday attack doesn't apply, because you can't just find any collsion --- you need to find a collision given a specific hash value. This is the difference between trying to find two people in a crowd that have the same birthday, and trying to find a single person in a crowd that has the same birthday as another, specific person in that crowd (say, May 14th). The latter is far more difficult than the former.

So for example, even if git used MD5, for which a collision was demonstrated in 2005, a theoretical pre-image attack was only demonstrated in 2009, and even then it had a complexity of 2^123. So you could replace a file in a git tree with another, but it would require trying 2^123 different messages --- only slightly better than a brute force search. And even then, there is no guarantee that the replacement file would make any sense as a valid C file.

And of course, git is not using MD5; it's using SHA-1.

It's really unfortunate that Val's compare-by-hash paper doesn't go into this rather subtle point, because it causes people to get more excited than what the facts really warrant.

<comment><USER3> Birthday attacks can work against content-based addressing schemes too. Sure, they may be a little bit harder (you need to convince someone to merge something that is able to carry a large random payload), but given that, say, the Linux kernel has a bunch of binary blob firmwares, it wouldn't be too hard for a hardware manufacturer to submit a driver for new hardware with one firmware, and then replace it with another later on.

For a similar example, you may think that generating a CA signing certificate would involve a second preimage attack, as you would need to generate a certificate that had a hash that matched one of an existing CA. But it turns out that you only need a birthday attack, because you just need to submit a certificate for signing that is one of two that collide, where the second one is marked as being a CA cert. This has actually been done a with certificate authority that used MD5 for signing certificates.[1]

There are lots of file formats that allow you to fairly easily create MD5 collisions, by virtue of being able to stick a random string that won't be interpreted somewhere in them.[2] If it were feasible to produce such a collision using SHA-1, anyone who got such a file merged in Git could then substitute it for an evil file and no one would be the wiser.

That said, this attack does require the ability to generate a collision on SHA-1 (which has not yet been done), the ability to convince Linus (or a subsystem maintainer) to pull your tree containing a big binary blob, and that binary blob being able to do something harmful when substituted that it couldn't do just by virtue of being a difficult to audit binary blob (otherwise, why bother with the birthday attack when you could just subvert the blob anyhow).

It's true that the writeup should distinguish between these cases, and contrast their difficulty, but you shouldn't be quite so quick to handwave away the possibility of collision attacks rather than second-preimage attacks.

If I were to build a content-addressed storage system or design Git today, I'd probably use a SHA-2 or SHA-3 hash to be on the safe side. While no one has yet demonstrated a SHA-1 collision publicly, it's been substantially weakened; it just doesn't give a good enough security margin. Current estimate are that finding a collisions would cost about $2.7M in cloud computing time[3], and there are lots of adversaries who have well more than those kinds of resources.

1: [http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue- ca/](http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/) 2: [http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~selinger/md5collision/](http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~selinger/md5collision/) 3: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/10/when_will_we_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/10/when_will_we_se.html)

<comment><USER2> Fair point. Although it's important to note that not any collision attack would work. The collision attack still had to meet certain properties before it could be used to successfully attack x509 certificates. So the ability to use this to succesfully attack a git tree from a cryptographic perspective falls somewhere between a collision attack and a pre-image attack.

Making the binary blob do something useful also assumes that you know enough about the firmware that you could figure out how to create a valid blob as well as a malicious blob. Very often with these binary blobs the low-level detail of the hardware is not generally available except to the manufacturer --- and if the manufacturer were malicious, they could insert the malware into the official firmware image (or to an update of the official firmware image) in the first place.

Finally, the cost estimates in [3] are for a brute force birthday attack, which is definitely not going to be enough for the sort of replacement attack which you are describing. That being said, certainly if we were starting from scratch today, using a newer hash would probably be a good idea. But it's still true that there's a goodly distance from "we can generate a collision" to we can use that to attack a CBA system in real life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Speaking as a CDN responsible for caching artifacts from petabytes of storage on relatively limited pools of "edge servers", I feel most any discussion of content-based addressing needs a review of _consistent hashing_ as well.

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

Also, we've been hashing content into content keys for a decade and haven't had a collision even using hashes one shouldn't use according to this discussion. In practice, "fast" has been more important to us than "secure", as we are dealing with multi gigabyte files. Consider your trade offs carefully and keep an eye on published work.

<comment><USER5> a technical question; how do you know you didn't have any collisions, do you get alerts when one occurs?

<comment><USER4> Because there'd be a key already there for a new file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A wonderful article (and a repost, I think), but showing it's age by not mentioning SHA-3 era stuff. Particularly BLAKE2 (IMHO) is interesting for this application, since it's blazingly fast, and at least as secure as BLAKE, which has received quite a bit of scrutiny as a SHA-3 finalist.

<comment><USER5> could be interesting to see a revised version of this article, including also authenticated MACs (HMAC etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very good article, but I am not sure why Valerie dedicated so much of the content of the article to the security of hashes. Sure, there may be some CBA systems that would require secure hashes but they would likely be few and far between (yes, BitTorrent 'cares', but they haven't seen any reason to move off of SHA1).

One could argue that weakening hashes increases the expected probability of two pieces of content having the same hash (which it does); however, the probability of the collision being exploited (as opposed to occurring by mistake) could be argued as much greater (and is what the research deals with).

I would have preferred to have seen two articles, with this one dealing with CBA exclusively and the other the security of hashing algorithms (and how that applies to CBA, for those who care). I would have expected an article on CBA to cover at least Merkle trees, for example. Non-cryptographic hashing functions such as Murmur would have also been a nice addition.

<comment><USER8> I also would've liked to see a discussion of hash lists and hash trees, because they seem fairly difficult to implement correctly. At least for hash trees my research has shown there isn't much help implementing them correctly, except for maybe reading the bittorrent source, and there are all kinds of subtle things like some sources recommending you use a different hash function for leaves that are on the sides of the tree, etc...

<comment><USER9> When you say hash tree do you mean Merkle trees? What research are you referring to?

Git uses the Merkle tree scheme. It just creates a binary listing of a directory, which the SHA1 of each file in it, and then takes the SHA1 of that dir object. Is there something insufficient about that?

<comment><USER8> I mean merkle trees more or less yeah. I don't remember all of the sources I researched but here is a source for the use of two different hash functions (it was for leaves not edges, my bad): [http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/2106/what-is- the-p...](http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/2106/what-is-the-purpose- of-using-different-hash-functions-for-the-leaves-and-interna)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why is the security of hashes really important in content-based addressing? The idea there is the hash chosen should be resistant to collision and more importantly fast. SHA1 for that is more than adequate.</comment>


Startup Posters & Motivation  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.prijector.com/post/64378899194/startup-posters-motivation

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you share your posters?</comment>


Chocolat 1.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://fileability.net

<comment><USER2> I've swapped to Chocolat as my full time text editor. I find it to be a really good cross between a plain+powerful text editor like Vim, but still with some of the pleasant UI touches of Espresso and such.

Its speed of development is great as well. It seems to get updates every week or two in the past few months. Compared to Textmate/Espresso/Coda etc, that's a real breath of fresh air.

That said, I haven't used Sublime 2 yet, and it seems to aim for similar goals, so no calls on which is best.

PS - You have to like the release notes:

"Feature – Major improvements to the version number. "

<comment><USER3> Could you say more about what you specifically find to be better than vim? thank you.

<comment><USER2> Sure thing. It's probably easiest to explain by comparing it with the other options. You could say that Vim is one end of a scale (Hardcore keyboard power usage), and Coda/Espresso are on the other (Very designed, and try to do pretty much everything). I really like Chocolat because it's a sweet spot in the middle for me.

I get a beautifully clean experience like in Vim, along with plenty of useful keyboard shortcuts, but still a pleasant UI, regular cursor, and convenience features like a file browser, highlighting recurrences of a word, quick jump into my recent projects etc.

It's not that it does one particular thing that other editors don't (Feature- wise, I can't think of anything that only Chocolat does). Instead, it's the combination of what it does and doesn't do that I like.

<comment><USER4> Vico is heading somewhere in that general direction. What do you have to say about that editor?

<comment><USER2> Vico sounds good, but in the demo screenshots at least, there's just too much going on for me. Not major differences, but Chocolat seems to get by great without the toolbars along the top, and each screenshot for Vico has too much happening (Split editing, symbol browser etc.).

It may be possible to tweak Vico to work in exactly such a way, but even the choice of screenshots, yellow background etc. shows the developer's personal taste. I want the editor to be as minimal as possible, without being quite as extreme as Vim. It's nice to find an editor which seems to have the same goal, and then sit back and let that developer work out the best way of achieving it.

