Fortnite's success led to months of intense crunch at Epic Games - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-crunch-epic-games <comment><USER2> If I were a mid-level manager at Epic, I wonder how I would handle internal politics at this time. So many competing objectives...

1\. Focus on producing novel content to keep the game interesting, mixing things up enough over weeks/months, but without killing the core mechanics.

2\. Hire lots of new employees, all while knowing that the popularity bubble may burst and they may need to be laid off in the near future.

3\. Give bonuses to my employees, who are working their tails off, to prevent resentment. Especially in the over-worked video game industry.

4\. Acknowledge that this lucky streak is unrepeatable, and that if the game falls out of popularity, there is likely no one to blame. But when it happens, the demoralization will hit hard and the layoffs are inevitable.

5\. All this, while the company reaps huge profits.

<comment><USER3> > Give bonuses to my employees, who are working their tails off, to prevent > resentment. Especially in the over-worked video game industry.

Hah.

I've know a few people on break-away titles(on the level of fortnight for an era) in my time in that industry. In most of those cases the employer or publisher had slipped in some sort of cap in royalties on a per-employee basis. So while their % cut of royalties was in the 7-figures they never saw anything above 6-figures.

Kudos on you for thinking this way but I'd be surprised if most of the people working on Fortnight are seeing more than mid FAANG compensation.

<comment><USER4> > more than mid FAANG compensation.

Do FAANG do remote? If so... what's that compensation like?

<comment><USER5> I remote for Amazon (as part of twitch but know other amazon remotes) but from my experience when other FAANG recruiters cold call me remote at those companies is discouraged. Amazon pays based on regions so my salary does not match what the ancestor post claims but would if I lived in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER4> levels.fyi says an SDE III (Senior SDE) should make $300k/yr in total compensation at Amazon working in a non-inflated city like Austin, TX.

Is that in line with your compensation?

<comment><USER5> Close enough (I'm not in the USA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I was contracting (not for Epic) I always negotiated an hourly rate. When they called for overtime I loved it, the meta is to become 10-20% more productive by whatever metric they use but bill 50-100% more hours at 1.5x my already large bill rate. I can generally work for 6 months like this without any life changing burn out symptoms.

</comment><comment><USER7> As much as it sucks to implicitly require people to work so many hours, i'd say it's OK in the short term if they were compensated accordingly (overtime or big bonuses), which according to the article they were (3x the salary?). Maybe someone more familiar with epic could enlighten me.

<comment><USER8> 1) It's not short term. Fortnite is constantly adding new features. This isn't normal crunch before a game ships then relax after patching bugs, it's literally crunch every week.

2) The actual employees are paid very well via a profit share arrangement. To my understanding, the issue is when contractors are worked like this. I don't believe contractors receive overtime or bonuses.

edit: some below have pointed out contractors do receive overtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ah, I remember my first live game, where you think we'll just crunch for this release, it'll be fine. Then the next release comes and because you were crunching on the other it comes out half baked, so you crunch again and again and before you know it half the team that made it happen is gone and no one wants to work there. You see this mentality in a lot of mobile studios that we're started by ex-AAA employees. Hopefully they learn that you can't crunch a live game or you'll never stop crunching. Single release games eventually ended, a good live game can go on for a very long time. The next generation of mobile studios knew that and ended up having a very good policy of no over time... Well some did

</comment><comment><USER10> I think they interviewed mostly people new to the gaming industry who don't know how to manage their time under pressure, Epic isn't an easy place if you're not pretty senior, they expect you to know what to do with little guidance. That said they also see the company as being a marathon since it's success isn't certain and fragile, so it's something they expect employees to take care of because it's a unique place, maybe similar to how museum staff look after art work. No doubt it's brutal with Fortnight's success, and you will get fired if you're not competent and pulling your weight, but that's the industry they're in, you can't have a few people putting everyone else's livelihood at risk, and they also compensate very well when they're successful. So it's not like some sweat shop, it's more complex than the article makes it sound.

<comment><USER11> > I think they interviewed mostly people new to the gaming industry who don't > know how to manage their time under pressure,

So everyone who has to work long hours is just incompetent or new, or new and incompetent, and should just do the same amount of work in less time, duh? That's not how these high-pressure workplaces function. Even if you are a significant contributor and you are technically allowed to opt out of overtime, that doesn't mean everyone won't resent you for it, and that management won't interpret as a 'lack of commitment' when promotion or reviews come around. As a corollary, the recent rise 'unlimited time off' policies have been widely criticized because they often inadvertently contribute to implicit pressures to take less time off than before, because of the resentment, hostility and jealously. I've seen some companies rolling out unlimited time off with mandatory minimums which seems healthier, but I'm unsure how successful it has been.

> they expect you to know what to do with little guidance

Even good engineers need guidance, and guidance and training are especially important when you're doubling and tripling your workforce.

> so it's something they expect employees to take care of because it's a > unique place, maybe similar to how museum staff look after art work.

This is a super weird analogy and makes no sense to me.

> and you will get fired if you're not competent and pulling your weight

Where does the article say that Epic shouldn't fire incompetent employees? No one is saying that.

> but that's the industry they're in, you can't have a few people putting > everyone else's livelihood at risk

Your response to a toxic work culture is just 'It is what it is, deal with it'? Don't you think we should have discussions about the human impact and damage caused by these intractable competing interests? And there's almost certainly a financial and business cost, it's just not as obvious to measure.

> So it's not like some sweat shop, it's more complex than the article makes > it sound.

The article covers both sides pretty thoroughly, there's a litany of quotes from Epic PR addressing the claims and recounting their efforts to resolve them. I understand WHY these pressures exist, and it's clear the Epic want to do everything they can to leverage their transient popularity. But that's not to say they shouldn't be criticized or they shouldn't do better.

<comment><USER10> I don't think you've worked at a struggling studio before, but yes that's just how it is, right up to the CEO. Once someone figures out a better way they'd do it in a heartbeat. Executives are no different than anyone else and they shoulder the responsibility of making sure everyone has a job too, it's one sided to think they're only interested in profit especially in Epic's case. You may think the museum analogy is odd, but it's not just another studio for many people.

<comment><USER12> But this isn't a struggling studio - it's a studio making insane profit.

<comment><USER10> It's not the same as say selling Microsoft Office, where the sales are stable. It's not stable and will taper off if they don't act on it, they also only have one game. So they got lucky and it's fragile success, it can change at anytime, they know this and since they've been around since 1991 and have come close to shutting down many times since then. EA would be more what you're thinking, where they have more diverse income from many titles and studios, one game failing won't cause EA to shutdown, but that's not what's happening here. I can understand the righteous feelings, but it needs to be coupled with an accurate understanding of the problem to find a solution.

<comment><USER11> But... no one is denying that. The article acknowledges it (it actually discusses it extensively), I acknowledge it. That doesn't mean they shouldn't do better, or that there isn't a huge cost on the personal lives of the people working there.

You are also making the assumption that their continued success is dependent on their toxic work culture, but I don't think that's a given. I'd wager that most people who work the kind of hours that we're discussing are:

a) either no more productive than someone working 40-50 hours, or only marginally more productive b) More likely to make simple/avoidable mistakes, which take time to track down, resolve and waste QA resources c) More likely to quit or have to go medical leave, which increases turnover, which is an enormous cost in development.

Furthermore, the stories of how bad the work place is will discourage potentially skilled applicants, and the longer they let it go on, the more trouble they'll have changing the way they are perceived in the industry.

I'd also wager that if you are constantly in crunch mode like this, it would stifle creativity and possible innovations. No one has the time to play around with new ideas, or try things and fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I might ruffle some feathers here but here it goes. Very much in the same manner some people refuse to eat inhumanely raised and slaughtered animals, buy diamonds or coffee from companies associated with slave-like labor, or palm oil because its harvesting destroys the tropical forests, or watch American football to protest constant stress of trauma for players, I refuse to play big name games. It is a moral stance. Once in a while I spend some time playing an indie game and before I do that I make sure to find the site or the blog of the producer.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure that level of crunch is generally lower in indie companies. In theory, they might be struggling more, they are in disadvantageous position against big companies, they have to do more experiments and take more risks than AAA, which make the same "press X to hollywood" or network shooters for the last 20 years.

(I don't play big companies' (modern) games, because almost always I'm not in target audience and find such games completely unplayable)

<comment><USER15> Yeah, if crunch is the moral issue, then indie companies are more prone to work/life balance issues than even the AAA developers. Indie companies have the usual startup issues of either the developers are moonlighting after their day jobs (working two jobs, a personal crunch) or pushed hard for "passion" to work hard (crunch) to pay the bills when it's still life or death to the company.

A lot of indies directly come from "game jam culture" which celebrates over- taxing developers with crunch "for fun".

Sustainable business practices in the games industry are unlikely to be possible until the industry is much more strongly unionized. At which point it would be more likely for the AAA games to be union shops and/or able to afford unionized workers to work on games.

<comment><USER16> Indie workers get rewarded proportionally for their crunch though. AAA workers seem to have to crunch for their base salary and good luck ever seeing an extra penny if the game becomes a phenomenon like fortnite did. meanwhile notch is a billionaire now and his employees are all comfortable millionaires

<comment><USER15> Indie workers _may_ get rewarded for their crunch efforts. Usual startup worker caveats apply that far more indie development companies bankrupt than succeed, and even in a small, early startup not all stock is equivalent (depending on funding sources and corporate politics).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Semi related, but Epic pays 25%+ above market.

