Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up (March 2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/yelp-extortion-allegations-stack-up/Content?oid=1176984 <comment><USER2> I stopped using Yelp and uninstalled it from my iPhone when I read the article last year.

Yelp's business model doesn't sit well with me. Even if the allegations of good reviews disappearing for businesses who don't pay up aren't true, the idea that there is a service out there that you don't want but you're almost forced into paying for since it's affecting your business directly feels to me like paying the mafia to 'protect' your business.

If Yelp really does want to help both businesses and consumers, give businesses the ability to respond to reviews for free and don't artificially alter results, be like Google and let your algorithm work. Make money selling ads.

It reminds me of the whole GetSatisfaction drama with 37 Signals from a few months ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540>). This type of business model where you provide a business a "service" they didn't ask for then try to charge them for it will never go over well.

[Edit] FWIW this page, found below in relme's comment (<http://www.yelp.com/myths>) directly answers every one of my concerns with Yelp. If it's true then great, sounds like they're doing things well. I find it hard to write off all the complaints as fictional though.

<comment><USER3> I seriously doubt good reviews would just disappear. The reviewer would complain. I'm a Yelp Elite in my city and I'd scream murder if any of my reviews disappeared.

<comment><USER4> It just happened to my wife this weekend: she'd written a review of her trainer that showed up at the time, but at some point in the last few months it disappeared from the trainer's page, even though it still appears within her profile. She updated the review and it then appeared to her when viewing her trainer's profile, but it didn't show up if she logged out or when logged in from my account.

Simply deciding not to show reviews you've written and/or randomly taking them down after they've been up? Sketchy. Showing those reviews to you so you think they're there even though no one else can see them? Ultra-sketchy.

<comment><USER5> The same thing happened to me. I created a yelp account for the express purpose of reviewing a local business that has food that's beyond shitty. I wrote a scathing one star review, and it was put in purgatory. Only when I logged into yelp was it visible.

Now, I can understand why they'd be wary of an account that only posted a single negative review, but if you ban someone, you should let them know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My wife and I both recently posted negative reviews at businesses that were advertising with Yelp. Neither review (which were both fair and truthful) ever showed up on site.

edit: Just to clarify, I spoke to Yelp about it. The reply I got was "[The] spam algorithm can filter based on how established user is. [Your post was] not deleted & can re-appear on biz page. Still live on your profile."

</comment><comment><USER7> The small business owners I know in Chicago say Yelp calls them incessantly, offering to let them take over their profile pages for $500/month (don't quote me on that price).

Their biggest issue with Yelp is that they tell their customers to go review them on Yelp. The customers do. Then Yelp deletes the reviews because the people who posted them weren't "true Yelpers." So only reviews from people who post lots of reviews are valid? WTF.

<comment><USER8> That's basically what happened to us. We had all our customers Yelp about us, many who haven't even heard of Yelp. Then they took them all down because those people only wrote one review, basically for us.

<comment><USER9> No offense, but that does tread into dicey territory. It comes rather close to businesses offering customers discounts for positive Yelp reviews. How do you draw the distinction? If there is no distinction how can you be sure that Yelp reviews are true?

<comment><USER10> But, is it any more dicey that only accepting reviews from a small population of yelpers that are more loyal to yelp than to the business they review? Think of it this way a yelper whose never heard of your business vs. many loyal customers who've never heard of yelp. To some degree it turns into a yelps loyal customers vs. a business' loyal customers and yelp with always side with their loyal customers on it. Advantage yelp. If they don't let everyone participate in the conversation equally then a business can't put their best foot forward.

I did find it that the salon owner was much wiser about how she approached yelp than the bookstore owner. The bookstore person wasn't listening to her customers, and blaming the wrong person.

<comment><USER9> I'm not saying that the alternative of only accepting reviews from a small population of regular/power users is necessarily a good thing either. I'm just stating that it's not a black-and-white issue with an easy answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sales operations where you need many customers, each consisting of low price point "buys" typically require a large salesforce of relatively low-paid junior people who make most of their money on commission (similar to classified sales at newspapers). Basically a boiler room style operation where people "dial for dollars" all day. It's not a surprise that some sales people may have attempted these tactics without management's knowledge or approval.

<comment><USER12> It may valid, but it doesn't exonerate the business (yelp, in this case) from responsability.

I think the real troubling issue is that they demand openess from other businesses but don't show their algorithms or give open access on their pages for response.

I wonder how long it will take for businesses to start using Mechanical Turk against this Yelp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is actually fairly plausible that Stoppelmann has no idea at all that his sales representatives are using such shady tactics.

That is not, however, good news for Stoppelmann. Not in any sense. It would indicate that, at the client-business level of interaction, there is no functional oversight at all. That Yelp's management's either willing to turn a blind eye, or are so negligent as to allow this to occur even in the face of growing criticisms.

Incompetence or malevolence; either way, they're in trouble.

<comment><USER14> or it could just not be true

<comment><USER15> You do have to view the claims with some skepticism considering those making the claims stand to benefit substantially from people believing them, true or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is actually racketeering and not extortion.

<comment><USER17> Can you explain why this doesn't quality as extortion?

<comment><USER16> To some people, racketeering is a subset of extortion. To me, extortion is the simple extraction of money by coercion. Racketeering involves the protection from both the racketeer but also from other aggressors. The Yelp model fits this nearly exactly, whereas extortion is a much broader term.

From the wikipedia article on protection racket:

>In some cases, the "protection" is little more than extortion, with no real service rendered unto the victim. Otherwise, the racketeers will warn other criminals that the client is under their protection and that they will punish anyone who harms the client. Services that the racketeers may offer may include the recovery of stolen property or punishing vandals. The racketeers may even advance the interests of the client, such as muscling out unprotected competitors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We had a similar issue over at Extreme Kung Fu where I teach out of. A Yelp rep called (this was maybe a year or year and a half ago) and same thing: We notice you have a lot of positive reviews and we drive a lot of traffic to your site. The implication of the conversation was that if we wanted to stay that way, we better sign up as a sponsor.

I even wrote a blog post about it, and that got picked up when the whole Yelp thing blew up last year. I used to recommend Yelp to everyone, now I feel dirty even talking about it.

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://www.yelp.com/myths>

<comment><USER19> "I am not a crook." -- Richard M. Nixon

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> JWZ has gotten the shakedown too: <http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html>

</comment><comment><USER21> This is why I want Foursquare to start handling reviews. (Foursquare lets people "check in" at a bar, restaurant, or other venue and notify friends.)

Foursquare's developers say they're working on winnowing out false checkins with GPS, which should give them a good idea of where their users are actually going, and when. I'd trust reviews written on the spot more already.

I'd also trust reviews from my friends. And since Foursquare is a social network first, I've built an actual collection of real-world friends, not a network of people I only know through a web site. These are people who largely share my taste in venues.

It's obvious that a lot of people want an alternative to Yelp. I'd try out others, but I particularly want one that verifies reviewers were actually there, and one that pays attention to what I already like and my friends like.

I want a Pandora for places.

</comment><comment><USER22> Bad reviews -> self/friend posted shill review -> shill reviews removed -> "Yelp removes my 5-star reviews!"

I'd expect a little exaggeration from the frustrated party, and these conversations sound like they're just barely more than benign. I'll have to ask my friend in Yelp ad sales how pushy they get.

<comment><USER23> By the same token: note enough ad revenue -> promise removing bad reviews in exchange for buying ads.

So why did you chose one narrative instead of the other?

<comment><USER22> I've only been on one side of the equation. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There probably isn't a single business owner out there that feels comfortable with the existence of an online directory where disgruntled customers can collate and publish their opinions. I'm sure a good deal of them are willing to lie to rid themselves of the nuisance. Just because Yelp is creates a large headache for lazy business owners doesn't mean it's evil. It's creating an environment where business strive to provide quality service. It does so by creating incentives for doing so (good reviews) and disincentives for failing to do so (bad reviews).

There are no facts in this article. Just allegations.

<comment><USER9> There are also incentives to disgruntled employees (for example) to publish bad reviews to 'get back' at the business. In general, services like this are only useful once they reach a critical mass so that the signal drowns the noise. But as you grow you also become the target of spammers (i.e. Google's problems with SEO, real estate scammers, link farms, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > As you have undoubtedly noticed, we've been doing some shuffling around > here, and the page you're looking for seems to have gone missing.

Bad web designers, _bad_! There's no excuse not to ensure that old URLs return HTTP 301 redirects to the new URLs.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't remember who it was or what their business was called , but someone else got called out for something similar. It was under the guise of brand management as the site aggregated social media, blogs, etc about what people were saying about a company on the Internet then charging business owners to make replies.

It came down to brands being held hostage and the story that broke was very similar. I wish I could remember the guy. I remember his blog posts sounding very proud though.

As far as yelp goes, Its probably only the sales or a small portion of the operation (maybe). I have a friend that works at yelp and I'd be dissapointed if he stayed there knowing this was going on.