Also, there hasn't been a tweet from Vico since March sadly. The active development speed does make it a bit more fun to be using Chocolat. Even if they aren't big updates, it's just nice to know things are happening :)

<comment><USER4> Well yeah, you're right on every account. But Vico _is moving_ in the general Chocolat direction (I'm active on the pathetic help site since before AppStore release), while being scriptable in Nu (a kind of objc+lisp) and having a working VIM mode (as it is it's only mode).

It doesn't have the visual polish yet, though. Or proper dev-to-community communication habits.

You really should grab the demo.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the info. I know it's a massive undertaking to write an editor, so it will be good to see what point Vico is at in a few more months. :)

<comment><USER4> Martin gave up on pushing it alone, and open-sourced it on <http://github.com/vicoapp/vico> (this might be a good thing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately, the new standard in text editors has been set...

Chocolat, put up a direct comparison with Sublime Text 2, and tell me what you do better, and what you do worse. Be honest.

Then and only then might I consider even trying your software.

Just the harsh reality of the current market.

<comment><USER6> I tried Sublime Text 2, loaded up a 150mb log file. It took over one minute to load, then crashed a few seconds later. I uninstalled it and am keeping Notepad++ and donating money to it.

<comment><USER5> Really? I'm honestly surprised.

One of the things I love about Sublime 2 is how it handles large files.

I just ran `cat /dev/urandom > test.log` for about 15 seconds to generate a 160MB file, and it's currently opening _in the background with a nice smooth status bar_ in Sublime, using up a single yielding thread while remaining completely and entirely UI responsive while loading. You can cancel loading at any time by closing the file; this doesn't interrupt workflow or slow you down at all if you accidentally open a massive file (awesome).

It finished opening the entire 1.1 million (!) line file in about 2 minutes, followed by a brief 3 second delay, followed by displaying it perfectly in the editor. I could smoothly scroll through the whole file (as smooth as if it were 100 lines), even using the minimap that displays a small representation of the whole file. Memory usage jumped about 200 MB, but that's to be expected and is rather efficient considering the task.

I'm not a Sublime evangelist or anything, just saying my experience completely contradicts yours, to such a degree that I think of Sublime second when I want to open large files.

Why second? Well, because you should really be using command line tools for files that big anyway.

*edit: Almost forgot to delete that test file. Whew.

<comment><USER7> vim loads the same file in 3 seconds. (Doing large smooth scrolls using the scrollbar lags out for a few seconds, but jumping to a given line is instantaneous.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been using the Chocolat betas for a while and it really is a nice editor. Worth $50, I don't know - for around that price you can get Sublime Text 2, BBEdit, or TextMate, all of which are more mature products.

I think Chocolat could be wildly successful as the "Pixelmator" to these other editors "Photoshop" if they dropped the price and sold it through the Mac App Store. But as it stands now, there's nothing that compells me to purchase it.

<comment><USER9> $50 is equal to about 20 minutes-60 minutes of your time. Chocolat has easily saved me that much frustration and time. So it's worth it for me.

<comment> throwaway54-762 Vim has saved me that much frustration and time. Maybe I should donate $50 to that Ugandan charity (ICCF?) that Moolenaar likes.

<comment><USER10> <http://www.moolenaar.net/Charityware.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> XKCD is always relevant: <http://xkcd.com/927/>

I am, actually, a Chocolat user. I'm essentially using it as a TextMate2 replacement... comes with all the niceties of TM truffles and it's easy on the eyes. Does what I need it to do well, nothing more, nothing less.

</comment><comment><USER12> There are 14 competing text editors. I know, I'll make the best one and end this dispute once and for all! There are 15 competing text editors.

<comment><USER13> Text editors are not standards, like sockets or protocols. They're programs.

The more competition, the better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yet another editor with a half-baked Vim mode!

<comment><USER15> Surely all editors will have half-baked Vim unless the editor is actually Vim.

<comment><USER16> <http://jvi.sourceforge.net/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm very reluctant to consider any editor that's not scriptable. Or if it is, it doesn't seem to be mentioned on the website...

<comment><USER17> And not cross platform.

Open Source would be nice, too, but I would not consider it a strict requirement.

<comment><USER18> emacs 24.1 has just been released.

<comment><USER17> That is what I am using. But if I weren"t, I'd use Sublime Text over Chocolat or Textmate, because it is cross-platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Neat, but, why not vim, which does all of these things? What differentiates it and justifies $50?

<comment><USER20> Believe it or not, a _lot_ of people don't like vim.

<comment><USER21> I don't like vim, but I'd still use it before spending $50 on a text editor that did less.

<comment><USER20> People are willing to spend a lot of money on a text editor, feature set is really not as important as one might think... What's important is that the editor feels good when I use it.

<comment><USER21> Sure, but the primary thing that should make someone feel good about their text editor is how efficiently they can manipulate text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Still doesn't handle YAML completely right. Try nesting quotes and using newlines within a single key- the highlighting gets completely confused.

Then try the same thing in BBEdit/Textwrangler to see the difference:

Chocolat: <http://c.tkwa.re/2G1O2x3T2f1F1Y0I2G1t>

TextWrangler: <http://c.tkwa.re/3w1V1V2g0I0H0C2t422t>

<comment><USER23> This touches on something that bugs me about all the commercial editors using TextMate-compatible bundles for language support: It's not clear who, if anyone, is maintaining the bundle for a specific language.

I doubt the developer of editor XYZ commits to actively maintaining the 2 dozen language bundles they distribute with their editor. So support for language X might forever be that _Last-updated-4-years-ago_ zip file that perhaps wasn't even the definitive version when it was found, especially for the less community-orientated languages.

<comment><USER16> but if someone writes a better textmate bundle, _all_ the editors can now use it! it's not like vim and emacs support all the languages themselves either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> $10 more bucks gets you Sublime Text 2 :)

<comment><USER25> Perhaps, but this once feels a lot more OSX native than ST2.

<comment><USER23> ST2 may not be perfect, but it's had a damn good effort put in to it to feel like a good Mac app. I had a niggly suggestion regarding menus during the beta and IIRC it was implemented and released within a few days.

<comment><USER26> Scrolling in ST2 isn't right. It doesn't do the rubber-band thing when you scroll to the end. It doesn't have the right resistance to scrolling horizontally when you mean to scroll vertically (it's hard to two-finger scroll perfectly vertically).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The app crashed the first time I opened it. The second time, I opened a file and the Python syntax mode marked lines in my file as invalid, even though they aren't and no other text editor marks them as such. It seems premature for a 1.0 release.

</comment><comment><USER28> Congrats on the 1.0 release. I have been following Chocolat's progress since a few months now and am impressed with how well it has improved.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand. But then again, I've havent used a Mac recently. Does this do something that Eclipse can't?

<comment><USER30> You mean other than function well and not eat RAM?

<comment><USER3> Eclipse is one of the best java editing environments though, in terms of understanding java and not just editing text. Yes it's fidgety and ram hungry, but using it is a significant improvement over vim etc strictly in terms of my productivity. Though it may only really demonstrate value on larger apis; if you can keep most of an api in your head, ie it's a _very_ small java project using few external libs, it may not do much for you.

And I just bought 16GB of ram for my macbook for $150; it's from crucial which I've had good experiences with but it's as expensive as it gets for 2x8GB. So that's a pretty trivial expense for your development environment: $75 a year.

<comment><USER15> You and the OP are comparing apples and oranges. VIM is an editor, Eclipse is an IDE. You can have your cake and eat it too [1]. Eclipse is a good cross platform IDE yes, but throwing more RAM at it won't make it feel natural and native to the platform.

      [1]: http://eclim.org/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Two questions:

1\. Is it scriptable? 2\. Does it have macros?

These are honest questions. The website did not mention anything at first glance. But without those, I would not consider it a serious text editor.

On the other hand, it not being cross platform makes it pretty much unusable for me.

</comment><comment><USER31> sublime text 2 was not the intended comp; textmate was (hence the compatibility with tmbundles etc.)

i use chocolat and enjoy it (have been using it since it's early open beta). the intellisense (or whatever you want to call it) feature is nicely implemented. the vim mode, though shallow, works if you're used to those key bindings for basic movement and editing etc.

i like it, overall. do i like it enough to pay $50 for it? probably not.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is there something like the Zen Coding as in Sublime Text 2 possible with Chocolat?

</comment><comment><USER33> For real? $49?

You have all that and so much more in jEdit for $0.

<comment><USER34> The single feature I long for that I've never seen in any other editor is the tree view of open buffers. It's 100% outstanding.

Alas, it's not enough to make me stick with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> cross-platform wins everything

<comment><USER36> I don't know if it wins -everything-, but one purchase working on all my OSes? That's pretty awesome. And with the prices so close, I really can't justify buying Chocolat over ST2. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> what languages does it support?

</comment><comment><USER38> Can we have the title changed to: Chocolate, a text editor for Mac 1.0 released

<comment><USER39> Erm. So. It's name is "Chocolat".

