Why Doesn't Our Government Actually Do Anything? - <AUTHOR> http://rationalconspiracy.com/2012/06/03/why-doesnt-our-government-actually-do-anything/

<comment><USER2> The fundamental problem here is demosclerosis - any low-hanging fruit have long since been plucked. Essentially every plank in the Socialist Party Platform of 1928 has already been enacted into law. Nowadays many of the issues government tries to address were _caused_ by the _previous_ round of government efforts to solve problems.

But the longer you apply patches on top of patches, the more rickety the whole structure becomes. Eventually you reach a point where you'd be better starting over with a complete rewrite from scratch. It happens for software languages and OSes; it happens for governments too.

As for what to do about it, I always liked Heinlein's suggestion (in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) that there should two houses of congress: one whose job is to pass new laws, another whose job is to repeal old ones. Without that second house, the legal code invariably becomes a cancer or an impenetrable thicket.

Another idea is Seasteading. Basically there needs to be _some_ way that brand new from-scratch ideas of how to govern can be tried out and demonstrated. The same way stodgy old companies can learn by stealing ideas (and people) from tiny new startup companies, the stodgy old governments need a way to learn by stealing ideas from tiny new startup governments. Any change that helps big old countries break up into smaller new ones or allows brand new smaller ones to come into existence would be a big help. Seasteading (forming new societies in international waters) is one such option; another is the "charter cities" movement, where existing governments are convinced to voluntarily allow other legal systems to flourish in small areas that would otherwise be in their domain.

</comment><comment><USER3> >>\- Eliminated all gold, and replaced it with unredeemable "greenbacks"

They confiscated the gold. The war on terror is a new phenomenon and it should meet the criteria for a significant undertaking.

</comment><comment><USER4> The reason is that government has valid things to do, but these have been frozen in place since the mid 70's.

Right now, the big debate appears to be a 5% taxation difference on the top 10% of wage earners.

The only other things that change are fear-based, such as the creation of "Homeland Security".

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, I'll try to keep my point simple. Our constant need to complain is corrosive. Visionary thinkers shaped our society for the next generation.

I didn't enjoy reading this since it was a large complain fest, and that is the corrosive thing that has made our government do nothing. If you imagine a future in which you have a government that is effective, that "does" things, somehow you are able to accomplish that goal. You need visionary thinkers, not complainers. And you have to offer up some idea of where you see the future of government, instead of complaining about how it does not do anything. The people who shaped our societies future knew the kind of society they wanted to live in. We rarely talk about what we want our society to look like, what we value as a society. Start talking about these things.

<comment><USER6> What should society look like? I'll take a stab at it.

We should value compassion and authentic relationships, rather than talking in the language of power. We should get the f over ourselves, and especially value those that do, as they're more likely to be trusted with positions of power since they have a level of self-knowledge that many do not. We should stop obsessing over meaningless things like money and get on with doing what we, personally, need to do. We should stop accepting the disgustingly low level of national discourse that pervades the mainstream media and move towards talking like adults. We should stop living in a reactionary, fear- based mode, especially with regard to terrorism. We should stop being obsessed with work in a vain attempt to define ourselves.

In short, we should take responsibility for our lives as humans and the impact we have on everyone around us. Currently, there's too much of an incentive to act like an asshole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why doesn't our government actually do anything? Because no one can agree on anything to do. The examples provided all were projects with widespread approval. But today, there isn't a lot of agreement. It will take more visionary politicians than what we have today to convince people their policy is the policy to follow. Yesterday, we had politicians that envisioned a future where Americans could drive across the country or put a man on the Moon. Today, what?</comment>


Ask HN: Deploying Jira Server for free or for under $10/month - <AUTHOR>

I'm using Bitbucket to track issues on several projects as I need private repository access with a budget of "free" allocated to a service such as Github or Bitbucket. Unfortunately, Bitbucket's issue tracking is severely lacking in comparison to what you can do in Jira or Github with no plans to improve it.
I have a Jira server license, however, I'm looking for some guidance on where I can deploy it for free or on a DigitalOcean $5/month Droplet or something similar.
Please help!
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Atlassian's hosted JIRA is $10/month for up to 10 users. It is very slow compared to hosting on premises, but users in my office don't need fast ticket tracking.

I switched from on-premises JIRA, Stash & Confluence to the Atlassian hosted services and I found it saved a ton of admin time. I am a happy customer.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion it's well worth it to host it with them if you don't want the hassle of maintaining database backups and such. You loose some customizing, but gain security and time.

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently tried unsuccessfully to run the free confluence version on a free ubunty AWS EC2 instance...too little memory. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER5> would it work on vpsdime? or some of the lowendbox stuff?</comment>


Ask HN: Startup Vacation Policy - <AUTHOR>

My company is getting to that stage where we have a number of salaried and part-time employees. My partners and I are looking to encourage and reward our employees while building an open and inviting company culture. At the same time we want to make sure and protect the company and make sure this environment isn't take advantage of. I've read of great companies with relaxed vacation policies and I've also seen other established companies with more traditional policies. What has HN found to work for you personally as an employee or an owner?<p>As this is HN, any links you've found to be helpful would be appreciated as well. <comment><USER2> In my opinion so-called "unlimited" vacation policies in tech companies are just a scam. People job hop a lot, and often they want to take their accumulated vacation as cash when they do - unlimited vacation policies seem to let companies avoid that payout. I'm guessing that's what you're referring to with "relaxed vacation policies."

I'd prefer a more typical 3 weeks, be generous with holidays - the day after Thanksgiving, for starters; and a "comp time" policy, where if someone works a weekend or extra long day(s) they accumulate more vacation days.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been leaning this way, I've also heard of people actually taking less time off with the policy. Although I'm not sure how much of an issue that will be as we are usually pushing people to unplug a bit. Also the partners do a good job of leading by example and taking time off. The fact that you don't have to track the vacation as much given everything that has to be tracked in the business is enticing though.

<comment><USER3> I think it really depends on the company and the founders: I have seen it both ways with friends. There are folks who don't even take a single day off every year in spite of having "Unlimited vacation days" because of a poisonous culture where people who take days off are considered to be slackers by peers. I think this is due to leadership failure because one of the reasons this happens is because the company is so "lean" that they can't afford to even miss one person for a single day. On the other hand, there are places where the CEO forces people to switch off their phones and GTFO because they are sick and have been working their asses off.

As an employee, I prefer the two weeks deal because it is clear and concise and there is no b.s. about whether I can take days off or not. My company does that and also shuts down during christmas holidays from the 24 till Jan 01. I feel like that in all makes a pretty decent holiday package.

Also, to answer your question regarding the fact that this is another parameter to track. You could just get people to self report PTOs on whatever HR management system you use?</comment></comment></comment>


Chrome Extensions to Make Wikipedia Clean, Usable, and Beautiful - <AUTHOR> http://willsewell.name/posts/2014-05-13-wiki-extens.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, OP here.

Just thought I'd add that I set up this site today. Having a personal site, along with a blog is something I have meant to do for a long time now.

It is obviously rather minimal right now, and I would love to hear any feedback about the site and blog style.

I hope you find the post itself useful.</comment>


Together vs. Alone: Thoughts on building a team - <AUTHOR> https://www.preetamnath.com/blog/building-a-team <comment><USER2> Very nice article, but I have to disagree with the notion that solo developers or small teams are limited to small ideas.

Team mode works well when you have found a beachhead and are ready to settle the new territory. If you are still looking through the fog, however, or exploring multiple ideas, or even some giant crazy sounding project, scout mode (single or small team) is more resource efficient and teaches/surfaces the resourceful and obsessed. Zuckerberg tinkering at Harvard, Drew Houston with DropBox, the Wright brothers, and plenty of others to showcase.

Solo developers and two person teams without a trust fund may even build revenue generating boring stuff first, to use the funds for moonshot prototyping (as the article writers also did).

Creativity, especially deep problem-solving or exploration requires hermit mode (ask PhDs). Ideas generated in solo mode make great discussion material for team brainstorming, but going straight to team produces mostly shallow work. Then there is the dynamic of managing work, expectations, direction, stakeholders.

If you are the type of founder who enjoys managing other people doing the work, you may start with fundraising/hiring, but I would put my money on those truly obsessed with the problem. Especially if they take the first stab at it to find the right direction and iterate a few times until they are confident with a solid target before growing a team.

<comment><USER3> Isn't what you're describing autonomy of team members?

Some team members go on their own path-finding journey and can make the decisions on their own on where to take it.

I believe a team effort also involves a transfer of knowledge. I know some companies are disfunctional regarding this. Some companies aren't and while you are working on something, you can invite others to comment and give suggestions while you present your current progress.

I would present during team meetings what I was doing and why and sometimes got great feedback which helped me. If what I was working on affected many teams or wasn't interesting to my own team, I would send an optional meeting invite. Two kinds of people accepted it. The ones who were interested and the ones who had experience in that particular sub-topic.