<comment> brown9-2 It was Seth Godin and "Brands in Public":

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/launching- br...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/launching-brands-in- public.html)

(I had the same memory this morning and tried searching for it and couldn't find anything, but thanks to your post I thought to include "brand management" in the search)

<comment><USER26> Good look. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The source is 404 Page Not Found [http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp- extortion-allega...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp-extortion- allegations-stack-up/Content?oid=1176984&showFullText=true)

Google Cache Link: [http://220.127.116.11/search?q=cache:DdZjkw- XSRgJ:www.eastba...](http://18.104.22.168/search?q=cache:DdZjkw- XSRgJ:www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/yelp-extortion-allegations-stack- up/Content%3Foid%3D1176984+http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/yelp- extortion-allegations-stack- up/Content%3Foid%3D1176984&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER28> Before reading this I'd never heard of Yelp. It sounds like a good example of antisocial networking, of which we might see more examples in future.

<comment><USER9> You've probably seen Yelp stickers in business windows before but overlooked them. I've seen them around, but I can only recall instances of businesses in Portland or Toronto. I can remember specifically if I've seen them in other places, but probably so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was expecting to see something damning but this looks like what yelp has been admitting to do for a while now.

<comment> brown9-2 They admit to letting you sort your negative reviews to the bottom if you advertise? Or to restore five-star reviews which were "flagged as spam" if you advertise?

Do you have a citation for this? I don't mean to call you out but I have no idea what yelp has admitted to.

<comment><USER30> And even if they did admit to it, that seems about as "damning" as it gets for a site whose value proposition is based almost entirely on its credibility.

<comment><USER31> I don't think that's even Yelps primary value proposition. They're much more of a social network than anything else. Their proposition seems to be more around providing a place for people to gain recognition for their taste. This is why they have the elite yelper program and what-not.

The result of that play is a huge site with a TON of reviews that create a lot of organic SEO traffic. The credibility of those reviews, while important, isn't really their upmost concern.

That's why withholding positive reviews (under the guise of spam control) is effective. They're effectively extorting you to create more content for them.

Is it intentionally designed that way? I have no idea, but I bet it's extremely effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Now..two things. 1\. Can anyone comment on the legality of this internet based extortion as opposed to "regular" extortion?

2\. Is this by any chance the reason why the Google deal fell through? I know we heard otherwise but it makes me wonder.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would think with that many reviews the potential for libel is a concern.

</comment><comment><USER34> What happened to the article? I am getting 404 errors? Is this some sort of Yelp conspiracy? Maybe East Bay Express didn't pay up!

</comment><comment><USER35> old news ... march '09

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Joel. I updated the title.

Maybe because I only recently moved to an area where Yelp has a presence, but I hadn't noticed this article until today.

<comment><USER36> I hadn't heard of this before, so thanks for posting.</comment></comment></comment>


How to build companies that matter (the lean startup on O'Reilly Radar) - <AUTHOR> http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-build-companies-that-matter-lean.html <comment><USER2> Does this really cover more than the source O'Reilly article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=525167> ?</comment>


Apple's Macs might get Face ID, as potentially revealed by code in macOS Big Sur - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/24/21337635/apple-mac-face-id-code-macos-big-sur-truedepth-camera <comment><AUTHOR> Wow! They're finally catching up to the Windows Surface computers of 8 years ago.</comment>


Video embedding finalé: OK Go leaves EMI - <AUTHOR> http://www.okgo.net/2010/03/10/onwards-and-upwards/

<comment><USER2> This is interesting on several levels. One of the big justifications for the major music publishers to take such large chunks out of record sale revenue (typically more than the artists make) is that they provide promotion and publicity for the artists. However, in this case the record label is hampering promotion, in service to a relatively tiny degree of financial gain for themselves.

As well there is still this idea that signing with a big record label gets you something, some momentum that propels your band to heights it wouldn't have been able to reach without the label. Increasingly it's becoming obvious that this just isn't so. In the modern age of cheap, ubiquitous communication, and of dime-a-dozen high quality recording studios, the value of the big record labels is becoming an increasingly dubious proposition. More and more people are realizing that signing with big record labels is a sure fire way to lose out on a lot of money while yoking your band to a bizarre set of restrictions that will more than likely hurt rather than help its popularity.

As more already successful bands go it alone more and more bands that are just starting out will have the courage to do the same. I suspect we're on the cusp of a "startup culture" in music that will blossom over the next several years.</comment>


Why things cost 19.95? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-things-cost-1995&sc=rss

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting read about pricing psychology, although its hard for me personally to agree with some of the claims - in the TV pricing example, I'd have probably mentallly equated anything around 5000 to just 5000 and extrapolated from there.

</comment><comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158316></comment>


Show HN: Library for a Travel Service to Optimize Time During Trip to a City - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/igushev/city_visit_planner <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone is welcomed to create an iOS/Android/Web application using the library! I'll be happy to answer any questions or help.

<comment><AUTHOR> P.S. If someone wants to build real app, I was looking for someone to collaborate or for co-founders. Although haven't touch for few years, it's still interesting idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> When I saw this my first thought was this is one of those instances of "client wouldn't pay so I put it up on github". Would love to know the story behind why this got released as open source.

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> I started the startup during mobile revolution and had the idea of an app which by given dates and parameters would optimize your time and give perfect trip. I spent too much time building and perfecting algorithm and backend and making live tests and space became very crowded and saw few websites and apps doing similar thing, so I decided to move on. It was idle for few years and recently decided to just open source. Maybe someone would like to use or collaborate.

<comment><USER3> Nice work! We recently had two weeks in Italy where I dreamt up a service like this. I wish to have a service that based on my surroundings and a few parameters tells me what possible daytrips or other activities are. TripAdvisor was too noisy for me. The difference in score for a great, free and restored castle and just four remaining walls was behind the decimal point... You mention there are other websites in the same space?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the time I was making research, I found one or two, don't recall from top of my head. Majority of travel apps focus on hotels and/or tickets, not points of interest. The one which focus on points of interest, usually tries to give user most interesting, but not entire schedule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> this's cool, injecting life into dry programming exercise. But you know, in real world, there're many random forces at work, like traffic congestion, road construction (e.g. midtown Manhattan), or just some unexpected and pleasant distraction -- hey i saw this neat little restaurant in Chelsea that I just couldn't resist going in....

<comment><AUTHOR> Also part of functionality which I wanted to add, is to for user to check what stage he/she at given moment and app would adjust the schedule, for example, user can't make it today for museum A therefore it rescheduled for tomorrow and today just go to point of interest B. Schedule is supposed to adapt during trip.

Moreover, app is supposed to learn about you, like speed of walk, duration of lunch, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is super cool. I've been working on an idea that would mesh well with this, I'll have to explore it more this weekend.

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Please reach out to me and see if I can help or even collaborate.</comment></comment>


E-mail Sign On - <AUTHOR> http://www.peej.co.uk/articles/email-sign-on.html

<comment><USER2> 1\. enter e-mail address

2\. go to e-mail

3\. refresh

4\. refresh

5\. count to ten... refresh again

6\. maybe it's in my spam folder?.. no...

7\. final refresh

8\. give up in disgust

 _minutes pass_

9\. e-mail finally arrives in inbox; delete it

\----

I effectively use this method to log in to Amazon (I have a habit of always changing my Amazon password to something so secure I can't remember it for more than a minute at a time), and it makes me less likely to log in (I want to add this book to my wishlist, but I have to log in first? Maybe I won't bother then).

To be fair Amazon password reset e-mails are _usually_ in my inbox by the time I switch to my e-mail, but some sites are slower.

<comment><USER3> It's been some time since I saw an email take more than 5 seconds to arrive.

<comment><USER4> Might not happen often, but it's a major bummer when it does.

An existing example: when you recover a password for some service you do it because you want to log in NOW, not some time next week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Its a clever idea but I would think it would be frustratingly slow to login via email. I wouldn't be surprised if it took 20 seconds or more to complete the entire transaction -- that is a long time for a relatively simple operation.

<comment><USER6> As opposed to OpenID, which takes that much time by design. Or more, since chances are you don't know your OpenID and therefore have to look it up in your email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Add in an "auth-request" header onto the email, have a plugin for your mail client that looks for the header - and if found hides the mail and does the auth in the background for you - and you then have seamless integration (thanks to <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=wlll>)

<comment><USER3> Enter page, type email, hit enter, wait 5-10 seconds, "You are logged in."

Apparently simple to implement for both customer and provider and takes alway all the headaches from account registering.

I would pay for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of my clients has so many web-based requests that he asked me to build a better system, and this system is basically what I came up with.

A visitor wants to use one of our request forms so he enters his email address and clicks Submit. The next page says "Check your inbox, spam and junk mail boxes for the email we just sent you, then click the link to complete our request form."

Nearly all of them click the link. SPAM and bogus requests have dropped to zero.

Once in a while we get a complaint stating that they never received the confirmation email, but we know they were all sent because we BCC copies to a special gmail account for archival purposes.

The client is happy.

No, this is not a login system but I'm going to implement it on my new website as a login system because it is MUCH simpler than dealing with passwords ... and there is far less resistance to this system than some of you seem to be complaining about.

The fact is, people really dislike dealing with passwords and this system gets rid of them.

</comment><comment><USER9> ... and some call it insecure. If you don't take care of Man-in-the-middle attacks, which is one of the most basic attacks, you simply are not secure on the internet (where things like XSS and cross site forgery are for more common, and can render the most complicated authentication mechanisms useless). But for starting thigns up, it can be just fine.

<comment><USER10> I guess you would have to ad a secret to the page you want to login to, that said page could display, and another one it could ask you for.