<comment><USER18> How much is your health and sanity worth?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honest question, why would competent developers subject themselves to this kind of treatment? If a company ever "requested" that I work Saturday or Sunday I'd be gone later that same day.

<comment><USER20> Because videogames are glamorous and a significant portion of people in CS went into it for the specific purpose of working in videogames. As such it's one of the rare sectors in our industry where employers do not struggle too much to hire fresh blood.

At the risk of sounding a bit jaded I don't feel _too_ bad about overworked videogame developers. The vast majority of them can quit at any point and probably land a job in some other sector of the industry, probably with better work conditions and a better salary.

Developers _chose_ to work for these videogame studios. They chose the glamour of being able to say "I wrote some code for GTA V" rather than the comfort and quality of life of being able to say "I write backend code for a flower shop".

<comment><USER21> I get it, some jobs are more desirable than others, and there has to be some reason for people to take the less glamorous job, but that barrier could just be skill. I support hard work when it comes to training. Hey, you want to make video games, well it's a really competitive field and you better train your ass off in order to be the best at what you do. I think generally, leveraging passion in order to get people to work really hard is good. They get fulfillment out of it, and everyone else gets a great product.

But that's not what this is. This is investors and executives who found a money pump and are pumping as hard as they possibly can without any regards for the health and wellbeing of the human machine they're putting pressure on. At some point, you have to give people the time to live their lives outside of work or the world is going to become a worse place. They become stressed and depressed, and it affects their families and friends, and and then has a ripple effect on society.

<comment><USER20> I agree with you completely, I'm not arguing that these studios are behaving ethically. I'm just pointing out that the fact that videogame studios have bad working conditions has been public knowledge for a long time and the engineers who apply for these jobs have to be aware of it. Yet they still decide to get into these jobs even though I'm certain that the vast majority of them could land a more comfortable and probably better paid developer job elsewhere.

I realize that I'm playing the "blame the victim" game and I'm not entirely comfortable with that but in this case it reminds me of that guy who knowingly got in touch with a cannibal to get eaten. If you know what's going to happen and you still on your own free will and without external pressure decide to continue on that path can you really complain that things are exactly how you knew they were going to be?

Are these people coerced in any way to work for these game studios? Were they lied to? Didn't they know that AAA game development is a thankless, soul- crushing task with very tight deadlines and terrible work ethics? Because I remember having almost exactly this conversation with a friend at school more than 15 years ago when he told me he wanted to become a game developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Game devs need to unionize. Now. This madness has got to stop.

<comment><USER23> I love the downvotes for suggesting unionization. Very nice, HN.

<comment><USER24> HN is full of people who fit the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" stereotype perfectly. Droves of developers sure that one day their SaaS site will make them rich, that one day they'll sell their side-project to google.

Most of us won't!

<comment><USER25> When people make criticisms of the HN community that apply just as much to any large sample of humans in general, I don't think they're really talking about HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Working more than 40 hours is stupid, but I can see doing it for very short times. In a culture where you are branded as not a team player if you don't work 70+ hours a week uncompensated is exactly what Marx called exploitation. You make other people wealthy while you burn yourself out. No matter the job its not worth it. If however you own the company it might be worth the risk of killing yourself, but it's not right to make other people do it to enrich yourself. Not that that ever stopped people from demanding others do it (see Jack Ma for an example).

</comment><comment><USER27> It's remarkable how someone will always find a way to lambast successful companies even if it means faulting them for becoming successful and relevant in the first place.

<comment><USER3> > faulting them for becoming successful and relevant in the first place.

Sorry but I'm going to call out bad work practices that run counter to building a better product when I see it _regardless_ of the success.

Crunch destroys lives(remember easpouse?) and has no place in that industry.

<comment><USER28> When you have a tiger by the tail (either literally or figuratively), it's not unreasonable to temporarily increase your level of effort beyond that which is long-term sustainable.

I've done it (in games, in 2 other startups, and in finance). I still do it now sometimes when waves of unrelated work all happen to peak near the same time.

<comment><USER23> It is unreasonable to force developers to increase their level of effort.

Manage adequately, hire more people if necessary. There are other solutions that going "welp, we're successful, better work even more hours now".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are good tech jobs that don't require being good at interviewing? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Nepotism can be your friend. Meet people through meetups, open source projects, conferences, non-profit volunteer work, etc. When people know and respect you already and you have an internal champion, the interview process often is much smoother. You'll be more confortable too when you know them. You might even bypass some of the process as well.

<comment><USER3> I think the word "networking" (not usually a negative) would fit better than "nepotism" (almost always seen as a negative) here. Hiring your friends - ahead of other candidates who might be better qualified - might well be considered nepotism, but going out of your way to make friends with people in the hope that they might hire you probably isn't nepotism as most people would understand it.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that "networking" as a term has been diluted to mean "introduce yourself to powerful strangers" as opposed to "build a network of people in your industry that respect you".

With a good network, you can find a job. With good networking, you have a nice Rolodex without much influence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wrong question - the right question is "which companies don't have the typical whiteboard interview". Mine didn't, and it's a regular software engineer job.

Here's a list of some - never used it but was on here a while back:

[https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without- whiteboards](https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards)

<comment><AUTHOR> _Wrong question - the right question is "which companies don't have the typical whiteboard interview"._

Wrong assumption - the majority of my on-site interviews don't even use whiteboards. They involve discussing real world problems and work experiences with me. I still do not get offers from them.

<comment><USER6> To be honest, I agree with the parent that the question is wrong. No company wants employees that are bad at interviewing. No company wants employees that are bad at anything, in fact.

Maybe it helps to contact the company that rejected you and ask them why they rejected you. This would allow you to narrow down your weaknesses and improve these skills. I've never tried this myself, so I'm not sure how common such a request is, but it seems like a sensible thing to do.

<comment> bjelkeman-again I don't think you will get very straight answers from most.

<comment><USER7> Or even a response for that matter.

<comment><USER8> Or, if you do get a response, it's usually a "can't sue me" copout like "not enough experience" or "wrong cultural fit".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This might sound a little strange, but I would say programming. I have worked in the industry 25+ years now, and I've never had what I would call an interview. I've had informal lunches with the CIO, met the team at BBQ's, like that, but never anything more rigorous. On top of that, I'm fairly introverted, and don't have many friends, but I do have a large number of acquaintances, I'm known to be a good and loyal employee (I don't switch jobs near as often as the norm) and have kept up my skills (I hope) fairly well. I've gotten jobs because people knew about me, essentially, so it can be done.

I kind of fear when I actually have to do an interview. I'm hoping I make it to the end of my career before that happens.

<comment><USER10> This is similar to me, but for engineering. Getting jobs via networking is much, much easier than cold-calling an interview.

Talk to your friends and workmates, ex-managers etc. If you've done good work in the past, people will be happy to get you in on the fast track. Companies hate doing interviews, so anything they can do to streamline that process they will generally do.

I'd broaden that to networking in general. Tech presentations also raise your profile, especially with manager types who attend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Every friend, colleague and former manager that I talk to has either lead to an interview (so I still don't skip interviewing) which I don't pass, but most of the time they just give me the same basic reply of: "I don't know of any job openings but I'll keep an eye out". No matter what time of the year, no matter how they're doing.

I am at a loss for networking ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Starting a startup. Honestly, the lack of control I felt at interviewing at the top tech firms back in college and my only average GPA was a big motivator for me to start my own business. I hated the idea that my career was out of my control and would depend on whether I could answer challenging interview questions under stress or my GPA/school. This was also at the peak of the ridiculous mythical word problems Microsoft, Google, et al were known for, and those were not my forte whatsoever.

Best decision I ever made

<comment><USER12> For another perspective, my GPA was at the top of my graduating class in CS but I still had a similar train of thought as you. I fundamentally philosophically disagreed with how broken interviewing in the tech industry is especially at the bigger companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Depends on what part of the interviewing process is slowing you down.

Your other comment indicates that your question is not "what jobs interview with day-to-day challenges rather than google-scale hypotheticals"

>They involve discussing real world problems and work experiences with me. I still do not get offers from them.

The question should not be "how do I run from this problem"

It is first "how do i get a credible assessment of why I didn't receive offers"

and then "how do I build or repair that area of my skills"

This applies equally if not especially to "soft skills" aka "how am I perceived by other humans".

edit: I poked back into your history and it seems that you figured this out with your question from ~20 days ago. That's the right thread to pull IMO and it looks like that post got some responses. I'd say keep pushing in that area - sub one month is a very short timeline for both personal growth and varied interview rounds.

<comment><AUTHOR> My soft skills are good enough on the job. I hardly get complaints about communication issues with co-workers and also have taken part in client meetings at some companies, discussing their goals and requirements. I keep on track with everyone that is needed for a project.

But almost everything about soft skills on a job interview feels too orthogonal and dissimilar to my applied work soft skills. Interviews like that are more suited for sales jobs, I think. Sales skills seem like they have been put on a pedestal. Therefore I cannot see these interviews as an accurate representation of most soft skills at work.

