Ask HN: How do you do home surveillance? - <AUTHOR> In this age of IoT where devices are being taken over by strangers and (service) companies are storing clear-text passwords, how do you manage your home security? I'm talking less about motion sensors and door/window open/close sensors, and more about video surveillance. I want to add a couple of IP cameras but I'm completely petrified by the thought of someone getting access to a live feed from my house, due to the negligence of the service provider.
I've looked around and there are plenty of options for IP/Wi-Fi cameras with a tone of cool features, which can be accessed through a smartphone app, which, of course, is handled by the manufacturer (feed goes through its servers).
What I'd like is an IP camera that provides an API to which I can connect from my home server and let me see the feed only trough it. Motion sensing is also a cool, and useful feature, as it would allow me to send notifications.
How would you solve this or better yet, did you have this issue and already solved it? <comment><USER3> I started by using a NVR off AliExpress. It worked well until I added a camera from a different vendor, same brand though and it refused to be reliable and had frequent disconnections.

Moved onto ZoneMinder and after hours of setup I felt the UI wasn't good enough for a non-tech person. I want others in my family access the feeds with ease, ZoneMinder does not cut it.

While I was experimenting with cameras, I was also getting into HomeAssistant which had motionEye as a supported service. It was easy to add cameras and almost any camera could be hacked to have RTSP support and motionEye.

Motion-detection could be enabled on the Raspberry Pi's motionEye, offloading compute off the cameras. This was important for me as many of my cheap Chinese cameras lag/hang/shutdown on load.

The Raspberry Pi also has Pi-Hole installed which I configured to block all IPs and domains being used by the IP cameras thereby limiting its access to local network only.

As I kept adding cameras (10+), performance on Raspberry Pi started getting affected, so I added another Raspberry Pi and installed motionEye on it. Setup MQTT on motionEye to send notifications to HomeAssistant on motion/human detection. Added multiple HDDs (4) so cameras can write with less conflicts.

I still haven't got some cameras (Xiaomi) into this setup as I don't want to hack them yet. (The open firmware(s) lack features). But they do backup recordings to the same Raspberry Pi NFS and I plan to find something which can show motionEye and Xiaomi videos in one interface.

<comment><USER4> > The Raspberry Pi also has Pi-Hole installed which I configured to block all > IPs and domains being used by the IP cameras thereby limiting its access to > local network only.

You might have to be careful here. My understanding is that PiHole is just a domain lookup blocker so it won't block a device which phones home with a straight IP address.

Happy to be corrected.

<comment><USER3> You are correct. Sorry, I forgot to mention that I also have OpenVPN setup on the Raspberry Pi and the IPs are blocked using firewall rules.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use a homegrown solution consisting of Raspberry Pi Zero W's with cameras, using the motion ([https://motion-project.github.io/](https://motion- project.github.io/)) daemon, saving their captured video to a NFSv4 share on a server.

The shares on the server are grouped so that each individual camera has a subdirectory of a parent directory, which is in turn shared by Syncthing to another local mirror and a remote mirror.

A python script runs on the server, using Pyinotify to detect new files, and using TensorFlow to do basic object detection, and adds bounding boxes to videos where it detects humans.

Finally a notification is sent through Pushover via MQTT (Mosquitto) when a person is detected, along with an image and a camera name and timestamp. It does presence detection by pinging our phones, so notifications are only sent if nobody is home.

If i should do it all again i would probably just buy a couple of Unifi cameras and a Cloudkey Gen 2 Plus and be done with it :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd recommend installing your own router. Mine is from Ubiquiti and they start at $50 ish. Dedicate a network/port/vlan to untrusted devices, don't allow any incoming or outgoing to that network except for anything you explicitly want and set up.

Then buy whatever IP camera you like. I bought 4 of the Reolink cameras for $50 ish each. Rated for outdoor use, power over ethernet, motion detection (can edit the sensitive area if you like), can be streamed to any RTSP client (like say most security software), etc. Generally plays well with others and doesn't depend on a cloud for anything.

So cameras -> RTSP -> whatever software you want.

<comment><USER7> What router is that? One of the Edge range I presume?

<comment><USER6> Ubiquiti ER-X-US 5-Port is $52 or so at newegg. I have the 6P, but that's more expensive. Quite happy with it though. They make it easy to download the text config, and of course you can keep that in git.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At my parents house I purchased a relatively cheap desktop with server hardware (PowerEdge T20). We planned viewing angles and doors/windows that he wanted monitored. We ran Ethernet cables and got a POE switch.

I tested out most of the non-commercial NVR software and landed on Blue Iris (the most recommended on ipcamtalk.com). Zoneminder and others were not as stable nor feature complete. My dad has the Blue Iris app on his phone so he can monitor remotely.

Blue Iris has motion detection and other common features.

Hikvision and Amcrest are often recommended for IP cameras.

ipcamtalk.com is an great resource for troubleshooting.

It's been a rock solid setup for 3+ years.

Edit: Price list \- Blue Iris 5 (~$50) + Blue Iris App (~$10) \- 4 Hikvision IP Cams off eBay ($280) \- T20 Desktop Server ($330) \- Desktop Server Upgrades (~$160) \- Ethernet Cables ($50)

</comment><comment><USER9> When I first brought my puppy home I set up a Raspberry Pi with a Camera module to spy on him during the day. I had it stream to a private YouTube channel, but there's no reason it couldn't stream to anywhere you like.

You could also use the IR camera and a good enough IR lamp to give you coverage at night as well. Use a PIR if you want motion sensing added on.

[https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/infrared- bird-b...](https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/infrared-bird-box)

<comment><USER10> Was the puppy doing something interesting while alone?

<comment><USER11> Puppies left alone destroy homes, worlds and galaxies, so he surely done something interesting. ;)

<comment><USER12> Must have been fun sitting at work watching all your wallpaper getting ripped off.

<comment><USER13> Reminds me of the time we were racing home from the store, watching our movie collection being eaten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why would you want home surveillance in the first place? Not having any cameras at all is probably safer in the first place.

<comment><USER15> I know lots of people with home security or surveillance systems. I'm from a pretty conservative southern (US) subculture, so I also know a lot of people with guns that they own for home defense. And a lot of people who are really worried about break-ins and what not.

I know of zero stories in which these people's home security or guns prevented or helped resolve a break-in or other crime. In fact, unless I'm forgetting something, I don't know that I really know anybody that's had their house robbed at all (this is a privilege, I know)...

I do know other stories, though... Like somebody going downstairs in the middle of the night, gun-drawn because a relative got home from a trip a day early without telling anybody... Or somebody rushing home from work (armed again) because they got alerts from their home security system and couldn't access their cameras... only to find a Sheriff's deputy already in the house and... absolutely nothing amiss other than their kid leaving a door open.

And we haven't even started talking about privacy concerns.

Personally, I lock my doors at night and when I leave the house. If somebody wants to smash the glass in the french doors and walk right in, well, they're gonna be pretty disappointed in what I've got in there. I'm OK with that setup.

I know OP's question is about making the tech work in a safe way, but I can't help but wonder if all of the surveillance/security stuff is really necessary, unless you live in a high-crime area...

<comment><USER16> Agree and to add one thing it seems to me like 90% of "smart" home systems whether surveillance or otherwise are always in a half-broken state. "Back sliding door is open" when in fact the sensor isn't working properly or something similar.

Great comparison to home gun ownership, it feels like a lot of money, technology, and energy put into protecting yourself from an extremely unlikely threat.

<comment><USER6> I don't really agree. I've had my car broken into twice, none since I pointed two cameras with bright red rings of LEDs at my car.

I find it quite useful to know when a package is left at my door.

My control system for lights can make the house look lived in, but is also really handy for controlling lights where they are hard to reach.

We have no useful front facing windows, it's quite nice to know when friends/family drive up for a kid pick up, visit, whatever without having to wait for them to knock.

It's nice to know when things happen, like a tree falling and landing on your house. Also handy if you have a surprise and your kid/wife/house sitter/plumber needs inside your house and your not there.

I just wanted to point out that home automation and surveillance have quite a bit of overlap and can be useful for more than detecting unwanted intruders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> MotionEye and docker.

I started off with a couple of Chinese WiFi cameras. I needed to hack a perl script to get at its stream; [https://gist.github.com/opless/d1effc2eefdf2dfe3b1a6418979bc...](https://gist.github.com/opless/d1effc2eefdf2dfe3b1a6418979bc8ba)

Now I use eBay'd Axis POE cameras dumping continuous video to a samba share, and motion eye to capture a frame every second and video when motion triggered.

All very overkill but worthwhile as it's caught vandals, bike thieves and trespassing landlords.

A pfsense router with haproxy sorts out the SSL website to the docker containers part.

<comment><USER17> The bad bits of my journey...

Raspberry PIs, other SBCs and usb webcams/noIR are an exercise in futility, as the inbuilt camera interface and v4l lags horribly at reasonable resolutions.