Hm, might become too inconvenient. The only advantage would be not having to remember the password.

This makes me think the traditional password recovery mechanism should also work that way. You should have to enter your new password first, then get the confirmation link to save it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> RedHat's Mugshot did this in 2007. I really liked it. [http://bits.quintanasegui.com/2007/04/05/login-without-a- pas...](http://bits.quintanasegui.com/2007/04/05/login-without-a-password/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I make this at my website [ <http://www.tanlup.com/users/login> ], but you have a password as well. In general, people will use this method if they can't remember their password. I already thought about making this the default sing on method to a website (it works great for e-commerce sites without user registration), but e-mail issues (delays, spam) and the fact that not everyone lives on their inbos (like me) changed my mind.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a shipped project that ties this in to OpenID. <http://emailtoid.net>

Some of the OpenID crowd were aware of it at the time, but it hasn't really caught on. It's kinda fun to use it as an OpenID provider to log in to itself. Very meta and clean.

</comment><comment><USER14> If I'm on a work computer I can't access my email.

If I'm on an untrusted (potentially keylogging) computer, I don't want to type my email password - but I may not care about the security of my Pandora password.

I think the process is defaulting every site to the same trust level as your email.

</comment><comment><USER15> This would frustrate me no-end. I'm not always at my own computer, and I change my password regularly to one to complex to remember. I don't always want to use my phone browser to login to sites I need access to.

</comment><comment><USER16> I had the exact same idea the other day. Good summary. Obviously not the best solution for all sites, but I think smaller sites might benefit from this. I'd love to see a basic plugin/library built around this.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hate the fact that I have to "validate" my email address with a lot of web app services when you first sign up.Imagine doing that every time you want to log on.

Definitely adds more resistance to the flow.

</comment><comment><USER18> Humble bundle did this.

</comment><comment><USER19> how 'bout log in via sms? Enter your mobile number. it texts you a code. input code. logged in.

</comment><comment><USER20> Fingerprints?</comment>


Scala's upcoming dynamic capabilities - <AUTHOR> http://squirrelsewer.blogspot.com/2011/02/scalas-upcoming-dynamic-capabilities.html <comment><USER2> Last week I spent a little bit of time trying to figure out how the Dynamic trait works and what its good for.

I managed to do a quick and dirty 5 minute mockup of a "Callable" Map that lets you invoke keys as method names:

<https://gist.github.com/797513>

<comment><USER3>
      def invokeDynamic(name: String)(args: Any*) = {
        println("Invoke Dynamic: (name = %s)(args: %s)".format(name, args))
        get(name.asInstanceOf[String])
      }

Why do you need the asInstanceOf(), when name is already declared to be a String?

Sorry if this is obvious; I don't know Scala (I've glanced at it, but the 2.8 compiler is too slow on my laptop--as in, about one line per minute).

<comment><USER2> Sorry, you don't. It's a leftover from an earlier attempt to do something different with dynamic.

Your assumption is correct: It is already a string and there is no purpose to casting it to a String.

I don't recall exactly where that artifact came from but I recall the original release of Dynamic had a very different method signature and I was fiddling to figure out the new signatures when I wrote this. The examples I found when I wrote this used the old interface and the new one had no docs or examples yet so I did a bit of playing.

I've updated the gist to remove the unnecessary asInstanceOf and demonstrate it as proper code.

<comment><USER3> Ah, nice. Thanks for answering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A recent interview of Martin Odersky on SE-Radio introduces this and other nice features that are in the works for Scala: [http://www.se- radio.net/2011/02/episode-171-scala-update-wit...](http://www.se- radio.net/2011/02/episode-171-scala-update-with-martin-odersky/)

</comment><comment><USER5> "You're going the wrong way!"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEZv0FUPtcc>

</comment><comment><USER6> I guess scala isn't already complex or rather implicit enough.

Is this implemented as a library or does it also require changes to the language/compiler?

<comment><USER7> It required a small language change, which I believe you can see in it's entirety here: <https://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/changeset/23993></comment></comment>


Introducing Operators: Putting Operational Knowledge into Software on Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://coreos.com/blog/introducing-operators.html <comment><AUTHOR> If you want to dive directly into the technical details here are two example Operators for etcd distributed key-value and Prometheus monitoring:

\- [https://coreos.com/blog/introducing-the-etcd- operator.html](https://coreos.com/blog/introducing-the-etcd-operator.html)

\- [https://coreos.com/blog/the-prometheus- operator.html](https://coreos.com/blog/the-prometheus-operator.html)</comment>


Show HN: Notes App using localStorage - <AUTHOR> http://www.schoolnotez.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I built an App platform (www.appynotebook.com) for education, now I am using it to crank out Apps like pancakes:)

This is the first in line of Apps I am planning to create.

Your feedback would be appreciated.</comment>


How the GOP used Twitter to stretch election laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/17/politics/twitter-republicans-outside-groups/index.html

<comment><USER2> The article also mentions that Republicans accused Democrats of doing a similar-but-not-the-same kind of thing some years ago.

Please keep in mind that this is politicians behaving badly, not Republicans behaving badly. Yes this time it was Republicans, but both parties do it.

The problem is horrendous set of incentives for politicians; something Larry Lessig is trying to do something about. [http://www.mayday.us](http://www.mayday.us)

<comment><USER3> Yeah this "they did it first!" mentality makes me sick. It's a race to the bottom in American politics, and race that has no winners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Strange how "campaign finance laws" always seem to come down to suppressing speech.

Sounds like there's also serious doubt this is in any way illegal, e.g. this comment by "Daniel Tokaji, a professor of Constitutional Law at Ohio State University":

 _" A lot of things you and I would consider coordination are not coordination under the law. I don't think sharing polling data is going to be enough to establish that the campaign was materially involved in decisions about content, target audience or timing."_

Outlawing "coordination" is a very dangerous slippery slope to go down, as Wisconsin recently showed.</comment>


FLIF, the new lossless image format that outperforms PNG, WebP and BPG - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/flif_the_new_lossless_image_format_that_outperforms_png_webp_and_bpg <comment><AUTHOR> FLIF is a new lossless image format that promised to be superior to the popular PNG format. This article describes comprehensive benchmark tests that verify that FLIF indeed outperforms PNG, WebP and other lossless formats. See also FLIF introduction on Hacker News earlier this month: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317790)</comment>


Bees Can Sense the Electric Fields of Flowers (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2013/02/21/bees-can-sense-the-electric-fields-of-flowers/ <comment><USER2> so what is the over / under on the chance that in 100 years we look back on the 19-21st century phenomenon of blanketing every centimeter of the planet with anthropomorphic electromagnetic radiation of varying wavelgenths and just assume there are no negative downstream effects the same way we look at Romans drinking from corroded lead pipes

<comment><USER3> Not impossible but what's the mechanism?

Humans haven't changed too much but societally we now have a much better understanding of systematically understanding new phenomenon. If there was something like Lead Poisoning going around, information spreads so quickly we'd know about it.

That doesn't mean there isn't anything, but there have been people living and working around extremely strong sources of electromagnetic radiation ever since the 1930s and no one has been able to demonstrate risk on any macroscopic scale (There are some papers that do demonstrate a "statistically significant" detectable link between something an EM exposure, but - even when the levels are _anywhere near_ safety limits let alone what is actually outside - these papers can never find any measurable risk to the body). The fact that nothing has been formally observed as of today establishes a fairly firm upper bound on the risk due to electromagnetic radiation.

That upper bound means that if there is any actual risk it is sufficiently subtle as to either be outpaced by the body or other issues (Even if 5G harmed people, based on the mentioned upper bound, it would still be better to telecommute than have cars polluting everywhere)

<comment><USER4> _> If there was something like Lead Poisoning going around, information spreads so quickly we'd know about it._

If said lead poisoning was profitable, then we'd mostly be busy belittling the negative effects for decades, until they couldn't be denied/ignored anymore, at which point most of the damage will already have been done, as it happened with tetraethyllead [0].

Another example would be the massive money in tobacco and how for decades this allowed certain profit-interests to dictate the public-health discourse around smoking it or how oil companies knew about their impact on climate change for decades before it became a widely-recognized problem [1].

There is no telling what other things that we consider "harmless" now will later turn out as having absolutely disastrous effects.

Very similar to how people living in Victorian times filled their homes with all kinds of deadly things because they were considered convenient at the time [2]. With the luxury of hindsight, it's easy for us to go "Wow, people back then were kinda stupid", but I have no doubt that 100-200 years from now people will look at our current ways of living and come to very similar conclusions about us.

To keep this on-topic: Maybe us blasting the environment with EM radiation is also a contributing factor bee colonies collapsing, as it might make it more difficult for bees to find their source of nutrition?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#History)

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

[2] [https://youtu.be/K3Jef7i7v1U](https://youtu.be/K3Jef7i7v1U)

<comment><USER5> Just to add another example, PFOA / PFAS / GenX, a chemical family used by DuPont to create non-stick surfaces, is an insidious endocrine disrupters at very low levels. And it's basically everywhere.

[https://theintercept.com/series/the-teflon- toxin/](https://theintercept.com/series/the-teflon-toxin/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I urge everyone interested in similar topics (bioelectricity and natural electromagnetic phenomena) to grab a copy of Becker's 'Body Electric', it's a fascinating book.