Edit: Also about my older thread, are you referring to the one about returning to an office job after 2 years of being away from it? I really do feel like this is what I need and almost all the jobs I apply to require daily 9-5 office work. I'm a homebody and hang out only with 3 people regularly. It remains to be seen on the "when" of I'll get that kind of job.

<comment><USER14> > My soft skills are good enough on the job. I hardly get complaints about > communication issues

This isn't about you, I don't know you, and you may well be the exception to this. But, given that; in my experience everyone I've ever met in person who claims that their social skills are not why their (not just coding) interview skills are lacking is wrong. Often they're wrong because they don't even realize it, because their peers know that communications skills are lacking and then don't even raise the issue to avoid the possibility of a (quite common) poor reception of the feedback. Don't assume the lack of criticism as an endorsement. If someone thinks you lack something technically but have strong communication, they'll tell you that. If someone thinks you lack communication skills, they'll do their best to avoid treading on the viper, because they don't know how you'll respond.

> But almost everything about soft skills on a job interview feels too > orthogonal and dissimilar to my applied work soft skills. Interviews like > that are more suited for sales jobs, I think.

I'm not even 100% sure what you mean by that, but I read it as "I don't really need the skills you think I do." Again, I'm not sure that's what you meant, but as a disinterested third party, if I read it that way, I'd be surprised if some interviewers don't.

<comment><AUTHOR> > their peers know that communications skills are lacking and then don't even > raise the issue to avoid the possibility of a (quite common) poor reception > of the feedback.

That's an interesting thought. It never occurred to me that feedback on technical skills is more commonly given than feedback on communication skills. How did you discover that?

Also, withholding certain kinds of feedback because of fear of reprisal does not seem like an effective way to manage or improve your employees. So they'd rather fire you without telling you how you needed to improve? That doesn't sound like good management to me and it sounds like these are the types of managers I should avoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You are being interviewed to see if you have the technical skills to do the job, and to see how you well you interact with other people. You must learn to be confident and friendly. These are foundational skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do some people (which includes me, I guess) have poorer foundational skills while being better at certain specialized field-specific skills, such as programming?

<comment><USER16> You most likely work on your field specific skills orders of magnitude more often/intensely. What have you done to develop your foundational skills in general? Where are you weak? Where are you strong? What have you studied recently to make them better?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am weak in closing the deal with job interviews, mainly. However I don't know what is the average ratio of offers to interviews for developers applying to mid-level jobs.

So I guess you're saying I should be studying people skills, I guess? I often hear that I need to get mock interviews but there are few official sources for it. Also it's not very instructive to tell someone to just find any friend. Most people do not have experience interviewing programmers, so they wouldn't be good for mock interviews. And mock interviewing with friends would introduce too much of a positive bias you won't have from strangers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Work for yourself?

Whenever we need to hit consultants for some work, we NEVER make them do technical exercises. We just trust their word.

However, the people that want a steady paycheck are put through much more tedious tasks for less pay.

<comment><USER18> The last place I worked with consultant hiring.. an employee hire was like a full day of interviews.. consultant hire was 30 minute phone screen "Do you know what an ArrayList is"?

Logic being it was very easy to fire bad consultants. Employees it was more work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The armed forces are screaming for tech people and really dont care about your interview skills. The US marines are even talking about dropping thier basic training requirements IOT get more tech people.

<comment><USER20> Don't they have low age requirements?

<comment><USER14> Yes. That said, most military recruitment requirements are requirements in the same way that "10 years of React experience" is a requirement... They ask for the world and make exceptions to get the people they want. But the bigger the exception, the more bureaucracy you should expect to wade through to make it happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I'm not certain what that age limit is, but their requirements sound strict. FWIW I am 34 years old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would get better at interviewing. I know sounds not helpful but its a useful skill.

<comment><USER21> Pretty much this. Once you get to the point that interviews are fun, you look forward to them.

<comment><USER22> I'd phrase it this way. If you're nervous and fumble interviews, don't stop going. Go to more interviews instead. After a while you'll be so used to it that your body stops reacting that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Startups and companies where technology is not their main product seem to have easier interview processes. If you can find a company that is contracting out their tech and wants to start developing in-house then they do not necessarily have a rigid tech hiring process.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was just going to post something along this line.. I've been to the 3-4th stage many times it it all falls when I have to do a video call.. every time ( about 25 interviews so far over the course of 4months). At this point I'm starting to think its more of a "culture" fit then anything else which I really dont like to think about. All of these are remote jobs which is odd cause they dont even have to see me or know my race. Even tried to apply to local jobs, no luck.

But after having pass tech tests, multiple calls and had people very impress about my 10year career its hard to see anything else then the word "culture" in these instances.

<comment><USER25> At any in-person shop or gig you'd have to relocate for, that video call would be your 2nd stage.

I think you're a victim of the process and sheer numbers, tbh. Keep at it and you'll probably land something remote.

<comment><USER24> I guess so, but in one instance I had 2 video interviews in one day with a total of 4 devs( all of the devs of the team). So it seems like it was both a tech interview (which I answered all their questions and was impressed) and then a "culture" test.

Thru take home test passing, inital 2 calls with people then video calls afterwards just to fail just seems odd but maybe I'm overthinking it. Local interviews havn't been well either. They tend to fall apart in the second call (not video). Seems like most people dont do in-shop interview but all over the net now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> All my jobs were from people I met. Even when they have some interview, I get offered the job before the interview, and the interviews are rigged to let me pass.

I normally get filtered out of phone interviews for some reason, with no technical questions. I do perfectly fine when it's a technical interview. I guess I just don't have an attractive personality.

</comment><comment><USER27> Founder, CTO. Lots of other requirements though.</comment>


IDIV DoS (INT_MIN / -1) - <AUTHOR> http://kqueue.org/blog/2012/12/31/idiv-dos/

<comment><USER2> If anyone here has used Second Life's scripting language LSL, they had to work around this issue. Apparently they now calculate x / -1 as -x instead, which gets a counter-intuitive result when x=INT_MIN but doesn't crash. I believe once upon a time this was documented and everything.

<comment><USER3> But -1*INT_MIN is still 1 greater than INT_MAX in two's complement ... so that's signed overflow and thus undefined behavior in C.

Assuming x86 signed overflow behavior, you're just back to INT_MIN again? Or am I crazy?

<comment><USER4> The language in question isn't C, so they can have whatever semantics they want.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, the use of the nym INT_MIN suggested to me that the implementation under the covers was C.

It looks like it was once an interpreter, but is now compiled down to CLR and run with Mono.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me about that fairly recent strtod() infinite loop that caused DoS in several languages.

[http://www.exploringbinary.com/why-volatile-fixes- the-2-2250...](http://www.exploringbinary.com/why-volatile-fixes- the-2-2250738585072011e-308-bug/)

<comment><USER6> Did it affect any languages other than PHP? The linked article suggests that it was PHP only (and this agrees with zend_strtod being the problem function and not any C library implementation of strtod(3)).

<comment><USER5> It affected a whole bunch of languages, libraries and compilers, apparently because the strtod() implementation in question has been a popular copy&paste piece.

This guy here over at <http://blog.andreas.org/display?id=9> mentions at least: "Android libc, gcc libio, gcc java runtime, newlib libc, GNU Mono, Apple's libc, mozilla"

It was particularly nasty because it could easily be exploited simply by putting that specific decimal number into a web form or whatever, and for each request a thread on the backend server would lock a CPU to 100% usage until sysadmins discover and kill those threads, worst case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fixed-precision integer arithmetic is evil.

<comment><USER8> And then a lot of game programmers would disagree :)

I for one just learned to love doubles...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just tried the C version and it compiles and exits gracefully with gcc 4.2.1.

<comment><USER10> That's probably because the code in the article uses compile-time constants as operands. Try this one and pass "-1" as the command-line parameter:

      int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { return (1LL << 63) / atoi(argv[1]); }

Note that this issue has been written about before by Tavis Ormandy: <http://my.opera.com/taviso/blog/show.dml/639454>

<comment><USER9> Floating point exception: 8</comment></comment></comment>


As a climate researcher, should I change my air-travel habits? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01652-2 <comment><USER2> Great example of today's absurdity: climate science student flies >2 flights per month (34 flights in 15 months, helicopter flights excluded), which puts her in probably top 1 % world wide emitters. But flying is fun and beneficial for the career while reducing flying is not, so researchers wrote a letter hoping that others would reduce their emissions.

You can't make that up.</comment>


Show HN: nlpTools API - sentiment analysis of online news media - <AUTHOR> http://nlptools.atrilla.net/web/api.php

<comment><USER2> I might have not fully understood the inner workings of the classifier, but wouldn't it be interesting to allow it to learn/calibrate from user input? Basically, is there any way to apply supervised learning to your classifier?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for your feedback. The classifier behind the scenes has already been trained with a supervised learning algorithm, so it can be customised/adapted to any user input. This is a business case I explore with each customer in order to properly fit the tool to the particularities of their problem (e.g., the specific salient features that represent their data).</comment></comment>


How not to use Powerpoint - <AUTHOR> http://www.5min.com/Video/How-NOT-To-Use-PowerPoint-14562160 <comment><USER2> Any idea where this guy did his act? I woldn't imagine that he'd get a laugh anywhere he went. Although I'd guess that his act would work a lot more places now than even a couple years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> The marketing crack is 100% fair but explainable. Sometimes the only way to justify our existence as marketers is to completely mystify the higher-ups with data-storms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wouldn't it be safer to demonstrate results?