USB webcams can behave oddly if you stream constantly and are close to using the bandwidth of USB2

Zoneminder is memory hungry and will suck CPU like no tomorrow. But has a decent user interface, if you keep lots of data.

MotionEye can be configured to be unable to play back its captures which is a bug imho.

<comment><USER18> I have no probs with a rpi and usb cam. I use motion to only store movement. And point the camera to the entry points to avoid privacy concerns.

Cheap and chearful. Bash scripts over ssh to turn it on or off.

<comment><USER17> If you only have one camera you could be okay, running two 720 mjpeg streams over usb2 can be quite problematic ;)

Do you know what codec and resolution is in use? What about the lag? What model of camera?

I'm curious because my CCTV journey has been over a few years, and there has obviously been kernel and distro improvements.

I did use the MotionEyeOS distro with an internal camera last summer briefly (a fortnight), but it didn't fit my use case very well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No cameras indoors.

When I did have them (for monitoring a puppy) I put a camera on a physical switch so power could be completely cut when I was at home. For awhile I had this on a WiFi enabled switch, though I used a different switch brand than the camera to add layers that would need to be compromised.

<comment><USER20> I feel like nfid would be a good use case for this. Scan your NFID sticker when you arrive home which triggers a workflow to disable indoor cameras, and the reverse when you scan to leave.

<comment><USER21> Presence detectors work well for this.

<comment><USER6> Know of any good ones? I as all set to buy the nest protect. But turns out they are stupid and require cloud connectivity for any interoperation all all. No public API, no SDK, and basically useless.

Sad, the nest protect has a microphone, multiple networks, speaker, light, presence detection, alarm, smoke detector, etc.

I'd love to get the same hardware with a sane stack that will interoperate with my home not just today, but in 10 years as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just recently I build a surveillance cam for my baby girl - I documented the approach in a blog post here: [https://77zzcx7.de/blog/posts/babyphone/](https://77zzcx7.de/blog/posts/babyphone/)

It does not rely on any external cloud service or the like, but is based on a Raspberry PI and a IR cam, completely self-hosted. The stream is only available in the local network, but could be accessed from anywhere with a properly set up VPN (e.g. Wireguard).

It does not tick all your requirements but maybe you can use it as a foundation for building your own solution.

Also have a look at ZoneMinder: [https://www.zoneminder.com/](https://www.zoneminder.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure what the point would be of cameras inside my house, or of being able to watch any part of my property remotely. If I'm home, I'm home. If I'm not, I'm not, and there's little I can do about anything.

We had some packages stolen, so I did put up a porch cam. It consists of:

        - An old laptop propped up vertically behind the front door
        - A USB web cam clipped to the door, looking out and down
        - sudo apt-get install mocam, and a little fiddling with config files

I get about 7 days of motion-triggered videos, which I can rsync over to my main laptop, but only if I'm on the home network. No clouds involved.

<comment><USER24> I have a little trouble understanding the mentality of surveilling the porch. If someone steals your package and you get it on tape, then what? The police aren't going to do anything. Whoever sent you the package will refund you.

It seems like both an unenforceable crime, and a victimless crime.

<comment><USER25> > If someone steals your package and you get it on tape, then what?

"Yes police, hear's a package of my neighbor Gary stealing my package. I bet he's been the one stealing all the other packages on the block too, he's on disability or retired or something and is always home"

"Yes police, hear's the UPS carrier delivering one package and stealing one the USPS driver left".

"Yes police, here's video you can keep. In the event you catch this individual stealing another package from someone you have evidence of another instance".

>and a victimless crime.

If the shipper replaces it then the company is the victim and their shareholders. If the shipper doesn't replace it (perhaps it was a birthday gift from Aunt Milly in Topeka and she's on a fixed income and can't afford to make you another sweater right now) then the recipient is the victim.

Never mind the fact that it is a felony under federal law.

<comment><USER26> The neighborhood listserv often enough has pictures of people stealing from porches or cars. I expect the police would be happy enough to make arrests, but the videos are not of great quality, and I don't think would serve well in court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As for home surveillance, I have the following 2 setups: Linux box with zoneminder, which offers motion detect, history, alerts via email, FTP upload, USB and network cameras. And the cameras which aren't supported, they have a FTP client with motion detection, to that linux box, and the uploaded videos from the cameras, I convert them from avi to mp4 and use rclone to copy the resulting videos on my nextcloud server, so that, I can access videos from both zoneminder and FTP on my phone, as well, having a backup elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER28> I used to use ZoneMinder, but found that it needed a lot of babysitting. Cameras which disconnected, usually due to wifi interference, sometimes wouldn't start working again when they came back on the network. The version I was on also struggled with larger image sizes, though that's most likely due to a lack of memory.

I've since switched to a dedicated machine running Blue Iris. It works a lot better for me than ZoneMinder did.

Network-wise, cameras get segregated onto their own VLAN and they aren't allowed to initiate connections to anywhere. The Blue Iris machine is the only machine allowed to initiate connections into the camera VLAN.

I use Node-RED and PushOver to deliver motion detection notifications from the outdoor cameras. They get run through AWS Rekognition first to filter out things I'm not interested in (e.g., don't tell me about neighbourhood cats at the door, but do tell me about humans at the door).

Remote access is via a VPN. Connect on demand makes remote access as seamless as local access.

Instead of trying to get a camera with the appropriate API and features, I recommend using "dumb" cameras and having all of the smarts on the NVR side. The big advantage of this is that you can upgrade the smarts of the system without replacing the cameras. Central management of alerts, recordings, etc is also very worthwhile.

<comment><USER20> Wow this sounds truly impressive, the image recognition takes it over the edge.

What do you do for power sources to your cameras? I imagine with a setup like that you're not just using an AC cable to the nearest outlet plus some of those are outdoors.

You got some in wall wiring going direct to the cameras? How much time/cost investment would you say it would take for someone to replicate this setup?

<comment><USER28> Believe it or not, it's not nearly as impressive as it sounds.

Most of my cameras are WiFi and the wiring is not run in the walls. My front door camera, for example, is actually an indoor WiFi camera looking out a window with its power cord running through a nearby closet to an outlet near that closet. My living room camera is mounted on a piece of wood that's clamped to a bookcase, its power cord runs behind the bookcase to an outlet nearby. The nice thing about having WiFi cameras is that you can move them around really easily. If I'm worried that one of the cats isn't eating, I can just put a camera looking at the food dish so that I can see what's going on.

My driveway camera is unique in my setup though. It's my only wired camera and it's powered via PoE, so all I need is an ethernet cable. I used an existing hole in the house, where the cable and telephone comes in, and ran the ethernet through that to the outside. From there it goes into some conduit for protection, then gets stuffed behind a piece of siding and run to where the camera is mounted. The mounting is similar to this[0] YouTube video.

It's really hard to say what it would cost to replicate it. My cameras have been acquired piecemeal over the span of 10-ish years. My Blue Iris server is a refurbished Windows 10 Pro (Pro is required so that I can manage it via RDP) business-class desktop machine that cost about $300CAD, Blue Iris itself I think cost around $70CAD. The networking gear is UniFi, but really the only requirements are that the switches and APs are VLAN-capable and that there is some routing/firewall sitting between the VLANs.

Beyond hardware, Blue Iris, and AWS, the software involved all open source. The biggest cost is really time, and it's really hard to put a number on it.

Setting up Blue Iris, tuning the motion detection, and building the Node-RED flows that coordinate it all took quite a bit of time to get working to my satisfaction. Tweaking the motion detection to avoid triggering on shadows from trees in particular is something I spent a lot of time on. It wouldn't surprise me if I spent a total of 20+ hours just trying to cut down on the useless alerts before I gave up and started using AWS Rekognition to filter the alerts. Cost-wise, I estimate that I'll pay about $5/mo for Rekognition once I finish up my free 12-months.

The VPN duties are handled by StrongSwan, I built configuration profiles for MacOS and iOS (using Apple Configurator 2 plus hand-tweaking the resulting .mobileconfig file) to do the connect-on-demand magic. The whole thing is backed by a PKI (internal CA, etc), complete with machine and user certificates for authentication. This whole setup is probably 10-20 hours worth of time.

Typing this all out, it sounds fairly insane, but the knowledge I gained during this process is invaluable. It also took place over a fairly large timeframe, so it doesn't feel like I've invested a lot of time.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjWkB0UZM1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjWkB0UZM1M)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I use Zoneminder. That has support for a lot of different cameras and then you only have to connect to the one frontend regardless of the cameras themselves. It takes a fair bit of tweaking but it has been around for a very long time. This:

[https://wiki.zoneminder.com/index.php/Understanding_ZoneMind...](https://wiki.zoneminder.com/index.php/Understanding_ZoneMinder's_Zoning_system_for_Dummies)?

gives some handy hints on zoning.