<comment><USER40> Its vs. it's:

[http://www.betteratenglish.com/grammar-mistakes-that-make- yo...](http://www.betteratenglish.com/grammar-mistakes-that-make-you-look- like-a-dork-its-vs-its/)

Also see McKean's law: "Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error."

<comment><USER41> A grammatical error does not change the fact that the OP hadn't registered that the product's name is "Chocolat" and not "Chocolate".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Collect Your Favorite Quotes Online with Quotica - <AUTHOR> http://sprouter.com/blog/collect-your-favorite-quotes-online-with-quotica/ <comment><USER2> I love quotes and have considered keeping a text file in my Dropbox account. Quotica sounds like a natural evolution from such an approach.

Years ago, I kept such a text file on my laptop and it grew to several hundred quotes. To say it was unwieldy would be an understatement. I started organizing them by topics, but what I really wanted was tags. Being the organizational freak that I am, I really hope Quotica will have that.

I use these quotes in personal essays and tweets (especially the shorter quotes). Being able to tweet a quote from Quotica would be cool too.

Neat idea. Wish I had thought of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's always funny to see an idea you had become a reality... because someone else made it. It's funny because it seems there is always someone else thinking about the same (almost exact) thing you are.

Nevertheless, kudos. It looks good. I probably wouldn't use it, but I know other people would.</comment>


Stripe Atlas Vendor Leaked SSNs - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kwuchu/status/1213306146225823749 <comment><USER2> I agree with [https://twitter.com/constmontague/status/1213309357204688899](https://twitter.com/constmontague/status/1213309357204688899)

"... we need a new personal identifier, SSNs are all stolen at this point"

Though identity and authentication should be different things, as an identifier the only real problem with SSNs is that we should be using UUIDs instead.

The hard part is authentication, which should have a far more secure process than merely knowing 9 digits everyone (re)uses.

<comment><USER3> I think we need a worldwide, federated identity system.

There should be multiple identity providers, mostly governments and organizations who already have lots of info about you, for example banks. This already works in Poland and several other european countries. Such organizations should verify that you are you the way they currently do, and give you a way of authorizing yourself, i.e. sms, mobile app, one time passwords etc. If someone needed to verify your identity, they would go through your chosen org for authentication. This approach has several benefits.

1\. You can provide as much or as little info as you want. The info you provide could include true/false assertions. For example, a porn website could just ask the org whether your age >= 18, without the need to know your exact birthdate,. Same for citizenship, disability, criminal record etc.

2\. You can easily integrate that with other services, for example payments or even a secure communication channel, letting companies contact you without learning any details about you. There could even be a secure shipping service, where the company selling you the product only gets a special qr code to stick on the package,. Only one shipping company would get your real address, the rest would just know the next leg of the route.

3\. You could provide instant "not a robot" verification, without any captchas, without any personal data and without any hassle. The authorizing org would just give the requestor a token, different for each visit, that they could send with a "add to blacklist request". The next time a blacklisted user would try to log in to that service, their org would refuse to provide the token.

4\. Ability to provide legal accountability without rewealing anything. The authenticating org would just provide a token to a service. The user could do whatever they wished, but, in case they'd do something illegal, the police could just force the org to actaully reveal who was behind that token.

Of course, the system would have to be regulated by a global body of governments or organizations. Each org would have certain resoponsibilities, i.e. allowing you to port your id to somewhere else, not requesting more data than necessary, honoring blacklists etc. If that system existed, implementing a safe, seamless online and real0-life experience would be trivial. Just imagine if it would be trivial to trace each website, each comment, everything to a real person with a court order, while not giving most companies any data whatsoever.

<comment><USER4> If we had a worldwide, federated identity system, there's a problem with this I can already see: what's stopping nation's like China from expanding their social credit system to the population of the world then, against their will for example? For what purpose, I can't know, but it doesn't seem ideal.

On one hand, it would be incredibly useful to only ever have to deal with one service or standard for identities (and that could include the possibility of making things easier for identity theft products to do their job) but it brings with it these other risks around centralizing that kind of information.

<comment><USER5> What prevents them from doing so now? They can already scrape public internet activity and create social credit profiles based on that.

Here I am posting a picture of Winnie The Pooh which I know Xi Jinping absolutely loves: [https://ohmy.disney.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/01/Pooh.jpg](https://ohmy.disney.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/01/Pooh.jpg) and my "social credit" is presumably now at zero.

Thankfully I am not in China, never will be, so even if the Chinese social credit system hates me I can still take a train, get on a plane, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why are they notifying folks via mail instead of good old fashioned email?

Haven't got a letter yet but would be super easy for me to check my inbox...

<comment><USER7> Each state has different laws about how people need to be notified about data breaches. U.S. mail is generally the lowest common denominator across states. See [https://info.digitalguardian.com/rs/768-OQW-145/images/the-d...](https://info.digitalguardian.com/rs/768-OQW-145/images/the- definitive-guide-to-us-state-data-breach-laws.pdf) for more information if you're curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As more Social Security Numbers are leaked from security breaches like Equifax et al - I have done a deep dive into all things publicly known about SSNs and published the results on a hobby site (with limited ad revenue to cover the server cost) to both educate myself on the historic data contained in a social security number, how its usage has changed throughout the years (enumeration at birth in the 80's for example) and then how finally the state and date information was removed around 2009 so that numbers are now randomly assigned. For those born before the 2010 - there is a real information encoded (or deduced) from your number beyond what most are aware. If you are curious what types of information a hacker could deduce, or additional ways your SSN could be mis-used if disclosed (or guessed) take a gander at

[https://numchk.com/](https://numchk.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this relevant to LLC formation only or also c corps?

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately, C Corps are affected, too. I created a C Corp through Atlas and was hoping that I dodged this issue, but I just received the notification of the breach in the mail today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why was Stripe sharing something as critical as [SSN+Name] with a third party? If Atlas is simply a white labeled service of another service, then I hope it was prominent in Stripe's communication with customers/potential-customers. I say this because the market has many competitive offerings in the space, and among the primary reasons to pick Stripe is the assumption of better security, given it's multi billion dollar venture funding and valuation

</comment><comment><USER12> The problem with SSNs is how short they are. 9 digits.

Even if you hash them, it's not that hard to make a 10^10 - 1 rainbow table.

It's the same problem with IPs (v4). You simply cannot store them at all if you care about your customers' privacy.

</comment><comment><USER13> Strange to not see an official statement and post Mortem from Stripe mentioned anywhere. Can someone who got a letter post a (redacted as necessary) scan of it?

<comment><USER14> For whatever reason there seems to be a semi-official version hosted by Vermont: [https://ago.vermont.gov/blog/2019/12/31/stripe-legalinc- noti...](https://ago.vermont.gov/blog/2019/12/31/stripe-legalinc-notice-of- data-breach-to-consumers/)

<comment><USER15> Oh jesus

[https://ago.vermont.gov/blog/category/security- breaches/](https://ago.vermont.gov/blog/category/security-breaches/)

There's 63 pages.

<comment><USER16> Scrolling through a few, the title of this one caught my eye:

University of Notice of Data Breach to Consumers

[https://ago.vermont.gov/blog/2019/10/02/university-of- notice...](https://ago.vermont.gov/blog/2019/10/02/university-of-notice-of- data-breach-to-consumers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How could Stripe Atlas even require SSNs? Wasn't the whole point of that service giving access to the U.S. market for people from other countries?

<comment><USER17> It could be used equally by US-based founders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If anyone needs a Stripe Atlas alternative that doesn't require SSN and also less expensive ($350 vs Stripes $500 + $400/yr) check out [https://www.blook.io/stripe-atlas-alternative](https://www.blook.io/stripe- atlas-alternative)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for this I was looking into setting up an LLC this year. I'll check them out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Odds are that all these SSNs had been leaked from a bunch of other sources anyways. Why the "fuuuuuuuck"? This doesn't seem like a big deal at all.

<comment><USER21> Presence on this list potentially indicates individuals of higher net worth and credit history, making it more valuable than other sources?

<comment><USER20> You can just buy 1000s of high-credit profiles located in the wealthiest zip codes for $1/pc max (I've seen prices below $0.1/pc but I suppose this is a special request)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there any verification / info other than a tweet?

<comment><USER23> As a Stripe Atlas customer, I received a snail mail letter from Stripe about this issue. It included some suggestions from them to prevent identity theft.

As I texted a tech friend of mine: if I'm receiving a physical letter from a leading tech co like Stripe, then it's at least a moderately serious issue.

<comment><USER24> Google sends Google adwords ads with physical letters in Germany at least.

<comment><USER25> What does it mean to send an "adwords ad"? Has Google branched out from digital advertising and started distributing ads via the mail?