<comment><USER3> Only when there are _good_ results to generate. Even then better to overload with information so that it won't look completely different from when we need to present poor results in the same manner.</comment></comment></comment>


Kahuna CEO Adam Marchick Steps Down - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/02/08/kahuna-ceo-adam-marchick/ <comment><USER2> Top 3 links are all about execs stepping down, now a 4th one? I'm wondering how all of these step downs will affect the tech sector in the stock market tomorrow especially with the recent downturns in the stock market already.</comment>


Chrome, Safari, and Edge to Prevent Disabling of Click Tracking Privacy Risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/major-browsers-to-prevent-disabling-of-click-tracking-privacy-risk/ <comment><USER2> > Firefox 66, Firefox Beta 67, and Firefox Nightly 68 disable Hyperlink > auditing by default

In the same vein, with Chromium-based browsers, web sites have priority in deciding whether a connection can be made for pre-fetching purpose, even when the user explicitly disable pre-fetching in browser settings.[1]

Firefox properly respects the disabling of pre-fetching.[2]

* * *

[1] [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=785125](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=785125)

[2] [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=785125...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=785125#c15)

</comment><comment><USER3> Similar to some others here, I always thought that most sites used JavaScript click handlers that send the host which links are clicked (where the target is visited directly and not through a redirect link).

Firefox with extensions is _the solution_ we should evangelize as some browsers become hostile to user privacy or just change things and pretend it's not a big deal ( __ _cough_ __Chrome __ _cough_ __).

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it really a privacy risk if there is no escalation? Exactly the same thing can be done, guaranteed, if JavaScript is enable. The UX is just objectively worse without this feature due to lag leaving the page.

So why make the UX worse for a callback function when the site can do it no matter what?

The only argument I can think of is that if the callback is slower, then sites may decide they don't want the data because it slows down a user leaving their site by maybe a few hundred milliseconds.

Is that really the mentality of a site which is going to track you without permission? And if they _have_ your permission, we should provide the JavaScript tools to make it _fast_.

<comment><USER5> A couple of reasons, in order of what I believe to be the strongest to most controversial:

First, hyperlink auditing works without Javascript enabled. Even if most users will have Javascript enabled, some won't. This moves auditing from "a thing that you _could_ disable if you were willing to block JS" to "a thing that's always on no matter what."

Secondly, to quote Chrome's dev team, you want developers to fall into a "pit of success."

The ping link is _so_ easy to use that it's something a developer can add without thinking. This encourages its inclusion in copy-paste code/tutorials. You're right that a site that wants to make use of something like this is probably not thrown off just because they need to add a click handler. But for someone who's newer to web development, it might make a difference.

Developer friction can add up -- if tracking is universally more complicated than writing normal code, more developers will do the "right" thing purely by virtue of laziness.

Finally, and most controversially, there is a line of thought that says that _end user experience_ ought to be better on sites that are doing the right thing. You're right that a site that wants to track users is not going to be deterred by a hundred millisecond delay. But users might notice.

If performance on "good" and "bad" sites are the same, the theory is that companies that respect users are at a strict disadvantage to companies that take advantage of them. Over time, users will migrate to the services that don't respect their privacy because of the extra resources being poured into those sites.

Again, not everyone agrees with this -- but the idea is that if you're building an ethical site, you should have at least a few competitive advantages build in that might influence users to stick with you -- for instance, a snappier site.

<comment><USER6> If you're willing to block JS, you can also trivially run an extension that strips all `ping` attributes from the page. And without JS you don't have to worry about the attributes being added back after the stripping.

> _Developer friction can add up -- if tracking is universally more > complicated than writing normal code, more developers will do the "right" > thing purely by virtue of laziness._

Developers don't add ping attributes because it's easy. They add them because they're required to for analytics reasons. They _will do this_ no matter what, so what we want to optimize for here is the user experience.

You say that users will naturally migrate to sites that don't have the bad UX inherent in javascript-based or redirect-based link tracking, but experience shows that's not true. Some of the most popular sites on the planet do this and users haven't been driven away.

<comment><USER5> I'm not here to argue which of these reasons are correct; I'm only here to explain some of the arguments that exist. That being said,

> _If you 're willing to block JS, you can also trivially run an extension > that strips all `ping` attributes._

Sure. Ublock Origin already does this today at the request level, so you don't even need to worry about pages re-adding the attributes. But we could just as easily use this argument to get rid of every privacy-protecting decision in the browser. Why should Firefox care about Canvas fingerprinting if an extension can block it instead?

For better or worse (some would argue worse) browsers have been slowly pulling privacy/tracking improvements from extensions into their core. I don't think they're close enough to a full solution that anyone should skip extensions like Ublock Origin or UMatrix, but I don't fault them for trying.

> _Developers don 't add ping attributes because it's easy._

Like you correctly mentioned above, ping attributes are trivial to block. If a developer is being forced to implement tracking, even with ping attributes available more broadly, they're still gonna use an additional method that gets through the most widely used ad blockers on the market -- and that means Javascript click events. Force-enabling the ping attribute will not change a single thing about that developer's approach.

The only developers who are going to be influenced by this change are hobbyists and engineers for small-time businesses that don't already have a massive analytics concern. I think it's reasonable to focus on its impact to them.

> _You say that users will naturally migrate to sites that don 't have the bad > UX... but experience shows that's not true._

Don't be too pessimistic, loading speed is one of the primary reasons why the average person installs an adblocker to begin with. It is very hard to get people to care about privacy, but lots of people are still installing ad blockers purely because they improve the UX experience. That's a success story.

Of course, 100 milliseconds on its own is not going to make someone abandon a site. But when you make a lot of tiny compromises, they add up to big ones. And as of 2018, Google is _still_ publishing statistics that say a 3 second load time will lose you 53% of your potential visitors.[0]

I know it seems like users don't care about this, but there's a nontrivial amount of data that suggests they do.

[0]: [https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data- mea...](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data- measurement/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/)

<comment><USER6> > _Sure. Ublock Origin already does this today at the request level, so you > don 't even need to worry about pages re-adding the attributes. But we could > just as easily use this argument to get rid of every privacy-protecting > decision in the browser. Why should Firefox care about Canvas fingerprinting > if an extension can block it instead?_

I view browsers supporting ping as absolutely a privacy-protecting measure. As long as the browser can be relied-upon to support it, developers will use it instead of more invasive techniques, which means not only is it a better UX for the users, but the amount of information collected by each ping is a known quantity, and browsers can also do things like defer executing ping requests for battery reasons or to reduce the amount of timing information given to the recipient.

I would have no objection to browsers disabling pings if JavaScript is also disabled at the browser level, but that's a fairly niche edge case and I don't have any strong opinions there (and of course even with JS disabled a site could still serve up a static page where all outbound links go through a redirect domain anyway; supporting pings by default even with JS disabled encourages developers to just always use it, and then the people who really care can run an extension to disable it).

> _Like you correctly mentioned above, ping attributes are trivial to block. > If a developer is being forced to implement tracking, even with ping > attributes available more broadly, they 're still gonna use an additional > method that gets through the most widely used ad blockers on the market -- > and that means Javascript click events. Force-enabling the ping attribute > will not change a single thing about that developer's approach._

The more privacy-protecting measures browsers have by default, the less aggressive people will be about using third-party extensions to do the same thing. And given what I said above, it might be a good idea fo adblockers to allow pings by default and only disable them upon request. As you said, if ping isn't reliable developers will use something else, so the goal here is _make ping reliable_. If it's reliable, people will use it, and using ping is far better than the other techniques available.

> _Don 't be too pessimistic, loading speed is one of the primary reasons why > the average person installs an adblocker to begin with. It is very hard to > get people to care about privacy, but lots of people are still installing ad > blockers purely because they improve the UX experience. That's a success > story._

We're talking about delays clicking on outbound links though. If a big site adds 100ms to the loading time of outbound links, most users are going to blame the external site for that because they don't understand that the delay is being added before the request is made. This means that big sites can add outbound link tracking with very little penalty, and in fact the additional delay, if anything, is going to encourage users to stay on the site instead of visiting external sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> :reading the title: Why doesn't they mention the stance of Firefox on this?

> Of all the browsers I tested, only Brave and Firefox currently disable it by > default and do not appear to have any plans on enabling it in the future.

Oh, that's why.

</comment><comment><USER8> <a ping> was disabled in Firefox back in 2008 [1]. The rationale was that navigator.sendBeacon() (which wasn't enabled until 2014 [2]) would be a more general solution, not for privacy reasons. Without <a ping> or navigator.sendBeacon(), websites will still use redirects or other JavaScript ping scripts. With <a ping> or navigator.sendBeacon(), the browser can delay or deprioritize those ping requests (to reduce performance impact on page loading) or allow extensions to block them.

But if popular websites are using <a ping> for other browsers, then perhaps Firefox should re-enable support to avoid the performance overhead of link redirects.