Generally, the ones with experience asked questions during the meeting and the ones without sometimes asked questions afterwards. Both were helpful. Those with experience sometimes made me pivot. And those without, I flagged as someone I would like to include now or at some point in the project.

I don't think what I said was contradicting what you said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article appears to have very little substance. The author and his co- founder hired an engineer. They don't explain how they found this engineer. They don't explain how they evaluated their hire. They don't explain anything about their overall philosophy on how an engineering team should function. It's just that the founder and co-founder couldn't do all the work they needed to do in order to execute on their plan, so they hired someone to help with the burden. I don't understand why this deserves a blog post, much less a blog post that reaches the front page of Hacker News.

<comment><USER5> What you mentioned is the raw materials of the post.. but the nice stuff I see: experience around these raw materials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr: Go alone when you want to go fast, go together when you want to go far.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great article!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Sergio. Hope you enjoyed the recent roadtrip to the oceans. The trail looked beautiful <3</comment></comment>


The New Airbnb - <AUTHOR> https://www.airbnb.com <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I've ever met an opinion on a logo, name, or anything creative less than a month old that was worth a damn.

When faced with something new, the tendency is to focus on the superficial, the easy joke, and it's too easy to let other opinions steer your own; they're momentarily on equal footing, you see. But the work will last longer than this moment. Your own opinion will evolve. The crowd will move on to the next easy joke and hip-shot reaction.

That's why I like to avoid making more than cautious, small statements until I've had a while to reflect. This work looks nice to me. There's potential for great marketing in an individually customizable — but still distinctive (or distinguishable) — logomark.

Most of this commentary feels like the person in the code review who hasn't taken the time to digest the intent of the code, so they comment on formatting. Whitespace. Trees. Not the forest.

<comment><USER3> I clicked on this thread wondering: 1) why is this news?; and 2) why are there so many comments? I'm not sure I learned the answer to either one...

<comment><USER4> I believe this comment was formatted incorrectly. I think this is how it should've been posted:

>> I'm not sure I've ever met an opinion on a logo, name, or anything creative less than a month old that was worth a damn.

>> When faced with something new, the tendency is to focus on the superficial, the easy joke, and it's too easy to let other opinions steer your own; they're momentarily on equal footing, you see. But the work will last longer than this moment. Your own opinion will evolve. The crowd will move on to the next easy joke and hip-shot reaction.

>> That's why I like to avoid making more than cautious, small statements until I've had a while to reflect. This work looks nice to me. There's potential for great marketing in an individually customizable — but still distinctive (or distinguishable) — logomark.

> Most of this commentary feels like the person in the code review who hasn't > taken the time to digest the intent of the code, so they comment on > formatting. Whitespace. Trees. Not the forest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Logo similarity:

[https://www.automationanywhere.com/](https://www.automationanywhere.com/)

They've had this re-design at least since March (based on their Facebook page).

<comment><USER6> That is nearly identical. Would anyone with legal experience like to chime in about trademarks or something? I don't have much knowledge of it.

<comment><USER7> Not a lawyer, but I do have a long-standing interest in trademark law and know a good deal about it.

Courts look at the potential for confusion, which is often avoided if the two companies are in completely different markets, eg Apple Computer complaining about a store that specializes in apple pie and uses the word 'apple' in their business name. Trademark owners essentially have to make a showing of defending their mark or risk being accused of abandonment by someone else who wants to appropriate it, so typically they write a huffy letter, the small business with a vaguely-similar mark protests, and a court or national trademark arbitrator says 'there there, your businesses are totally different and it's OK to have slightly similar names because consumers will be able to tell them apart.'

However it's quite unusual to see two logos that are virtually identical as in this case, and arguably AirBNB is in the business of automating short term lets so there's a possibility of confusion with this firm that offers automation services. The automation firm might have a legitimate complaint for having been using their logo first, but it also depends on which company filed the mark with the USPTO first (which I haven't checked). I'd guess a likely outcome is that AirBnB pays the automation firm some cash to avoid a dispute.

<comment><USER8> Looks like Airbnb and Automation Anywhere are already working together on this.

[http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/16/airbnbs-new-logo-looks- a-l...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/16/airbnbs-new-logo-looks-a-lot-this- other-companys-logo/)

<comment><USER9> The piece starts with the companies on equal footing and ends with the logo belonging to AirBNB. To me that implies AirBNB is buying them off.

<comment><USER7> It's a win-win...and AirBNB will surely be able to negotiate the bill of its design consultants steeply downward for their lack of due diligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, this should go down in the annals of logos which should have gotten some wider impressions before launching.

Since nobody else on HN has mentioned it, all of twitter thinks the new logo looks like a vagina. It's hard to unsee.

<comment><USER11> What's wrong with a logo that looks like a vagina? Apple's logo looks like an apple, which isn't really related to their business.

<comment><USER12> If you were designing a logo, would you make one that looks like a penis?

<comment><USER13> Sure. What's wrong with vaginas? Why do we demonize parts of the body?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, OK, why do we? I agree. It's silly. Does the rest of America agree? No.

Given that this is part of AirBnb transforming to a consumer brand you'd think they'd pay more attention to what their target consumers think. They're a business, after all.

<comment><USER14> "Hey, let's rent a place. It costs reasonable, the people seem nice, it's going to be fun."

"OMG, no, no we can't. The logo looks like a vagina."

<comment><USER12> Why yes, you're right, that's exactly how brand perception works.

<comment><USER15> Actually, brand perception usually works in the reverse order of the uphtread description, where negative reaction to branding prevents consideration of the other qualities of the product rather than be considered as a factor of discussion _after_ consideration of those qualities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I clicked on the link and saw the "Welcome Home" message with a lady sleeping in the background.

A second or two later she moved and I realized I'm watching a short video of some lady sleeping. Which felt very creepy.

I just thought that was noteworthy since that's not a feeling that comes up all that often clicking on a link for a business's home page.

On the new logo:

I think it's surprisingly nice. The video introduction was good too. Except for a couple things:

1\. The flashing font-color/background-color sequence bothered my eyes quite a bit. It's almost offensively intrusive? It seems like one of those "persistent vision" pictures/illusions. Except you don't expect it.

2\. The "four things"... took a nice (if a bit cheesy) message, and really made it feel forced. It clued me into the intent that they want little Bélo stickers plastered in the corners of windows... but I feel like that sort of thing happens organically, or not. If you distribute free stickers to owners, with that suggestion on the back of the peel-away, I bet it's as effective. If you don't distribute them, then the video isn't going to make it happen anyways.

Just my 2c.

<comment><USER17> > _I clicked on the link and saw the "Welcome Home" message with a lady > sleeping in the background. A second or two later she moved and I realized > I'm watching a short video of some lady sleeping. Which felt very creepy._

could not reproduce.

<comment><USER18> It seems to cycle through different videos, I think this is the one they are talking about: [https://a0.muscache.com/airbnb/static/Paris-P1-0.webm](https://a0.muscache.com/airbnb/static/Paris-P1-0.webm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _For so long, people thought Airbnb was about renting houses. But really, we're about home. You see, a house is just a space, but a home is where you belong._

I hope they didn't pay very much for this, it's nauseating.

<comment><USER9> The house-home pivot is pretty pedestrian, but nothing I've seen about the rebrand tells me it was anything but expensive.

<comment><USER19> Naming the logo is pretty pretentious. Though, it doesn't matter much, I have a feeling Bélo isn't going to become a household word.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't have to be, it's a mascot, which in my experience means it will be an officehold word. Also, since it has a name, I'd say the smart money would be to look for it to play a role in future marketing and advertising collateral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I haven't used AirBnB extensively and don't really remember the old UI, but my immediate thought is this new UI will probably appeal to their target audiences.

It looks like it's designed to convey an emotion - that giddy feeling when you're traveling and seeing something new, coupled with having a homey experience from a local. It's got great big photos, that big hero video, and is emphasizing both people and landscapes pretty well.

Overall, I get the sense that the brand is growing up and expanding from a sub-culture to a larger market of travelers now. And they've managed to look better than an Expedia or Travelocity.

With that said - darn it, now I can't get the "private parts" comparison out of my head now.

(Conspiracy theorist note: Unless, that's what they wanted to put into your head... Ooo...)

</comment><comment><USER21> The site looks great.

However, is it just me, or do the videos in the mantle not really add much? I find the movement in some of them distract from the space itself, while others just seem a little staged or even a bit creepy. I think I would have much preferred photos.

<comment><USER22> As a counter-point, the videos were my favorite part but I agree some of them look a little too staged. Possibly blurring them a bit or adding a slightly translucent overlay as another poster suggested could make them less distracting and increase the prominence of the white text overlay.

Just don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not a critique of the design overall, but if someone responsible for the home page design is reading this: it might be worth applying a slight translucent layer over the background images/videos to help make the white text more readable (something like (0,0,0,0.4)!