<comment><USER26> A solicitation to join adwords, often including an offer to run a certain amount (ex. $100 worth) of free ads for new users

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> getting your identity stolen in any way that'll effect you is all random

they're all leaked now and people borrow them for things that would never show up on your credit report

hope you don't get framed! Good luck

<comment><USER28> Not me though! Equifax gave me 4 years of credit monitoring! I'm in the safe right? /s</comment></comment>


Dear Amazon, NYC doesn't want you - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/09/amazon-new-york-jeff-bezos-long-island-city <comment><USER3> > _We've already got Wall Street – must we be flooded with rich techies on top > of that?_

Speaking as a long-time NYC resident, I'm glad that the income taxes that these "rich techies" pay will help NYC provide services for the less fortunate. Our infrastructure - roads, bridges, subways, public housing - <USER2> crumbling, and an increased tax base can only help. People with money also spend it on local businesses, which provides jobs for other people.

Also, techies aren't really "rich" by NYC standards. Software developers aren't the ones buying up the new $10 million apartments that are going up all over the city, or even the old apartments on Park Avenue. And not everyone who works at Amazon is a techie anyway.

Finally, NYC has a population of 8M and the metro area has a population of 20M. Adding 20K "techies" isn't going to make a big difference in our demographics.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was born and raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and lived in other neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn for many years. I wound up going overseas for eight years, and when I came back the biggest thing I noticed was sort of a "cultural appropriation" of Brooklyn by people who only moved to Brooklyn, and have lived there long enough to open a business and put "Brooklyn" in the business name or on their product. I passed by some hipster clothing and other accessories shop on Fifth Ave. in NYC in the 30's or 40's with Brooklyn in the title, and it made me wonder what selling power it conveyed. I am of the generation where I worked on losing my Brooklyn accent to better my chances of getting a job in the early 80s. When I was working outside of the U.S., acquaintances thought I should hook up with a worker from Brooklyn for some camaraderie. I met her and asked where she was from in Brooklyn, only to quickly find out she was from LA, CA, and had lived only for 3 or 5 years in Park Slope Brooklyn. I didn't call her on it. Later I walked away from our conversation wondering what would drive somebody to say they were from Brooklyn when one, they no longer lived there, and two, they only lived there a few years. I wonder if the author Hamilton Nolan is born and bred, or a Brooklyn or NYC transplant. Of course, I really don't care, since I don't have any dibs on "Brooklyn". I just find it interesting, and want to understand the phenomenon. And as a note, I never felt like people from Jersey or finance workers invaded my turf.

<comment><USER5> I was raised in NYC too and also used to get irritated by transplants claiming some MYC identity as their own. But then I realized that what makes NYC special is that people come here from all over. It is the transplants that make the city so dynamic.

Changing neighborhoods and cultures is the price we pay for that.

Brooklyn is now more known for artisanal candles and soaps than working class grit, but I'm okay with that.

<comment><USER4> The shops with Brooklyn in their name don't irritate me, or transplants. I am glad things look less gritty, although, I don't want to go too Disney or Normal Rockwell here ;)

After all, I am a mutt, and at some point on my father's side, his father was from either the Ukraine or Poland depending on the borders at the time, and settled in the Lower East Side. My grandmother, my mom's mom, was from Ireland. My (4x) great grandfather on my father's side was from Scotland and fought with George Washington in the Revolutionary War.

I was confused and curious at the same time on why someone who was born and grew up in LA, lived in Brooklyn only for two or three years or their 35 year old life, then back to LA before I had this conversation with her, would answer "Where are you from?", with "Brooklyn". She had been in SE Asia for a couple of years by then too. She also seemed like she got caught in a lie when this came up with me. Chameleon?

<comment><USER5> Maybe Chameleon, or maybe she just identified with Brooklyn more than the other places she lived. She may not be an authentic Brooklyn-ite, but it's a testament to the dynamism of NYC that she identifies with it most.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > [Referring to Amazon] "Its owner should have his immoral hoard of wealth > forcibly expropriated by the state before his power grows so great that all > of society is warped by it. Jeff Bezos's money should immediately be put to > use helping the public; (...)"

As someone that once lived under a system, which used to do that in eastern Europe, it is absolutely bizarre to see this being written by an American journalist. I guess you don't know how good you have it until you lose it.

</comment><comment><USER7> This opinion piece is really bizarre, how this kind of mentality turns from abhorrent to great when your target is supposed "rich techies"? The writer must understand the economic advantages of having productive and well-paid professionals moving in your neighborhood, the problems that arise from a sudden influx of people are merely infrastructure problems that will be fixed over time, with the tax revenue they bring with them, it's called a happy problem. You can't plan for it in advance because it's not economically feasible to add Metro lines just in case someone decides to build a campus somewhere in the city. If this line of thinking is fine, then you really can't argue with anti-immigration rhetoric since theirs is largely the same, irrational fear and hatred for change in a world that is constantly moving but would rather forego any long-term benefits because it inconveniences you in the now and shakes your precious culture you value over anything else.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad to see someone else expressing annoyance at the special class citizen status awarded to companies and pointing out this whole city selection process as bullshit.

They were just trying to get the cities they already picked to make concessions.</comment>


Finding and Understanding Bugs in C Compilers - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4241 <comment><USER2> I typed in the examples from the paper and tried them out with the Digital Mars C compiler. They all passed, as well as <http://blog.regehr.org/archives/482>. I hope the authors will try to break dmc with their test suite generator, and look forward to fixing any issues they find.

<comment><AUTHOR> I emailed John Regehr asking when they're planning to publish Csmith, and he responded "Almost certainly sometime in April"

<comment><USER3> Cfront or Csmith? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Er, Csmith, sorry;fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The remarks about coverage are interesting, and lends support to something I was thinking about a while ago (maybe this is common knowledge):

If I'm writing test cases with the goal of increasing (line) coverage, I first look for large sections of code that aren't yet covered, then test the most obvious path to reach those lines (usually its some sort of special case or error handler). Sometimes this catches really simple mistakes, but generally those lines were written specifically to handle the the path I'm testing. The problem is that once I've tested that path I'm inclined to move on to un- covered lines, and don't test a lot of paths that exercise the same code, but that aren't necessarily obvious to me. Such paths, of course, tend to be more likely to contain bugs because they weren't as obvious to, or considered as critical by whoever originally wrote the code.

<comment><USER5> Look into Microsoft's CHESS proejct which analyzes the code to quickly converge on error cases as well as a system by which thread interleaving is predictable and thus testable. It actually tests every possible combination of thread interleaving through a code path.

<comment><USER6> Also the fantastic Microsoft Pex: <http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/projects/pex/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who works in generative algorithms for expressive/art/content purposes, the phrase "generating random programs that are expressive" is interestingly evocative. I wonder if there are any lessons from the past ~5 years of "fuzzing" algorithms for generative-art / generative-AI to mine.</comment>


Ak HN: Are iframe-bars inherently evil? - <AUTHOR>

In light of Digg's (Kevin Rose's) recent move (http://digg.com/d31Nfqb The Digg iFrame Toolbar is Dead), what's your opinion on iframe-bars? There are (arguably) good use cases for a "no install needed" "no browser reboot needed" instant and temporary toolbar. At the same time getting users to install a "real" add-on is challenging.<p>The current browser technologies don't really support the iframe-bar well. So to keep it short: 1. Are they inherently evil?
2. Could a new "eframe" be defined with such semantics to make such use cases possible (I have some ideas but this question is getting too long). Uri <comment><USER2> I guess I'm okay with them if the users opt-in somehow. The main thing that rankles people is when it's the default on outgoing links to attach a frame around them.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's encouraging.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin Miners Signal Revolt Amid Sluggish Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-13/bitcoin-miners-signal-revolt-in-push-to-fix-sluggish-blockchain <comment><USER5> The irony here is that "decentralized p2p-based currency" is very much centralized with 60-70% of the mining power concentrated in 2-3 mining pools who get to impose their will on the system.

<comment><USER6> Sorry but you've been misinformed... If you take a look, it takes at least 5 mining pools today to get over 50% of mining power [1]. Some have argued that this is more than enough decentralization that the network needs to stay secure [2].

The beauty of it is how easy it is to switch mining pools. Miners come and go [3] so the large mining pools need to make sure they're keeping both the miners happy and the network users happy.

[1] [https://blockchain.info/pools](https://blockchain.info/pools)

[2] [https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/problems-associated- wit...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/problems-associated-with-bitcoin- mining-centralization-may-be-overstated-1474917259/)

[3] [https://news.bitcoin.com/pools-diversifying-bitcoin- mining/](https://news.bitcoin.com/pools-diversifying-bitcoin-mining/)

<comment><USER5> These numbers go up and down - because yes it's easy to switch pools - <USER3> even if 5 pools is the "magic 51% number" today, this centralization is borderline extreme.

This is not about security mind you - this is about imposing the will where it takes 5-6 individuals or maybe one subpoena order from one government considering the physical location of these pools to force the rest of the blockchain to comply with you.

<comment><USER6> You're never forced to comply with the status quo, you can fork. This is what people in Ethereum realized and this is what the Bitcoin Unlimited movement is about.

