Amazon's App Store Turned Me Into an iOS dev - <AUTHOR> http://wacheena.blogspot.com/2011/04/amazons-app-store-makes-me-feel-like.html

<comment><USER2> The title is misleading - has the blog article been renamed since? It's now titled "Amazon's App Store Makes Me Feel Like an iOS Developer", more appropriately.

<comment><USER3> To further elaborate, his choice of in-app advertiser was breaking some rules and Amazon caught it in his app, so his app was rejected.

Yes, that seems unfair, but in the end, there's something in his app that's breaking the rules.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I've had some back and forth with Amazon over the past few hours. Their current policy is "the developer shouldn't been penalized for issues outside of their core binary."

In my case Amazon is going to approve the app without modification while they work out the kinks in the approval process.

Some argue that the deviceid is a security risk and Greystripe shouldn't be using it to track impressions.

But advertisers should be able to send their customers to whatever app store they choose. Especially since they're not beholden to Amazon's T&Cs.

I doubt that Amazon wants to eliminate Greystripe/Admob/Millennial, etc. from their app store, so my guess is they just need a better way to vet urls that end up in non-Amazon app stores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's interesting here is that the Amazon TOS says that you have to have all your apps in their store - so now that you've been rejected, are you breaking your agreement with them by still having it in the Android Market?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question on this one. I'm not sure.

My understanding was that Amazon was concerned more with equitable pricing across app stores. i.e., you can't sell the app for $0.99 with Google and $1.99 with Amazon.

But in truth I haven't gone through the TOS with a fine tooth comb. Do you have a reference to that section?</comment></comment>


Windows and Line of Business Applications: No Good Options - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/articles/Win8-LOB-Options <comment><USER2> Cringe, laugh or cry if you will, but LoB development has essentially moved to the web.

Overall I think Microsoft's metro/winrt/client focus really abandoned their position of strength in the enterprise. This essentially forces existing Microsoft-friendly enterprises to switch technology stacks (WinRT is a non- trivial migration target) and at the same time gives a significant boost to HTML- the long trail of abandoned platforms should give everyone pause when considering a new one.

I'll put much of the responsibility (blame?) of this on Sinofsky who essentially wanted a clean slate for WinRT to ensure apps were designed for Metro and not half-assed ports. This strategy was fairly cocky and I'll argue could have been done with more finesse to not destroy as much marketshare- right now Win8 needs every inch it can get.

<comment><USER3> Agree to this. Most of the enterprise applications I have worked on in the last 7 years have been web based.

The default question is now, why not Web? A justification needs to be made as to why its not web based.

With ASP.NET MVC I feel there is better control of large datasets so that the whole set isn't loaded at once which WebForms made so easy to do.

<comment><USER4> The inevitable sequence of questions:

1\. Why not Web? 2\. Why not NoSQL? 3\. Why Microsoft?

<comment><USER3> I don't want this to start into another debate.

For most companies, its either Microsoft or Java stack. There isn't too much in between. And frankly its not a bad stack when money is not a factor in deciding the stack.Most companies whose core business isn't software just want to get their job done. Microsoft works well in this space and will continue to do so. Frankly, with Java being part of Oracle, I feel there is an even more push to Microsoft.

Obviously this is my opinion but I don't believe I will running out of work any time soon on the Microsoft stack.

<comment><USER5> > For most companies, its either Microsoft or Java stack. There isn't too much > in between.

I find it odd that the "Unix stack" isn't considered a horse in this race.

<comment><USER6> So which of them work well with Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2 drivers? Your average fortune 500 company isn't moving to PostgreSQL for the hell of it.

They're running on top of unix, but it all comes down to the database. And the java and .NET drivers are the best options. Rails has oracle and DB2 options, but how many people are using them? How well are they supported? How many people are around if you run into problems? What list of consultants can you hire when an advanced problem comes up?

Otherwise, you're stuck with a labyrinth of ETL jobs between the main DB and your internal app. That's not going to bode well, especially with JRuby around.