<comment><USER7> Also this presentation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg) (What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing that! This presentation serves as a nice TL;DR of the book. I am curious if there's a palpable bio-inspired computational model based on these discoveries. [1] and [2] in general come to mind.

[1]: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220687776_Robustnes...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220687776_Robustness_to_Code_and_Data_Deletion_in_Autocatalytic_Quines)

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

<comment><USER7> These links are very interesting, thank you! I haven't heard of the term autonomic computing before. Software systems are so far from achieving properties of life such as homeostasis...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> And some flowers can hear the bees coming, so they sweeten their nectar!

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/flowers-sweeten- wh...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/flowers-sweeten-when-they- hear-bees-buzzing-180971300/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Literature suggestions for those interested in this fascinating topic:

1). [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279863242_Oxidative...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279863242_Oxidative_mechanisms_of_biological_activity_of_low- intensity_radiofrequency_radiation)

2). [https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914)

3). [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/1536837910903141...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368379109031410)

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if this is related to colony collapse disorder [0] somehow.

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder)

<comment><USER10> Can't be ruled out, but I would first look at (improper) pesticide use and monoculture. At least this is the general observation in my beekeeping community. We noticed a gradual decline in colonies since the local farmers started growing rapeseed for biodiesel about 7-8 years ago. It has only gotten worse recently. Apart from the intensive use of pesticides, compared to other plants, one other problem that I face with rapeseed, is that the honey crystallizes really fast. If such honey is left in the hive during winter, its a sure recipe for failure. Even in the summer, it creates some irregularities in the food supply (I've seen bees taking it out of the combs after crystallization).</comment></comment>


Curiosity rover writes Morse Code of JPL everywhere it goes - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2012/08/curiosity-rover-writes-morse-code-of.html <comment><USER2> I was surprised the treads are not very deep on the wheels.

With a 14-22 minute ping time, it better be able to handle most situations on its own...

<comment><USER3> They have very detailed physics-based models of terrain-wheel interaction ("terramechanics" is the general term). The tread depth must be one of the design parameters.

Slip is something they watch closely, and 100% slip is something they worry about a lot. I worked on a project using a small prototype in that same yard (metal wheels with metal tread) and was really f-ing hard to get the thing to slip with anything like a reasonable load and slope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why don't they just put a camera filming downwards to determine the ground speed? Wouldn't it be simpler and more reliable?

<comment><USER5> As I understood it that's exactly what the camera is doing, and the morse code is just a helpful pattern with a known distance to make more precise measurements of ground speed.

With no patterns one could think of a situation where the surface sand/terrain would be displaced but your actual position was exactly the same.

<comment><USER3> All true. JPL has been a world leader in development of visual odometry ("VO"), which is key to estimating slip, which in turn is key to not getting stuck in sand.

The method hinges on establishing correspondence between visual features in before/after images. Then, since you know (through stereo ranging) how far away things are in both images, you can match points and see how far you've gone. This works better the more visual features (tiny edges and corners) you have to cue off of, and presumably these treads are generating more distinguishable features. They ran VO on Spirit and Opportunity, and they will on Curiousity as well.

A summary is in the first page of this little white paper:

[http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/marsconcepts2012/pdf/4053.p...](http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/marsconcepts2012/pdf/4053.pdf)

and one full description is here:

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.104....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.104.3110)

The good thing is that VO requires no extra hardware, because you already have stereo cameras.

By the way, they do make commercial velocity sensors of the kind described in the GP comment (special camera looking down):

<http://www.corrsys-datron.com/optical_sensors.htm>

These may not use VO, they might just use optical correlation. Sometimes they're used in robotics.

<comment><USER6> _Sometimes they're used_ ...in optical mice. By the millions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It should have been DEI.</comment>


Meet Pepper, Aldebaran's New Personal Robot With an "Emotion Engine" - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/pepper-aldebaran-softbank-personal-robot#.U5DH-kfo2Jk.hackernews <comment><USER2> I can't wait to play all my old Playstation 2 games on this robot.

/s</comment>


Show HN: TravelMap – Create a Travel Blog Centered on a Map - <AUTHOR> https://travelmap.net <comment><USER2> It's not clear if there is a way to record automatically your position from your smartphone or if you have to do it manually.

I will give it a try later, I'm interested in documenting my walking on the Camino de Santiago next year.

edit : there are options available in premium plus however it's not possible from a smartphone. What happens when I stop paying for premium plus ?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no mobile app yet but the admin is fully responsive. Most users update their blog from their phone/tablet.

You can add a spot manually each day (using geolocation or search) or use the Live Tracking feature but that requires a GPS satellite tracker and a Premium Plus account (mostly intended for sailors and desert expeditions).

I just cycled on the Camino de Santiago last month. Here's my TravelMap: [https://clem.travelmap.net/cycling-to- portugal](https://clem.travelmap.net/cycling-to-portugal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I thought of a travel blog where you can send texts to your a unique # and it will post your msg / pics and location. very minimal but great way to keep track of position that changes often.

Great job!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is neat!</comment>


New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-neighbors-build-cheaper-way-to-connect-to-web-11565100000?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Shameless plug: My company Althea ([https://althea.net](https://althea.net)) is making router firmware that makes it easy to people to set up incentivized mesh networks in their communities. It allows routers to pay each other for bandwidth which means that everyone hosting a node earns money for the packets they forward.

We have 2 networks live, one in rural Oregon and one in Medellin, Colombia. Also, 4 more networks people are currently pre-registering subscribers for in their communities, for example [https://althea.net/hilltop](https://althea.net/hilltop).

<comment><USER3> It is quite shameless, here is an awesome volunteer run basic service project, and this is a Blockchain rent-seeking VC startup.

Ironically I went back to the 2015 thread and found much the same "shameless plug", minus the Blockchain.

<comment><USER4> > It is quite shameless, here is an awesome volunteer run basic service > project, and this is a Blockchain rent-seeking VC startup.

You're implying that there is something shameful with providing a market for connectivity which allows for people who can't afford to work for free to participate. What is shameful about this?

<comment><USER5> Taking attention from a free community project to market your for profit company certainly isn't a purely altruistic thing to do.

<comment><USER6> theres still a monthly fee for free. weird right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been very intrigued by their efforts for some time now. Last time I read about NYC Mesh, it sent me down a rabbit hole of research into mesh networks and what it takes to found an ISP. I'd love to replicate their efforts in NOLA, but the legal and technical hurdles are tricky!

When I had looked into it, these resources had been helpful for research:

Wireless Networking in the Developing world -- [http://wndw.net/](http://wndw.net/) \-- A useful guidebook on the tech needed for large scale community mesh networks

Guifi.net -- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net) \-- A huge wireless mesh in Spain, there's a linked economic report in the references that's very good but may be unavailable at the moment. It may have been, or be contained within, "The Cook Report on Internet Protocol" Volume XX1, No, 12 & XXII, No 1 March April 2013 ISSN 1071 - 6327. The report is very long and covers quite a bit of the social and technical challenges faced by Guifi.net

<comment><USER8> Hey there codexarcanum,

My partner and I are NOLA based programmers / lawyers who have been researching this matter for a few years. We own the domain nolamesh.net and would love to work with you to navigate the political / legal / business issues to deploy a similar network in the New Orleans metro area. Please reach out to us at email@example.com and let's set up a meeting.

<comment><USER9> your website is down

<comment><USER10> >own the domain

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There were (maybe still are) tons of such mesh networks run by small commercial operators in Germany's rural areas, usually using directional radio to create connections between villages and then meshing all the wifi consumer routers to span wifi over the village. They did that/do that because the major commercial providers (i.e. Telekom) weren't exactly fast laying fiber to these villages.

A buddy of mine used to run such a network spanning 3 villages with about 400 customers a bunch of years back. I seem to remember one of the directional antennas was strategically placed in some church tower.

They ran this as a two people operation. Extreme weather also was a problem for them, and they essentially learned network design by trial and error, starting out as a fully bridged network where everybody was in the same 10.0.0.0/8, NATed to the outside. They fixed that later. Customers only got like 3-4MBit/s from this mesh, which wasn't exactly fast but not too shabby either back then, especially considering the only alternative those villagers had was ISDN speeds (128kbit/s max I think). No LTE yet either.

They weren't alone either. There was a huge number of such operators who shared knowledge etc.

Once he started negotiating with those villages to lay fiber and provide DSL service all of the sudden the Telekom started fibering up "his" villages.

<comment><USER12> My home internet in the Rocky Mountains, USA is delivered via mesh-WiFi provided by one of my neighbors. It's a really cool system actually- the towers are battery/solar operated and some can only be accessed via horseback. Covers ~500 homes.

5mbps down/2mbps up is what I get for $79/month, and I've learned to live with it. The only other option is satellite internet with restrictive usage caps. We used to have another competitor in the space but after big floods in 2013 they exited our area.

<comment><USER13> Does your connection maintain 5mbps/2mbps consistently? Or do you experience ups and downs in terms of speed?

<comment><USER12> It's mostly consistent except for 7-9PM weekdays. I set up some special QoS rules that I can toggle on/off on my LAN to make my phone feel decent enough during those hours...shh don't tell my wife! ;)

<comment><USER13> Ah, a classic home router admin move: "I'm gonna QoS all of your traffic into oblivion so that I can download my cat videos".