<comment><USER24> I think because the background is such a long, varied animation, it works as- is. None of the letters are unreadable for more than a moment, and only occasionally do small portions become unreadable. The exception, I think, is the Signup|Login|Help navigation section in the top-right. Sometimes whole links become unreadable for like 5 seconds!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is the new symbol an attempt at some contrived post-millenial hobo code?

"Look, honey! The Bélo! We've found a safe-house!"

<comment><USER26> I actually was thinking this, because of a Mad Men episode[1] and came here to mention it.

Overall I like the logo, but the idea of something akin to the Hobo Code in particular is pretty brilliant IMHO. It's a very Don Draper idea :)

1: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1097128/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1097128/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love the new site. I was never a fan of the old one because I felt overwhelmed with all the information on the screen. This feels cleaner, more minimalist.

One gripe I have with the new site is the fixed booking form on the right side of the screen as you scroll through a listing. I find it really distracting (perhaps that's the point?). Because of the fixed form on the right, there's also a lot of wasted space in the column. I dunno, maybe I'll get used to this over time.

</comment><comment><USER28> Frankly I did not see this coming [0], I always figured Airbnb would aim to be a universal marketplace, rather than carving out a niche in "authentic", "unique", "truly amazing experiences".

Anyhow, I read "belonging" as a coded word for "community", and wonder how Airbnb thinks they are going to culture their own community...

Maybe they will make a strategic acquisition? Lonely Planet, for example.

Or maybe they will bleed some of their profits into a virtual currency / karma that folks can earn, trade, and apply toward accommodations? Airbnb could tweak the karma economy to maximize profits while still infusing enough karma to bootstrap their community.

[0] [http://blog.airbnb.com/belong-anywhere](http://blog.airbnb.com/belong- anywhere)

<comment><USER29> Well, unique and amazing experiences will probably cause them fewer legal issues for Airbnb over the long-term. As opposed to being a universal marketplace where people aren't necessarily abiding by their own leases.

<comment><USER28> A $10 billion dollar company ought to be able to work that stuff out.

<comment><USER29> They are _valued_ at $10 billion. They don't _have_ $10 billion. If NYC or SF decided to crackdown harder on Airbnb hosts, then that valuation would drop.

However, if they can move into the slightly more predictable (and defensible) position of providing unique getaways, then they would be in a better position for when that inevitable crackdown does occur.

<comment><USER28> Another thing that might affect their valuation is whether or not investors believe Airbnb may grow to serve a universal market or just a niche market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't really care about the new logo. But I do wish that the "new airbnb" allowed me to sort the listings by price. This is standard practice on any other site I can think of. Sure I can set a price range but this still forces me to have to think. I like the fact that when I sort results I know that as I continue scrolling the price is going to increase. That way when I find a place I am happy with I know that there is not going to be a place further on which is better value. Please let me know if I am just being stupid and have not figured out how to sort the results.

</comment><comment><USER31> The change is neat, giving more room to expand towards their bigger vision. But,

what I don't understand is why the hell they moved the most important element in their site down to a secondary place ("the search").

<comment><USER9> To increase on-page metrics as a driver of "engagement?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think this is a step in the right direction for Airbnb. It has more warmth and personality, feels more accessible and less like a website created in 2005 (the existing button styles always irked me). A minor nitpick I have with the design is that video background header, on my desktop Mac with a screen resolution of 2560 x 1440 viewing in Chrome at maximum width and height the scaling bugs up and the heads of everyone are being cut off. As I drag the sides of my browser in, the heads come into view and looks much better. It looks a little strange with the cut off heads, perhaps centring the video would be the most ideal fix. The video content seems a little strange as well (especially the one of the woman sleeping).

I am loving that explore view and the subsequent single listing pages with the sticky quick book form. Definitely leaps and bounds better over the existing site. I don't know how I feel about that logo though. I love the story behind its creation, I love the versatility of it as a brand mark, but it kind of looks like a vagina/rocket ship. Hate to be crude, but once you see it, there is no unseeing it. Based on Tweets I've seen about it, I am not alone in thinking that.

Another thing that surprised me is the fact the site is only responsive to an extent. If you shrink your browser down small to that of an iPad mini, it kind of breaks. Surprised the site doesn't work at all resolutions considering the great teams they'd have to make it happen.

</comment><comment><USER33> Not bad, but I have to say the old design/logo/identity just seemed like more ... fun.

<comment><USER34> I agree, but I could see (for example) my parents trusting the new design more. It seems more like a legitimate short term rental service rather than a couchsurfing site.

<comment><USER35> And yet it retains the informality you want from an AirBnB. It's almost perfect.

IMO the design process seems way over the top, but it seems to have produced results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I can't say I really believe in Airbnb as a company and idea, but that is a damn well designed website -- I guess you could say the best money could buy..

<comment><USER37> What is so well-designed about the site? I'm no designer and I am not being cynical - I'm genuinely curious because, to me, the site is very similar to many others I have seen today. It's possible I don't have an eye for the details here, but I really don't see a huge difference.

Ex. [http://electricpulp.com/](http://electricpulp.com/) [http://spigotdesign.com/](http://spigotdesign.com/) ...

<comment><USER36> Well. The moving picture at the top, the Masonry image layout. It all really fits well together to convey what airbnb does -- and it really makes you want to connect with them. Airbnb is no doubt a very well funded company.

The second one you mention is also very well designed I'd say, but as you can see, it's a professional web design firm -- so it should look very well -- and as you can see it uses very similar techniques as airbnb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> How much bandwidth does one need to be able pipe down a 22.9 Meg WebM video file with every home page impression? Oi. Looks beautiful though.

</comment><comment><USER39> Trivia: the new logo is called the "Bélo"; the old one was constructed from the typeface "Bello" by Underware.

[http://www.underware.nl/fonts/bello/preface](http://www.underware.nl/fonts/bello/preface)

<comment><USER40> The coincidence is startling. Old typeface Bello by Underwear. New logo is being called a vagina and is named Bélo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Not bad, but its WAY too over designed. The actual functional part on the front page is like a black bar that is 10% of the page. The start your adventure part is nice, but serves little functionality to me. Yes its cool to see all these awesome places, but I don't think I'll be going to Berlin anytime soon. The search page looks good still, just not a fan of the front page.

Compared to Kayak which makes it super obvious where to start, and the "Start Your Adventure" equivalent is top cities people travel to. That section should be a supplement not a main feature.

</comment><comment><USER42> It seems clear to me that this is a step towards a bigger vision (example: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-airbnb- dinner-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-airbnb-dinner- idUSKBN0EG29320140605))

I just saw the event they had, and while extremely awkward and painful to watch, they continually eluded to a broader concept bigger than "renting rooms."

</comment><comment><USER43> I am not really a fan of the pastel colors and the new logo. I know they were trying to make photos and such more prominent but I find it harder to navigate.

<comment><USER44> The new logo just looks like a paperclip to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Think of how many meaningful connections you could make if you charged below market rate for lodging in high demand areas. Until now I thought airbnb was about making money for themselves and their hosts, but now I see it's about connecting the world through meaningful experiences and the money is almost not even a factor! Amazing!

</comment><comment><USER46> The front page looks like a designer/agency portfolio site and not like the tool/application that it really is. It looks like the actual result pages haven't changed much, so that's a good thing.

I'm in the middle of redesigning my own website this week and I've seen plenty of this stuff. Too much really.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think this was a well thought out rebranding, especially seeing as they are becoming a larger global brand, and their identity needed to reflect that as well.

The site is beautiful, the new logo is simple yet unique and fits their brand well, and I personally cannot wait to use their services next year for my trip through Europe.

</comment><comment><USER48> first impression of logo: it nauseates me. It makes me uneasy. I don't know why, it looks like too random to me, to doodled. And their initiative to people draw it by themselves make this even worse.

I ain't no designer, or any kind of expert, but I keep looking at it and it confounds my eyes. Terribly.

</comment><comment><USER49> The new logo looks like a spaceship ... they are preparing for selling trips into orbit.

<comment><USER50> If you've been following the commentary about the logo on Twitter, that is the _exact opposite_ of what people immediately interpret as the symbol.

<comment><USER51> the exact opposite?

<comment><USER14> Apparently vaginas and rockets are opposites. Maybe because rockets = penises. Who knows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The ethos of the redesign is more important than the redesign itself. The new logo is more than airbnb's take on the hobo code. It is an attempt to move beyond being a commodity and into a brand people can aspire to.

</comment><comment><USER53> Airbnb: Watching you sleep!

</comment><comment><USER54> I absolutely love the new branding & fluid logo. This is one of those gigantic branding leaps that makes everything that came before look instantly outdated. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm not sure why so many people seem so intent on sexualizing a logo. I think that it's pretty clever to incorporate the location marker into the A.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like a lot of the design but some of those videos are super creepy. Just felt like "AirBNB, we watch you while you sleep." :)

</comment><comment><USER56> Are they into space technology? No joke, that was the very first thing that came to my mind when I saw the new logo.