</comment><comment><USER30> I evaluated ZoneMinder, Shinobi and Xeoma, but in the end, I went with Digital Watchdog Spectrum IPVMS[0] running in a Docker container. Since I already have a Linux server doing other stuff (running Home Assistant, web server, etc.), I wanted a VMS that would run natively under Linux. DWS is a real, commercial- quality VMS solution (it can scale to hundreds of cameras, multiple/redundant servers, have users with different roles, etc...) so it's not free; you pay a one-time license per-camera and get lifetime updates. It has _excellent_ , high-quality (read: usable by non-techie people) apps for macOS, Windows _and_ Linux, as well as easy-to-use mobile apps[1]. Best of all, nothing is sent to the cloud! But I (and more importantly, other family members) can just open the app on their phone/Mac and easily look at live camera views, past events where "motion" was detected, etc. It also has an extensive REST API, and is not restricted to working with just a single brand of camera like a lot of NVR solutions. (Note that DW Spectrum is marketed outside the US as Nx Witness VMS by Network Optix.[2])

[0] [https://digital-watchdog.com/spectrum-landingpage/](https://digital- watchdog.com/spectrum-landingpage/)

[1] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dw-mobile- plus/id1454719539](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dw-mobile-plus/id1454719539)

[2] [https://www.networkoptix.com/nx- witness/](https://www.networkoptix.com/nx-witness/)

</comment><comment><USER31> I changed my view a bit and basically turn it off when I'm not away. (I work at home, but if you don't you could always schedule it to turn on/off every day) When I do go for longer holidays, I accept that the service can be hacked and someone could get access to the feed (although I think it's not very likely). There's just not much risk in it for me. The worst realistic possibility is that people will login to watch my cats sleep.

</comment><comment><USER32> When we got a new puppy, I wasn't bothered about recording and I didn't want my video sitting on some dodgy 3rd party cloud, so I dug out some old half- broken iPhones, plugged them into permanent power and run [https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/icam-webcam-video- streaming/id...](https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/icam-webcam-video- streaming/id296273730) on them.

Worked very well.

</comment><comment><USER33> An aside - I am lucky enough to live somewhere where no security is needed. I don't even have lockable doors or windows. I only mention this because it hasn't struck me for a long time how different life felt when I lived in a city (there've been a few - London, Glasgow, Sydney, Brisbane). Locking a door would seem really odd to me here.

I did though once set up a timelapse cam to try & trace where a bush rat was getting in the house.

<comment><USER34> I am in the same situation. I felt a massive surge of anxiety just reading all of the suggestions here. There are locks on some of the doors from the 1940s, but to the best of my knowledge they have never been used and we do not have any keys.

<comment><USER35> You are missing the point of surveillance, it's not always about bad things, and even if 99% of the time nothing happen where you live you my want to capture the some of the 1% moments. It's also useful if you want to know who came when you are not home or when you have delivery.

<comment><USER36> I think I'm better off _not_ knowing who comes when I'm away.

If they have any business with me, they know my phone number or email address, or they can write a letter.

Otherwise, I'd rather not worry about the mysterious strangers. 99.99999% of them will be delivering pizza leaflets anyway.

<comment><USER37> No hostility but this is such a myopic, complacent mentality. In various places I've lived there have been burglars walking around casing the home, neighbors' houses getting broken into, and even a shooting right outside my stoop. I'm two or three degrees of acquaintance away from multiple people who've been murdered in home invasions. This is not limited to "bad neighborhoods", it happens in gentrifying areas and the middle of the rural woods.

Putting your head in the sand about it is just naïve optimism that I can't relate to. The odds are greater than you realize and the stakes are your life, it just makes no sense not to take a few precautionary measures for home defense. You don't have to make a hobby of it or go full prepper, but basic gun ownership and entry hardening don't require that much effort or expense and yield a huge ROI on protection from very realistic threats.

<comment><USER33> I'm assuming you're referring to the US, in which case it's worth bearing in mind that your nation's violence rates are often well outside the norm amongst developed nations. I can assure you the only relationship I (or friends & family) have ever had with murder is via TV. I did have a friend who had been raped during a home invasion, but that was during a visit to the US.

If I had to install special security equipment and arm myself with a machine for making holes in other people to 'feel safe', I'd rather move somewhere with a more peaceful culture if I had the option.

<comment><USER37> Yes, we have extremely violent subcultures that are not present in Europe. But I don't want to uproot my life and abandon my friends, family and country. I just want the option of defending myself.

<comment><USER33> I don't believe "violent subcultures" is quite the right way to put it. Violence is a deep part of US history, which its mainstream culture vaunts & clings to. In some ways, I believe US culture has a kind of love affair with violence, and can't quite bear the thought of just letting it go. Peaceability is always and everywhere hard to achieve to various degrees of course, but in the US there is a strand, broader than in most of modernity, which doesn't find it desirable at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I started with a combination of Raspberry Pi + Pi camera running motion - <USER2> then moved towards Ubiquiti with their PoE cameras and their NVR software.

This was when their NVR software came as a Debian package, and was well supported. It meant I could run up syncthing against the local instance to (near) instantaneously share new videos across from my remote network, on a satellite connection, back to my home network.

Ubiquiti now appear to have abandoned support of the run-your-own NVR approach, and instead are pushing dedicated devices, which remove a lot of the flexibility to use them as you see fit. Their motion detection is also done within the NVR, not the camera module itself, so you need an NVR close to the camera(s).

I mention this as the price in Australia for the entry-level Unifi camera devices is about the same as a raspberry pi + camera + microSD card. Power consumption will be higher with the latter, but the tradeoff is that it's a proper GNU/Linux host, not just a blackbox appliance.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't. I don't install surveillance in my apartment. Before going for it, consider carefully whether you really need it.

<comment><USER40> I don't really understand why people would want surveillance inside an apartment, but it's nice to have around your house. Even if it's just for the postman.

<comment><USER41> Why would you need or want to surveil your postman? Do they not deserve the dignity of doing their job without pervasive surveillance scrutiny?

<comment><USER40> Well, just to see when post or a package is delivered, and get a notification. It's not to surveil the actual person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Synology NAS with surveillance station. You can flash the firmware on the $25 Wyze cams and connect them via RTSP. Only catch is that SS allows 2 cams for free and then a $50 license per cam after. We only plan to have 2 and already had the NAS so all in all an easy enough project.

The Wyze cams are nice as they have audio, detection zones, etc.

</comment><comment> jon-wood I "solved" this by working for the company that provides the cameras and platform, which means I know exactly who has access to my data, and where it's going. It's possibly not the most viable option, but it does give me about as much confidence in the solution as I'm ever going to get.

</comment><comment><USER43> There are currently quite a few IP cameras in the market that broadcast directly to a web interface where you can password protect.

The brand I got was VStar ([https://www.vstarcam.com.sg](https://www.vstarcam.com.sg)), it allows broadcast, control as well as record to a MicroSD card simultaneously.

As long as you secure your own network and monitors the logs to make sure no one that is not supposed to is connecting to your network, it should be fine.

It also has access log to tell you who accessed using what credentials. I managed to write a script that automatically pulls the logs every second and if there's an unrecognized IP, it will send me a slack notification.

<comment><USER44> Searching for vstar security doesn't inspire much confidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Get a top to bottom UniFi setup from Ubiquiti. The cameras have everything you need for motion detection and night vision. You can use your own NVR or a cloud key gen2.

Most Cameras support RTSP which will allow you to monitor their streams from 3rd party software.

<comment><USER46> Ubiquiti products aren't reliable. I live next to the ocean and the cameras last about a year. I had a POE switch in a conditioned space and it only lasted 2 years.

<comment><USER45> I've had Cameras outside for a couple years and they've done just fine. My Outdoor Flex PoE switch has been working great as well. Ocean spray will eat a lot of stuff. I'm curious what you think is reliable for a salt environment.

My father in law has cheap Chinese cameras from Amazon that didn't last 6 months. He also pays a monthly subscription for his Nest Cameras.

I'll be installing a G3 Flex and an outdoor Mesh AP on the patio of a condo by the beach. We'll see how long it lasts. Inside the USG and a Switch have been running fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Orchid VMS Core [0] on Ordoid HC1 [1], 2 PoE cameras - turn off all the camera-based doo-dads

I use NAT to expose my web interface, Orchid marks motion on the timeline like most good video servers, and Orchid uses ONVIF / RTSP so it can use any standard IP camera

[0] [https://www.ipconfigure.com/products/orchid](https://www.ipconfigure.com/products/orchid) \- free on Arm

[1] [https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc1-home-cloud- one/](https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc1-home-cloud-one/) \- 8 core A15 / A7, 2G ram + SATA, GBE

</comment><comment><USER48> Tried out Shinobi, Motion Eye, Zoneminder, and Blue Iris. Ended up using Zoneminder due to easy mobile usage (not Shinobi, or MotionEye on iOS) and being docker friendly (not Blue Iris).

Hardware: raspberry pi zero running gstreamer rtsp streams. Didn't want to deal with all the terrible cameras phoning some random server.

Mobile App: zmNinja. $5.00. Worth it in my opinion. Motion notifications, event montage review, live streams, everything I need. HomeAssistant assists in enabling motion detection recording when our phones are not detected at home.