The other option is writing your business logic in the JVM and doing rest calls between that and your front end. I've heard multiple discussions of this (and even seen it done a few times.) But that's not getting rid of the JVM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps this could be retitled "Having cake and eating it too: No good options."

Big companies want technologies they can invest in that will remain stable and supported for a decade or more. Hell, many of them are upset that XP isn't being supported for longer than that.

If as a big company you had been a leader and built a web-based app in, say, 2005, it would most likely be a mess of hand-built DOM libraries that sniffed for specific browsers and most likely were wired to IE6 or IE7 (remember, jQuery didn't even exist yet). The "good options" that corps are choosing to use today mainly involve forcing newer versions of Internet Explorer into IE7 or IE5-Quirks mode so they don't have to lift a finger to change that festering pile of custom JavaScript.

I'm not convinced that any technology exists today that will be so set-it-and- forget-it wonderful that companies should plan to build it now and leave it the hell alone for a decade. But that's what they've demanded of the last generation of apps they built.

<comment><USER8> > I'm not convinced that any technology exists today that will be so set-it- > and-forget-it wonderful that companies should plan to build it now and leave > it the hell alone for a decade.

Perhaps not, but there probably should be. A lot of LoB applications don't really need to keep up so to speak. Employees learn how to use them, and they accomplish whatever business process goal they are supposed to accomplish. Yes maybe they look or feel terribly old fashioned (curses anyone?) but as long as they get the job done, why should they need to be re-written every 10 years at considerable expense and risk?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Many of these technologies are certainly supported (WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, etc). It's just that there isn't and won't be any new development on these products in the future. Microsoft is putting all of their focus into WinRT and Web development. On the one hand, yeah it kind of sucks that the platforms they built over the last 10-12 years are obsolete. On the other hand, they're moving an incredible pace around developing tools for WinRT and Web development (especially Web, which I keep up with in my day job).

<comment><USER10> MS went through a terrible process of whipping up and discarding frameworks a few years back... the churn of Linq2SQL being abandoned almost as soon as it was launched, Silverlight, all those rapid-fire dead-ends. Plus there were some horrible false-starts - EF3.5 was nightmarish, as was ClickOnce, and I've been less-than-impressed with SqlCE. I love the newish linguistic features of C#, but I've seriously slacked off in learning the new libs after being burned so many times. I still use WinForms for Pete's sake.

Has it settled down enough? Is it safe to start learning about WinRT? To actually figure out how MVC actually works instead of doing my best to ignore it while I do everything in Javascript and the Controllers?

<comment><USER9> All of the web stuff (ASP.NET MVC, etc) has the advantage of being open source (real open source, Apache 2 licensed, and accepts contributions). The team is also very open with the community and releases frequently. They're also working with with the OWIN ([http://owin.org/](http://owin.org/)) standards so that these projects don't have to be tied to Windows/IIS. It all moves very fast however, which might not necessarily be a good thing for LOB developers.

I can't really speak for WinRT. I've never touched or looked at the developer tools. And I've not ever really used an app as a user. The only reason I think it's here to stay, for a little bit anyway, is that it's the _only_ way to develop software that runs on Windows Phone or Windows RT tablets (other than Web apps).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> WinForms are still an option in VS 2012-how are they not supported? Is this just an alarmist piece of writing, or are WinForms no longer around in VS 2013?

<comment><USER12> WinForms is still there. I don't understand why the author dismisses WinForms. I also don't understand why the author feels WinRT is the way forward. Sure, WinRT confused people about Microsoft's strategy, but saying this is the only route left is, well, stupid. Especially when you consider the huge industry investment in legacy tech (WinForms and WPF). There's no way Microsoft will just abandon support for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So many problems with this article. For starters, he gives apple way too much credit. He also nitpicks about RT not being able to run .net apps. So what? Get a non-RT tablet. Can you run mac programs on any iPad version? No.