</comment><comment><USER57> Bootstrap, I guess it just over for now. What's the next look and feel? Things I ponder, late nights. :-)

</comment><comment><USER58> So it's... a new logo? Sure seems like an awful lot of fuss over a very little change.

<comment><USER59> Yeah, I thought they were going to do something meaningful, like waiting at least a minute to forget the dates I've already entered at least a dozen times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> On airbnb.pl were the prices always displayed as zł1090 etc? The proper way is 1090zł.

<comment><USER61> Thanks for the bug report! I'll relay it to the proper engineer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The white text in the main headers sometimes blends in with the video background.

</comment><comment><USER63> Star Trek? A stylized male genitalia?

</comment><comment><USER64> This feels faster. Is it?

</comment><comment><USER65> What was wrong with the old design? IMHO, the current site doesn't look as good.</comment>


Why Ruby Class Methods Resist Refactoring - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2012/11/14/why-ruby-class-methods-resist-refactoring/ <comment><USER2> Ruby shines because it is a terse/expressive language that doesn't need heavy use of patterns, so you can grok a lot of logic at a glance. You want a hash? Write it inline, you don't need a lazy-loaded memoized function.

The original was the easiest to understand, and the refactored versions didn't expose much that would benefit from testing or code reuse. This feels over- engineered to me.

And not to nitpick, but since when is _class << self_ an ugly form? It makes perfect sense if all methods will be class methods.

<comment><USER3> The biggest problem with "class << self" syntax is that it is hard to read in classes that have more than a handful or so lines. At quick glance you might not be able to tell if "def xxx" is a class method or instance method. However, with "def self.xxx" it is more easily recognizable.

Btw, I think its a small nitpick. Plenty of great code bases use "class << self".

<comment><USER2> Totally agree, that's why I said 'if all methods are class methods...', in which case _class <<self_ should go at the top of the class body. If there are instance methods I prefer _def self.bar_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like this misses the real reason the construction presented is awkward. It's not because class methods are hard to refactor, it's because class methods in ruby are _not static methods_. The thing being attempted seems to be to avoid creating a method that doesn't access state, as if this were C++ and state is relatively expensive.

A class method in ruby is not a static method. It is an instance method on the class. It sounds like nitpicking, but the distinction is real. You call #new on a class because the class is The Thing that makes objects, not an awkward pseudo-global scope. Class methods should thus be things for which the class is the subject.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The signature of 'this shouldn't be a class' is that it has two methods, one of which is __init__." [0]

Why not write a function? This addresses all of the objections. Then refactor by pulling out concerns into other functions.

Need to share logic around the functions? Use a decorator. Passing too many attributes? Create a class to contain them.

I think classes are best avoided until it's obvious that encapsulating state provides a benefit, which I don't see in this case.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0&t=3m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0&t=3m)

<comment><USER4> Comparisons to python are difficult here because in Ruby there's no such thing as an object that doesn't have a class. Even the classes have classes (which is, as I touched on elsewhere, what class methods actually are -- instance methods on the class).

You can store a proc in a variable or a constant, but you're getting into some very ugly patterns at that point and you still haven't really left classes behind.

In Ruby everything is encapsulated and there's really no point in fighting that.

<comment><USER6> > Comparisons to python are difficult here because in Ruby there's no such > thing as an object that doesn't have a class. Even the classes have classes > (which is, as I touched on elsewhere, what class methods actually are -- > instance methods on the class

So exactly the same as Python then?

> You can store a proc in a variable or a constant, but you're getting into > some very ugly patterns at that point and you still haven't really left > classes behind.

How so? If you need to pass around something that quacks like a proc, do it as a proc.

<comment><USER4> > So exactly the same as Python then?

Recently? Sort of, yes. Though in python it's more like everything has a blessed hash, and the assumption that everything is an object is much more thoroughly baked in in Ruby. Also the way that classes interact with their instances is quite different.

For example, in python a member of the class that is not overridden in an instance also happens to be a member of an instance. This is how default attributes work:

        >>> class x(object):
        ...     pass
        ...
        >>> x.blah = 1
        >>> x().blah
        1

This actually gives you something qualitatively like a static method (through the staticmethod decorator), it is callable from an instance as well as the class and behaves always as if it has no access to the instance's state.

This kind of blending of instance and class doesn't happen in Ruby. The class is a completely distinct object with its own independent state, and is instantiated just like any other object, some syntactic sugar aside. It is an instance of class Class and its methods are the methods of class Class, while instances created by calling its #alloc method have the methods that are defined on it.

Python now shares some concept of everything being an object, I'll grant, but their models remain quite different and you really do have to work significantly against the grain to effectively use ruby in a non-OO fashion. In ways you simply don't in Python.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the biggest problems in ruby is that there is often no clear difference in code between a method and a variable. This leads to some seriously bad code by developers for the sake of elegance.

For example, you can have a Model.foo method that seems harmless enough, except that actually calls other methods on other models to do some calculation that maybe two or three layers deep makes a call to an external service. Let's say for the sake of example that two or three levels of database queries and api service calls ends up spawning hundreds of queries and at least dozens of external api calls. This takes anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds if the dataset is large enough.

A junior programmer would think he is doing the right thing by simply calling Model.foo because he might be so foolish to not know the difference between Model.foo and Model.foo(). Since Rails by default doesn't annotate database model attributes, it's even easier to think that Model.foo Model.bar Model.whatever are just attributes so there would be no performance penalty for using them.

As it turns out, this makes your code terribly slow even though it looks "elegant" and "clean". Why? Because it is super non-obvious to many/most programmers that there is a potentially huge difference between a simple attribute on a model vs. a calculated attribute method derived from potentially a multitude of other data sources. When you are calling Model.foo and Model.bar, it is completely unclear that one might be a method and one might be an attribute.

I've seen this happen many times to both really good and really average Ruby programmers. At this point it is a genuine flaw in Ruby that is compounded by the way I see people using ActiveRecord and Rails.

<comment><USER8> Its all about abstraction.

If you're calling Model.foo or Model.bar, you don't care about the specific implementation, you just want foo or bar.

The calling code doesn't need to know how Model works.

This way you can refactor either ones into normal attributes down the road without changing any dependant code.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps, but the simple habit of Model.foo() (for methods) and Model.bar for data would make it easier to spot when one is an attribute and one is a method.

<comment><USER9> That seems to fit the definition of leaky abstraction (an implementation detail influencing whether how you use it). Leaky abstractions are all over.

That same logic would suggest that we should name our methods Model.foo_slow() and Model.bar_fast() because the execution speed is important and should be transparent to the caller.

In practice, Model.foo() ends up often being memoized so that all but the first call are practically equivalent to accessing an attribute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In some ways using an object to share parameters between helpers is an alternative to having a function that can have internal helper methods that all have access to the original parameters via the shared enclosed environment. But that doesn't make this "object oriented" and I don't see why that should be a goal in and of itself.

</comment><comment><USER11> A class is just a reusable definition of a data structure. The SyncToAnalyticsService example is not really a data structure at all, it's just a function. It's a verb, not a noun. But it's made into a class just because OOP and patterns. This feels like someone tried to write Java in Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not just add a new class which is instantiated and called inside the perform method? There are valid reasons for not choosing class methods but claiming it limits the way in which you implement a method is just nonsense.</comment>


37Signals Profiled In Time Magazine - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1622565,00.html <comment><USER2> _the team wanted to let people track how much a document had changed over time. They pored over Ph.D. theses and complex algorithms. Instead, ace programmer David Hansson worked out a "cheat": software to track the number of characters in each document. ... With that clever solution, 37signals reduced what could have been a months-long programming project to a day's work_

full implementation:

counter++

Keyword: "Ace"

<comment><USER3> This deserves an upmod because that's exactly the essence of software engineering, in my opinion. "How do you sidestep this hard problem in an elegant way?" David is one of the most valuable engineers in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that is truly great PR.</comment>


Equifax Releases Details on Cybersecurity Incident, Announces Personnel Changes - <AUTHOR> https://investor.equifax.com/news-and-events/news/2017/09-15-2017-224018832 <comment><USER2> If a hacker can use just one CVE to break into your system and do a database dump (or equivalent), the system is architecturally wrongly designed and only being protected by a single layer of security. Which means, any one from the inside can access pretty much the info as the hacker, which is horrible.

For example, are the items in DB encrypted? Are database backups encrypted? Are different items encrypted using different keys? I don't think EFX did it right.

<comment><USER3> _If a hacker can use just one CVE to break into your system and do a database dump (or equivalent), the system is architecturally wrongly designed and only being protected by a single layer of security. Which means, any one from the inside can access pretty much the info as the hacker, which is horrible._

This is how it works at almost every company. Call it horrible if you want, but everyone stops short of describing _in detail_ the exact architectural replacement. And when someone does, it inevitably has flaws that make it impossible to meet business goals.