</comment><comment><USER49> IP cam behind a firewall where your (private) VPN is whitelisted should work.

[https://zoneminder.com/](https://zoneminder.com/) looks good too.

</comment><comment><USER50> I use the Ubiquiti USG and Cloud key with their outdoor cameras. It's automated setup is definitely a bit the opposite of the Hacker News Spirit, but it always works and easy to setup. Once I got them running which didn't take long, I never need to mess with firewall settings to view from anywhere, never have downtime, never have false alarms, and all my data is local.

I also have some Schlage locks and a few sensors on areas like my garage doors in case they are forcibly opened.

</comment><comment><USER51> I use a raspberry pi 3 and camera with motion. Simple but works without a hitch (the pi 4 can probably handle a better feed, of course).

</comment><comment><USER52> I have a QNAP NAS device with a bunch of storage. PPoE gigabit switch. A few ReoLink hardwired cameras pointed at all the entrances to my house. My QNAP device has a free NVR app that detects the cameras on the network and saves the recordings to the NAS. It's pretty simple and I don't have to worry about shady cloud-based devices.

</comment><comment><USER53> IP Cam with FTP capabilities, home NAS server (data storage for cam footage), with cloud backup. And of course, IP cam live streams to my phone. My approach is no different than cam + dvr + subscription. Instead I am solving it with cloud storage backup via my in-house nas.

</comment><comment><USER54> That's an excellent question. I personally want something simpler - 4-8 CCTV cameras on a drive that gets automatically backed up to a remote server of my choosing. I suppose the only thing stopping me from doing it in Linux is getting CCTV output to the drive.

<comment><USER55> Probably worth checking out Zoneminder: [http://www.zoneminder.com/](http://www.zoneminder.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Unifi cameras are pretty solid. Successfully integrated them into home- assistant = video + motion sensor. For nvr you're free to use any as unifi provides rtsp stream. I would recommend NX Witness or Unifi Protect (but they are working thru webrtc)

</comment><comment><USER57> Lots of suggestions for ZoneMinder already; I haven't used either, but [https://shinobi.video/](https://shinobi.video/) is the other bookmark I have from looking into it a while ago.

<comment><USER58> I tried out Shinobi but found it to be very unstable. The video feeds from my cameras would just break without any indication of why.

I was running Motion on the same machine and it continued to work without any problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I use a RaspyZero with cam and a bit of Python and Bash. Encrypt photos on the Raspi with a public key and upload them to my server.

</comment><comment><USER25> I lock my doors and when I hear something strange I look out the window?

</comment><comment><USER60> guns and insurance riders. low tech but i sleep well at night

</comment><comment><USER61> I bought an Alexa.

</comment><comment><USER62> I live in Germany so I don't need home surveillance. I never experienced a break-in while living in Europe.

Also me and my family members are socialists so I can trust them instead of having to monitor them.</comment>


Show HN: Gazette: towards unification of batch and stream processing - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gazette/core <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I've been working on Gazette for a little while now, having used it as a proprietary solution in my last couple of companies, and having now open- sourced it. I'd appreciate the community's take on it.

One of Gazette's contributions is that it unifies "my real-time event stream" and "all of my historical data" into a single source-of-truth with a representation that's super easy to integrate (plain old files on S3).

Going forward, what excites me is its potential to unify 1) stream processing, 2) Data Lake build-out, and 3) ad-hoc analysis (via BigQuery/Athena/Hive/etc external tables) into a single system. If that's interesting, I'd love to talk with you about it.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think this looks very neat. I think you have exactly the right idea about offloading the physical storage to object stores like S3 -- I had the same idea some time ago, and using a version of it for an internal analytics streaming system.

Thanks for making this open source. I'm considering an application where I might be able to use this.</comment>


Turing Completeness on the iPhone (aka a thing I built) - <AUTHOR> http://heavyephemera.com/wiresq/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all. I am unabashedly spamming, yes. I recently built an app that has a turing complete CA in it, and apparently this particular turing complete CA is on the right side of apples review policy. I got a little bit worried there for a second.

This is a sequencer and synthesizer that you can trigger with wireworld, a 4 state, 2d cellular automata that is pretty easy to build logic with. Hopefully someone gets a kick out of it.</comment>


Cybrary's Free Android App - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cybrary.app <comment><AUTHOR> Based on our main site, Cybrary's mobile app is designed for people to learn about hacking and cyber security on the go, without an internet connection. Cybrary lets anyone learn Cyber Security and IT for free, wherever they are, whenever they want. Cybrary is continually adding courses for everyone - <USER2> beginners to professionals. Each course has video lessons as well as quizzes and study guides to either prepare members for certifications, or to help them move up in their careers.</comment>


Former Microsoft Exec Decides to Sell Weed - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2012/12/former-microsoft-exec-decides-to-just-sell-weed-instead/

<comment><USER2> Users should expect to see lots of pretty colors while being confused when presented with a choice. Just like Windows 8.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now we know where the inspiration came from!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was semi-seriously thinking about doing almost the same thing here in Colorado.

The general assembly still has to nail down the details, and the federal government hasn't said what they're going to do, so it's still mostly an idea. Depending on how those play out, I'm going to look into it a little more.

In any case, I doubt it'll make me rich, but I think I could make enough money to quit my day job.

<comment><USER4> On one hand, the barrier to entry from competitors is very small.

On the other hand, most of your competitors are going to be smoking pot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> Starting on December 6th, it will be legal for Washington residents over 21 to possess marijuana

What? Is it actually legalisation or decriminalisation?

Either way, it's progress.

<comment><USER6> legalisation.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/07/us-usa- marijuana-l...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/07/us-usa-marijuana- legalization-idUSBRE8A602D20121107)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have you noticed the Macbook in the right-bottom corner?

<comment><USER8> He hasn't worked at MS for 3 years. He's been the CEO of <http://www.facebook.com/findood> for that period.

I would not be surprised if everyone there used macbooks, even if they had windows installed on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Less provocative headline: "Entrepreneur Sees Opportunity And Announces Intent To Start New Business"

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm slightly confused about all of this. The DEA can still come after dealers, no?

<comment><USER6> Yep - But look to the Volstead_Act[1].

Its not whether or not it is illegal, its whether or not they want to / have the power to enforce it.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volstead_Act#Enforcement_and_im...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volstead_Act#Enforcement_and_impact)</comment></comment>


How RNA formed at the origins of life - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-05-rna-life.html <comment><USER2> Sort of unrelated, but for a long time I have been curious why uracil in RNA is replaced by thymine in DNA. I was inspired by this post to do a little digging and here is what I found in case anyone else is interested.

[http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=52606](http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=52606)</comment>


Shameful Profiling of the Mentally Ill - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/opinion/sunday/shameful-profiling-of-the-mentally-ill.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0 <comment><USER2> While I am sympathetic to the woman in the article, consider this: I am bipolar type one (the wilder type), ultra rapid cyclicity with psychotic features. I have had countless manic episodes complete with week-long total sleeplessness, hallucinations (visual and auditory) and delusions ranging from believing I was a CIA agent to thinking the CIA is out to get me. And I've done some really crazy, stupid things of.. questionable judgment, including sending very crazy faxes to the White House. Been hospitalized against my will more than once.

But now I take several drugs and am very well-treated, extremely "high- functioning" in the clinical sense. I've been married happily and nicely employed for years. While being manic is a lot of fun, I have no inclination to fall off the treatment wagon. I'm a success story basically.

But suppose I wanted a government job requiring security clearance to privileged information, should I be trusted given that I've been mentally healthy for several years, without incident?

I think the answer is no. Obviously.

Manic depressives are, relative to everybody else, prone to poor judgment, psychosis, run-ins with the law, suicide, not taking their medicines, unemployment, broken relationships and vices in general. Call me a self-hating nut but if I had a daughter (and parenthetically I do intend to have a kid, even though the kid has a fifty fifty chance of having the disease), would I want a bipolar boy to date my daughter, however well-treated he might be? Absolutely not.

So regarding my people, those with mood disorders (not just bipolar), while I appreciate the anti-discriminatory progressive stuff to make things easier for my people, between you and me, do yourself a favor, whether you are an employer, a money lender, an army recruiter, an immigration policy maker or a dad - or even a bipolar person yourself who's on the dating market, keep your distance from us manic depressives as too often we are bad news.

... Though we are more creative.

<comment><USER3> I agree that some background checks need to be done for sensitive jobs, such as government jobs you describe. However the article is about a woman who was just crossing the border between Canada and US. This should have just been a formality, provided she wasn't carrying weapons or drugs, and the fact that the check was so thorough for this is what scares me the most in the article. Basically how long do we need to wait before the boarding agents scan our gmails and participation to any internet forum or social network to assert we are not gonna do crazy things once we have entered in the US?

<comment><USER2> I was writing more in response to whether or not "profiling the mentally ill" is a shameful thing or a good idea for society in general, not this woman trying to cross the border. Hers is a soft anecdote to use as context for an important question.