[1] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=415168](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=415168)

[2] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=990220](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=990220)

</comment><comment> m-p-3 This further solidifies my choice to remain with Firefox.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. Until Firefox pulls a dick move, that is. And I wonder what then...

<comment><USER10> Yes, Firefox is the good one here but it seems we're slowly being squeezed on all sides as browsers gradually become dumbed-down and noncustomisable "consumption portals".

<comment><USER11> Firefox started gaining over IE6 when techies started installing it on their friends PCs. It was faster and it got traction instantaneously despite all those made for IE web sites.

Selling privacy is not as easy as to sell speed but if we start installing Firefox again it can gain back some of its former share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess I'll have to inject some JS to delete ping attributes while browsing in Safari.

This move is very counter to Apple's privacy stance.

<comment><USER13> That could be countered by other JS on the page.

<comment><USER12> Indeed, but I just learned about the DOM mutation API[1], that can be used here. This also makes sense when additional content is loaded later via AJAX (was achieving that with _setInterval_ ).

1: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/MutationObs...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/MutationObserver)

<comment><USER14> I wonder if whoever sets these attributes has also set appropriate DOM mutation listeners therefore creating and endless tug-of-war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can't you just add click event listeners in JavaScript to do the same thing? Honestly I never knew the ping spec existed and thought that was what people were using to accomplish this.

<comment><USER16> Yes, unless JS is disabled, now even disabling JS isn't enough. This move sucks hard. Please, everyone, move to Firefox now, even if it's only for personal browsing (use what you must for work), and write a strongly worded message to the maker of the browser you are leaving.

<comment><USER17> If you have JavaScript disabled they can still redirect you through a portal page to capture your visit and then send you to the actual link.

<comment><USER18> But that means they have to send links to the tracking page, that will show the tracking page on hover as the link destination etc.

That is much more noticeable than sending a link that shows www.google.com but instead goes somewhere else on click.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Who thought this feature would be a good idea seriously? It will be abused to no-end by trackers and script kiddies.

<comment><USER20> How is it abusing the feature to use it exactly as intended? The standard is literally called "hyperlink auditing." Tracking clicks is the entire point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So how is the long-term outlook for Firefox? I believe that the Yahoo deal is (or already has) set to expire, so how will the browser keep afloat financially? I fear Google boxing out Firefox into a small corner of the market somehow.

<comment><USER22> Despite the shrinking userbase Firefox is still quite a decently sized market.

With both Bing and Google still existing I don't see why Mozilla wouldn't continue being able to negotiate a good sized contract from one or the other for default search placements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Am I reading this wrong or are the browser vendors making it seem like this is a good feature for privacy?

<comment><USER24> The argument is that it's privacy neutral since this kind of tracking can already happen with JS or no JS with redirects both of which are widely deployed already.

* There's now a spec/standard for the data exchange.

* Users get faster websites, can see the actual destination URL on hover, and maybe a _slight_ security improvement in the event that the server component performing the tracking redirects is compromised.

* It's easier to find the ping attributes on links than untangle all the JS on a page.

* For extension developers this actually increases privacy (assuming it's adopted en mass) because now you can just remove all the ping attributes on links rather than unbind click handlers which might end up breaking the page.

<comment><USER25> End users can at least disable JS to solve JS-based privacy concerns. So the act of removing methods to disable this is at least a tiny bit on the anti- privacy side of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I endorse this: if devs use this my rewrite proxy that manages all my port 80 and 443 traffic can filter them out. If it's a weird blob of javascript I can't reliably do this.

</comment><comment><USER27> What is the intended use case for this feature?

<comment><USER28> WhatWG says it exists because it's more performant and transparent to end users than js or redirect based tracking.

It also says the end user can disable it. Guess that bit is being dropped?:

 _" The ping attribute is redundant with pre-existing technologies like HTTP redirects and JavaScript in allowing Web pages to track which off-site links are most popular or allowing advertisers to track click-through rates.

However, the ping attribute provides these advantages to the user over those alternatives:

It allows the user to see the final target URL unobscured. It allows the UA to inform the user about the out-of-band notifications. It allows the user to disable the notifications without losing the underlying link functionality. It allows the UA to optimize the use of available network bandwidth so that the target page loads faster.

Thus, while it is possible to track users without this feature, authors are encouraged to use the ping attribute so that the user agent can make the user experience more transparent."_

[https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#hyperlink-...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#hyperlink- auditing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's also a space separated list, so you can ping multiple endpoints for one click.

</comment><comment><USER29> Oh, so we're going back to the age of `/track_exit.php?base64_url=aHR0cHM6Ly9leGFtcGxlLm9yZy8=`?

</comment><comment><USER30> I've just released an extension for blocking ping requests: [https://github.com/dessant/ping-blocker](https://github.com/dessant/ping- blocker)

It will be available on the Chrome Web Store once the listing is reviewed: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jkpocifanmihboebfh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jkpocifanmihboebfhigkjcdihgfcdnb)

The extension is not needed if you already use uBlock Origin, because the latter disables hyperlink auditing by default.

</comment><comment><USER31> "A HTML standard called hyperlink auditing that allows sites to track link clicks is enabled by default on Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Microsoft Edge, but will soon have no way to disable it."

With "standards" like these, it does not sound like end users are involved in the "standards-making" process.

Maybe users need their own set of "standards" and browser authors can decide whether or not they want to implement them.

For example, one (implemented) standard might be the ability to disable automatic loading of images.

Another standard might be the option to disable CSS.

Another might be the ability to disable DNS prefetch.

And so on.

<comment><USER32> I was involved in W3C and WHATWG when ping was specified. Not sure if I meet your definition of "end user", but I'm a web developer, and I use websites, too…

This feature was specced, because sites use JS and HTTP redirects to do click tracking anyway. HTTP-based tracking (like t.co) can't even be bypassed.

With or without ping you get the exact same amount of tracking, but with ping at least the tracking can be made more transparent, lower priority and not delaying the navigation.

The problem is that as long as ping is less reliable than JS and HTTP, sites will continue to use JS and HTTP. You don't get less tracking, you only get less performant tracking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Part of me wonders if the big push for tls everywhere was less about privacy and more about making it harder to filter out stuff like this. But regardless I can see some utilitarian aspects to this feature, it is all the Sneaky Pete stuff I object to. Why not be transparent and open about this feature being used? Because they know people object if they knew. It might not even be legal to use this in the EU.

<comment><USER10> No kidding. If you look at the vehement opposition against even "border" MITM proxies, it's not surprising to make such an assumption. They want to use the "security" argument to force users into consuming all the crap they _don 't_ want too (a form of "anti-user security".)

(Disclaimer: I use one, and it works _very_ well at filtering stuff out before it even gets to the browser.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If only the Firefox devtools were as good as Chrome's.

I've switched to Firefox but somethings are blockers for me. Webpack hot reloading doesn't work :(

Other than that, it's a very solid browser. The only way someone's gonna win against chrome is by keeping the user first.

Super sad to see Apple privacy double speak when Safari isn't even walking the talk.

</comment><comment><USER35> Pretty user-hostile. Time to install Firefox.

<comment><USER36> But see this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19597268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19597268)

<comment><USER37> Still user-hostile, because it reduces user choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There should be some better control around this feature. For example you might feel ok about first party click tracking but not third party. Or you may just want to shut the feature off completely. You shouldn't need a browser extension to do this for you.

<comment><USER39> I can agree with this. The option to disable or prevent cross-domain posts sounds like an entirely reasonable request.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There is all other problem in many webbrowser too and I wrote a document how to better.

Better is design (anything!) by UNIX philosophy, which is: you have enough ropes to hang yourself, and also a few more just in case.

</comment><comment><USER41> What would be interesting is that we move away from domain blacklists (e.g. adblocks, /etc/hosts, pi hole, etc.) to domain/ips whitelists (like firewalls).

</comment><comment><USER39> Can't you just make/use a browser plugin that removes all ping="" attributes from anchor tags?

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm guessing an extension could search-and-replace the DOM pretty easily?

</comment><comment><USER43> do any major websites use this ping= attribute?

<comment><USER44> Google search results. Great way to see which results are popular, and still allow users to copy links straight from the search results.

<comment><USER45> I don't see it when I inspect Google Search results. Instead I see a mouse down handler that rewrites the link's href to go through a google.com redirector. How did you spot the use of `ping`? Maybe they are running an A/B test.

<comment><USER44> Must have been an A/B test or something else specific to my setup. Saw it on google.co.uk in Chrome in the source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Just turn off JavaScript when using a browser. It does break a lot of things, but you can whitelist domains where you feel the JavaScript provides additional value (e.g., your banking website may require JS for login).

It makes the first week or so of web browsing a little mechanical, having to manually whitelist. But it's worth it. The Web is so performant with JavaScript disabled.

<comment><USER47> The ping feature does not require JavaScript.

<comment><USER48> Not to mention that css is Turing Complete.

... and then you have Javascript at the edge (e.g. Cloud flare workers, etc).

The act of circumventing tracking can ironically make you more identifiable. How many users toggle Do Not Track, how many disable Javascript and share the same user agent and ip block...