<comment><USER14> Enterprises need a platform that they can invest thousands, if not millions, of man-hours in. Explaining to upper management that a very expensive application will no longer work due to an upgrade that doesn't benefit the company is a career limiting event. Not to mention why there are some instances of Windows 98 still running.

Even though it is only implied by the article, Microsoft's business model is in jeopardy if the most future-proof method of application development/deployment becomes the web.

The phrase isn't "Nobody has ever been fired buying Apple." Apple is unapologetically a consumer-oriented company. Which allows them to behave differently than Microsoft.

<comment> at-fates-hands >>>> Apple is unapologetically a consumer-oriented company. Which allows them to behave differently than Microsoft.

This a thousand times.

Microsoft is essentially stuck between servicing the enterprise segment whilst still trying to behave like Apple. They're trying to build a walled garden and shim everybody into it - including their enterprise products and customers.

In short, they are in the midst of a HUGE identity crisis.

<comment><USER15> The sad part is Apple has a more consistent message even between iOS and MacOS, that is Cocoa, and they show no sign of abandoning it anytime soon for a new framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think it takes 3-4 times longer to do something in a web app versus a WinForms app. It all depends on what you are doing of course. Simple grids and data entry type input stuff is simple to do in web apps.

<comment><USER17> > Simple grids and data entry type input stuff is simple to do in web apps.

Well, for an appropriately narrow and trivial sense of "simple" I'd agree. I mean, if all you're talking about is "input number/text into box, press 'Save'" then sure, that's "simple."

I don't think I've ever witnessed a business web app with such trivial requirements, though. After they've been through the "me, too!" (e.g., for "visibility", people will insist on the inclusion of feature X, even if it's not really necessary) and political/gossip/clique infighting grinders most such apps have ridiculous requirements that blow the complexity way up.

<comment><USER18> _Well, for an appropriately narrow and trivial sense of "simple" I'd agree._

I think the biggest lesson we've learned from the rise of web apps is that most business applications _are_ simple. They come down to some sort of database, some sort of guided processes for using it, and some sort of structured user interface for data entry and reporting. These systems are inherently centralised anyway because of the shared data store that they are built on, so running the whole thing centrally and using dumb(ish) clients is a natural fit.

This doesn't mean that all business software is suitable for running as a web app. If you're creating material rather than merely entering data -- writing a report, drawing a diagram, anything like that -- web apps are still many years behind native applications in what they can do. The more significant the creation, the more this effect takes over: when was the last time you saw a professional architect or engineer doing their CAD and rendering work in a web app, or a programmer working on a million lines of code in Google IDE? But it turns out that a lot of what people do with computers is more about simple data entry and then information consumption, and you don't need all the downsides of native applications for that.

In a way, Microsoft and the like decided their own fate, because they made deployment and maintenance of native applications so onerous. If they'd had a standardised and robust deployment/upgrade facility for third party software on Windows years ago, including good support for centralised management by IT departments in the professional levels of Windows used by organisations, we might have had a different picture today. If they'd also maintained the focus they used to have on trying to provide backward compatibility at almost any cost, and developed new technologies incrementally rather than making big announcement where you just assumed their new thing would be dead in 3-5 years, I'm pretty sure they'd still be a leading business in the software industry. But they didn't, so the Web and the iPad came along, and now Microsoft are just trying to keep up.

<comment><USER17> > I think the biggest lession we've learned ....

True, but in that case an Excel or Access "front end" is almost certainly more than sufficient and where it isn't, whatever built-in system for writing "front-end forms" for the DB backend would be.

Web applications are certainly overkill for these use cases, and native applications are even more so. However, few who use these applications are interested in thinking of their jobs as rote and easily automated, and even those who recognize and are comfortable with it will likely have managers who want to increase their visibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why are winforms no longer an option? Surely, as long as WinAPI exists, there will be a .NET layer for it.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think the author is experiencing and commenting on the challenge of building business apps for mobile in general - not just Windows/WinRT. WinRT suffers from the same limitations as iOS and Android when it comes to servicing business' needs. The good news is that WFP is going to be supported and improved upon (despite what the author says) until WinRT is a viable alternative.