<comment><USER4> You don't become an 'officially mentally ill person' without serious profiling, anyway. The DSM-IV is nothing _but_ a book of massive discrimination. One mans religion is another mans madness; and vice versa.

Make no mistake - we will never be rid of hatred and intolerance in the world for as long as we have industrialised mental health institutions producing their discriminating materials. Without discrimination, you can't "diagnose" someone as having a "mental disorder" that is "socially not accepted and therefore requires treatment".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems relevant to the thread about "should I use my real name online?" You just never know how information about you could be used against you, maybe ten or twenty years from now, maybe half a world away. You never know.

(I'm not too excited about Google dredging up 25-year-old Usenet posts from my college days.)

<comment><USER6> Side note: What about just consistently using a handle? And that handle being part of your "brand"? What if Jay-Z decided to become a web developer?

Primary note: African Americans could _easily_ be labeled given the qualification of the nebulous "threat" clause, when it is in fact Old America ( _those likely to celebrate their licensed gun-ownership_ ) that is going about shooting them in the face[0].

White supremicists, Men's Rights Advocates of many stripes, and the Tea Party are stridently making cases that African Americans are sub-human[1]; wherein it stands to reason they so too could be required to have "clearance" given their supposed "lack" of psychological integrity, etc.

There are many nets and dragnets being cast to categorize arbitrary lots of "unmentionable" society. There's a significant rate of undiagnosed depression in the African American community[2].

[0]: [http://www.upworthy.com/she-knocked-on-his-door-to-ask- for-h...](http://www.upworthy.com/she-knocked-on-his-door-to-ask-for-help-he- shot-her-dead-why-isnt-justice-being-served?c=ufb1)

[1]: [http://whitelocust.wordpress.com/morality-and-abstract- think...](http://whitelocust.wordpress.com/morality-and-abstract-thinking-how- africans-may-differ-from-westerners/)

[2]: [http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/blogs/black-and- depress...](http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/blogs/black-and-depressed- two-african-american-women-break-silence)

<comment><USER7> > _" Side note: What about just consistently using a handle? And that handle > being part of your "brand"?"_

For me, there is too much cognitive overhead when you try to do this because you have to be constantly aware of what you have already said about yourself (going back _years_ ) and decide if additional information you are about to give could be used to disambiguate your identity by somebody who had access to the content of all your past online posts.

For example, say that mention that I am from a small town in Vermont. On another website, years later but with the same uncommon handle, I mention that my highschool class only had 27 people in it. On another site, I mention that I once swam a 100 meter freestyle in under 55 seconds. Just with those three things, each fairly reasonable things to mention in various online discussions, an obsessed stalker could probably narrow me down to one of a few dozen people. Now that is not too bad, but those are only three mundane facts, and if I am using the same handle for years or decades...

Handles that are hard to google without getting irrelevant results (such as my current handle) can certainly help, but that will only go so far. Counting on that is making assumptions about the capabilities of future web search technology.

<comment><USER8> I agree, I found it really not worth it for me to use a handle that was not my real name. I don't know about other people, but when I interact online, I don't act in a way that very different from how I act "IRL". Because who I am is the same online as it is in real life, obscuring just my name doesn't do me much benefit.

The only way I could obscure my information online would be if I maintained an entirely different persona/identity entirely, with totally separate lives. Since I can't or won't do that (I'd feel vaguely dishonest), I just use my real name anyway.

<comment><USER7> _" Because who I am is the same online as it is in real life, obscuring just my name doesn't do me much benefit."_

I operated like that for a few years, but then I realized that although my presentation of myself online is not that different from how I present myself in 'real life', there _are_ examples in real life of situations where I present myself differently. For instance, I no longer discuss politics with family _(in no small part out of respect for immediate family members who are now in the military. If I said to them what I am willing to say online, feelings would be hurt...)_

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it really is a luxury that many people don't have, being able to not worry about who knows your views. I choose to not share most all my political or religious views in real life or online. But for many people who have views far outside the mainstream, or who would be otherwise persecuted for the things they think, I can totally understand why they wouldn't share many things.

<comment><USER6> Isn't this, like, the basic problem with our political system? Structural oppression? Disenfranchisement?

Hos does this not also apply to voting? I feel the same, now I am afraid to be in public for having the views that I have.

...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I appreciate that this is getting press on the American side of the border. This was in the Canadian news cycles a little while ago, but understandably the focus there was on how U.S. Border agents were able to access her medical history in the first place--with speculation that the Canadian government had some form of information sharing that involved medical history.

So it's great to see the focus on the other side of this issue as well, which is why the U.S. is profiling in this way in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER10> The author of this article, Andrew Solomon, wrote a book entitled _The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression_ [1] that is based in part on his own struggles with depression.

[1] [http://andrewsolomon.com/books/the-noonday- demon/](http://andrewsolomon.com/books/the-noonday-demon/)

</comment><comment><USER11> U.S. law (Citizenship and Immigration Services, Act 212) ([http://www.uscis.gov/laws/act](http://www.uscis.gov/laws/act)) states that aliens are inadmissible if they have:

 _a physical or mental disorder and behavior associated with the disorder that may pose, or has posed, a threat to the property, safety, or welfare of the alien or others_ , or

 _have had_ such a disorder and it is _likely to recur_.

It sounds as though this lady's condition does not meet these requirements, and hence she should have been admitted.

The issue, in this case, is that the immigration agents actually searched online for her medical/criminal history and found evidence of mental disorder[1].

Apparently, the agent in this case did not ascertain whether her condition presents a danger to herself or others currently. She states that it does not, and presumably she has a psychiatric sign-off to that effect.

Unfortunately, aliens have very little power to effect change in U.S. laws and abuse of those laws by the border guards. You just try to get past the border people, then breath a sigh of relief. If you can't get through, you are angry but your own government is unlikely to act.

This is just more fuel for the argument that our border control needs a major overhaul. Certainly we should be scrutinizing people coming in from other countries, especially ones who come from certain Middle Eastern and central Asian places who are interested in learning to fly jet planes and so forth. But the vast, overwhelming majority of visitors are good, honest people whom we should and must welcome. All I can think of to help solve this problem is to write to your Congressional delegation and get the issue onto the agenda.

[1] [http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/dhs-agent- cites-p...](http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/dhs-agent-cites- private-medical-history-deny-canadian-entry-us)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's almost hypocritical. Our lack of universal healthcare causes so many otherwise mildly ill people to become much sicker. (U.S. health insurers, who make much of their money by throwing red tape at people until they just give up on legit claims, are especially vicious toward those with mental illness, who are statistically more likely to give up easily.) Then the U.S. says, "no sick people! We've made too many of our own!"

<comment><USER13> Just to offer the anecdotal opposite: we left Canada precisely because the health care system harmed my son. Since living n the US, both of them have gotten help for far, far less than it would have cost in Canada to go the private route, and with a dramatically shorter wait time. This is without needing to use private insurance.

<comment><USER14> Having survived a childhood of OHIP, I find it hard to believe that your son received a significantly worse quality of care _because_ you were in Canada. I don't doubt some doctors are better than others, but that happens everywhere.

<comment><USER13> It's not because we were in Canada, but because of the structure of Canada's Healthcare system, and specifically Quebec's.

> I find it hard to believe

Don't let my facts get in the way of your beliefs.

Edit: Better yet, let me treat you the same way. I doubt your story, liar. Fuck, you offer up a contradicting story, and people find it so hard to believe and immediately doubt you.

Seriously, if you think Canada's health care system is perfect, you are delusional.

<comment><USER14> edit: I get that this is a personal issue for you, and you got piled on for giving an anecdote that didn't fit people's expectations. I wasn't following the whole thread, so I didn't see you already answered my questions below. That said, you were kind of a jerk considering you gave no detail (not the province, not the illness, not the complaint, nothing but "Canadian healthcare sucks").

Was language a contributing factor? With the exception of Montral Quebec tends to be like a completely different country, and they definitely prioritize French language services. I could see getting an English-speaking specialist would be tough, especially in a smaller place.

<comment><USER13> > That said, you were kind of a jerk considering you gave no detail (not the > province, not the illness, not the complaint, nothing but "Canadian > healthcare sucks").

Considering the original comment I was replying to was "US healthcare sucks," I don't see why I need to pony up the proof. There are 50 states, all with different rules and regulations, all with different programs, and all that do things better in some areas than others. I'm tired of playing the game of having to explain it every time, so I limit my explanation to what I'm replying to.

As for being piled on, I'm used to it. But consider it's my kids, I feel it's worthwhile. If I can save someone else's child from suffering what my child had to suffer, it's worth it.

> Was language a contributing factor?

No.

First, this was several years ago, before the latest government went all crazy with the French language and French language police. It's worse now, but back than, it wasn't as bad.

Second, we lived and would have received services in Montreal.

Thirdly, we never prioritized English. My wife speaks French just fine, and we didn't care if it the service was in English or French.

Fourth, it was a result of regulations by the government saying that early intervention for children with Autism is not crucial. This was explained to us many times. This rule flies in the face of every doctor. Early intervention for children with autism is key.