More seriously, I'm impressed at that consistency. I've always heard that that type of connection tends to be iffy, so it's interesting to know that my preconceptions may have been wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who is on NYC Mesh - it's amazing. I can't explain the feeling you can get of pointing an antenna at a distant building and getting a ping. So great!

<comment><USER15> How was your onboarding experience? I'd love to join the mesh, but I'm pretty far from the supernodes. If you live in an apartment, did you have any issues running the wires into the building?

<comment><USER16> I think this is the big hurdle or most people in Manhattan:

To get connected to NYC Mesh, you'll need a line of sight from your rooftop or balcony to one of our supernodes or hubs. Check our map to see if you're in the network coverage zone. And if you're not yet in range, keep checking back as our network is always expanding, or volunteer to help us grow towards your neighborhood.

So this means that if you are in a condo you can't use it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A month ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20320212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20320212)

2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861748)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544)

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052261)

<comment><USER18> I applaud Brian Hall's dedication to NYC Mesh.

<comment><USER19> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a map of community-owned networks, more than 750 communities across the United States have embraced operating their own broadband network

Map here:

[https://muninetworks.org/communitymap](https://muninetworks.org/communitymap)

<comment><USER21> It really bothers me to see nothing going on in the Phoenix, Arizona region, where I live.

I'm planning on getting my Technicians HAM license sometime soon (I took one of the online practice tests "blind" and scored an 80 - so with some study it shouldn't be a problem).

Maybe after that if I can find some like-minded people nearby...

<comment><USER22> A HAM license doesn't help you: you cannot legally use the amateur radio bands to transmit an internet connection.

I suspect the Amateur HAMmers would detect and enforce that: I imagine there are HAM goonsquads.

<comment><USER23> I thought the rule was no encryption. They theoretically have an entire ip block available.

<comment><USER24> The rules also prohibit commercial communications (i.e. pecuniary interest). There are some limited exceptions which depending on your use may be enough.

That said, ham radio is a fun hobby regardless. If you are into IP stuff on ham radio, it's not too hard to get an ip on the ham IP block /8.

Amateur radio does have a tradition of self enforcement which is part of my the FCC continues to grant privileges. People practice RDF for fun but I know people who have used to to find people intentionally interfering with other stations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Vice had a good feature on this last month. [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paj8z8/a-diy-internet- net...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paj8z8/a-diy-internet-network-has- drastically-expanded-its-coverage-in-nyc)

</comment><comment><USER26> Who does the backhaul for these networks? If it's regular ISPs, aren't all of the participants just violating their ISP terms and conditions?

<comment><USER27> NYC Mesh pays for a backhaul. I assume that this use is covered in the ToS, but it isn't just a normal residential internet connection.

NYC Mesh pays for it through donations. Last I checked they were trying to setup a 501c3 to manage this, unsure of the status though.

<comment><USER26> Do you know what band they broadcast on? Is it the innovation band?

<comment><USER28> Most people connect over Ubiquiti airMax AC, which is 5ghz. Large hubs connect using airFiber, typically 24ghz.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What is impressive here, that it's a "mesh" or that it's a volunteer for driven?

Years ago all Minsk was covered by volunteer maintained local ethernet networks, I was accessing internet through one. Today most of them are bought out by commercial providers, some turned into providers themselves.

<comment><USER30> In Russia it was the same. Because the existing infrastructure (i.e. phone lines) was so poor, back in early 2000s people were just connecting the apartment blocks in their communities with ethernet cables.

You could then pay for Internet traffic or enjoy local neighbourhood network resources for free. People would build local websites, chat rooms, message boards, fileshares, gaming. It was pretty good for the time and I was surprised to find that in the UK/US there had not been such a development, perhaps because of better pre-existing infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Are there similar efforts to follow in other cities? e.g Boston, SF

<comment><USER32> Comcast & AT&T cast SF's into oblivion: [https://www.fastcompany.com/90319916/the-anti-competitive- fo...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90319916/the-anti-competitive-forces-that- foil-speedy-affordable-broadband)

<comment><AUTHOR> If I understand it correctly, the two ways that incumbents are able to kill these efforts are through lower costs and through infrastructure restrictions. Emitting radio waves is both cheaper and lower-infrastructure than laying fiber. The question in my mind is whether the quality holds up.

<comment><USER32> You forgot pay the opposition party to demagogue. Lobbying has a higher ROI and they can keep treating internet service as a luxury good instead of a commodity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm kindda surprised internet affordability is even a blip on the radar in NY compared to housing affordability. Though I'm 100% supportive of the philosophical basis on creating the network.

</comment><comment><USER34> There is also [https://freifunk.net/](https://freifunk.net/) for many major cities in germany

</comment><comment><USER35> There's a lot of good amateur radio mesh nets around as well - I'm in the process of setting up an antenna to join one in Orange County [https://sites.google.com/site/orangecountymeshorganization/h...](https://sites.google.com/site/orangecountymeshorganization/home)

<comment><USER36> We're also setting up an AREDN mesh in St. Louis, MO. Most of the fun for me is getting access to skyscrapers and installing and troubleshooting the network equipment and antennas. I'm not really sure what we're going to do with it once it's actually up. We might host a meet up on it via mumble every once in a while...post some files for hams to enjoy...but for me it's like, "cool, now what?"

<comment><USER37> Mumble uses TLS for everyone and every connection. Is this allowed per Part 97?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I live in a peripheral area of Europe and this is how we get our internet since 12 years from a co-op. Our speed is lower 10 Mb download and a lot less upload but it's good enough.

</comment><comment><USER39> Can anybody explain how this works? like on a technical level?

<comment><USER40> From their docs, it looks like they're deploying a series of neighborhood- scale mesh networks, each with at least one "supernode" which acts as gateway to other supernodes and the meshes behind them, and possibly also to the internet. All the supernodes themselves are meshed together as well, each with its own private ASN.

<comment><USER41> > and possibly also to the internet.

That is an excellent point. Mesh nets may be vulnerable to being monitored over the internet. I have not read the article, but I hope these groups are building privacy into their protocol.

I have wanted to build something like this for decade now. It is inspiring to hear about their success.

<comment><USER40> Well, if you're using TLS it shouldn't matter if someone is monitoring, right?

<comment><USER41> Do these mesh networks support TLS? Even if they do support TLS, it might be possible for a node on the mesh to successfully carry out a SSL strip attack. Or aggregate leaked metadata from the requests that pass through it. I am not familiar with these mesh networks, there may be many lurking attack vectors if the creators are not particularly concerned with privacy / security.

<comment><USER42> TLS is layer 7, so any network will support it.

<comment><USER41> I wasn't making the assumption that their mesh was based on TCP. I should really just read the article and linked materials, but I am trying to ingore that temptation since I am supposed to be working :-P

<comment><USER40> I think it's very poor etiquette to make assumptions about the contents of the article while advertising the fact you haven't read the article.

<comment><USER41> By that line of reasoning it _might_ be good etiquette to make assumptions about an article and the contents of an article provided that one does not include a disclaimer about not reading the article :-P

I did make the disclaimer that I have not read the article for the sake of transparency and humility. I probably will later this week, but the only spare time I have has been spent responding to this thread :-P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is interesting - it says that they are connected to an internet exchange point (IXP), which means presumably they are their own AS and don't pay for peering. It makes them basically a peer of Verizon, etc..

It's a bit of a reminder of what the internet actually is - a bunch of networks connected together. If you make your own network, negotiate or purchase a piece of the IPv6 address space, and convince someone to connect to you and exchange BGP routes then you are part of it.

I wonder how hard it is to join an IXP and how much it costs?

<comment><USER28> IX costs vary by region but in NYC you can expect around $700/m for a 10g port as a startup. Transit costs over an IX port are much higher than crossconnecting directly to a provider, but IX ports are convenient and save a lot of bandwidth cost if you're good at building relationships.

The network engineering world is very different from software. Relationships are everything and the pricing very opaque. Often pricing and lists of "who is in the building" are even behind NDA. If you are an "eyeball network" (more downloads than uploads) your transit costs will be much cheaper if you know how to negotiate, for example.

<comment> _-david-_ >$700/m

Is that $700 a minute, month or something else?

<comment><USER28> Month. Yikes that would be expensive otherwise!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > Spectrum said it also offers a slower $15-a-month connection to eligible > low-income families and seniors.

For what it's worth, the plan is called "Every Day Low Price Internet", and there's no formal eligibility requirements. Spectrum doesn't advertise the plan, but you can see it listed at: [https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/ratecard.html](https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/ratecard.html)

For $15 per month, I get 3 mb down / 1 mb up. The price never changes, there's no hidden fee, no bundle crap etc.

Even as a heavy internet user, I'm very satisfied. It's plenty fast enough for general web browsing, and I let larger downloads run overnight. I can't stream videos above 720p, but I can just wait for them to download in the background with youtube-dl. I also have a script that autodownloads new Youtube videos while I sleep.

Fios is available in my apartment, but for $50 more per month, it's not worth it. If I wasn't in a rental apartment I would seriously consider NYC Mesh, but I'm not. (I'd also be a bit concerned about latency.)