Until there are strong privacy defaults used by the masses, one has to go through ridiculous lengths to get anything more than the illusion of privacy.</comment></comment></comment>


Plants, parasites may communicate using messenger RNA - <AUTHOR> http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2014/08/081514-cals-talkingplants.html <comment><USER2> Cool findings. It's encouraging to see that Science published a paper based pretty much only on sequencing data.

The next step is to find out the mechanism of how mRNA gets transferred from parasite to host. How does the mRNA exist stably in the inter-cellular space? Are there specialized transport proteins? How does it get through the cell membrane? Are the mRNA actually getting actively translated? Is codon usage between host and parasite similar?</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best feedback you've ever gotten? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> "Just tell the story"

It actually comes from writing for the screen. Our novelistic and theatrical instincts compel us to fill a page with decorative flourishes demonstrating our creative elan. But our audience is just craving a memorable tale.

Obviously just as applicable to pitching your startup ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great advice. I admire pg for pushing for that, both in the YC applications and in his writing.</comment></comment>


The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2017/press.html <comment><USER2> Congrats! Cryo-EM is the tool that basically gave birth to integrative structural biology. Our understanding of how viruses attach to healthy cells, or how blastocysts differentiate into stem cells is all contingent upon our ability to observe these processes in vivo. And as we push ever further down into the atomic scale, using better electron detectors and more intelligent Bayesian estimations, many hidden mysteries of cell functioning will soon be revealed.

For example, seeing the structure and attack vector of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite that causes severe malaria has led to the design for an inhibitor.

The cryo-EM structure of the Plasmodium falciparum 20S proteasome and its use in the fight against malaria.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27286897](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27286897)

Hexahydroquinolines are antimalarial candidates with potent blood-stage and transmission-blocking activity

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-017-0007-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-017-0007-4)

<comment><USER3> What are some good introductory texts/resources to read to get up to your level of understanding in these topics? Is this a biochem, virology, molecular bio area of study?

<comment><USER2> Invaluable for understanding the Central Dogma of molecular biochemistry:

[https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret- life-...](https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life- mitx-7-00x-6)

Followed by a daily diet of Nature, Cell, & Science

<comment><USER3> Much obliged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a former chemistry student from way back, this is awesome stuff that was science-fiction back then. Imaging chemical reactions in mid-flight is one of those things people have always wanted.

<comment><USER5> Wasn't that done by Herschbach and Lee with molecular beams?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The computational problem for solving Cryo-EM structures is an interesting one. The current state-of-the-art approach is essentially an EM algorithm for classifying and estimating the orientations of the images, but it utilises a fairly brute-force approach (and thus quite computationally expensive). There is probably a lot of room here for further improvements, such as better or faster approximations, or using different statistical/machine learning approaches, as well as incorporating more chemical/structural knowledge into the process.

The software I'm most familiar with is relion, which is open source: [https://github.com/3dem/relion](https://github.com/3dem/relion)

</comment><comment><USER7> just the other day i was looking at this cryo-EM playlist, seems relevant now: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8_xPU5epJdctoHdQjpfH...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8_xPU5epJdctoHdQjpfHmd_z9WvGxK8-)

</comment><comment><USER8> A bit off topic. Say, 5-10 years ago I read about someone winning a nobel prize for something he did regarding blood. When he was asked in the interview how he came about the discovery, he replied having imagined himself as that particular "compound" traveling through the blood stream while on Acid. Later on I tried searching for that to see who it was but couldn't find it. Now I wonder if it's true.

<comment><USER9> Are you thinking of Kary Mullis?

<comment><USER8> Now I am. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the second nobel price in five years going to protein structure prediction. Pretty exciting stuff!

<comment><USER11> This is not prediction, it's structure determination. Though there is a lot of computation and modelling involved, it's much more like X-ray crystallography and NMR than ab initio structure prediction. It's based on actual, measured data, not on computation alone.

It is very impressive that they managed to get the resolution of the method into a range comparable to the other conventional methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this means that the super resolution microscopy techniques are also in line for a Nobel...

<comment><AUTHOR> Awarded the 2014 prize:

[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2014/)</comment></comment>


Pentagon: U.S. to respond to cyber-attacks with conventional force - <AUTHOR> http://volokh.com/2011/05/30/pentagon-concludes-cyber-attack-can-be-act-of-war/

<comment><USER2> So by that logic Iran could justifiably attack the western nations that created Stuxnet.</comment>


Microsoft posts record revenue in spite of flat Windows market - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/#!/microsoft/news/2011/07/microsoft-posts-record-revenue-in-spite-of-flat-windows-market.ars <comment><USER2> _the only division to post a drop in revenue was the Windows and Windows Live division_

If Live Messenger is any indication of how this division operates, the reason for this is exceedingly clear. They manage to make their software less user friendly, slower, more of a memory hog, and crash more with every major update. Additionally, they manage to cut out distinguishing features absent in competitors.

<comment><USER3> I would have to agree. In recent years I'd have to admit that most Microsoft software has been improving...but not Live Messenger. You'd think removing all the features would make it work better. Not so.

No wonder they bought Skype. It must have been for the UI IP. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Online services revenue grew by 17 percent year on year to $662 million for the quarter. Full year revenue was $2.56 billion, up 15 percent. The growth came on the back of a 20 percent increase in advertising revenue, primarily driven by search. The division continues to make losses, however, and in spite of the revenue growth, the losses also grew, up 9 percent to $2.55 billion. Profitability for Online Services remains elusive."

I guess it's not that easy to compete with Google...

<comment><USER5> To really compete in the search game against Google they pretty much have to spend about half the amount that Google does on search, but only get about 11% of the revenue that Google gets.

I think what MS correctly sees is if they can drive up marketshare in search they'll revenue number will grow linearly, but their costs will grow much slower (as they're already largely all in headcount and advertising wise. The big delta would be to get the number of data centers that Google has).

I think its a sound strategy, but they're going to need to more than double their current marketshare before they break even. I think they originally thought that Yahoo would do it, but the Yahoo deal seems to have problems that are hard to pinpoint, at least for an outsider.

<comment><USER6> As a strategy it reminds me a lot of trench warfare in the first world war. They've been trying it for years and years without success so it's hard to see what's going to change.

<comment><USER5> A few things can change:

1) They can the Yahoo partnership working well. In which case they may actually be able to break even with current marketshare. Only MS and Yahoo really know what is broken right now.

2) If Bing continue to grow at this rate they'll be break even in 3 years. Is it worth $7.5B more to have a breakeven search business?

3) Competing on search means that Google has to continue to throw resources at search. MS and Google are both playing the game that they're attacking their competitors strength, so their competitor has to spend a lot resources playing tower defense.

4) Mobile is still largely up for grabs. MS probably realizes that Bing is in a good position to get 30-50% marketshare, especially if WP ever gets 20% marketshare.

While a lot of people like to say, "look at the money they're losing, they should just quit". I honestly don't think they can.

<comment><USER6> Microsoft's strategy back in 2006 was to become #2 in a search duopoly, with a strong focus on the most lucrative forms of search. They've largely executed on it; spending Yahoo into the ground was a key part of it. And they've also increased their search quality, and with Bing's UX differentiated themselves from Google. Kudos to them.

In the process, though, they've starved the rest of their investments online. Remember when MSN Messenger was #1 in a lot of the world, and so was Hotmail? Remember when Spaces had initial momentum in the photo-sharing/blogging world and they were about to introduce Circles? Remember QnA, which had a shot at combining with algorithmic search to duplicate Naver's approach in South Korea? In order to devote resources to search, MS underinvested in the product in all of these areas. For the last several years Google has been far less resource-constrained than MS so #3 cuts against MS.

> Is it work $7.5B more to have a breakeven search business?

You do the math. What's the ROI from investing $7.5B and getting 0 return?

Apparently though that's not how they're making decisions.

<comment><USER5> _with a strong focus on the most lucrative forms of search_

Their revenue hasn't shown they've achieved this. Their search revenue seems about inline with what you'd expect for their marketshare. Not disproportionately higher.

 _Remember when MSN Messenger was #1 in a lot of the world, and so was Hotmail? Remember when Spaces had initial momentum in the photo- sharing/blogging world and they were about to introduce Circles? Remember QnA, which had a shot at combining with algorithmic search to duplicate Naver's approach in South Korea?_

Win Live Messenger ist still #1 in a lot of the world. I Think its #1 worldwide in fact. Hotmail is still top 3 probably (Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail?). But honestly I don't really remember anyone using the other ones. I recall Spaces, but no one was really using it. I donm't recall QnA at all.

I think what MS tried to do was focus. And they decided that search was their focus area in the online space. I don't think it was an unreasonable call. And frankly, I think if I were in charge, I'd do the same thing. And if I were running MS today, I think I'd continue to invest in search -- especially mobile.

<comment><USER6> Well, starting with a position of strength everywhere but search, they've been losing a billion dollars or more a year. They just had to spend $8.5B buying Skype in a market that Messenger should have owned. Microsoft doesn't even have a social network offering. Google's lead in search has continued to grow.

I said at the time that focusing primarily on search was the wrong call. It sure seems to me like results since then have proven me right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only on hackernews: 12 comments and no mention of xbox, one of the powerhouses behind this result. Guys, there's more to this world than cloud, JavaScript and iPhone apps!