Fifth, for the amount of money I was paying in taxes, I found it evil the amount that was being given to police the french language over Autism assistance. I will not ever stand to support that province again in any way, and have no qualms about fucking it over every chance I get.

Sixth, we were told on more than one occasion we should give up our son to a state run home. Now, this is the part that really gets people, and I'd love to say I was lying. I realize this isn't official policy, but still. It's the mentality. From what I'm told by others working up there in the medical field, this isn't uncommon for the French.

Anyways, that's more information than I intended to share, but point is, we did everything in our power. My wife worked this full time, submitting paperwork to every possible location to the point where our primary physician told us to stop sending out letters because she was tired of getting requests for information.

The straw that broke our back was being informed that we had finally gotten an appointment after 6 months of waiting, and we scheduled that appointment (which would take place 6 months later, mind you). This was with an service that our doctor from one of the children's hospitals in Montreal had recommended to us for our son. We got this appointment in the sprint of 2011, and we were finally happy that we were moving forward. That afternoon, we got a call back from the agency, and they cancelled the appointment, because they don't take children with autism. One moment we were happy! The next, horrified that all that work was for nothing. Over a year, and we had nothing to show for it, and our son was almost 2 1/2\. Luckily, I am American, and we made the decision to move that day.

So yeah, I have a deep seeded hatred for Quebec, and the Canadian Healthcare system that allowed that to happen. Almost 10 years of living up there, and when we really needed the system, it failed us hard. It wasn't money, it wasn't lack of doctors, it wasn't even a lack of need.

It was purely a choice, political, and prioritizing a stupid language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ADHD is a much larger threat than all other mental illnesses combined. For every schizo with a rifle in a clock tower, there are 10,000 people with poor impulse control crashing cars.

As usual, FedGov is oblivious to statistics.

<comment><USER16> I'm very clumsy (I might have ADHD myself) but I have never accidentally killed someone.</comment></comment>


Das Steingeschöpf (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/das-steingeschopf/ <comment><USER2> Lovely Story! I enjoy the use English with the little bit of German and French thrown in. Love the characters as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> A wonderful story, but I've found the sporadic use of German phrases detracted from the experience. Why is any given dialogue in English or in German? There was no discernible pattern. Were the characters themselves bilingual? That seems out of place given the setting.

<comment><USER4> I also noticed it, since the implication of the setting is that the characters are speaking German, and the story teller is translating. I think it's just a bit of artistic license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> beautiful and sad

</comment><comment><USER6> What a lovely story</comment>


Think your language is better than mine? The market says otherwise - <AUTHOR> http://andrewcurioso.com/2011/03/the-free-market-theory-of-programming-languages/

<comment><USER2> This is based on a mountain of false assumptions. Just a few of them:

• Most people choose a language based on quality rather than what everyone else is using

• Good languages are necessarily well known (if you build it, they will come?)

• Large corporations, which make up a large segment of the market and can basically anoint programming languages to dominance, have the ability or inclination to choose a good programming language (rather than, e.g., a language which has a strong promotional machine behind it or a language whose backer offers lots of enterprise support)

• Attractiveness to amateurs is equal to all other factors in determining a programming language's quality (regardless of what you think of the language, this is a _large_ part of PHP's popularity)

The thesis here is simply false for any reasonable definition of "good." The only way you can make it true is to "#define good popular", in which case it's tautological.

For example, the reason there is still so much COBOL in production is not that the language is awesome and people choose it of their own free will — in fact, the opposite is generally considered to be the case even by COBOL experts — it's simply _entrenched_. These systems would not be written in COBOL if they were being developed today, but because they happen to have been written in COBOL's heyday, people still use COBOL. The market chooses COBOL for these positions because of the horrific cost of rewriting everything from the ground-up, not because of anything related to COBOL itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Three things:

First, thank you for reading. This article was meant entirely to spur discussion so I thank you for taking the time to discuss.

Second, I don't think an argument that most people choose based on quality is pertinent to the theory. The theory just states that the market decides. It does not infer than any metric the market uses is inherently better or worse than others.

Third, your COBOL example is explicitly excluded from the theory as not being in a free-market. Thus it is fading away slowly. If it were truly up to the market (no external regulation from business interests) it would be dead.*

* In this case the market is defined as the direct consumers of the programming language. The programmers themselves. As opposed to indirect consumers (organizations).

<comment><USER2> > _Second, I don't think an argument that most people choose based on quality > is pertinent to the theory. The theory just states that the market decides._

It states that the market decides _what_? The article repeatedly suggests that what the market decides is which language is "good" or "better," which can only be true if people choose based on quality.

If the market choice is only loosely correlated with quality, then looking at the market tells us nothing about which languages are good (since "good" is a qualitative judgment).

There are only two ways I can see for market penetration to be relevant to the discussion of which languages are better:

1\. The market chooses based on quality

2\. "Good" is synonymous with "popular"

Otherwise you're measuring one thing and then announcing another. Market position is just popularity, and is only a reliable indicator of the things that determine popularity. If people don't choose based on the quality of a language, then looking at popularity to figure out which languages are good is like looking at the eating habits of the average American and concluding that Big Macs are the most nutritionally balanced food around because they're in the dominant market position.

<comment><AUTHOR> The market decides if a language has any value.

It is not implying in any way that there is a 1:1 between popularity and quality (or any defined relationship for that matter). I think that would be ridiculous.

It is not meant as any means to grade or rank one language against the other. Only to say that a language has some value.

Rereading your comments I do not necessarily agree that the assumption is that market chooses based on quality. The market chooses based on perceived value which definitely takes into account quality but is not based entirely on it.

The implication being is that if there is truly no value or the value is so low that consumers are no longer willing to consume the product. Then the product will disappear or get replaced by a better and cheaper alternative.

In a way, it is simply saying, if someone uses a language then it has value -- at the very least -- to that person.

I guess the underlying message is: do not assume that because something doesn't have value to you that it is not valuable. If it didn't have any value it would (IFF the theory is correct -- I'm not saying it definitely is!) cease to be used.

I am anxiously awaiting your reply. If you have a good one, I might have to concede that the theory is disprove and/or incomplete.

<comment><USER3> So your headline should have been "Think your language is more popular than mine: The market says otherwise".

No one would have argued with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. The title is misleading. I'll have to be more careful on future HN posts. Although, if someone else posted it I would have little control over that.

I don't think your alternative isn't quite right either.

Perhaps, I should have just titled it something like: "Ask HN: Review my theory, The Free-Market Theory of Programming Languages"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, yeah, the status quo can always be defended with a market analogy.

Step one to making this kind of statement: give some evidence that the language ecosystem actually works as a free market.

First of all changing languages is almost always a large investment. That removes the "free" from your free market analogy so many of the assumptions you are making are completely unfounded.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is why it is a theory and I am opening it up to peer review. Otherwise I would have stated it as a fact.

Also, "free" as in choice, not "free" as in cost.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough, in that case it's certainly not a "theory", the correct term would be "hypothesis" or "conjecture".

I understood what you meant by "free" but you seem to be discounting the high cost of making that choice.

You can examine the language ecosystem as a market but if you do you see immediately that it is inherently a lock in market.

Once you choose a language it's very high cost to change languages.

It's also high cost to choose a language that's not already popular, recruiting is more difficult and you will not have as much 3rd party library support.

So you have both "lock in" and large advantages for existing large players. Sure, it's technically still a "free market" because it's not regulated by the state but this kind of market doesn't have the behavior you are assuming.

What evidence do you have that these kinds of markets optimize for "better" languages?

<comment><AUTHOR> My biggest mistake: using the word "good" What I should of said is "has value"

I have since conceded that point and removed the word "good" (which is subjective) from the post.

Also, the only evidence I have is observation. Which is why I posted the idea. To get good constructive input from people like you!

You make some good points. It is an expensive proposition to switch languages, which is why I excluded that explicitly in the post.

It is also expensive to train people. So that alone may disprove the theory. I'm not sure yet.

On a side note, as far as I know, being based on observation only does not preclude the use of the word theory. It is technically correct (at least according to the dictionary definition of theory). Although, I agree hypothesis may be better.

<comment><USER3> You need to define "has value" right away though, because defining "value" as "whatever the market measures" is tautological and just plain useless. "PHP has value because people find that PHP has value" is not contributing anything new.

It's also the go to "moving the goalpost" logical fallacy used by free market ideological cranks who you don't want to be compared to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I don't want to ask you to complete my thought, but how would you define value in a way that makes sense in that context? Or is it hopeless?

<comment><USER3> Well now you're trying to figure out what it is that the market optimizes for.

In my experience it has little to do with language quality and mostly to do with reputation and momentum. Whatever that company/team used before they will likely use again.

I'll talk about things in the web space since that's what I know best, things will be different in each market.

If it's a blue sky exercise or they decided they need something new then it's mostly based on reputation, the less popular the language chosen the more blame taken by the chooser in the case of failure. In other words, no one ever got in trouble for choosing Java, PHP or C#.

Trying to define value in a way that covers even only the big players is tough.