\---

Edit: Actually, looking at the rate card again, the article was likely referring to "Spectrum Internet Assist", which is still $15 a month but offers 30 down / 4 up—but with eligibility requirements: [https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/spectrum-internet- as...](https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/spectrum-internet-assist)

</comment><comment><USER45> I worked as an IT tech in a school district with 9 buildings, each connected by directional antenna. The speed wasn't great but certainly usable enough, even for video. This was back in 2000 and the guy maintaining the network learned it all on his own as far as I can tell. Weather was a problem for the network as outages were fairly common. We had an outside tech who would come out to fix the radios once in a while. Overall it got the job done, but eventually the district ponied up for a fiber connection to at least a few of the larger buildings. I helped lay new wiring for most of the buildings.

</comment><comment><USER46> Reminds me of this: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan_Network)

</comment><comment><USER47> What if every household enabled an open "guest" SSID on their Wifi router? Wouldn't it have a huge positive impact of giving access to people who can't afford mobile data or home internet?

<comment><USER48> You'd lose bandwidth and gain liability. Not a winning proposition.

<comment><USER49> Not an issue really for liability.

[https://openwireless.org/myths-legal.html](https://openwireless.org/myths- legal.html)

<comment><USER48> Your link just makes me more comfident that I don't want to run an open WiFi network.

Most of their defense is based on the assumption that you have all the same protections as a network operator. However, as the article points out, this has never been tested in court. So you might be fine, and you might go to jail, we don't know.

And even if you do get network operator status, there are still legal notices and copyright systems you have to comply with.

And thats all just copyright. That article doesn't deal with more serious online crimes.

If the FBI finds someone downloading child porn from your network, you will be arrested. You will have to convince the police that it was someone else. Even if you don't end up with any serious penalties, that's a hell of a lot more hassle than I'm willing to put up with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> can any Manhattan users here share their experiences? especially if more upper

<comment><USER19> We haven't reached much past 14th St yet. We are working on some big projects uptown.

</comment></comment><comment> Seb-C I love this idea and concept, and I hope it will work well and expand. But if such a concept were to work and expand to big cities, I wonder what will happen to people living outside big cities...

While I don't know anything about the US market, I also wonder what is the motivation to make this project at home instead of mobile-based. Since we all have super-powerful computers in our pockets, it seems to me that we could have an easier similar solution using a smartphone mesh, especially in big and crowded cities?

<comment><USER51> Are you talking about turning smartphones into mesh network routers? I would imagine this would kill your battery rather quickly.

Also, it would probably require rooting the phone to install the necessary routing software.

There are a whole host of other reasons but those two are the easiest to explain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Quotes:"The Mesh maintains a "super node" antenna and 31 hubs throughout lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn that collectively serve about 350 residences."...""Plus the people are nice," she said. "It's a great community."

Yeah, 350 is less then a block of customers for Comcast or Verizon. When only few people are involved everything is great, try to scale this bigger then you'll the real shit go down. It's human condition, individually we are smart, but when in large groups we're stupid.

<comment><USER53> Does it _need_ to be scaled up beyond a community of neighbors?

<comment><USER54> If you want to offer this as an alternative to more than 0.004% of the population of New York City, yes.

Either larger groups or more of them, or both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm curious about how these things are expected to scale..

1000 subscribers, dedicated support person

5000, ???

10000, ???

At some point these community efforts must grow back into a company again, right? And the cycle repeats

<comment><USER56> > At some point these community efforts must grow back into a company again, > right?

(a) Not necessarily, it might turn into a non-profit organisation, a cooperative, or something "akin".

(b) Nothing wrong with companies either. Although I (and many others) would prefer option (a), a _fairer_ company that respects its customers' needs and rights is very welcome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Interesting. I wonder what equipment they're using for $110 that gets a high- bandwidth data signal over multiple city blocks without running afoul of the FCC's limits for broadcast power and signal strength. At certain frequencies those can be remarkably constraining, low enough you can easily exceed them with a twenty dollar wifi adapter and a ten dollar yagi antenna.

</comment><comment><USER58> Wow! Is $66 really considered cheap internet these days?

I pay around $14 monthly for 100 Mbps connection from a corporate internet provider (which typically gives me around 20 Mbps download and upload when I test). No installation fee and free equipment. Same internet, but from a different country. Is the internet connection in the NYC Mesh really that much faster?

</comment><comment><USER59> That's all great IF you live in a new building that has ethernet throughout. I live in central London where there's fiber on my street and yet I can only get ADSL @ max 8MB/s. I'd happily pay some office next door to share their gigabit fibre with me over wifi. Why hasn't anyone solved this?

</comment><comment><USER60> Damn, I wanna make something like this happen in Miami.

I wonder how expensive a 10GB uplink from Terremark would set me back.

<comment><USER28> NYC Mesh survived on a gigabit uplink for a very long time. Go for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> some context on the primary ISP in NYC: 1 year ago (2018-07-27) Spectrum got "kicked out of NYC": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17628906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17628906)

then in April 2019, managed to avoid getting kicked out by agreeing to expansion and paying a fine: [https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2019/04/charter-avoids-g...](https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2019/04/charter-avoids-getting-kicked-out-of-new-york-agrees-to-new- merger-conditions/)

</comment><comment><USER62> Similar to [https://www.liveport.com/](https://www.liveport.com/)

</comment><comment><USER62> [https://archive.is/kvDUb](https://archive.is/kvDUb)

</comment><comment><USER63> Anyone know what hardware these Mesh networks use?

</comment><comment><USER64> Is there something like this for San Francisco?

<comment><USER65> [https://www.monkeybrains.net/](https://www.monkeybrains.net/)

<comment><USER66> I can't recommend them enough, I get 70/70 Mbps symmetric on average, going as high as 100/100+. I only wish they didn't have a soft monthly data cap of 1.5TB. Only $25/month after the installation fee of a satellite on your dwelling.

FTTH would be faster but San Francisco doesn't seem that interested in wiring fiber to SFHs.

The network doesn't seem to have an issue with fog or rain (my home might be in a particularly good spot for it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Wait, how can internet start from $66 in NYC of all places? Where a teeny bit of extra cable can get the connection to hundreds of other subscribers? I smell a rort.

<comment><USER68> Doesn't NYC have a Times Warner monopoly for internet?

If so, that's why.

<comment><USER69> Doesn't appear so. Haven't you seen this cool, allegedly-correct FCC tool:

[https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/location- summary?version=dec2...](https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/location- summary?version=dec2017&lat=40.757846&lon=-73.978748&tech=acfosw&speed=25_3&vlat=40.75554214235714&vlon=-73.9790654494135&vzoom=13.093490849658636)

<comment><USER68> Thats so cool! Learning about this made it worth being wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Guessing this violates many ISP ToS?

<comment><USER71> NYC Mesh is their own ISP, they aren't piggybacking onto consumer ISP connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> If rain effects it, it is millimeter waves. Probably some kind of LMDS (point to multipoint) wireless network

<comment><USER19> My quote was a bit out of context. I was talking about how if it rained my old Time Warner Cable ("Spectrum") connection would go down for a day. This is a known TWC problem in downtown Manhattan.

NYC Mesh is having a different problem with very heavy rain where two of our high speed point-to-point connections (60GHz and 24GHz) will go down for like 20 minutes in very heavy rain. We're working on fixing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Aloha NYC!

</comment><comment><USER74> This is a great use case for crypto. You can earn by supporting the network and spend it to use the network. It helps the incentive layer. Those supporting the network can pay for support personnel as they grow, or there can be a network tax that goes towards this. You can also decentralize the support personnel by rewarding people that successfully answer tickets and offer a premium for when questions are answered within a certain amount of time. These questions and answers would also be stored on-chain on a sidechain.

<comment><USER75> Why is crypto better suited to any of this than... money?

<comment><USER74> The tokens can be used for authentication. With money you'd need accounts, auth for those accounts, somebody needs to manage those accounts, etc

<comment><USER75> > With money you'd need accounts, auth for those accounts, somebody needs to > manage those accounts, etc

Like... a bank? I mean, you're talking as if the infrastructure for paying someone money in return for providing you with a good or service is a wild west territory. It's, er, pretty well established.

<comment><USER74> Yes, but this way it can be decentralized along with the rest of the network, otherwise you need some central entity to manage these accounts and payments and you're back at square one where it basically becomes an ISP.

<comment><USER75> There's still some centralisation to a network like this whether you like it or not. The internet connection it uses has to be paid for somehow.

> you're back at square one where it basically becomes an ISP.

Well, a _non-profit_ ISP, which is an important difference. The non-profit nature makes a much bigger difference to customers than the mesh nature of distribution does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> While I am in favor of increasing competition among ISPs. I don't see how making it volunteer-based is actually good. All this does is take away presumably well-paying jobs from those who need them. IMO, a for-profit company developing a new mesh network would be more compelling. Not only would it provide local jobs, but it would also drive down the cost of internet for all. Somehow though, I feel this is a minority view.

<comment><USER77> At a certain scale they will hire from the same pool as the ISPs. Labor is never saved, it's just moved around. Cooperatives are _always_ better than traditional for-profit companies because you dont have an executive class that does nothing but soak up value generated by the laborers.

At very worst, this sort of volunteer operation will not change the relationship the workers have with their labor and only change who's paying them to do it.

<comment><USER76> Cooperatives are for profit companies. I'm unsure why you think they're not or why they did not fall under my definition of 'for profit' company.