<comment><USER8> If it makes you feel better, the first thing I thought upon seeing the headline was 'well, the Xbox market certainly isn't shrinking'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Companies _officially_ declare earnings once a quarter. Isn't day trading purely insider/speculative?

</comment><comment><USER6> "Online services revenue grew by 17 percent year on year to $662 million for the quarter. Full year revenue was $2.56 billion, up 15 percent. The growth came on the back of a 20 percent increase in advertising revenue, primarily driven by search. The division continues to make losses, however, and in spite of the revenue growth, the losses also grew, up 9 percent to $2.55 billion. Profitability for Online Services remains elusive."

Makes GroupOn look like pikers ...

<comment><USER10> Revenue ($2.56B) = losses ($2.55B) ?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should higher education be expensive? - <AUTHOR>

In Belgium we have enjoyed a relatively cheap tuition fee for a number of years: ~600 euro without scholarships. However, with our new (conservative) government this is set to change. They want to cut 413 million euro of government funding, and the only way to recuperate this loss is for institutes to increase tuition fees.
The arguments from both sides boil down to:
In favour of a higher fee: "We don't want to pay for someone else's tuition" and "Higher education should only be for a certain elite". And from the populist side "students should get jobs and stop drinking and attending festivals" or "other countries are way more expensive than Belgium" (mostly pointing towards the USA or the UK).
Against a higher fee: "Everyone should have a chance at higher education" or "look what happens to students in the USA, they start their career with a huge debt" and "in Sweden and Finland there are no fees, and it works as well". And also fear that a new class of citizens is going to appear, who earn just a little over what's required for a scholarship, but won't be able to pay these higher fees.
But these arguments seem too simple, so I was hoping to get stronger arguments on HN for either side. I don't really know which side to choose here, because our tuition fees would still be low after raising them. <comment><USER2> I am torn.

I think every student should have the option to go to college and they should not be limited by their parents' resources.

I also think that not every student should go to college, at least not a standard 4 year university. Many people are better suited to, and would be happier with, a technical school that prepares them for a career, but that it frowned upon. Any student who can get in to college is told that they should go.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are no strong arguments for hypocrisy.

The only people who support the higher fee are the ones who already benefited from the lower fee.

You won't hear a student or young person saying: "Yes, I want to pay more to get an education". It's always the old conservative people who eat the cake and want to have it too.

<comment><USER4> There are people who are not inclined or able to pursue higher education. Should they support those who do? I'd say that Yes, society as a whole does benefit. But if I were someone who couldn't sit still in a classroom, and went to work at 16, I might see matters differently.

<comment><USER3> You're part of a system. And the system educates people and we have to pay for it. When you enjoy privileges like infrastructure, but dismiss paying taxes to educate other people, you're a hypocrite. Who do you think built the world you see today? And with what money? You can't eat the cake and have it too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think education is one of (if not the) most important thing for a coutry (or society, call it what you want). I put it on the same level as health.

As a result I am obviously in favor of free education, or as free as possible.

ps: I am french so my point of view might be biased a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the biggest issues in the US is cost of education. If you have a country that doesn't have that issue, keep it that way. Too many parents have to tell their kids they can't go to college for financial reasons. That's wrong.

<comment><USER7> It's also wrong to force me to pay for your joy ride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think the arguments from either side are too simple. People who recieve free college are in favor. People who must pay the bill are not in favor.

</comment><comment><USER8> _But these arguments seem too simple_

The arguments are too simple. If the government can't figure out a means to pay it which is sustainable, then it can't keep doing it. It either stops of its own volition or the country goes bankrupt/devolves into civil war/whatever and is forced to stop.

This kind of decision cannot be made in a vacuum. There is no one theoretical "correct" answer. It has to be part of a larger view which makes all the pieces work together.</comment>


Email privacy bill unanimously passes U.S. House - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-email-idUSKCN0XO1J7 <comment><USER2> The article is somewhat confusingly worded. Under the ECPA (passed in 1986), a warrant is required to access email less than 180 days old. Back in the days of POP email, when the user checked his email, it would be downloaded and deleted from the server. So the reasoning was that an email still on the server more than 180 days had been "abandoned" there by the user. What this bill does is apply the warrant requirement to emails older than 180 days as well. So the net effect is that accessing any email will now require a warrant.

<comment><USER3> When the NSA intercepts it on the wire, under the presumption of investigating international terrorists (presumably in near-real-time) and the then shares it [0] with domestic three-letter-agencies, does it matter that they need a warrant to get it from "provider" (Google, etc.)?

[0] [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama- admin...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/us/politics/obama- administration-set-to-expand-sharing-of-data-that-nsa-intercepts.html?_r=1)

<comment><USER4> A serious question here: has anyone reading this been arrested, prosecuted or otherwise harassed because of email contents obtained by the NSA? I am not in favor or warrantless searches, but it feels more and more like the tech community treats the NSA like Eastasia.

I certainly could be wrong, thus the question.

<comment><USER4> Downvoted? But no answer? Seems to prove my point that the knee-jerk hatred of the NSA ought to be backed by some real world facts.

<comment><USER5> You appear to be ignoring the fact that even if you consider the NSA's work benevolent, it is only benevolent to US citizens. Meanwhile lots of us on here are, in fact, not US citizens, especially at this time of day. So the NSA's activities are all negative, no positive to non-Americans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So this passed unanimously in the House, and is supported by more than 25% of Senators.

But it might not pass the senate because Grassley doesn't want to discuss it "during an election year"? WTF?!? Where's the controversy? This sounds more like an opportunity for a big bi-partisan win that everyone in both parties could brag about.

<comment><USER7> According to [https://morningconsult.com/2016/04/email-privacy-act- faces-s...](https://morningconsult.com/2016/04/email-privacy-act-faces-senate- hurdles/)

Grassley wants to give civil agencies like the FTC and SEC an exemption.

<comment><USER8> Ahh, that must be the real reason this was passed. Somebody doesn't like the SEC looking at their email.

<comment><USER9> And why shouldn't the SEC need a warrant just like the FBI does?

<comment><USER8> Because the SEC regulates publicly traded companies. If you wish to keep your email private simply don't go public.

<comment><USER10> > _the SEC regulates publicly traded companies_

Nope. The SEC regulates all securities issued by American companies or to American investors. Tesla and SpaceX are both SEC regulated.

<comment><USER11> IMO, there is not much difference in regulating public stock and public debt. If SpaceX wants to borrow from bank of America fine, but if they want to issue trade-able bonds and borrow from John Q Public that's a separate thing.

PS: Arguably this is the same reason banks are regulated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a Boulder, CO resident I'm extremely proud that our representative co- authored this bill. Polis is one of the few representatives that seem to always be on the side of privacy. [http://polis.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3...](http://polis.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398099)

<comment><USER13> As a Vermont resident, I'm happy Senator Batman (Leahy) co-authored the Senate version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My knowledge of US criminal law is limited to what I've grokked from watching crime tv shows, so I'm not clear on the definitions of some terms.

Does a search warrant imply that the person being searched will be notified? I know that a court has to approve the request, but wanted to confirm if it means that the person under suspicion is informed. The way the article contrasts this new law to the current ECPA seems to suggest this is the case.

Additionally, the article mentions requests made to service providers. What if I host my own server? Is it just a case of the law agency making the request to my hosting company, or are they required to contact me to get the information?

<comment><USER13> If you host your own private server, from what I recall reading (and looks consistent with a cursory Google search), a warrant is required to review your emails.

Edit: looks like it only applies to in-home servers, not hosted ones.

<comment><USER15> Host the mail server on DO then download and delete it (heh, a use for POP!) from that to a server in your house.

<comment><USER16> You can also configure it to encrypt incoming mail: [https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...](https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_Email)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Business doesn't care about privacy, until business realizes that the mechanisms used to hunt for terrorists are also used by the IRS.

It will be interesting times for "the cloud" when business realizes that investigations and subpoenas are transparently happening in the background, without the heads-up of marshalls at the doorstep.

<comment><USER18> This will only hurt small to mid-sized businesses like every other piece of legislation or trade regulation. The fine print so small it's invisible: "Does not apply to the oligarchy."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> About fucking time (pardon my language)

<comment><USER19> I'm surprised this passed, to be honest.

<comment><USER20> Unanimously. How often does that happen?

<comment><USER21> In the 113th Congress, it looks like the House of Representatives had 95 unanimous votes, where unanimous is defined as having zero no votes and at least one yes vote. This is out of 1204 votes, based on a quick little script I whipped up.

You can look at the raw data pretty easily thanks to [https://www.govtrack.us/developers/data](https://www.govtrack.us/developers/data)

        rsync -avz --delete --delete-excluded --exclude **/text-versions/ govtrack.us::govtrackdata/congress/113/votes .
        for file in votes/*/h*/data.json; do
            noes=$(jq '(.votes.Nay | length) + (.votes.No | length)'  $file;)
            yeses=$(jq  '(.votes.Yea | length) + (.votes.Aye | length)' $file;)
            if [[ "$yeses" -gt 0 && "$noes" -eq 0 ]]
                then
                echo $file :  "No: $noes" "Yes: $yeses"
            fi
        done | wc -l

In the senate, the number is 87. (The code for the senate is basically the same, except you do

        votes/*/s*/data.json
        instead of
        votes/*/h*/data.json
    )

<comment><USER20> Cool. Thanks. It's the definition of unanimous that's a little fishy. I thought it meant everyone voted Yes for it whereas even a 1 to 0 vote could pass as unanimous, right?