In the future I can see a small business owner linking all his computers together with a master Microsoft account and then buying a POS app that's downloaded to all of his computers linked under that account. If that can be done, it'd be a major leap from where we're at right now.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why do developers keep mixing WPF, Silverlight and XAML?!

XAML is what counts in these stacks and it is still there.

<comment><USER4> Because XAML: 1) is a limited subset of WPF; 2) an intentionally chosen confusing name; 3) can't be used for desktop development (AFAIK) - and that is what a typical enterprise wants.

<comment><USER21> XAML is the layout engine used in Silverlight, WPF and WinRT.

There are only differences in the amount of C# and C++ code in the XAML stack, and the set of available UI components.

<comment><USER15> XAML is not a layout engine, it's a language for instantiating objects. It does not even have to be used for GUI objects, just look at workflow foundation or BizTalk transforms.

<comment><USER21> XAML is not _only_ a layout engine, yes I know.

We are discussing its place in GUI Frameworks.

<comment><USER15> No its simply not an engine, you are wrong. WPF or WPFe (Silverlight) or WinRT have layout engines, XAML can instantiate objects that call into the respective layout engines. Those same object can be created with normal code as well, no XAML at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Um, there is Adobe AIR which seems like a very reasonable option for building Line of Business Apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever. I know it's not cool to like Adobe AIR/Flash but it would certainly get the job done and allow for easy updates, etc. outside of the Windows Store.

</comment><comment><USER23> You could always build your apps in IronPython with GTK#.

Or even straight Python with QT. Or Java or Groovy or...

If Microsoft doesn't provide a tool that does what you need, then choose another tool. There are an awful lot of choices out there and you gain greater control over your destiny.

<comment><USER24> Yes you could do that but then you would face a bunch of hard problems. Like support, deployment or where to find all these python/qt programmers.</comment></comment>


Objecting to sexual harassment got me fired, says ex-Uber employee - <AUTHOR> https://www.revealnews.org/blog/objecting-to-sexual-harassment-got-me-fired-says-ex-uber-employee/ <comment><AUTHOR> Yet another uber thread</comment>


The battle between Washington and Silicon Valley over encryption - <AUTHOR> http://passcode.csmonitor.com/cryptowars <comment><USER2> Not mentioned in the article is how to deal with the encroachment of backdoors worldwide. If we allow the US to have a backdoor, we've allowed the principle of backdoors in general. What's stopping the UK asking for its set of keys? Still OK? They're allies after all.

Where does it get uncomfortable for people? France? India? Israel? Saudi Arabia? China?

Once the principle is there for it to be done technologically, businesses will be faced with the choice of allowing multiple backdoors or not doing business in those countries at all.

And if you do accept all these backdoors, now you've got dozens of potential security holes. Not to mention you have absolutely no guarantee that any of these countries are genuinely going to decrypt just for "national security". Giving their native companies access to your corporate data would be a huge boon.

<comment><USER3> That is actually mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's seems to me that the inevitable response to back doors will be similar to what has happened following the NSA leaks - secint, sysadmins and devs will update their threat model, excluding the known defective components from the system. In trying to gain deeper access, I believe the government will only lock themselves out further.

Either that or it's a noisy ruse. Make lots of noise about how you're going to backdoor things. Have a great debate and declare it a dead idea, then do it secretly.

<comment><USER5> This is a really good article, balanced and well informed. Is this typical for the csmonitor?

>> Have a great debate and declare it a dead idea, then do it secretly.

Or, putting on my tinfoil hat, they already have means to break arbitrary encryption and they just want back doors (public or in secret) to provide plausible deniability of that fact. An important aspect about having an exceptional capability is not revealing you have that capability.