<comment><USER5> Fork and then what? Unless you have formidable percentage of the total hashing power you're dead in the water. But if you do have it and with this bitcoin centralization it's not physically hard to control then you can threaten the rest to fork if they don't comply with your "direction".

<comment><USER6> This is conjecture on my part but to your point: some have suggested that the minority fork change its proof-of-work algorithm, to prevent attacks from the majority fork.

I would also point out that miners are heavily incentivized to keep the network valuable. If 80% of the miners got together and decided that transactions need a signature from the PBoC or an output to the IRS before being valid, everyone would sell, the price would plummet, and the miners will be left with a bunch of inefficient heating equipment and no more revenue. Miners need to stay engaged with the users if they are to force any kind of change onto the network, lest the rewards they get from mining turn to dust.

<comment><USER5> sure, there are things that are obviously "bad" for all of the miners. but the reality isn't as cut-and-dry - there are things that are up for a debate - <USER3> with this centralization there is no debate, or rather the debate is short :) which is why bitcoin xl didn't happen for example.

not sure what your point is - you saying there's no centralization? it's not as bad as it seems? something else?

<comment><USER6> I've just been refuting your original statements about how decentralized it is and about how miners get to "impose their will" arbitrarily. You seem to think that tomorrow 3 miners can come out and decide to increase the coinbase reward back to 50 btc and there would be no consequence. I'm saying the system doesn't work like that and that the level of decentralization is adequate.

<comment><USER5> If these "3 miners" are controlling the majority of the hashing power - <USER4> isn't too far fetched from how the things really are - we're literally talking like 10 physical individuals here - then yes, they get to tell the others what to do.

This already happened in the past and looks like Ver and AntPool are trying to make it happen again. And they know full well that it's not that hard to do:

>>> "Ver says he plans to step up lobbying efforts, especially in China which is home to the majority of bitcoin mining."

and again this lobbying^^ will only need to be applied to a few concrete individuals again because of the extreme level of centralization of the hashing power.

<comment><USER6> I see what you're saying, but you originally said that miners get to "impose _their_ will". If Bitcoin miners have announced support for Bitcoin Unlimited and the market price hasn't crashed in response, what does that tell us?

<comment><USER5> you tell me since I don't see how this proves/disproves the "bitcoin is centralized af" statement...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Much as I read Bitcoin articles from time to time I still don't get why on earth one would want to use a crypto currency.

I'm like, I vaguely get the "not under control of a .gov" and privacy concerns and all, but the thing seems literally backed 100% on faith, in contrast with (if only theoretically) the "we the nation" backing of fiat money.

Any odds an aficionado might be around to enlighten the uninitiated?

<comment><USER8> For one, all currency is based on faith. We have faith the government can control the currency and will back the currency.

Take Venezuela, their currency is/has collapsed because the people no longer have faith that it is valuable.

Typically, people just blindly trust authority, and that's why we believe green paper made from cotton to be valuable. We all agree it's valuable (except people who want a gold standard).

Similarly, we all agree Bitcoin is worth X. It's no different, except no one is telling us it's worth X. The market is saying it's worth X.

It's not really the first time a society agreed to use something arbitrary as valuable either. There are cultures that used salt, gold, silver, white stones, etc. as currency. The point is, once we agree something is worth X, we can trade for other goods at value X.

The advantage to Bitcoin is it's not centrally controlled so it's harder to mess up (see great depression, federal reserve basically made it 100x worse), or Germany post WWI. Further, you have an auditable history, some privacy (better than credit cards), and a truly global currency (similar to gold, without the need to lug it around).

<comment><USER9> For most currencies, governments act as huge buyers and stabilize the value over the entire year by calculating taxes in that currency. It's not just faith in the currency itself. Bitcoin doesn't have any institutional buyers like that.

> Take Venezuela, their currency is/has collapsed because the people no longer > have faith that it is valuable.

Almost all the devaluing there is because _they keep making so much_ , not because of a lack of faith.

<comment><USER10> They make a lot less than the US government.

<comment><USER9> Proportional to how much existed a couple years ago they have created insane amounts of new currency. US government can't touch that rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is actually one of the most important standoffs ever in Bitcoin and will rival the well know Ethereum Hard Fork after the DAO fiasco.

To give an idea of what is happening, I'll try to explain what I know, which isn't lot.

Since last year, there's been an increase in fees that every transaction has to pay to get confirmation within a reasonable timeframe (the point at which your transaction is deemed a valid one). The reason for this is that, the Blocksize is capped at 1MB. Now, the problem is that people are disagreeing with the direct solution to this problem, which is increase the blocksize.

What that means is that only 1MB worth of transactions (I don't exactly know how many that is) will fit in a particular block, which is generated once every 10 minutes (the difficulty of 'mining' is actually adjusted to ensure this). So since there's been a lot of activity with bitcoin, a lot of people are having to wait longer to get their transactions confirmed because they usually have to wait for the second or third block after the transaction is sent out by the client. This makes confirmations slower.[1]

Now, to make confirmations faster, people have to pay more for the 'transaction fee' which directly goes into the pockets of the miner who includes the transaction in their block. So transactions which pay lower fees are pushed out of the block the miner is currently mining because, they obviously want more money. So the transaction usually occurs in the next block, if they're lucky.

The way I see it, the blocksize has to be increased, because it is ridiculous that I have to pay more in fees for sending bitcoin than using paypal. But, the party opposing it has some interesting arguments too. (The full pro-con list can be found here[2])

The strongest argument in my opinion is that making the blocksize larger would lower the transaction fees the client has to pay. Now, that is good for the client, because they pay less fees. But, bad for the miner because they get less money for all the work that they put in.

So there was talk about increasing the blocksize to 2MB. That never went through, because of some other problems with SegWit, which frankly I have not much knowledge of.

But then came the idea of Bitcoin Unlimited. Now the people behind this say that the blocksize should be WHATEVER the miner chooses and they want autonomy over the blocksize. What can happen in this scenario is that the big players can make a loss temporarily while the smaller players lose money. Eventually the smaller players (miners) close shop which would make bitcoin more centralized.

Very interesting arguments on both sides, and this will be much more interesting to watch than anything in recent history.

I'm actually surprised not many people are talking about this, and that there's more interest in whether Bitcoin is accepted as an ETF, which was a terrible idea in the first place.

[1]:[https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation- time](https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time)

[2]:[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy)

<comment><USER12> "Economic majority" of bitcoin space have already agreed not to follow BU, that's why not many talk about it.

<comment><USER11> Well, the confirmation time problem and the transaction fees problems aren't going to go away anytime soon right? They're only going to get worse. So what's the opinion of people who have agreed not to follow BU? Let the transaction fees increase till transactions <$10 will be stupid to make?

<comment> TD-Linux As someone who will never run BU, I'd rather have segwit activate, which will bump the blocksize to ~2.1MB and also enable a lot of better payment channel implementations, like lightning, that can lessen the demand.

It seems very clear to me that simply increasing the block size forever to keep under some arbitrary fee isn't going to work, though the reasons I have against running BU are mostly to do with its implementation.

<comment><USER11> I'm interested. Why aren't you going to run BU?

<comment> TD-Linux BU doesn't implement a hard fork but rather potentially infinite hard forks, depending on two user controlled parameters. If the AD parameter is low (the default), then it will just be a long orphan chain, with effectively miner selected block size, but in kind of a gross way (for miners to limit block size they need to orphan other miners' blocks... but they might all have different settings, so it's a risky deal). You also don't know when a chain fork will happen. To avoid this, all users are supposed to coordinate their 'EB' parameter via some side channel, like Reddit. In my opinion this is very error prone, and maintaining consensus is the job of the software, not the user. Earlier hard fork proposals like BIP-100, BIP-101, etc which had BIP9 style voting, or even just a flag day that activate on a certain height, are far safer.

It also doesn't help that BU forked from an old version of Bitcoin Core, which means it's missing some new features and is slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As expected. Turns out seizing the means of production won't necessarily result in equitable outcomes.

<comment><USER14> Only because, you're are grossly misinterpreting the phrase.

The whole idea behind socialism is that the means of production are controlled and owned in some democratic manner where everyone has almost equal ownership and control.

Bitcoin is more akin to Rothbard's capitalist utopia, with private ownership of property but no state.

<comment><USER15> About a hundred years ago, some Germans (the `Freiwirtschaftler', a bit similar to the American Georgists) had an interesting alternative interpretation of socialism: socialism is when approximately all GDP goes to labour, and only negligible fractions to capital and land. (And they wanted to get there in a market based economy.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like it is playing a part in Ethereum and ether blowing up this week (hit $30 today...)