It's too easy to handwave this away as "well, get a better architecture." Everyone knows that; the hard part is, what architecture? How does your architecture work in practice? Encrypting items won't help when the keys need to be stored in the same place to access the data. The attackers will just go after that box instead of the DB.

You can guard it more carefully, but the point is that _some_ box _somewhere_ needs access to a substantial amount of the data at any given time. It's the nature of a credit bureau.

<comment><USER4> In multiple threads now I've seen you express this sentiment. I just don't buy it. Vanguard hasn't had a leak like this. USAA hasn't had a leak like this. ETrade, Fidelity, etc, no leaks like this of which I'm aware (correct me if I'm wrong). These are big plodding institutions too. No leaks like this from Google nor Facebook nor Amazon. Maybe you're arguing it's just a matter of time, but I disagreee.

Equifax had a trivially easy architecture to break.

Minimally, the data should be on a separate set of servers protected by an API with rate limiting, and that API should be implemented on top of a different framework than the front-end servers to minimize the chance that a single flaw would open up the entire set of data. This isn't rocket science. Equifax is a multi-billion dollar company. They could and should have done better.

Please stop defending them?

Disclosure: I work for Yahoo (er, Verizon) since late 2013. I don't know the details of Yahoo's data leaks, but it was not as trivial as getting RCE on Yahoo's public facing servers.

<comment><USER3> When two people are clearly intelligent but disagree, the reason is almost always a different set of experiences. My experience differs from yours; if I could Vulcan my brain to yours, you'd see why I feel this way. You might still disagree, but it would be far less clear cut.

Now, I've seen nearly a hundred codebases and they all looked pretty much like Equifax. I don't even need to see Equifax to know the kind of disaster their codebase facilitated.

Equifax's codebase is your code, and my code, and Bob's code. The only way to make this situation better is to talk openly about it. And the best way to do that is to actively defend the unpopular side in order to call attention to uncomfortable truths. It's a calculated strategy.

Just because you worked at a place with good security hygiene, it makes no difference to the world at large. Everybody else looks like Equifax. We need to (a) acknowledge that and (b) actively seek out solutions. That's what's happening here.

Ask yourself: "Why do I disagree when I've seen one or two enterprise codebases?" Those big, plodding institutions you mention are similarly vulnerable. Everyone is.

Why aren't data breaches happening almost daily? Because it's illegal. It's no coincidence that companies with public bug bounties are among the hardest targets to hit. When you make it not-illegal to attack you, surprise: you find the vulns.

A good question is, "is it illegal for a white hat to attack my business?" If the answer is yes, seek to change that. It's a low effort thing that will increase your security posture. But it's no substitute for $40k pentests.

<comment><USER4> > Everybody else looks like Equifax.

I don't doubt that there are other Equifaxes out there, nor do I doubt that there will be more leaks. But this wasn't a simple matter of a horrible code base. Heck, the leak wasn't even due to Equifax code, it was due to third party code. Other companies of Equifax's size apparently do better. Equifax should have done better, and I'll bet if the penalties for losing this data were more severe, would have done better.

<comment><USER3> (replying to your "What if $40k for a pentest becomes a rubber stamp?" question, which was an important observation)

Mm, it can become that. It's important to get a pentest from a reputable firm. At the one I worked at, it was a point of pride to come up with clever attacks. We'd make a sport of it and try to one-up each other. But it's easy to imagine some other pentest firm just going through the motions, running Nessus and calling it a day.

Unfortunately, that's where money really does make a difference. $40k is at the low end of how absurdly expensive pentests are. Yet they make all the difference -- one app that I pentested was at a trading firm. I took that app from "typing ' leads to SQLi in their Node backend," and "there was SQLi in their Java backend if you were clever" to "you'd have to be more clever than me if you want to breach this app."

 _Most_ attacks come from unsophisticated adversaries. This implies that raising the bar higher than these guys gets you 80% of the way home. The other 20% is much harder, but it's doable if your company has a culture of caring about security.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for replying and sorry for moving my comment.

<comment><USER3> It's all good. Just happy the world is starting to care about security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, MarketWatch is right. They are trying to erase Susan Mauldin (the former CISO), she is not even mentioned in this article. Does anyone with Google juice have a way to recover the interviews that are referenced in [1]?

I watched them before they came down on Sept 10, and they were eye opening. I can say with certainty that the transcripts are not complete, because I remember "resistance to cloud is futile" and other such gems which are nowhere to be found in the partial transcripts that you can still find on the linked archive.is pages.

[1]: [https://hollywoodlanews.com/equifax-chief-security- officer/](https://hollywoodlanews.com/equifax-chief-security-officer/)

<comment><USER6> This article, [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/equifax-ceo-hired-a- music-m...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/equifax-ceo-hired-a-music-major- as-the-companys-chief-security-officer-2017-09-15) , is brutally ridiculous and unfair. The major point seems to be "Hah, they hired a stupid music major to be their Chief Security Officer!"

Some of the best software developers I've known were music majors. I know nothing about Susan Mauldin, including any of her other qualifications or lack thereof, but implying someone is only qualified to do what their college major was tells me this author is a complete idiot.

<comment><USER5> That is not my purpose. I have no idea what her qualifications are, I saw the LinkedIn page and it contained almost no information. That is hardly relevant.

I personally believe that she was backed into a corner, based on the interviews I watched from some time before the breach (that I can't show you, and I won't link to the transcripts because I know they are incomplete and by far less impactful.)

She sounded to me, exactly like a person who was given a budget that was effectively no budget, and then put into this role because people with a larger stake were sure that she would comply when they said "this is your budget, and not a penny more." I know exactly what that is like, because I have been made CIO and put in that position before. (I'm sure she was better paid than I was...)

There is absolutely 100% a coverup going on. I am so bummed that I did not save the interviews when I first watched them. You would agree too, if I could show you.

Edit:

Here is the transcript, but with the disclaimer that it is 100% not the full transcript. Although it is in her own words. Make your own judgement about her qualifications please.

[https://archive.is/6M8mg](https://archive.is/6M8mg)

<comment><USER7> I found it for you... gimme a few minutes...

\-----

 _Edit_ : Well, I found _one_ video (11m30s), were there more?

\-----

 _Edit_ :

From a quick check, this seems to be the same interview that was transcribed, though I'm not sure if it's the _entire_ interview or even the one you were looking for:

80MB, M4V: [http://evilrouters.net/media/susan_mauldin_cazena_interview_...](http://evilrouters.net/media/susan_mauldin_cazena_interview_201603.m4v)

I'm uploading it to YouTube as well but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets taken down at some point.

<comment><USER5> There was a second interview with Cazena that looked a lot like the first interview, but the topic was different. It looked like they were possibly recorded on the same day.

Edit: Bless you for doing this, however you found it.

<comment><USER7> You're very welcome. Is that the video you were wanting?

<comment><USER5> Someone has let Hollywood LA News know that you found it, and it's been updated and reposted to their site now.

They also gave you credit for finding it! ;)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I found their article from links here so I reached out to them via email right after posting it here. According to a later email, they independently found my HN above post a bit later.

Looks like the embedded version on their page is missing about 1m30s of the interview, though.

<comment><USER5> Srsly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The CVE and the patch came out on March 7. Exploits were already being detected in the wild at the time by perimeter security vendors. See [http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2017/03/apache-0-day- explo...](http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2017/03/apache-0-day- exploited.html)

Equifax "believes" that the hackers got in on May 13. They had some kind of intrusion detection system that finally detected the intrusion on July 29. 5 months after the "Critical" CVE alert went out. During that time security vendors were adding firewall rules to stop the attack. But apparently Equifax didn't have any other security in front of the Struts server.

That just seems like unconscionable incompetence and malpractice for such a high value target.

<comment><USER9> > They had some kind of intrusion detection system that finally detected the > intrusion on July 29.

If they had some sort of intrusion detection system, I gotta think they would have picked up on this in days, not more than 2 months later.

I feel like this is one of those situations where a dev is saying something like "where is all of the CPU on this database going?" or "Why is the network connection so slow?" and digs into it and finds some strange behavior...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> \- In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers, were accessed.

This looks really bad. I don't know what's the point of letting them operate anymore. They utterly failed on the single thing they were supposed to do.

<comment><USER11> The business they are in is supplying information to creditors about the credit-worthiness of potential customers. AFAIK they have succeeded at this.

I don't want to downplay their security failure. It's obviously really bad, but saying that security was the "single thing they were supposed to do" is false.

<comment><USER10> You are right, it was a hyperbole, but I still don't see why they should be allowed to continue operating. Would you let a bank continue to operate after they have lost all their money?

Never mind, I guess too big to fail applies here as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Actually looking at the CVE made my stomach drop. That is a horrible horrible bug. Getting access to the shell while under the web app user's environment potentially means that all secrets were available either in the app server administration, the user environment, or in a readable file on the system. Effing yikes.

Also knowing how JNDI usually gets configured on app servers (sometimes with credentials and all) would have made recon ridiculously easy.