Java and C# are chosen because they are big (library support, support materials) and have been around for a while. They are considered trustworthy.

PHP is chosen because there are tons of cheap semi-competent programmers who know PHP. It was marketed and packaged for beginners at the perfect time and that worked fantastically.

Ruby/Rails is chosen because of marketing (the engineers might be fans, but the business guys say OK and the HR people can find programmers because of the marketing). A lot of ex-php-ers who discovered how bad PHP is as a language when they learned Ruby as their second modern language.

This is just in a small piece of the language ecosystem that I know about. Other areas of programming (other markets i suppose) are completely different but I suppose that momentum, marketing and trained workforce are factors in all of them.

I think this is too messy a problem to ever arrive at a good definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You could also segment the market by knowledge, and time in business. Each would yield different results.

What you might find is the market aggregate is a lagging indicator or that any summary is void of true detail.

Besides the language measurement quanta here is so far apart, no?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a bit intentionally vague. For instance, let's say there is a language dedicated to hardware prototypes (let's call it Gabview)...

Say it is very popular now but it is difficult to use and no one enjoys using it. If the theory holds true, a new language will come around gain popularity with hardware firmware developers and Gabview will fade off into the distance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another factor influencing language popularity is to have some control over the language popularity metrics. E.g. Groovy lead developer Jochen Theodorou got involved with changing the TIOBE algorithms in January. In February, Groovy jumped from 49th to 25th place in one month.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Any programming language, when not influenced by external forces, will be > unable to grow and eventually cease to exist unless there is a demand. Any > languages that remains is, by exclusion, a useful and good language.

For very small values of "useful" and "good"...

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't disagree :) and the theory does not specify either of those properties as binary.</comment></comment>


I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere - <AUTHOR> http://http://kevinjohngallagher.com/2013/04/pirated-game-of-thrones-season-premiere/ <comment><USER2> Pirating has become a much higher quality entertainment experience than any other. The pace of development is insane, and the things you can do with pirated content these days are, in a word, wonderful.

Let's say I pirated a show called Fest of Kings. The hour Fest of Kings aired, it would already be on my home media server. It would have downloaded at about 6MB/second (that's MegaBytes) over a secure SSL connection and be done in about 5 minutes flat in 720p HD. The moment it finished downloading, it would be available to watch on a beautiful media center in my living room, as well as on any internet-connected computer, as well as on my phone (Plex is amazing).

This is better than DVR, it's better than On Demand, and it's a breeze to use (it's not a breeze to set up, but whatever).

It's also _not free._ You pay for certain services you download from, you pay for the Plex Pro subscription to be able to stream your content to your phone, you pay for the Plex app, you pay for various management apps. It's not ridiculously expensive, but it's not free.

If there was a legitimate content source that did all this well, and gave me the content I wanted when I wanted it (right when it airs), I would be paying for it. But there isn't. This is a far better experience than any alternative. It's just awesome.

And that's why piracy is a problem.

<comment><USER3> _"It's also not free."_

Sure, but the creators also don't receive any compensation from you. It's like jumping the turnstile at a subway station, figuring that because you bought NewBalance sneakers you're already paying the government for providing public transport.

That said, if I could pay, say $100 a month for 'all you can eat' pirating (providing that money would go to the studios and artists) I'd love to.

<comment><USER4> I think his point was that people aren't pirating purely because it is free, but because the experience is superior in every way measurable, even to the point that people will pay for pirating.

User experience counts. You'd thought companies like Apple and Google had taught us that by now.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. Even in the UK were we have the brilliant BBC iPlayer, downloading from other places is still a better experience. Quality and speed win out.

Of course, the BBC gets it funding from a licence fee, so it kinda doesn't matter (I pay the licence fee there for I have already paid up, so what does it matter how I see it?) apart from the fact that the BBC cant include a non BBC download in its figures.

I think that to be honest the experience point is a red herring. Its really about it being free. My position here is that in show or movie advertising, or product placement, is the best way to go. That way we get the show for free, and the producers get their advertising money.

If I in the UK was able to go to, say, HBO in the US and download a show for free, I would. Even if that meant a special international free version that was non HD and contained adverts in the middle, or even product placement. But I cant, so I would go for other sources.

This will only settle down when they release shows for free at the point of watching, and find other ways to make their money.

Capitalists: this is supply and demand. Its very basic and the fact that so many huge businesses and politicians seem to have forgotten the most basic law of economics is frankly contemptible and offensive to any one with half a function brain. Worse still is the government interference that seems to want to use law to criminalise citizens who are obeying the laws of supply and demand, while offering a protection racket to the very organisation who should be primarily guided by it, but chose to ignore it. This, IMHO, is a vile and disgusting abuse of law, society and government. Its up to the business to adapt, not have their old control freak behaviour endorsed and protected by government, who's election funding depends on such organisations.

And BTW, this betrays the biggest flaw in US democracy, which has become little more than those with money get to buy the government and dictate legislation. The military industrial lot paid for Bush and we get war. The media pay for Obama and we get draconian protection rackets.

Oppps, again, longer than I intended......

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        People have always been, and always will be, willing
        to pay for good products. We have always understood
        Return on Investment, even if we don't call it that.

Which is why World Of Goo[0], a fantastic indie game that was priced at $20, that has a 90 / 100 Metacritic score[1], that has absolutely no DRM is a game that had over 80% piracy rate at launch? The "People want to pay it's just the companies stopping them" argument is so much bunk it's insulting that people continue to write it.

People want stuff consequence free, if they have to pay to get rid of those consequences then they will. For a lot of people the consequences of media piracy are non-existant, they don't believe they will ever be caught (and it's not as if "getting caught" even matters) so the only result of media piracy is... saving money! So they do it. For me a consequence of media piracy is knowing I did not pay for something I have, that is why I don't engage in media piracy. For people that don't have this feeling that they should pay why would they?

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Goo>

[1] <http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/world-of-goo>

[2] [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/11/15/world-of-goo- pira...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/11/15/world-of-goo-piracy- rate-82/)

<comment><USER7> And so are you suggesting that if it _had_ DRM it wouldn't have seen such a high piracy rate? The fact is, there's going to be some level of piracy no matter what you do. There will always be people out there who will obtain the game but would have never otherwise bought the game. There will always be people out there for whom $20 is a reasonable price and will gladly pay it to obtain the game. It's up to the game author to determine the optimal price point to maximize their return. The option of preventing piracy, frankly, will never exist (barring egregious internet freedom encroachments). And people like you can continue to feel morally superior to everyone, if it helps you sleep at night.

<comment><USER8> Does 80% really qualify as "some level of piracy?"

Clearly there is a group of people who will always pirate what they want, regardless of the price or what it is (movies, TV shows, games, Photoshop). If that's the case, then I think it's also fair to say that there is a certain group of people for whom even the smallest bit of DRM would cause them to either go without the movie/show/program (I think the most likely) or buy it outright.

<comment><USER9>
        > even the smallest bit of DRM would cause them to [...]
        > go without the movie/show/program (I think the most likely)

And this would benefit the producer how? It would only serve to reduce the userbase, and thereby dampening the word-of-mouth spread and the perceived popularity the game, thus harming the sales of the product.

Of course, it those people bought the game instead, it could make up for it. But you said it was the less likely scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I pay for HBO and they would have aired Game of Thrones on Monday evening this week. A day later than in the US, which is fine by me.

But I was on a plane at that time and I have boxing practice when GoT airs anyway. So I shamelessly pirated the episode while at the airport (when did airport hotspots become 3.5MB/s monsters anyway?) intending to watch it on my laptop while flying over the atlantic.

I ended up watching it yesterday morning as I woke up at 6am due to jetlag.

I feel I did nothing wrong.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. You've paid for the content but simply changed the way you receive it. Ethically, I think you're on pretty strong grounds.

It's unfortunate that folks like us who would like to be able to do common sense things with content are caught in a war between extremists on both sides. We have the rabid content creators and protectors suing everyone for every infraction and corrupting our legal system in the process - then we have the piracy zealots who feel no compunction with having an artist make zero from creating a great deal of desirable content because "information/data should be free".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If Sky doesn't offer the service you expect, why do you keep paying for that insufficient service? They will hardly listen to someone saying 'I don't like the way you do things, but I'll pay you anyways for not doing anything' – on the other hand, were they only paid if they actually delivered the expected service, they at least _might_ consider doing so.

(Also the link is currently a little broken with duplicate http-s.)

<comment><USER13> How else can he support the creators of the show?

<comment><USER12> Not at all? Both they and his cable provider are to blame for this mess and they are delivering as little of the service he expects as his cable provider. I am rather positive that, given an 'enthusiastic' creator/producer, there would be ways for Sky to air the show at the same time as it airs in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree with all of sentiments in the blog post but this:

 _"Why should almost 40% of my time be taken up by adverts for something I am ALREADY paying for?"_

Your cable subscription is a _partial_ payment for viewing the shows. It's works in the same way as buying a newspaper or magazine: the revenues from newsstand sales are a fraction of what it costs to create and distribute the publication. The rest is paid through advertising. Even more, subscription prices are kept low so that the publishers can claim a certain degree of readership, thus being able to ask certain advertising rates.