</comment><comment><USER17> Roger Ver's quote

"Say you haven't had any water to drink for a day and a half, and you also need a haircut. Do you drink some water or go to the barber shop? SegWit is like going to the barber shop."

fails to notice that this barber also provides free drinks...</comment>


Python 3 is killing Python - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thezerobit/python-3-is-killing-python-5d2ad703365d <comment><USER2> OK, no. Most modules/libraries _are_ ported to Python 3. The minor ones that aren't are those that are dead upstream, and you shouldn't be using them, and/or they should be easy to port yourself.

I really think the _real_ reason is that people, especially English-speaking, but others, too, have been sticking their collective heads in the sand about this ASCII/Unicode situation for far too long. If, on the other hand, you started to use Unicode strings as soon as possible in Python 2, your Python 3 "port" could be two additional lines:

        if sys.version_info.major == 2:
            str = unicode

Oh yeah, the future_builtins module does not exist anymore (for obvious reasons), so its import needs to be wrapped in a try-except clause:

        try:
            from future_builtins import *
        except ImportError:
            pass

So call it five additional lines. That it _literally_ all the porting I had to do to make two Python 2 programs _completely_ runnable in Python 3 _and_ Python 2, unaltered.

The problem is not Python 3. The problem is people using byte strings and Python 2's implicit conversions of them without actually understanding what a _string_ is.

</comment><comment><USER3> It has definitely been a painful process to port from python 2 to 3. We have one developer who has been pushing hard for this, and while it may not be a defensible business position we believe it's the right thing as members of the community.

There are some nontrivial improvements in Python 3 (async) that we want, but more than that we don't want python to split and languish. We think that by taking a step into python 3 (and porting our remaining dependencies) we can make a small dent.

<comment><USER4> It is sad. There is an expression in Russian, that in English sounds something like "hedgehogs were crying, but kept on chewing the cactus". Best of luck to your team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is sad. In my 25+ years of programming, python is the only language I've ever _liked_.</comment>


Schwern's perl5i makes Perl 5 awesomer until Perl 6 comes along. (via Perlbuzz) - <AUTHOR> http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl5i/lib/perl5ifaq.pod

<comment><USER2> I realize it still has its die-hard supporters, but are there really new developers joining the perl community these days? I'm not trying to start a flame war here; I would be genuinely interested to know if anybody is starting a new project in perl -- who hasn't been doing perl for, say, 10+ years already.

(And yes,I realize that's what this project is trying to fix)

<comment><USER3> Judging from IRC and perlmonks.org there are tons of newbies trying to do real work. I gather the growth of CPAN and core contributors indicate growing growth.

I am genuinely curious where you got your ideas about on perl usage?

Regardless of growth or decline in any of Perl, Python, and Ruby, my opinion is they're so equivalent it's barely worth discussing them separately. Pick the one that has the libraries and frameworks you need. It so happens that <http://search.cpan.org> is the easiest way to check up on libraries for any of the languages.

Perl6, if they ever pull off a fast and stable release, is another matter. It's likely to be a game changer. I actually quite dislike this perl5i thing and the declarex syntax changing modules in general because they needlessly fragment the language.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you mean by equivalent but would all 3 exist if they didn't have significant differences? Would they have gone off in search of the Holy Grail with Perl 6 if Perl didn't have a few nasty issues that needed to be cleaned up. I'm one of those guys who has used Perl for over 10 years. It was wilting and I'm glad to see some new life being breathed back into it.

<comment><USER5> > I'm not sure what you mean by equivalent ...

It means that for basic stuff they are pretty much the same. Variables & data structures (scalars, arrays, mappings), creating and calling functions, creating and instantiating classes, looping, if/then/else, talking to the network, talking to the OS, talking to the db, etc. This basic stuff is in all these languages; the only real differences are in the syntax (and that's not even very different).

For many programming tasks, you're just doing these basics over and over again. Any language will work, so you may as well pick one that's got it where it counts -- modules, since that will make the most difference in how much extra code you have to write. And Perl wins that competition with the CPAN.

> Would they have gone off in search of the Holy Grail with Perl 6 ...

Thing is, it's not a Holy Grail. It's just the next revision of Perl. Take a look at some example Perl 6 code online; they've cleaned things up, fixed some boo-boos, and upon seeing it I expect you'll matter-of-factly say, "oh, yeah, still looks like Perl :)".

<comment><USER4> Perl6 was started in the year 2000. It's a lot more than a rev from 5.08 to 5.12, for example. Can you elaborate on some of the more details? For example, what concepts from Ruby and Python are they borrowing in Perl6 that don't exist in Perl5? Wikipedia didn't elaborate.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl6#Goals>

Sure, at some high-level they're all the same, but the devil is in the details. Just saying they're all the same is specious.

<comment><USER5> Actually melling, thanks for calling me on that. Thinking more about it, I think Perl 6 actually has 2 sides: one is the "like Perl 5 but with a number of things improved/cleaned-up", and the other side (which I neglected to think about in my post above) is indeed some major and sophisticated changes (many of which I know little about since I most often use Perl in a simplistic way -- do this, open that file, process these log files, etc.).

If you have some specific questions, I suggest asking them at <http://perl6.org/community/irc> , which I've found to be very friendly and helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this CPAN module is a great idea, but is there any team of Perl programmers that would consent to actually using this? It seems that anyone who thinks this module is a good idea would already be using a different language entirely. I say this as someone who in the past year or two has had to work with a team of Perl coders, and most of them could care less about the awesomeness that this module has to offer. I couldn't even get them to agree on a uniform exception-handling strategy! do_blah or die "failz"; was good enough for them. :)

<comment><USER7> As a Perl coder: No, we're still using Perl. And Exceptions are pretty common these days, so I wouldn't blame the experience you had on the language, but rather on the people.</comment></comment>


A Brighter Future for Electric Cars and the Planet - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/opinion/a-brighter-future-for-electric-cars-and-the-planet.html <comment><USER2> I can't wait for electric cars to become more common and competitive with conventional cars. I believe we're going to look back car's emissions the same way we look back at the pre-sewage treatment days - when people used to dump their sewage out the window and into their drinking water!

That being said, we haven't reached the EOL for this first generation of electric cars, and figured out what happens next. Will replacement batteries cost a reasonable price? Or will manufacturers use this as an opportunity to try and get you to buy another car? Maybe you'll be able to replace the old battery with a new one from a 3rd party, or maybe you won't because its loaded with DRM.

Battery prices may go down for automakers, but perhaps consumers won't see a huge benefit. A replacement battery for my hybrid still runs a few thousand dollars and its only about 1 kilowatt-hour.

<comment><USER3> Batteries are almost 100% recyclable. Also, with the Volt at least, zero failures of the battery systems:

[http://insideevs.com/zero-first-generation-chevrolet-volt- ba...](http://insideevs.com/zero-first-generation-chevrolet-volt-battery- packs-replaced-due-general-capacity-degradation/)

<comment><USER4> This isn't true, in the sense that recovering lithium from batteries is more expensive than mining new. The main reason for that is that lithium mining is extremely energy efficient and hence cheap.

<comment><USER3> The lithium is a small percentage of the battery by weight.

<comment><USER4> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Obviously air pollution is the main thing to tackle here, but even _noise_ pollution is a nice benefit of electrics. When I test-drove the Tesla Model S I was excited for a quiet future.

ICE cars simply produce far too much noise. They've disrupted my local downtown area, making it undesirable as the 18-wheelers roar by. If not for the emissions damaging public health, I'm surprised to see municipalities tolerate this scourge of deafening noise.

And the death of artificially-loud pickup trucks will receive an ovation from myself.

<comment><USER6> I don't buy the noise argument. Above a certain speed, wind and tire noise far exceed ICE noise. The pickups I've seen are mostly due to the use of course off-road tires that buzz as they go down the road and the motorcycles won't give up their not-super-legal aftermarket exhausts until people collectively agree to stop running them over.

<comment><USER7> In a downtown area the speeds are likely not high, and the traffic is likely stop and go, with lots of opportunity for revving engines as drivers jam the accelerator down from a dead stop. My previous apartment had a busy highway on one side, and a busy street with a stop light right before an onramp to said highway. The furious acceleration of cars going from a stop to highway speeds as fast as they can was much worse than the monotonous general highway whooshing sounds.

<comment><USER4> I've heard this called "breakthrough noise", and whenever I'm walking around and hear an obnoxiously loud noise from a vehicle I exclaim, "My Tesla doesn't make that noise!" Fortunately my walking companions generally find that amusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You have to love the people in the comments section there. Few seem to understand that one of the major points of electric cars is decoupling the energy generation and expenditure. Sure, if your country generates all its electricity with coal then of course electric cars aren't going to do anything for you at first. The whole concept is that you reduce the number of sources of pollution so that you have less things that you have to replace in the future.

<comment><USER3> Even if 101% of your electricity is coal generated, you are head of the game with EVs.

My gen-1 Volt travels about 27 miles on the electricity/energy it takes to refine one gallon of gas. Basically, if you stopped refining gas, you could power almost all of the EVs on the road with the same energy.