That being said. Cooperatives do have executive classes and they do soak up value from labor

Also traditional for profit companies would theoretically allow local stakeholders to reap profits but I do agree that due to unjust sec rules about accredited investors designed to protect the rich, this can not happen

<comment><USER77> Well ok, but I never implied (or meant to) that co-operatives aren't trying to generate profit for reasons that include less of that profit generation ending up in the hands of people who do less, at least in the co-ops im familiar with. They are more efficient than the predecessor organization style.

I definitely did imply that they had _no_ executive class, though, which is wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A note on reading big, difficult books - <AUTHOR> https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/12/a-note-on-reading-big-difficult-books.html <comment><USER2> Here's the thing: most books, for most people, don't _need_ to be absorbed or understood in their entirety.

If you're a professional in your field and ought to be expected to be able to write a similar book? Then sure, you should understand it 100%. But this is a very rare circumstance for most people.

For most books, the reality is that you only need to know the Big Idea and its main justifications. Or that, depending on your needs, there are a few additional details that might come in handy. But that reading the whole book a) really ensures you'll remember the big idea and its main justifications, in a way that a one-page summary you might totally forget later, and b) lets you skim for specific details that might be especially relevant to you personally.

You shouldn't generally feel guilty that you don't remember enough from a book. You're not _supposed_ to. (Again, unless you have a very specific and necessary professional reason to.)

Fully understanding a book might take 100 hours. In that time, you could read 10 other books in 10 hours each and get the main gist of each. Which one do you think is going to be more productive for your life?

<comment><USER3> >Which one do you think is going to be more productive for your life?

I think it's better to carefully select which books you read, and really get everything that you can out of them. For example, you could read 10 self help books or you could read The Republic and really understand it. And you could probably quickly read 100 self help books and books on leadership in the time it would take you to go through the relevant Plato->Aristotle->Kant->Schopenhauer->Nietzsche books that build on each other. I think you'd be far better off reading the philosophy than the self help books, but that's just me. Those self help books are a garbage use of language relative to works held up as being pillars of modern thought, there is enough extremely high quality literature from human history and text books from the modern era to keep me busy reading carefully and learning a lot for the rest of my life if its all I did, I'm fairly certain.

>You shouldn't generally feel guilty that you don't remember enough from a book. You're not supposed to.

Completely disagree, this might hurt some feelings, but if you can't remember much from a book you read, you wasted your time reading it if you weren't reading it just for pleasure. Either the book wasn't worth reading in the first place or you didn't pay close enough attention.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but I just can't disagree enough.

As someone who has read not just The Republic, but much of philosophy from Aristotle through Rawls and beyond... it's been tremendously useful to me academically and utterly fascinating, but of relatively little value in my personal life (with the sole exception of Aristotle). I mean, the Republic is valuable principally as a historical work, not because any idea within it whatsoever is going to change your life. Its ideas are... quirky, to say the least. Also, most philosophy classics are completely inaccessible to the average reader, and make little sense on their own -- only making sense in a much wider context that you really need to dedicate extensive study to.

In contrast, there are "self-help" books that can fundamentally alter the way you look at and lead your life at a personal level -- your actual day-to-day behavior and the relationships you have with people. Just like any genre, there are plenty of garbage ones, but plenty of invaluable ones as well, written by psychiatrists (e.g. "Too Perfect" or "Present Perfect") and artists (e.g. "The Artist's Way") and literary/philosophy types (e.g. anything by Alain de Botton).

Your thinking seems very black-and-white -- in that philosophy classics are overwhelmingly better than self-help for people today, or that a book must either be worth intense study or else is worthless. In reality, most books are somewhere in between, kind of like a bell curve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reading big difficult books is offered as a way to teach reasoning from first principles. On how to go about it:

"We have our recommended ten-stage process for reading such big books:

1\. Figure out beforehand what the author is trying to accomplish in the book.

2\. Orient yourself by becoming the kind of reader the book is directed at—the kind of person with whom the arguments would resonate.

3\. Read through the book actively, taking notes.

4\. "Steelman" the argument, reworking it so that you find it as convincing and clear as you can possibly make it.

5\. Find someone else—usually a roommate—and bore them to death by making them listen to you set out your "steelmanned" version of the argument.

6\. Go back over the book again, giving it a sympathetic but not credulous reading

7\. Then you will be in a good position to figure out what the weak points of this strongest-possible argument version might be.

8\. Test the major assertions and interpretations against reality: do they actually make sense of and in the context of the world as it truly is?

9\. Decide what you think of the whole.

10\. Then comes the task of cementing your interpretation, your reading, into your mind so that it becomes part of your intellectual panoply for the future."

</comment><comment><USER5> My research involves reading "big, difficult books" all the time. It usually takes me 5 books on the same subject to get a firm grip on the subject.

The first book gives me the important words.

The second book gives me the paragraphs that show how the words are used.

The third book strings together the ideas.

The fourth book shows how the ideas are used.

The fifth book makes sense and I get a grip on the subject.

Breaking into a new area where you don't even understand the words, such as in biology, is a very time consuming task.

<comment><USER6> Considering it seems like you're just building up your understanding one step at a time, wouldn't you also be able to read the same book 5 times?

<comment><USER7> Perspectives make the picture. None is complete, and all have assumptions.

<comment><USER6> But that's not how the process was described. The first book is apparently only for vocabulary, the second for diction (not sure about a better term for this), third for basic concepts, fourth for application, and then finally a holistic understanding of the subject. If the case was looking at various ideas, I'd agree with you, but if the first book only "gives me the important words" and the second "gives me the paragraphs that show how the words are used" then it's not really giving you different perspectives as you're still very much in the "understanding what the book is talking about" phase.

<comment><USER8> I think this list could be written as "after finishing book one, I have the important words; after finishing book two, I have a grasp on how these words are used", etc.

I.e. the process is additive, each book lets you tease out another layer of understanding, and it's best if these are different books, because then there are more things for your brain to diff, making the understanding process faster.

<comment><USER6> Totally fair, but given that you only pulled out the basics the first time through the book, why not go through it again to see what the book has to say about those basics? You clearly didn't get everything out of the first book on the first run through.

<comment><USER9> Sure, after you have skimmed 2 or 3 other books, go back and read the first one more carefully again.

* * *

I strongly endorse this method. Doesn't have to be books either. Want to learn about some cutting edge research topic in a highly technical field, but don't want to first go through 3 years of grad-student-level coursework?

Jump right in, but don't start with a textbook or a survey paper. Start by skimming 10 or 20 (or more) arbitrary papers about related topics. Don't worry that many terms seem like nonsense. Try to get the gist (to the extent possible) of each paper quickly. Let the methods and terminology wash over you. After that go back and read the survey paper, which should hopefully start to make sense after prior exposure to some of its ideas. Then if there are parts of that which still don't make sense, go find the relevant textbook(s).

It's not worth reading research papers in an unfamiliar community too carefully right off the bat; most of the papers are garbage and without some exposure/context it's sometimes hard to tell which ones. Sweating all of the details before you have the right high level impression is going to confuse you and waste your time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Skimming is helpful, especially I think if in a structured way: reading the beginning and the end first, then deciding if more is worth it, and if so, reading the first sentence (or so, maybe last) of each paragraph, and then deciding if more is needed.

The optimal approach might vary sometimes, but I have found this helpful even for some fiction (to relax, but get thru boring parts faster), and to get through more material generally, because things are of very unequal worth.

Also news articles tend to put the most important things at the beginning so there is less reason to read the end, or anything once you get far enough to answer your purpose.

</comment><comment><USER11> 6-9 hours per book seems impressive to me.

<comment><USER12> That was my reaction too. Maybe this is an argument in favor or reading slower?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought when I was younger I couldn't read big, difficult books and (since it never occurred to me that there might be people smarter than me) I concluded that nobody could read big, difficult books. It was quite an epiphany when I actually really forced myself to get through one - and once I had pushed past that first barrier, it's gotten easier and easier to read really meaningful books.

<comment><USER14> Most of these books are very poorly written. Smith's Wealth of Nations, as an example, is mostly very well-written and abysmally bad through the minority (Marx/Keynes probably the opposite). And meaning isn't really constant either, you read something and then come back to parts of it.

<comment><USER15> Keynes is known as being one of the best Economist writers of all time.

<comment><USER14> First, no he isn't. Second, the book we are talking about (again) is a textbook (this view isn't remotely controversial btw - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employme...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employment,_Interest_and_Money#Observations_on_its_readability)). Economic Consequences of Peace is very good, a lot of his stuff aimed at the general public (Persuasion/How to Pay for the War) is good...General Theory is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> He certainly makes Wealth Of Nations sound compelling. I haven't read it before and want to see how it's structured as an actual argument with premises leading towards conclusions.

<comment><USER17> As suggested, it's an excellent but difficult read. But like many such books (say The Beginning of Infinity), they reverberate in my mind for years afterwards, with interesting inferences and callbacks.

That said, you might skip the digression on silver (ugh).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This isn't really how most people should read books. You aren't reading a book to learn arguments like a parrot. The meaning of all the books he mentions has changed over time, and you won't have the same understanding the second time you read it (i.e. years after, re-reading it straight after is pointless...it is robotic).