<comment><USER6> csmonitor puts out surprisingly good well researched articles that compared to other online outlets, aren't rushed to press or are well researched in depth pieces that you simply don't find on many other sites (except maybe Vice or the Atlantic) on occasion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rekindling this government desire was an easily forseeable result of centralization. "Web 2.0" companies are inherently surveillance companies, and their motives are directly aligned with government. They are putting on a good show to avoid alienating their targetbase. But even if it were in their interests to adopt end to end encryption, they are in no position to stand up to the government the way a bunch of distributed software users would be.

We won the war in the 90's, just to have to fight it all over again because lazy people adopted webcrapps.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone that buys the argument that we need back doors for encryption to stop crime is an idiot. Crimes were solved before cell phones even existed, proving that backdoors into software are not needed to solve crimes. I'm sure the administration knows better, but they also know how weak most Americans' minds are when it comes to understanding the consequences of national policies. The fact that this is a debate is ridiculous, but not unexpected in the US.

Damn straight it will hurt tech companies, as it should. They should go out of business until they move or their government stops fucking them over, ideally the latter, and the government should be held accountable. We're not talking about mom 'n pop shops here, we're talking about some of the richest companies on earth here. They can lobby for the government to subsidize their losses. They can lobby directly against any legislation proposed. If they're unsuccessful, they pretty much have only themselves to blame, after all their money is what moves politicians, not the other way around.

<comment><USER9> > Anyone that buys the argument that we need back doors for encryption to stop > crime is an idiot. Crimes were solved before cell phones even existed, > proving that backdoors into software are not needed to solve crimes.

I don't support requiring back-doors, but it's pretty ironic that you call people idiots then immediately follow that with a totally fallacious assertion. Law enforcement didn't have back-doors into cell phones before those existed, but criminals also didn't have secure ways to communicate over distance in real time. We can't conclude anything from the fact that crimes were still solved before cell phones existed.

The other way to look at it is to ask: out of the universe of ways for people to communicate, what can the government get at with a warrant? Historically, the answer was: nearly everything. For most of the last century, there was no way to communicate over distance that the government couldn't intercept. The only real-time way to communicate over distance was phone, and they've always had a "back door" to the PSTN through wire taps. Think about it: why do mob bosses in old movies take the risk of meeting at shady restaurants, instead of just dialing into a conference number? Because their phones are all tapped!

Law enforcement's position is that back doors just maintain that long-standing status quo. It may be a bad idea because security should outweigh the needs of law enforcement, but it's not an irrational argument.

<comment><USER10> > _but it 's not an irrational argument_

Actually, irrationality is at the heart of it. As with global warming denial, the argument _for_ back doors is a denialist argument against all evidence and against all expert advice.

Moreover, pro-back-doors argument isn't trying to defend a law enforcement status quo, it's trying to defend a program of illegal mass surveillance, because that is where pervasive strong encryption would have the largest impact. Fuck these people and the horse they rode in on.

<comment><USER11> "Actually, irrationality is at the heart of it. As with global warming denial, the argument _for_ back doors is a denialist argument against all evidence and against all expert advice."

It would be a lot easier if that were true, but it's not.

Examine all the reasons why backdoors in encryption are bad. Then ask yourself, which of those bother the government that wants to do survelliance?

None of them.

When the adversary pretty much wants everybody to conduct all their business in plain text, and if that's bad for them, too bad so sad, pointing out that we can't very well _partially_ weaken encryption is a non-argument to them.

The only thing that slightly bothers them is that ultimately, government power is significantly based upon American businesses being successful (they provide the tax base, directly and indirectly), and if the encryption weakens American businesses it therefore weakens their own power. That's why they're even slightly listening, and why their line to date has been variants of "Can't you just try harder?" From their point of view, the only thing that has to happen is that customers of American businesses need to be _convinced_ that they are secure; real security is to them a fully separable concern only loosely related to perceptions.