<comment><USER9> Does this include the energy in the refined gas itself?

<comment><USER3> That is the energy it takes to create the gas (and not the energy to extract and move around).

Again, my EV goes the same distance as the average fuel economy for the same amount of energy.

ICE double dip.. plus more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Or we could build our cities to walk, bike, and ride transit.

<comment><USER11> Cities are already and will always be hybrid transportation hubs. There will be walkable areas, there will be car-required areas, and a wide range of in between mixes. These serve different markets and attract different citizens. One thing that will not work will be to force a one-type-fits all transportation strategy to all cities or all city areas.

<comment><USER10> I agree. America has generally forced a one-type-fits all transpo strategy - personal autos. This is causing lots of problems regardless of the fuel source of the car - oil, natural gas, or electricity from the grid or rooftop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One detail usually overlooked with having a fleet of electric cars is the added weight of the battery and the extra wear and tear this will create on our highways. There is a rule of thumb that says that highway damage goes up by the 4th power of the axle weight. So an electric car that is 33% heavier than the an ICE car, will cause (4/3)^4 = 3.16 times as much damage. So if we all go to electric cars and if batteries do not become lighter, then expect road to not last as long. Also, concrete production itself is a serious CO2 source.

</comment><comment><USER13> For those of us city dwellers with on-street parking, there doesn't seem to be much talk about getting public infrastructure to charge them. Public charging stations? I'm not sure that will help a lot.

It seems like a future for those with suburban homes. I think those in cities don't drive that much, so maybe those car bound people are a better place to start.

I guess I can get an eBike at some point.

<comment><USER4> There's always at least one person in every electric car thread saying "but it doesn't work for me!"

Many city dwellers who own cars don't park on the street, but it really varies by city. There are a few on-street chargers out there, maybe there will be more in the future if people advocate for them.

<comment><USER14> On street parking in a biggish city sounds like a nightmare to me anyways. It's really living on the edge of street cleaning, time limits, and so on...

<comment><USER15> There's also the constant threat of break-ins.

Forgot to put your sunglasses away? Have fun replacing a window!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the biggest drawbacks for electric cars is charging. I am not taking about super charging – Tesla has shown that you can go almost anywhere with an electric car.

I'm taking about home charging for people who rent apartments and park in the street. For those, charging is a real problem because I do not think it is practical for them to use quick charging all the time. Quick charging is great for road trips. They give you enough power to go for another few hours while you have a break (which you should take anyways after driving for a while).

Quick chargers are impractical for home charging for a couple of reasons:

1\. They are going to be crowded because people will spend 40min there on average (see SF where a lot of people already do that).

2\. It sucks to wait for the car to finish charging. Going to a gas pump is already annoying but charging a car for a extended amount of time is just inconvenient and impractical.

Electric cars should really be charged just like mobile phones. When you get home, you plug in the car. When you leave the car is full (or at the desired charging level). This makes electric car superior because you do not have to worry about "is my tank full enough for me to get to work and to the next gas station or am I gonna be late in the office".

But until we have that, electric cars are unfortunately infeasible for a lot of people who live in apartments.

What we need to do is provide charging and parking solutions for them. They need to be able to park for 17+ without getting into trouble while charging. One way to do that is by providing normal charger at people's work, so that they arrive, plugin and wait until they have finished work and go home.

Another interesting solution is to use the power of street lamps. A British startup is already working on that [1].

What we need IMO is to have both. Some people will charge in the streets and some will at work. But until we have that (which might take the longest because it is very expensive to install so many chargers), EVs are going to be impractical for basically anybody who does not have a garage (and incredible useful for those that do).

There are also a couple of other ways, though, im not sure how feasible they are in the short term future: increase the speed of quick charging (I don't think it is possible to charge a 70kwh battery in 5min without killing it in the long term)

Have the cars charge them autonomously at big charging parks at night. While this is my favorite we have yet to see when this really happens for non luxury cars (the hardware for autonomy could already increase the purchase price by many thousands of dollars and I don't know when all car manufacturers are ready – I sincerely hope Tesla will not be the only car maker to have feasible electric cars because seeing mostly Tesla would be kind of boring and kill competition sooner or later which is always bad for the consumers).

[1]: [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/london-street- lamps...](http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/london-street-lamps- electric-car-charging-points-ubitricity-tech-firm-hounslow-council- richmond-a7809126.html)

<comment><USER17> Someone already replied to this, in effect: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843081)

<comment><USER4> On the plus side at least Matt3o12_ pointed out solutions! Still, he/she appears to think that this is a huge issue because that's their personal situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Until you can go on a road trip in an electric car without a lot of thinking about where and when you'll fuel up they are not going to make headway as primary vehicles.

People buy cars in order to have a fast mode of transportation available with good uptime. The prospect of having a hr delay every several hundred miles in the middle of an overnight trip to see a dying relative or in the middle of a cross country vacation is a prospect that will cause many non-urban households to retain fossil fueled powered vehicles for longer than some would like.

The HN crowd will buy electric econoboxes and fancy Teslas while they run the SV rat race but when it comes time to raise kids in teh suburbs and really put on the miles the convenience of range and fuel time will cause many people to have at least one in the household fleet.

<comment><USER19> I can't wait to be a hipster ICE collector.

Electric vehicles just feel and sound like shit. Auto racing is dead, for example, if we move to all electric. No more rib rattling exhaust, the wonderful smell of 2 stroke exhaust burping out of a bike, and the general feeling of driving seven thousand contained explosions every minute.

Electric may be nice, but it's boring as hell.

<comment><USER4> There's already electric car racing, a couple of kinds, actually.

Lots of ICE cars with turbos already pipe fake engine noise into the car cabin, all you need is loudspeakers and a stereo.

<comment><USER19> Have you actually watched formula e? The race is so quiet and uneventful that they have a dj playing shitty edm music.

<comment><USER4> I am merely noting that it exists.

If I want to see an event with electronic music that might involve carnage, I watch SpaceX launches.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley startup unveils Internet-connected smart guns for cops - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/silicon-valley-startup-unveils-internet-connected-smart-guns-for-cops/ <comment><USER2> On their old, hopeless business model:

" _But gun rights advocates, like the National Rifle Association, say smart guns could limit Second Amendment rights._ "

As in, introduction of "smart guns" will limit or eliminate sales of normal guns in New Jersey, and it's been seriously proposed in California last year, and has in the past elsewhere.

Needless to say, the police are _always_ exempted from the laws.

Needless to say, gun owners (forget about the NRA, at most it's the people they inform) will boycott _anyone_ touching this technology. As we've seen in the latest iteration with a German company.

What also should not need saying is that the founders of this company are not in touch with the gun market. Not a good sign, but maybe they'll learn. But it doesn't help them to lie about "being _the_ leader in firearms safety technologies for law enforcement".

No, that would be the holster manufacturers that make ones that make it hard for an assailant to grab a gun, which is one of the greatest threats a uniformed police officer faces.

I skimmed some of the article's comments, and someone mentioned that in a hot area an officer friend of his frequently had to pull his service pistol as a threat. I suspect that like civilians, police threaten with their guns a _lot_ more than they fire them. Having to explain why each time you pulled your gun ... they're not going to like that.

Or let me put it this way: will putting our police in a high tech Panopticon solve the real problems with them? Will it do more than adjust them a little at the margin? _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ As in, who will be passing judgement on the data these guns will be producing? How often does the law enforcement-judicial complex really police itself?

</comment><comment><USER3> This should also provide defense lawyers with adequate evidence for motions to dismiss due to excessive force used.

Frankly, I'm as happy about this as I am about cameras on police officers. it should dramatically lower abuse of authority.

<comment><USER4> _This should also provide defense lawyers with adequate evidence for motions to dismiss due to excessive force used._

What does this mean?

<comment><USER3> Every time a gun is fired, paperwork must be filed. When cops want to hide that they fired shots, likely due to using excessive force in their duties, they don't do the paperwork.

This gun now makes an electronic record of every use. No paperwork to support the shot fired? Defense attorneys could subpoena those records as evidence of police misconduct.

<comment><USER4> Does that happen actually happen though? I imagine the punishment for not disclosing that you fired your weapon is probably worse than actually firing it.

<comment><USER3> I bet it would be, if could be proven to be more than negligence in paperwork. Sadly, that's harder to prove than one would expect. This device will lower the bar considerably, in that regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah yes, just what I want to trust my life to: potentially failing technology.

<comment><USER2> Naw, this is purely a reporting system. If if fails, if somehow, the officer doesn't keep the battery charged, if the data _somehow_ can't be read after a bad shoot, the primary function of the firearm will not be affected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the tommorrow's news: Government introduces the Sibyl system.</comment>


Python Module Usage Stats - cool-RR http://www.algorithm.co.il/blogs/programming/python/python-module-usage-stats/

<comment> cool-RR Good idea, I think it introduces less skew than counting PyPI downloads as many people currently do.</comment>


The Arachnids That Live on Your Face - <AUTHOR> http://news.ncsu.edu/2014/08/face-mites-2014/ <comment><USER2> I wish the article would have addressed how babies get these mites from their parents. Are they present in the womb? Or do they get transferred from all the hugs and kisses?