Also, just generally I think the structure of the course is bad. Reading three books cover-to-cover is basically pointless (Keynes esp. so as it was a textbook, I think he would turn in his grave if he thought people were being subjected to this, both Marx/Smith are very dry in areas too). It would be far better to look at the key ideas across more periods and get students to engage directly with those ideas...which is why similar courses in philosophy, theology, etc. do this.

<comment><USER12> I agree, and I don't think I appreciated this point enough when I was in school. In high school or college, I would do literally what is said here - get assigned a book, and read the book. In my professional reading, or also hobby reading as an adult, I would never approach learning a topic that way. As an adult, I supplement my reading of a text with secondary sources about the text (things people have written about the text, wikipedia articles about the text or things in it, etc.).

To take an example of an edition that does this really well: the "Landmark" series for Thucydides [1] and Herodotus [2] both qualify as "big, difficult" books, but the book comes with additional secondary sources that aid in the reading to orient the newbie in how to approach the text.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Thucydides-Comprehensive- Gui...](https://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Thucydides-Comprehensive-Guide- Peloponnesian/dp/0684827905) [2] [https://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Herodotus- Histories-Robert-S...](https://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Herodotus-Histories- Robert-Strassler/dp/1400031141)

<comment><USER14> Yep, tbh it is kind of wasteful to just go into Thucydides...like you read it, and 95% of it will go over your head (that is a particularly good choice of example because it is at the nexus of sp many important subjects...if you just come in without anything...it is just a normal book).

And, imo, dipping between books is far more effective. Even at university, you are given a few sources and you move between them but it isn't natural. Going between sources naturally at your own pace and based on your own interest/understanding will build far more actual knowledge than trying to shortcut your way there (and yes, Wiki is great for that). It is a shame that doesn't fit into some kind of formal education system...definitely in a subject like history, the end result would be far better work from academics.

<comment><USER18> Ouch, that really hit home about Thucydides. I was going through the Classics at one point, and did get a lot out of Herodotus and some of the philosophers, but Peloponnesian War just seemed like a list of islands they sailed to, and fought at. I did get a general sense that diplomacy and debate hasn't changed much in 2500 years though.

<comment><USER19> Hehe I had to stop reading Thucydides because my flatmates were fighting each other at the time, and the book was way too reminiscent of what was happening at home.

<comment><USER14> One of the funniest things I have heard said about Thucydides.

Were you just like: "Bro, if the Delian League could see you two now?" _laughs quietly to self and walks out the room shaking head_

<comment><USER19> There was me and 4 or 5 others renting a huge, cheap Sydney house. My girlfriend and her best friend (early 20s, involved in uni politics) were fighting, and there was a couple in their 40s that had split up, he (a playwright) wanted her out immediately, and she was being hilariously cruel. I came back from visiting my parents to find everyone fighting with each other. I'd just gotten through Herodotus, with great pleasure, but the Melian Dialogue was too much, too in-my-face, sickening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Realizing you don't understand the point comes from understanding the point more than you did before you read the book.</comment>


ES6 const - <AUTHOR> I'd want ECMAScript's `const` shortened to something like `ref`, `val`, `cst`<p>- it's the most frequently used keyword<p>- it's not really a constant but more a 'shallow' constant<p>- it conflicts with console.log auto-completion <comment><USER2> ... Neat. There would be any number of ways to implement this using existing tools. `cst` would certainly be a horrible choice. But a trivial IDE/editor/text expander fix anyway.

2) You may be confusing immutability vs. binding

3) Trivial editor fix</comment>


Longest-standing videogame record declared impossible, thrown out after 35 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/29/16944736/atari-dragster-game-world-record-banned <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16263143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16263143)

93+ points</comment>


Starting a startup on an F1 visa - <AUTHOR> 	I'm a student on an F1 visa in the Unites States. I've been working along with my co-founder on our startup for the past 9 months. Recently, I was issued CPT to work for my own company, and I didn't realize you couldn't be self-employed while working on CPT. So I was wondering what options I have at this point to avoid violating my student status? The document was issued early of this month for your reference.
We are going through seeding stage at the moment and finalizing things with investors, so we have to register our company and establish all the related paperwork, and we are trying to do so taking my situation into consideration.
So is there any legal way in which I can keep working on my startup without violating my status? If any of you know lawyers or website where I can look for legal concerning this matter, please point me to them. I'm currently located in MA.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> You cannot start a startup with your F1 visa, at least legally, so as you rightfully mentioned you are violating your visa.

If your cofounder is American, the company can be registered in his name and you can work for him as an employee which you can do with your CPT and later OPT and possibly H1B. As an employee you can have shares in the company which can help protect your interest.

If you startup does well and your share become valuable to around 100K you can apple for an investor visa or a visa for special ability which will help you work here.

If your cofounder is not American your best bet is registering the startup in your home country and getting a virtual forwarding address here in the US, then you can claim you are not working in the US but then you have to find a company in the US to work for and work on your startup parttime

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for your response, I do appreciate it! Just couple follow up questions, how much shares can I legally own? And does one of the co-founders have to register the company under his name or could it be a third trusted party? Again, thanks for your time!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Windows XP in your Browser - <AUTHOR> https://elkael.com <comment><USER2> At first I thought it was going to be something like jslinux[1] and instead I was greeted by something so cheesy and thrown together I can't tell if it's a joke or a serious attempt.

[1] [https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=https://bellard.org/...](https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=https://bellard.org/jslinux/win2k.cfg&mem=192&graphic=1&w=1024&h=768)</comment>


The N=2 Interview about Ph.D.s in Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-interview-eugene-wu-keith-winstein.htm

<comment><USER2> I love the idea of doing an "interview" over Google Docs. That way you can ask one question and have multiple people respond at the same time.

Great read. Thanks again @pgbovine!

<comment><USER3> Ytalk reinvented bbadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How can the second guy, Eugene Wu, possibly be a professor straight after getting his PhD? That's insane! In the UK you'd have to do probably 20 years after your PhD as a postdoc and then lecturer before you could remotely hope to get a chair. How come he's gotten it immediately?

<comment><USER5> lecturer in uk = assistant professor (tenure track) in usa

senior lecturer? in uk = associate professor (with tenure) in usa

<comment><USER6> In the UK the pecking order is:

PhD Student

Postdoc

Lecturer

Reader

Professor

There are various higher positions like head of department/faculty and prestigious professorships, e.g. the Lucasian Chair in Cambridge.

Lecturer is normally the first 'tenure track' job people get after being a postdoc for a few years. It's the first of the permanent placements you can get. That said, postdoc is a catch-all and doesn't necessarily mean fresh grad. There are postdocs in my group who are nearing retirement and have stable jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Technically in the UK it is:

Post doc Lecturer A (probation) Lecturer B (tenured) Senior lecturer Reader Professor Senior/Research Professor or Named Chair Emeritus Professor</comment>


On periodisation: or, what's the best way to chop history into bits? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://manyheadedmonster.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/on-periodisation-or-whats-the-best-way-to-chop-history-into-bits/ <comment><USER2> The engineer's view: The Iron Age, with iron, stonework, brasswork, woodworking, weaving, and agriculture, ran until the 1600s or so. Then there was a period of tinkering and one-offs, but not much happened until 1830.

Then, in 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened. That was the moment when the industrial revolution got out of beta. The Liverpool and Manchester had passenger tickets, double track, schedules, and all steam locomotives - no horses, no cable hauling. (There's a great documentary for which I lack the link, for which replicas, or even the originals, of early locomotives were taken out and run. Everything before the Liverpool and Manchester was clunky and didn't run smoothly. The narrator rides the Liverpool and Manchester train, which is smoothly running at about 30MPH, and drinks from a glass.)

And then the modern world began.

<comment><USER3> I'd add another step with the Electric Age. Maybe at 1882 (the opening of the Pearl Street Station).

And maybe another with the Computer Age. Maybe at 1945, with ENIAC.

<comment><USER4> It's hard to overstate how much of advantage the computers in Bletchley Park gave the allies in WWII. At least bump the Computer Age back one year so you can get D-Day in there.

<comment><USER2> Bletchley Park did not have general-purpose computers as we understand them. They had special-purpose hardware key-testers - the electromechanical bombe, and the electronic Colossus. Their successor today is a Bitcoin miner.

Although it gets less publicity today, Friedman's cryptanalysis operation in the US did much more number-crunching. Friedman turned cryptanalysis from guessing and testing into a statistical problem.[1] He and his organizations made heavy use of modified IBM tabulators during WWII.[2] Those were much more general purpose machines, somewhat programmable.

[1] [https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news- features/decla...](https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news- features/declassified-documents/friedman- documents/publications/FOLDER_231/41760429079956.pdf)

[2] p. 183ff, [https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news- features/decla...](https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news- features/declassified-documents/friedman- documents/publications/ACC15281/41785109082412.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huh, I was expecting a discussion of a language problem about how you take historical texts from the early days and add punctuation to it. I know things can be "period"-ized different ways because I've read Bibles where the there's new verse numbers starting in the middle of a sentence.

Dividing history into epochs seems like a much more intractable problem, because the future was already then, it was just unevenly distributed. Taking the names to be more meaningful than conventions is a little silly.

</comment><comment><USER5> My high school history books always used watershed moments. The beginning of a chapter was a big event, then some explanation of the fallout of the event, and then some context on the buildup to the next big event and then.... next chapter!</comment>