<comment><USER2> I wonder how much people would pay for advertising-free television?

<comment><USER14> In the UK we pay £145 per year [0] - call that US$250. For that we get 3 HD channels, 2 SD channels, 2 kids channels, a 24 hour news channel, a dozen national radio stations, and a bunch of local stations. All FTA via your aerial.

Oh, and you get the BBC websites.

All without adverts.

Totally worth it.

[0] [http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need- one/topics/tv...](http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need- one/topics/tv-licence-types-and-costs-top2/)

<comment><USER3> Most countries have public service broadcasters. However, the UK has the largest broadcasting corporation in the world, with arguably the highest quality programming. PBS in the US and CBC in Canada have far smaller budgets, which is weird given population size of their respective countries. Perhaps if tax payers would ask to pay more for public broadcasting, we wouldn't even need commercial stations.

EDIT: I just found out that most of the funding for public broadcasters in the US doesn't even come from taxes. Canada's CBC receives two-thirds of its funding from taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I did too. I would happily pay a reasonable price for the show, but HBO doesn't offer an option to do that. I cancelled my cable subscription months ago because there's really only a few shows I want to watch and they're on HBO. Paying an extra $50 a month ($600 a year) to watch two shows is ridiculous.

I like the way Downton Abbey was distributed on Amazon. It was, I think, $2 an episode with a small discount if you paid for the whole season at one. New episodes became available to stream as soon as they aired. I'd happily watch every show I like that way If I could.

<comment><USER16> "I would happily pay a reasonable price for the show"

The price they are charging is the bundled price. The fact that you do not get enough value from the bundled price means that you don't have to pay for it, but it also doesn't mean you can steal it.

If you go to the store and someone is selling a 30 pack of toilet paper but you only need 5 rolls because you live alone, you can't simply take 5 rolls, and say, "the price I would have to pay to get 5 rolls is ridiculous, so I'm not paying".

"HBO doesn't offer an option to do that" because they have determined that the revenue/profit they earn from bundling HBO with cable is higher then by selling HBO alone since cable isn't as desirable as it used to be.

The way to think about it is, HBO costs $600/year and you get some crappy free TV with it.

<comment><USER17> "The way to think about it is, HBO costs $600/year and you get some crappy free TV with it."

I find plenty of the "free" TV so offensively terrible that I'll nearly pay more for the TV I want just so no subsidization hits the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Link doesnt work - [http://kevinjohngallagher.com/2013/04/pirated-game-of- throne...](http://kevinjohngallagher.com/2013/04/pirated-game-of-thrones- season-premiere/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I pirate all the shows I watch. I know of no legal on-demand service that is available to me. I guess that if there were such service available it would be way too expensive (it's international market, highest price is usually the global one). But it would be something...

I wouldn't watch them in TV if I had the chance (I don't) either, because of all the ads. So if I want to watch the shows (I know I don't have to), I pirate them. Luckily it's not illegal for me, but it's still not the best thing to do I guess.

For now, I'm glad that I don't have to pirate software (games included) and just have to restrict myself (prices, see above). Though sometimes I wish I pirated a game instead of buying it (GTA IV for example - never played it thanks to their DRM mindset).

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a netflix subscription and find it more convenient than pirating. It's less of an effort for me to sit down, turn on my PS3 and run netflix than it is to find a torrent, download a huge file, transfer the file to a NAS, turn on my PVR and select the file to watch.

Unfortunately netflix doesn't have everything and the netflix UK selection is sometimes really far behind what the US get so I have to either change my DNS to receive the US content, or as a last resort...pirate.

<comment><USER2> Netflix is a good start, but what I want is Spotify for television.

Name your price, networks, I'd pay for a super-premium Netflix in a heartbeat. It just doesn't exist yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The argument of "I paid for it so I can pirate it" is especially funny when coupled with "Too many ads!"

When you watch a show on cable, you're not just paying with your subscription but with your eyeballs. Advertisements, shockingly, aren't designed merely to irritate the viewer but to bring in more revenues.

(What do you think is going to happen when Sky realizes that their viewership is down even if their membership is stable?)

<comment><USER22> That's addressed in the article.

 _And Sky get this. If you wait another 24 hours, the show appears on "Sky Anytime", and you can watch it with no adverts and at any time you please. The adverts are an additional tax on the consumer for having the audacity to watch the programme when Sky decides.

Are you playing by the rules? Yes? Are you paying for the show? Yes. Are you watching it when we say? Yes? Are you watching it where we say you can? Yes? Good for you, here's some adverts as a punishment.

And people wonder why that business model is failing…_

<comment><USER21> I read that. I was addressing this:

> _The adverts are an additional tax on the consumer for having the audacity > to watch the programme when Sky decides._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> You need a : in your link there fella.

</comment><comment><USER24> _"20 hours is a LONG time in Social media terms. It's a long time in the news."_

This is the most pathetic justification for piracy I've ever heard.

You couldn't wait twenty hours to watch it legally? _Twenty hours?_ Many of which you'd probably be sleeping through anyway? That's not even a single day. You can't wait _a single day?_

It's like listening to a kid justify tearing open his Christmas presents on Christmas Eve.

 _"Wanting to watch GoT spoiler free is incredibly difficult when you have a 20 hour gap between airing in the US and airing in the UK."_

Not really. I live in the States, but I TiVoed the premiere episode and watched it the next day. (The horror!) I stayed away from recap articles and had no problems avoiding spoilers.

Besides, you said earlier in the article that _you had already read the books!_ Which means you have already pre-spoilered yourself, no? You already know every major plot twist the TV show is ever going to throw at you. The first two seasons followed the books pretty much note for note; did you think the third was going to suddenly change direction and bring in the cast of "Glee" for a big musical number?

 _"Basically, it means staying off Social Media and almost all "geek-news" outlets for a whole day. For some people thats easy enough, I'm not a huge social media fan/user anyway – but my JOB dictates that I check in on the different channels at least a few times each day... So I now have a choice: either don't do my job properly and ignore my friends for a whole day, or accept that I'll see some spoilers and my enjoyment of the show will be reduced."_

That one's easy -- if your job and the scheduling of your favorite TV show conflict, your job wins. Because _you're a grown-up._ Right?

Right?

<comment><USER12> > It's like listening to a kid justify tearing open his Christmas presents on > Christmas Eve.

I always opened my presents on Christmas Eve :)

> if your job and the scheduling of your favorite TV show conflict, your job > wins.

Exactly, and the TV series/cable provider has one happy customer fewer that could have been satisfied easily. Which was pretty much the point of his blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wouldn't it be a little strange for the network creating the show (HBO) to air it _after_ some other network? The author says Sky could have aired it at 10pm in England, but this is hours before HBO would air it in the US. You could maybe make the argument that Sky should air it at 2AM -- simultaneous to HBO's airing. But premiering HBO's show before HBO?

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't really care about a delay of a day or so, and now I know that sky atlantic show some of this stuff that quickly I might even subscribe.

Of course the ideal would be ad-free, on-demand and not geographically restricted, but that doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone.

<comment><USER27> Thanks to piracy thinks are getting better. now most us series are translated within weeks. Supernatural had a 3 years(!) delay in germany.

There will allways be people who want everything for free but there REALLY are people like me who want to pay but get rejected because of "licensing issues" aka "wait till it is published in your country even if you hate the voice over and want to watch the original anyway"

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think it's time for some people to admit that when it comes to certain things, they have become addicts. This is not a condemnation. I was there with Forbrydelsen III (which at least was never going to be shown in the US as-is, and DK had the sense to open the stream worldwide due to ex-pat outrage, and which I not only watched streaming in Danish without subtitles but then also downloaded later when fansubs were available).

<comment><USER29> Fansubs of Danish programming? Now I've heard that as well!

<comment><USER28> Forbrydelsen was a worldwide phenomenon. Surprised you never heard of it. AMC in the US re-did it (badly) as The Killing.

<comment><USER29> Considering I am Danish, it would incredibly surprising if I had never heard of it. Personally, I am not a big fan of it, it was just a bunch of mumbling going on. I needed subtitles too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Pretty simple take: I admit, I've grown bored of listening to most people justify pirating. Is it a big deal? Not really. Does it likely hurt content producers? Probably. Do I personally pay for most of the art projects I'm interested in? Sure.

But I like this article. He's already paying for the show, why not watch it when it's out? End of story.

</comment><comment><USER31> Pardon the middlebrow dismissal, but why is this remarkable? I mean,

 _Didn't we all?_

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems like this has been said before...

<https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/288199968932630528>

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Seems to be a problem with the site - it's just redirecting me to the home page.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think the mistake is in thinking a corporation can act like an individual. An individual can disregard most contractual agreements with impunity, a corporation has to navigate a myriad of byzantine international contract law because they have real assets that could be at risk. No conspiracy needed.</comment>