<comment><USER3> There's no way they are in the womb (they wouldn't be able to get inside the uterus, and the immune system would attack them quite quickly if they did).

They are almost certainly transfered via close skin contact (breastfeeding, etc).

<comment><USER4> "There's no way they are in the womb (they wouldn't be able to get inside the uterus, and the immune system would attack them quite quickly if they did)." That is simply untrue [1,2,3,4, 5]. It has been recently discovered that many fetuses acquire their gut bacteria before parturition, it is logical to assume that the same can happened with these mites.

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3747743](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3747743) [2] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22647043](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22647043) [3] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18281199](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18281199) [4] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19018955](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19018955) [5] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18166321](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18166321)

<comment><USER5> > it is logical to assume that the same can happened with these mites

Bacteria are about 1/100 the size (1/1,000,000 the volume) of these mites. The mites can be seen by the naked eye (barely).

How would the mite even get in? Much less breathe. Bacteria can get in the same way sperm do, mites are not able to swim through the fluid.

<comment><USER4> Frankly my point was more about the immune system.

<comment><USER5> I didn't downmod you, I thought the point about bacteria was good.

But you went rather too far in assuming what's true for bacteria is true for mites.

Plus the immune system actively works with bacteria to cultivate specific species. So you should not extrapolate to all bacteria either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah, it's always better not to look too close. Just wait til you find out what lives in your mouth!

Reminds me of this piece detailing the writer's own "microbiome":

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/06/27/discoverin...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/06/27/discovering- my-microbiome-you-my-friend-are-a-wonderland/)

<comment><USER7> On the contrary, it's better to look close. Death to the public squeamishness about human biology, I say! Know and understand how your body travels through life, don't fear it and put it out of your mind :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I woke up with swollen eyelids one morning a few years back and was diagnosed with blepharitis later that day. I now use Sterilid 1-2 times a day since it contains tea tree oil which supposedly is effective in treatment against Demodex. I occasionally still get flareups/complications but they've definitely seemed rarer since using the product:

[http://www.theratears.com/sterilid.php](http://www.theratears.com/sterilid.php)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll be rubbing my face for the next three days with imaginary itches from bugs that live on my face.

<comment><USER10> You could probably kill them with rubbing alcohol on your skin.

<comment><USER11> I really hope this article doesn't make anyone actually try to get rid of these arachnids although I'm sure "hygiene" companies will be all over this in a few years.

> _Spiders are living on your FACE!_ Please buy our stuff.

<comment><USER12> Already happening in Easter Europe and China. Go to the doctor and they show you under the microscope -- look you got spiders on your face. Buy this cream we made in the basement over at my cousins' it will help you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Url changed from [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2014/08/27/3-things-d...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2014/08/27/3-things- didnt-know-mites-live-face/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Dan Fergus ... discovered that mite DNA could be sequenced from face > scrapings regardless of whether a mite could be found under the microscope

Reminds me of the use of DNA sequencing to detect giant salamanders using DNA collected from stream water. [0]

There's something so incredible wondrous to me about this. Tiny, tiny signals revealing secret hidden life.

[0] [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022746)

</comment><comment><USER15> Remember, each of us is an ecosystem in which purely "human" cells are _vastly_ outnumbered. We should get comfortable with that idea.

</comment><comment><USER16> "There ain't no bugs on me. There ain't no bugs on me. There may be bugs on some of you mugs but there ain't no bugs on me."

This old nursery rhythm can join Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the other lies we tell our children.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if I'm the only one who gets annoyed by how many suggestions of evolutionary theory there are in the article.

 _we acquired our mites from our ape ancestors..._

 _as early humans walked out of Africa..._

I believe in evolution...but I believe in misinterpretation a lot more.

<comment><USER18> What is it you believe was misinterpreted? That mites were passed over rather than staying through the process of evolution?</comment></comment>


Nintendo Plunges After Saying Pokemon Go's Impact Is Limited - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-25/nintendo-set-to-plunge-after-saying-pokemon-go-s-impact-limited <comment><USER2> So everyone understands that the short term downloads/revenue would NOT justify the crazy increase in market cap of Nintendo so far.

However, what distressed investor is not the fact that Nintendo didn't adjust quarterly earnings, but the conservative management team refused to signal that they acknowledge the potential of their IP + mobile + new technology such as AR and change their future strategy to be beyond in-house consoles + first party games.

It almost seems to me that their management is embarrassed by the meteoric success of Pokemon Go, considering that they have traditionally been very reluctant of creating contents for smartphones. Now despite their pride, the biggest value jump in their company's history was not lead by any in-house product, but literally a 3rd party American startup writing an app on a platform they traditionally ignored.

I wouldn't be surprised if they are trying to downplay the impact of Pokemon Go just to save face.

Investors, on the other hand, just want to see them acknowledge this potential gold mine and commit a strategy in the future.

<comment><USER3> Yup what a stupid, stupid, company. If only they had the wisdom of Silicon Valley Startups. Then they would be a real company and be able to create innovative and disruptive products that changed the world! \s

<comment><USER2> You used such strong sarcastic tone as if that statement is so ridiculous, but the truth has been that the Japanese tech industry is in the process of being MURDURED by everyone, from the Americans to the Koreans and to the Chinese.

Sure Nintendo has been able to protect their moat relatively well (after losing their home console castle), but just like the overall Japanese economy, their traditional culture is really limiting how they can compete in today's cutting edge tech markets.

<comment><USER4> I can't stop wondering if the typo in the all-caps word is intentional. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As expected. Pokemon Go proves that Nintendo has tremendous potential to monetize its IP on mobile in the coming years, but investors expected short term bang for the buck.

I can guarantee you Nintendo, as a tightly controlled company, could care less about this volatility.

<comment><USER6> > _I can guarantee you Nintendo, as a tightly controlled company, could care > less about this volatility._

couldn't* care less?

<comment><USER7> Put it on the list with "lowest common denominator" and "begs the question". That battle is lost.

<comment><USER8> Can you show an example of "lowest common denominator" being misused? I've never noticed it so fear I may be guilty of misusing it.

<comment><USER9> The correct version is greatest common denominator. The lowest common denominator is usually 1.

<comment><USER10> Maybe you're thinking of divisor instead of denominator?

<comment><USER11> They're pretty much the same thing, some fractions are expressed as numerator/denominator

<comment><USER10> Divisor in the sense of greatest common divisor is not the same as a denominator. More to the point, we may indeed care about greatest common divisors, but we also care about least common denominators (i.e. least common multiples)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perfect example of how irrational the stock market can be. Billions of dollars moved around based on nothing but hype.

<comment><USER12> It's a pretty sensical and predictable movement though; Nintendo's first real foray into smartphone games becomes the most successful launch ever, leading the stock market to rationally believe that Nintendo will begin to really push their IP into this space and make lots of money. The irrational party is Nintendo, since they now give every indication that the success of Pokemon Go will have no effect on their strategy; the stock market has now responded and said 'we don't think Nintendo will make as much money in future as we'd previously predicted'.

<comment><USER13> In fact, you're making the same mistake investors did: Believing Nintendo made a foray into smartphone games. Nintendo did not make Pokémon Go, nor is it receiving much profit from it. Niantic, Google, and Apple are all getting the lion's share of the profit, Pokémon Company gets a bit of it too, but then Nintendo only gets a fraction of that.

<comment><USER12> I may be incorrect, but Pokemon Go was released with Nintendo's approval; meaning they've dipped a toe into smartphone games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This diagram depicts the real ownership relations for Pokemon Go: [http://blogs- images.forbes.com/insertcoin/files/2016/07/poke...](http://blogs- images.forbes.com/insertcoin/files/2016/07/pokemon-go-owns.jpg)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2016/07/25/nintendo-d...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2016/07/25/nintendo- does-not-deserve-most-of-the-credit-for-pokemon-gos-success/#330cfce933e9)

</comment><comment><USER15> So is Nintendo saying that they had already calculated the success & revenue from Pokemon Go and its side effects, or are they saying that their original projections are falling short and Pokemon Go saved them?

<comment><USER16> >> It also said sales of Pokemon Go Plus, a Nintendo-produced accessory for the game, have already been factored into its existing profit forecast.

It's funny how the plunge, a singular event, is now news, rather than the trend over time. sure enough, last week it was the surge, another singular event... short term view presented in market news never stops amusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nintendo did not create Pokémon Go, Ninantic did. The game's success is not an indication that Nintendo finally gets mobile.

This is the key point in the article which should be stressed much more.</comment>