I think some have alluded to it, but what some people in the comments don't seem to understand is that RCE is an "all bets are off" type of situation. DEFCON 1 to be sure. Prevention is really the only good answer.

</comment><comment><USER13> Failure to apply a patch for a two month old bug led to this entire nightmare scenario. What are some best practices to ensure that ones dependencies are always up to date?

-asking as a relatively inexperienced dev

<comment><USER14> Don't hire someone who majored in Music Composition as your Chief Security Officer is key.

<comment><USER15> Based on her work experience she seemed qualified.

<comment><USER16> You mean her "Head of Security when Equifax was Hacked" work experience?

<comment><USER17> I heard she was in a similar role at First Data, prior to the Equifax gig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> They were able to use a subdomain for their announcement, but not for their Breach service which asks for your SSN.

</comment><comment><USER19> For everyone patting themselves on the back for how much better they are at securing their data realize that for way over 80% of incidents the attack vector is email and social engineering. Look at Red team exercises of competent teams and try to honestly answer the question would have they succeed with that tactic at your company. So yes having much better practices vs what we see here is very important but will not really help much if you are being targeted by a competent adversary.

</comment><comment><USER20> Gotta admire the artful way they gave the appearance of disclosure while avoiding answering the most damning question: why did it take so long for them to patch Struts?

"The particular vulnerability in Apache Struts was identified and disclosed by U.S. CERT in early March 2017."

"Equifax's Security organization was aware of this vulnerability at that time, and took efforts to identify and to patch any vulnerable systems in the company's IT infrastructure."

?????????!!!!!!??????

"While Equifax fully understands the intense focus on patching efforts, the company's review of the facts is still ongoing."

<comment><USER21> It's struts, and the CVE fix was pushed to a newer version than the one they were using. That's an intense app rebuild, akin to moving mongo versions.

<comment><USER22> > That's an intense app rebuild

That is not even close to an excuse. A remote code execution vulnerability has the potential to destroy your whole company.

<comment><USER23> I hope Equifax will be learning from this, but can you tell your CEO that your core business must be shut down for 3 weeks as you upgrade and rebuild the system?

<comment><USER22> Yes, the risk is much higher than the cost. From the article:

> The company's internal review of the incident continued. Upon discovering a > vulnerability in the Apache Struts web application framework as the initial > attack vector, Equifax patched the affected web application before bringing > it back online.

That bullet point lies between the "July 30th" and "August 2nd" bullet points. Based on that timeline, the vulnerability took days to patch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Having a remote execution exploit shouldn't mean keys to the kingdom. I find it hard to believe that this company whose whole business is electronic didn't adapt it's technology stack to remedy this type of attack limiting the scope of a data leak. I wouldn't be surprised if struts has another exploit of similar magnitude, what then?

They might as well be running their business on a cluster of tomcat servers sitting atop sqlite.

Hopefully they don't recover from this - they should not have the data they posses if they cannot mitigate risk.

</comment><comment><USER25> They are really in deep trouble and need to manage the story carefully. If people on a broad basis start freezing their credit history (one of the most effective means to protect against abuse) their and their competitors ability to sell data to other parties will suffer (see also [https://wolfstreet.com/2017/09/15/equifax- sacks-2-executives...](https://wolfstreet.com/2017/09/15/equifax- sacks-2-executives-gets-devious-to-stop-you-from-getting-a-credit-freeze/) )

</comment><comment><USER26> What about storing sensitive data in something like a HSM, which rate-limits access rate, so you could only lets say access 10000 records per day.

Yes, developing against such a system might be annoying (think about updating a new piece of data for all records).

But it feels to me that we need a way to rate-limit access to sensitive data, to prevent wholesale dump in a short time. But you still need other systems in place, to prevent a hacker lurking around for months until it gets all the data.

<comment><USER23> Or, you know, monitoring systems.

"Hey... Splunk tells me there's been a 34x increase in record queries. Page page"

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I just had a scamming debt collector call me about a debt I already paid off to another collection company. They had all the right information. I suspect it has to do with the hack. Watch out for First Equity Alliance.

</comment><comment><USER28> Do they plan to change their Chief Security Officer who is a MA in Music Composition?</comment>


VXHeaven: Source code for classic viruses - <AUTHOR> https://vxheaven.org/src.php <comment><USER2> Phrack and VXHeaven on HN front-page, now I'm waiting for a new 29A issue.

<comment><USER3> All we need now is an issue of 40Hex, 2600, and the Anarchist's Cookbook.

<comment><USER4> 40Hex? That's a name that takes me back.

Thanks for the reminder. I should go reread some of their releases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recall the prolific, ubiquitous but apparently benign form virus and the surrounding speculation as to its true nature and specifically whether the payload was only malignant under a 32 bit OS (which would not exist yet for 20+ years)? I thought it was just a Norton false-positive.

Any progress on this?

I also recall these viruses taught you about terminate-stay-residents, self- modifiers, boot sectors and how to manage your 8k of memory... everything really.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, somebody weaponised[1] the EICAR test file[2].

[1]: [https://vxheaven.org/src_view.php?file=eicar.zip](https://vxheaven.org/src_view.php?file=eicar.zip)

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

</comment><comment><USER7> Barrotes ate all my floppies

[http://vxheaven.org/vl.php?dir=Virus.DOS.Barrotes](http://vxheaven.org/vl.php?dir=Virus.DOS.Barrotes)

</comment><comment><USER8> The days I used to use sub 7.

<comment><USER9> That brings back some memories. Thanks.

<comment><USER10> ...bo2k, netbus, sub7! ahh nostalgia :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh the memories of collecting all those Vienna's...</comment>


We need a nationalised alternative to Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/facebook-cambridge-analytica-bbc-nationalised-alternative-a8269066.html <comment><USER2> I fail to see how anyone "needs" an alternative to Facebook, or Facebook itself. This is not a judgement on those that use it, if it's giving people value then they should continue using it, and judging from their user's numbers it is valuable to at least a portion of the population. That being said, it wasn't around 15 years ago and who knows how long it'll stay around. I'm sure people will handle a world without Facebook just fine once it's out.

<comment><USER3> The point is that marketplace will never provide the kind of solution society wants. What people want is an easy-to-use way to stay in touch, keep up with and communicate with their friends via the web. What people don't want is to be targeted by advertisers/political campaigns or have their data saved and sold. The market can only take us to the local max of 'you can keep in touch but your data is saved/sold/used', to move to the global max of 'you can keep in touch and your data is safe' we need a solution which isn't tied to profit motive.

<comment><USER4> Why can't this need be met by a corporation that gets paid for what they are doing?

The size of the problem here is bounded by the amount of money the companies are making invading your privacy. Simple math [1] places it at about $20/year/user for Facebook, who are probably on the upper end of what they can make by doing this. So to incentivize a company not to stay in business via selling your data, that's the bar you have to leap.

That hardly seems a big enough problem that the only solution is to turn over your social network to be run by Donald Trump, who, I feel I must remind many of you, whenever you say "The $GOVERNMENT should...", you really ought to remember that "Donald Trump" is a valid expansion of the term $GOVERNMENT. Or whoever else it is you don't like, it doesn't matter to my argument, I'm just reading the room here.

As a sidebar, if you want to get a sense of the scope of the damage that Facebook is doing to our civilization, consider all the ways in which they manipulate you, the things your friends posted that you wanted to see but didn't, the torrent of ads they have PhDs working overtime to figure out how to hit you with, enrolling you in psychological studies without your consent, embroiling you in family or friend drama that you'd rather not be embroiled in and potentially cutting off contact with people over it, and who knows what fingers on what scales when it comes to what you do and do not see in the news... for TWENTY DOLLARS. Of _revenue_ , not even profit! Talk about your new twist on the banality of evil.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16688400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16688400)

<comment><USER3> >Why can't this need be met by a corporation that gets paid for what they are doing?

Because you can't serve two masters. For-profit corporations are going to side with profit over privacy when they conflict.

>The size of the problem here is bounded by the amount of money the companies are making invading your privacy. Simple math [1] places it at about $20/year/user for Facebook, who are probably on the upper end of what they can make by doing this. So to incentivize a company not to stay in business via selling your data, that's the bar you have to leap.

That $20 isn't just for costs it's also for profit. How cheaply could Facebook run if it didn't have to return any money to it's shareholders? That's a major case for either a non-profit or a nationalized service.

>whenever you say "The $GOVERNMENT should...", you really ought to remember that "Donald Trump" is a valid expansion of the term $GOVERNMENT.

Well here let's put it like this. When you leave something up to the $MARKET you should remember that 'literally anybody' (including Donald Trump) is a valid expansion of the term $MARKET. With government at least there is some (admittedly meager) level of democratic accountability. How much accountability is there in the market? I think we've seen how these privacy violations play out with Equifax already. Richard Smith, Mark Begor, Mark Zuckerberg these people are just interchangeable names/faces and no matter who you swap in and out of these roles the desires of a corporation in the market place to maintain and increase profitability will weigh on them the same. I prefer a system where these people are directly accountable to the people ie nationalized services, not a system where their accountability is obfuscated and mediated by the market.