<comment><USER22> That's why we have a quorum. Half of all seated Senators (51) are required to be present for the Senate to do business. For a House with no vacancies, half means 218 Representatives.

So you're right; fishy "unanimous" votes can and do happen. A controversial measure might pass unanimously in a legislative body because all the opposition walked out in protest. This happened about a month ago in the 50-seat North Carolina Senate, which is dominated by Republicans. [1]

[1] [https://www.carolinajournal.com/news-article/senate- democrat...](https://www.carolinajournal.com/news-article/senate-democrats- walk-out-of-vote-overturning-bathroom-ordinance/)

<comment><USER21> It looks like the smallest unanimous vote in the 113/114th congresses was 353.

[http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll631.xml](http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll631.xml)

For the Senate, 83.

[http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote11...](http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1141/vote_114_1_00300.xml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What's the process in the US to undo/invalidate a law? Is it the same as in other countries, where you'd go through the supreme court? I stated this in another post yesterday, but I firmly think laws may only be passed after a long >=5 years process and those pushing for the same law repeatedly in disguise need to be penalized or precluded from doing so. We see so many things get blocked due to popular outcry, to just be hidden inside trojan package and passed as a side note.

<comment><USER24> It requires Congress to pass a new law repealing the old; alternatively the Judicial Branch can invalidate the law as well, which would culminate at the level of the US Supreme Court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The Senate version of the bill is S.283

[https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house- bill/283](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/283)

If you live in the United States and want to voice your opinion with your senator, [http://www.digital4th.org/](http://www.digital4th.org/) has a tool that provides a template along with contact links to the senators for your state.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is only for Americans right? And what if I run my own email server? Can I be forced to hand over my own emails after 180 days? Are they allowed to hack the server in my basement?

<comment><USER27> I'm pretty sure they don't need a warrant for obtaining emails for international citizens. Also, this bill doesn't seem to protect for non- warranted snooping by NSA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> On a downer note, this is so overdue that I'm wondering why now instead of ten years ago.

<comment><USER28> Because, due to recent leaks, they now understand the implications from a purely selfish perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So emails less than 180 days old are not protected?

<comment><USER30> They were already protected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> do they not need a warrant for emails not 180 days old?

Edit: Do they need a warrant for emails less than 180 days old?

<comment><USER13> If they're on a home email server, they always need a warrant. For hosted email, they don't require a warrant for older emails.

<comment><USER32> That's not really the case. The courts have decided otherwise:

[http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Theofel_v._Farey- Jones](http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Theofel_v._Farey-Jones) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Warshak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Warshak)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why is this bill important?</comment>


Ask HN: What to think of the end of unlimited broadband internet? - <AUTHOR>

In light of AT&T's recent announcement that they will cap their broadband internet offering (through U-Verse and regular DSL), as does COMCAST from what I understand, it really looks like this is the way future will be for broadband internet.
It seems to me the impact on existing business models such as Netflix' streaming service, iTunes, Amazon's new streaming service, Sling, etc... will be devastating. Caps may be high enough (for now) but people will definitely think twice before committing to multi-GB downloads. Also, I can't help but think that this may kill yet-to-be discovered business models that would have relied on unlimited broadband.
Am I being too gloomy or is the door slowly closing on many internet-related future opportunities? <comment><USER2> Broadband is a utility just like any other, and ought to be treated as such. I completely agree it should be capped or metered just like water and power are. I also agree that my usage should be my business, and that telcos have no right to tell me that I can use megabits I paid for in one way but not another. I wouldn't tolerate it if, for example, Xcel Energy told me that I could only power General Electric appliances.

Also, unlimited is an awfully big amount, and if your business model depends on unlimited in any way, the odds are that you either haven't thought it through or that it's simply not viable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Welcome to Australia where there have always been caps - partially because we download so much content from the USA that someone has to pay for the fibre under the ocean to carry it all to us. Caps do change consumer behaviour a lot, but that said the caps are getting generous enough these days to not be too restrictive. If you shop around you can get a Terabyte a month for a reasonable price and can only use that amount by streaming video content. Part of what aussie ISP's do now is offer steaming content free if you are their customer. iiNet does this with its Fetch-TV service, and also has unmetered access to iTunes, ABC iView and gaming content.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm on TalkTalk (UK), last month I went twice over our monthly bandwidth and all that happened is that the download speeds went from 1600kps to 800-1100kps, which for the UK is still a pretty good speed. Talktalk BT and Sky who are the major three, just have general shaping, not aimed only at high users. It's timed, so you can download all you want 11pm to 5pm, then in what they call peak time, you can still watch HD films and so on, the slower speed is still enough for a lot.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do not like the addition of the caps, however, I don't think I've ever gotten close to their proposed caps, either. Perhaps their DSL cap, but not the U-Verse cap. (According to my router, I've used 48GB down thus far in March.)

I have a question to which I can not recall the answer: With U-Verse, television comes over the fiber as well, correct? If so, are they considering that part of the bandwidth cap or do they look at "internet" usage only?

</comment><comment><USER6> I think most of these caps are a result of Netflix. Saw something a few months ago that in the evening Netflix accounts for a majority of internet bandwidth, which is craziness. A lot of people are in favor of net neutrality, but the telecoms need to make money, networks aren't cheap. Due to the uncertainty I wouldn't fault them for holding back on infrastructure investments which causes prices to rise due to limited supply.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a 50GB cap on the ISP I am with, and I cannot fault them for it as it uses BT's network.

It's sort of fortunate that my phone line is 40 years old because if it wasn't, I would download a lot more than 50GB/month</comment>


Receiver's Reputation:  A clever way to detect spam? - <AUTHOR> http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/12/04/0149241.shtml#

<comment><USER2> It isn't exactly "revolutionary". Receiver-based approach has been employed for a while, although with a twist: analogous to methods of identifying DOS- attack sources, large ISPs or web mail providers (gmail) establish a network of "honeypots" - thousands of fake mailboxes whose addresses are published on fake web pages, allowing spammers' crawlers to absorb those emails into their databases.

Then you just tag IP addresses that attempt to deliver emails to honeypots. What you get is a simplest receiver-based system with just two groups of receivers: 100% spam-receivers and "others".

<comment><AUTHOR> The "honeypots" might not get most of the spam though.</comment></comment>


How to Attract Female Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/opinion/how-to-attract-female-engineers.html

<comment><USER2> Cookbooks, aprons, and free makeup

<comment><USER3> I usually work out and keep tabs on my hygiene. So far it's working.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your backup strategy for desktops\laptops, NAS and cloud? - <AUTHOR> Having to backup several machines and a NAS, and with redundancy in mind: Do you backup the desktops\laptops locally to the NAS and then backup from NAS to cloud? Or do you also backup each machine separately to the cloud? Do you also keep a local cold backup?<p>I'm not asking which specific cloud storage vendors you use (like S3, B2, Wasabi etc.) or which specific tools you recommend (rsync, restic, dupli-city/cati/cacy etc.) although it's always interesting. <comment><USER2> In that scenario I would backup locally to the NAS and do a backup straight from the laptops to a cloud provider (Backblaze, iDrive, etc). That way if a corrupt file gets accidentally backed up to the NAS it won't necessarily propagate through the entire backup chain like it might if you were copying the NAS directly.

My current strategy is to backup my laptops (macOS) locally using Time Machine for a full backup with a fast recovery time and then sync important files to a cloud backup provider in case of a major disaster.

<comment><AUTHOR> > That way if a corrupt file gets accidentally backed up to the NAS it won't > necessarily propagate through the entire backup chain like it might if you > were copying the NAS directly.

That's a very good point. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I backup all my home computers to my NAS and my work computer to an external drive. All my really important documents are also synced between all my machines with syncthing. I don't consider any of my data important enough to backup the NAS as well but if I did I'd probably use a second NAS at work.

</comment><comment><USER4> Simple: Onedrive (6TB for $99.99) a year. Using 6 account 1 for each machine.

[https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft- offi...](https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office- products?&rtc=1&activetab=tab:primaryr1)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to have redundancy (the 3-2-1 rule) and I do have a local NAS so my question referred to that scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Large drive on one machine in my house, every computer in my house backs up to there using Restic. I keep hourlies for 2 days, weeklies for 2 months, monthlies for a year, and one extra year.

I also back up to Backblaze B2 using Restic and do the same thing except no hourlies.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a Macbook and a Mac Mini. The Macbook backs up to the NAS with Time Machine, and the Mini backs up to an external drive over USB with Time Machine. Both back up with Backblaze as well, and the Documents folder is on iCloud.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a set of Bash scripts using Rclone to backup from my laptop to another laptop via Google Drive.

</comment><comment><USER8> A Synology system for local backups.

Backblaze for the cloud.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you backup only the Synology to the cloud or do you backup each machine separately to the cloud?

<comment><USER8> Everyone backs up to both.

I probabbly should / could get the Synology to backup to the cloud after it does it's local thing but I haven't looked into it ;)</comment></comment></comment>