<comment><USER4> "How much accountability is there in the market?"

You are proposing a black/white dichotomy where I proposed a partnership. Let the corporations provide the services, let the government write the rules of the playing field. Why would you trust the same government that is already not regulating Facebook to do any better if it has to implement something itself?

Neither side, on its own, is sufficient. A system where both sides are doing their job is way better.

Mind you, I have some compassion (for lack of a better word) for the government not regulating Facebook, on the grounds that to a first-order approximation, nobody saw how bad this was going to be in advance. Local commentators may vigorously object to this characterization, to which I'd reply that the concentration of the people who did see it coming (including, least of all, myself) is sky-high here compared to the general public.

<comment><USER3> >You are proposing a black/white dichotomy where I proposed a partnership. Let the corporations provide the services, let the government write the rules of the playing field. Why would you trust the same government that is already not regulating Facebook to do any better if it has to implement something itself?

I'll admit I am proposing a black/white dichotomy in this instance. I don't do that for all markets but I do in this one. To me a free market is best when we really want the market to race to the bottom quickly and there are few externalities or complicating factors. This is very rare. A regulated market is best when there are complicating factors and externalities but we still want to engage in a race to the bottom. This is very common. Removing the market entirely is best when we don't want to race to the bottom. This is rare. Even though it's rare, I cannot think of a better example than Social Media. Facebook and these other companies have utilized mostly free markets to race to the bottom, we've made 95% of the gains already. Now Facebook is exposing it's users to all sorts of nasty costs that society does not want to bear in order to squeeze out profit. This is not being caused by some one-off feature of the market, it is being caused by the _central_ feature of the market, profit motive. The only way to fix these problems are to remove profit motive. That means either nationalization or non-profit status.

Here's two quotes from a recent Tim Wu interview that I think speak to what I'm trying to say here:

>They're not. But, well, that's the problem. I think there's a sort of intrinsic problem with having for-profit entities with this business model in this position of so much public trust because they're always at the edge because their profitability depends on it.

>Well, if Mark Zuckerberg is telling the truth when he says, what I care about is connecting people to their families and friends, that's a very lofty ambition. If that's what he really wants to do, he can do it. But it doesn't mean he'll be the most profitable company in the world. You know, utilities - which is what Facebook is, a social utility - have never been understood as profit centers before. [...] And there's a reason. The social sphere is a little bit different. And maybe we need to accept that it's not a source of major profit to be in people's personal lives.

[https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597221954/facebook- previously...](https://www.npr.org/2018/03/27/597221954/facebook-previously- failed-to-keep-privacy-promises-ex-ftc-adviser-says)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So the govt has my data instead of Facebook? No thank you - that's vastly worse.

<comment><USER6> Being cynical, the goverment has it anyway. Why not avoid the middleman?

<comment><USER7> Too easy to access, there is a world of difference between the police taking a warrant to Facebook and some jobsworth in the local council browsing through data to look for potential victims to harass.

<comment><USER8> It might already be possible for facebook employees to access your information anyway, and if it isn't then a similar system could be set up in a govt run agency. There are many advantages to having a democratic administration run such a system rather than a profit-driven one --- businesses will always, rightly, put profit before privacy. If we decide that privacy is more important then we either have to regulate better, nationalise, or choose not to use the service. The third option doesn't seem to be getting widespread uptake; where young people are moving away from facebook it is not primarily because of privacy concerns.

<comment><USER5> So you trust the govt to do right by you. What about the next govt? What if UKIP got in power?

Honestly I think this information is actually too dangerous for anyone to have - companies or govts. I'd like to see this kind of level of information gathering made illegal.

<comment><USER8> I don't 'trust' them blindly, but if information gathering is necessary for such a service to exist, then I think it's better if the service is provided by a democratic agency than a private company. Nobody is forced to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are we really at the point of "needing" Facebook?

edit: BBC taking the "Social" part of "Social Networking" too literally.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've always wondered about creating an equivalent to Facebook as a desktop and mobile app, that connected to your email account. Adding a friend would just be inputting their email address and connecting would involve a PGP exchange in the background.

Your email would become the decrentralized, encrypted medium for exchange and broadcast. You could use IMAP to leverage it as your datastore on multiple devices.

You could more easily schedule message delivery and times too. The most complicated thing about it would be setting up a simple enough onboarding process.

It wouldn't be efficient, but it doesn't really need to be.

<comment><USER11> I've been dreaming about this a lot lately, but there's definitely some roadblocks for the average person. They don't want to clutter up their existing email, and they will drag their feet to getting a new email address just for social networking. People also like the idea that they can actually delete their posts, even if it's illusory, which they can't do to any meaningful extent with email. With ActivityPub, I think a lot of potential developers don't want to bother with email because it's not the future. It is still a great idea in general, though. I would totally build it or sign up for it if enough people I knew were willing to do it. The problem is I wouldn't want that form of social networking just to connect with people who are smart enough to use it.

<comment><USER10> True, but at the same time deleting a post only matters because new people can see it that may not have initially. With this, only people who the message was sent to would see it anyway.

If as part of the on boarding process you could provide instructions to move those messages out of the main view and into a folder so they didn't clutter up the rest of the email too.

It probably makes more sense as an open source project. There's not much of a profit model for decentralized social networking where you can't inject ads that people didn't want to see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel like that when it comes to social media, decentralized is really the answer. I'm not sure I could trust many big corps (maybe Wikimedia). Mastodon and Diaspora fill these needs, perhaps what they need is better marketing and improved UX (specially for Diaspora).

<comment><USER13> Does Diaspora actually provide better privacy than Facebook? It removes the need to trust a centralized entity, but it seems to me that it largely replaces it with the need to trust a _multitude_ of distributed entities. At least if we're talking about stuff like clandestinely sharing data about people's friends with third parties.

<comment><USER12> It's tricky to deal with privacy and social networks. After all, even if you control your own Diaspora server, someone can still follow you and get your content. Unless you block them, I suppose. In the aspect of social media, privacy means owning your data, and both of those platforms offer the option to do that by running your own instance. If you run your own Diaspora instance, you can delete all your data and walk away from it. Also, you technically don't need to allow for federation, if you don't want to.

Here's some more info on it: [https://diasporafoundation.org/about#privacy](https://diasporafoundation.org/about#privacy)

<comment><USER13> Honestly this reads a bit like a PR-speak way of saying that Diaspora indeed doesn't really provide better privacy than Facebook.

I'm on it, and I donate to (or pay for) a pod so I'm not anti-Diaspora by any means, but it just seems incorrect to promote it as a solution to Facebook's privacy issues.

<comment><USER12> I actually said right away how it's tricky to achieve privacy with a social network. However, to me, owning your data is a big step towards it. I have nothing to do with Diaspora, I'm not on it and don't donate.

Out of curiosity, what would be your ideal for good privacy on a social media site? What aspects would it need?

<comment><USER13> I'm not really sure what "owning your data" means here, in practice. If you're sharing it with other people / pods the best you can meaningfully say is that you own a _copy_ of your data, as does anybody you share it with. In terms of privacy, I don't really see how this is better than Facebook.

I don't have an answer to your question. Broadcasting information while also wanting to keep it private is, as you say, a tricky problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why wait for the corporate platforms to get around to aggressively restricting your speech on their services, when you can go right to being limited by the head censor.

Britain already has a rapidly growing problem with censorship and restricted speech. This would just be a more direct way for the government to control what you can express and see online.

The authoritarians continue their march.

Within 20 years, it'll be the rare nation that doesn't have something equivalent to the Chinese firewall heavily controlling what their people do online. Nations with freedom online equivalent to what existed from ~1995-2015 across most of the developed world, will be the exception.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just when you thought the UK couldn't get any closer to 1984, they wheel out a doozy like this. This is coming from the country where you can literally end up in jail for shitposting on Twitter.

<comment><USER16> It's an opinion piece by a single journalist.

<comment><USER17> a journalist whose salary is paid for by advertisers, a journalist working for a concurrent of Facebook (in terms of ad revenue), a journalist who's probably complaining how internet 2.0 has killed his profession, how Social Media has killed Traditional Media, etc...

Plus how could a journalist suggest a nationalised alternative that would stop at UK's border, instead of a global one connecting people from all countries? It's extremely short sighted and closed minded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The utility of Facebook is it's raw messaging and information sharing capacity. These exist in a thousand ways in different apps from Twitter to Diaspora to Signal. People use Facebook not because of the raw utility - it is winning a competition for people's attention that is going to be an endless battle.

Setting some ground rules for what can and can't be collected and shared from people is way more effective than having the government enter that rat race.

</comment><comment><USER19> In my view, the problem isn't the platform, it's the people using it. Until people are widely educated to give a damn about their own personal information, they will continue to flock to the next free Social Platform over and over again until some scandal, that they don't really care about or understand, now makes that platform 'uncool', and then they will all register for the next 'cool' platform.

Over, and over, again.

</comment><comment><USER20> The future isn't national. It's distributed.

What is Facebook but a fancy web host and RSS feed in one? First, it is a web host. It lets everyone make a free website (their Wall). Second, it gives everyone an RSS reader (their News Feed).

My point is, I think we already have the protocols. What the ordinary user lacks is the software. Actually what they also lack is the hardware. Everyone, technical or not, wants their own website. They always have. But most people are at the mercy of some company providing a server. After all, to run a website, you need a computer that's always on, always connected. I propose we use the user's phone. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of that.

So what we need is an easy-to-use webserver that users install on their phones. They don't have to build their website on their phone. It's just hosted there. They could build it on their laptop and push it to their phone.

Then you also make a nice RSS reader that users also install, and they subscribe to each other's websites.

Profit! I mean, not profit, happiness!

<comment><USER21> While I like the idea, the problem is that bandwidth on mobile is limited and certainly not free.

Also, this would be a battery killer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Three years ago I forced myself to reduce my FB usage.

\- At the beginning I remember it was super hard not to check FB

\- So I just stopped posting first

\- Then I realized that it significantly helped to avoid FB in the morning

\- Later, I installed the Chrome Extension Eradicator which lets the FB feed disappear; I never used a FB mobile app

\- More and more I could stay away from FB the entire day just checking it in the evening

\- Still for 1 or 2 years it was kind of tempting to check FB even if it was in the evening

Now, I rarely use FB anymore, maybe once a week or even less and if I see all the same people posting non-stop self-adulations and all the likers liking every little thing because xy posted it, I command-w FB faster than I opened it. I pity those posting people, too lonely, too little attention, on a desperate hunt for some friends on a addictive Skinner Box network.

TBH it was a bit like quitting smoking: initially super, super hard and when looking back FB's feed feels just useless.

Why do we need an alternative or FB at all?

</comment><comment><USER23> Because when I think responsible, competent custodians of personal data, I think federal government /s.

Secondly, the mere premise that we "need" a Facebook, or alternative, is inherently flawed.

Probably echoing the rest of the comments in here at this point, but my 2 cents fwiw.

</comment><comment><USER24> So that the big brother watches you over instead of a corporation. Great Idea!!!

<comment><USER25> Are you saying that he doesn't do it now anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> We need an educated populous that takes interest/supports the development and use of decentralized alternative(s, remember competition?!) to Facebook.

If it's federated, that helps completion even further.

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe I didn't read the article closely, but...what feature of Facebook makes nationalization necessary? Do we need a FB-like platform "of, by, and for the people" for...ads? News distribution? Sharing news? Connecting people? Classifieds?

To me, the biggest utility of FB that would make such a project worthwhile is the pure network aspect of it; there are very few people in my life who aren't on Facebook.

If that's what we're looking to nationalize, does this just become a national ID card debate for the Internet era?

<comment><USER28> Rather than think of it as a feature that makes nationalization necessary, think of it like the center-left of the UK would:

Facebook's current shitshow is a market failure. Market failures can be addressed through nationalization. Ergo, Facebook should be nationalized.

It's not something I agree with, but that's the thought process distilled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If it was a public open network then maybe, I wouldn't use it to share things between friends though or messaging. Could be based around posting of public events like a billboard/invitation feature (the tool i use most on fb), and maybe a twitter like status feature too. I wouldn't share images unless random gifs and memes or anything too personal/controversial. It wouldn't be a full network more like a public information service. There was talk of bbc doing something like that.

</comment><comment><USER30> Worth noting that The Independent is a UK news service, not the US.

<comment><USER31> Also worth noting that it is a shell of the old Independent that went bust and then got auctioned off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nationalised? Yeah, why not just cut out the middleman (FB) and hand everything directly to the 'government'?

</comment><comment><USER33> No, we need a user-owned, democratically-controlled version of Facebook, with correspondingly enshrined "rights."

The problem is authoritarian control. Swapping out corporate authoritarianism with government authoritarianism solves zero problems, especially given that they already constantly collude to entrench each other's power.

</comment><comment><USER32> FB is not a problem. Handing over information blindly to an entity which centralizes and consolidates it's 'power' over you is. FB can only do as much as we 'feed' it.

Stop feeding it. FB is simply doing what inevitably happens when power and knowledge is concentrated into one place.

</comment><comment><USER34> We don't need an alternative to FB at all. Social Networking isn't a first principle of society.

</comment><comment><USER35> Yes, because the government has such a spectacular record for protecting privacy and NOT spying on its citizens. Of course, Facebook cannot come into your home with guns if they think something your doing is wrong, so governments have that to their advantage...

</comment><comment><USER36> So, all the problems we have because of Facebook's de facto monopoly status will be solved by a government-backed monopoly. Because a faceless government beurocracy is so much better than a corporate beurocracy.

<comment><USER37> Governments have democratic accountability and "company policy" requires a public vote in parliament/congress.

A private company is a dictatorship of secrecy. Monopolistic systems are best handled by democratic governments for this reason.

<comment><USER36> In theory.

In practice, democracy is driven by populism and histerical news cycles, while beurocracy doesn't feel any pressure from the public whatsoever and is usually occupied with entrenching into occupied political territory. Companies are much more accountable to their shareholders than governments are to their citizens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> No just no. How about we just do without Facebook period.

</comment><comment><USER39> Could it be built so that the user data was encrypted / hidden / not usable for the developers?

(And open source so we could all know for sure this was the case)

</comment><comment><USER40> There's this thing most countries have called the post office. I suggest it look into providing secure email.

</comment><comment><USER38> It wouldn't be able to compete.

<comment><USER41> It doesn't have to compete. It just has to provide an alternative for people who want to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Can we get some health care first?

</comment><comment><USER43> Fexit

</comment><comment><USER44> Try [https://vk.com](https://vk.com), a lot of people in London using it

<comment><USER14> Based out of Russia - the nation that just attacked the British with a nerve agent.

If you're going to make the mistake of giving that kind of information to some entity, at least either pick your own companies or government, or an ally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Isn't Facebook already biased enough? Exactly what we need is the BBC looking at our communications, removing what they can.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why, no government-funded institutions have ever violated our privacy. What a wonderful idea.

Propaganda, trite.

<comment><USER37> So if bad things happen, we may as well opt for the worse solution?

This all-or-nothing thinking is pathological. Democratic systems are better than non-democratic systems in monopolistic cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Haven't the ideologues learned anything from the 20th century?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System)</comment>


Ask HN: We Need Help - <AUTHOR> There is s a group of us that have had our identities revealed. We are a group that have been targeted by a far right group. I am being very cautious here for obvious reasons. The Governor of Washington State stood up a web site that said that it would be anonymous but instead everyone's identity was exposed to the net. Now people are getting death threat from far right wing groups. I am reaching out to this group because there are a lot of people who are really afraid and need help. This is not a fake thing, I am able to provide a lot of contacts but people are nervous. What happened is that Governor Inslee of WA state stood up a web site that was supposed to be anonymous but the identities of a lot of at risk people have been revealed and now they are receiving death threats. We need help but so many are really afraid. I think that this forum can help us. A friend of mine who works for a local news organization told me that they are not allowed to report on this because they published the web link and think they may be culpable. There is a group of us who are very afraid. Can someone help us with some advice. Please, we are begging you, I am trusting that this forum is capable of helping us. Thank you. PS I can provide more details if someone feels they can help us but people are so nervous I am afraid to post specific links. I have details but people are worried. <comment><USER2> I am willing to help

Contact me at HN AT Free dot TV

<comment><USER2> I did not get any contact, so I guess you do not need my help.</comment></comment>


MPs vote to reject no-deal Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47562995 <comment><USER2> They also crushed the proposal to extend the article 50 deadline to the 22nd of May and ignore the Irish backstop. Now amaizngly this is the future: they can withdraw article 50 (unlikely), they can pass a deal before the 29th (not going to happen, and can't even bring the same motion for a third defeat), they can pass an extension which the EU has to agree to, and/or have another referendum.

I suspect they'll go for a long extension and another referendum, it's pretty much the only option left. Then the fight will be just what the referendum will ask. It's likely that any referendum will end up with remain, but it's only likely. If there are more than two questions though, it becomes virtually certain that remain wins. As a result the remainders will fight to have 3 or more questions in the referendum, and the leavers I'll fight to whittle down to 2.

What a slow motion train wreck!</comment>


Fire Eagle is coming... - <AUTHOR> http://fireeagle.research.yahoo.com/ <comment><USER2> Anyone have an example of what you can do with someone's location?

<comment><USER3> Yup. Wait for it. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Better headline please?

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone got an invite yet? Sounds interesting.

</comment><comment><USER6> Something oddly rails-ish about the site.</comment>


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