I personally would observe that over time, perception of security and reality of security would tend to synchronize, but one thing you must understand about government or it will forever be mysterious to you is that it is full of people who are used to _creating_ perceptions, wholesale, with varying and often small relationships to the truth. Watch the next high-level policy debate that happens on CNN and Fox, and yes, I'm deliberately picking mass media because it's actually where it is clearest to see. Note how the debate is almost _never_ about facts, real facts, provable and disprovable facts. It is about manufacturing perceptions, and the other side trying to manufacture a perception that fits into people's heads more easily and therefore wins out. If you try to argue that actually weakening security will directly, via facts, create a perception of weak security, you are almost literally saying words that they can not even represent in their brains.

Perceptions don't come from reality for them... perceptions are _created_ , by acts of will and clever spin. When we technologists say that people will perceive our stuff as insecure and not buy it, the solution that leaps to their mind is to use their usual tools to create the necessary perception, then weaken the security under that cover, and to them, we sound like children who believe that reality somehow creates perceptions independently and reliably in people, which to them is snicker-worthy childish naivity.

And worst of all, they're being rational. _It works_. All the time. Even here on HN in a lot of other of the perennial debates. It's very difficult to rationally argue them out of this position because rather a lot of the facts support their view.

A disturbing number of them accept the perceptions created as a whole as reality even though they are witnesses to or authors of the creation of perceptions themselves, so a disturbing number of these people on one level or another essentially believe they are _creating reality_. (I find this observation an incredibly important aspect of understanding how the very highest level of politicians operate, as after decades in this world, most of them fit this.) It's basically that observation about how when you read your own field of expertise in the paper you see how crap the reporting is but still believe the other bits of the paper, writ large. Others realize the process consciously to one extent or another and are simply cynically exploiting it.

Now, I believe the technologists are still correct, because for the most part, security purchasers at the high end are fairly rationally evaluating products, and real weaknesses will create perceptions of weakness, and probably little to nothing the government perception-writers can do will change that. But it's hard to explain the government how this is one of those rare places where the engineering and the math are just too hard and too rigorous, the connection to reality too direct and too strong, for _their_ toolset to be of much use. They encounter that situation so rarely they don't really believe it exists.

<comment><USER10> > _But it 's hard to explain the government how this is one of those rare > places where the engineering and the math are just too hard and too > rigorous, the connection to reality too direct and too strong, for their > toolset to be of much use. They encounter that situation so rarely they > don't really believe it exists._

While we're at "it's even worse than that..." Many of the more-thoughtful proponents of back doors who might have a grasp of the impossibility of doing what they say they want are die-hard Hobbesians who think that if encryption (or 3D printing, or cryptocurrency, or CRISPR, or whatever novelty the government can't easily tightly control) means the end of beloved Leviathan and a world of crowdsourced assassinations by bio-engineered insects carrying 3D printed titanium machine guns. A vision they'll make frightening to the masses by saying "there will be more CP." They think the world will spin out of control without pervasive surveillance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash My problem with intentional vulnerabilities is this: if we (Americans) supposedly have the best and baddest intelligence agencies in the world, isn't asking for a key under the doormat akin to a magician asking the crowd to close their eyes while they get their next trick ready?

If the FBI and NSA really need backdoors to do their job, then it makes me feel less secure...and less trusting.

</comment><comment><USER12> Every OS gets software updates to patch various security issues every few weeks or month or so. There is absolutely no reason why the NSA or FBI can't have a warrant saying that the person that they want to tap gets government spy ware on it via an update.

Also, I have to assume that every OS has security vulnerabilities that are not known to the public. If so, those can be used.

Also, I remember reading some story about something like Intel IPMI being used to read arbitrary memory remotely regardless of OS installed.

I think that there are far too many security holes for an agency with tons of employees and money to not be able to exploit. How many mathematicians and cryptographers does the NSA employ? I think that there is only one full time person working on GNU Privacy Guard.

I don't really see any information stored on a phone as safe. I would think that the manufacturer, the OS writer and the ISP can probably patch the phone, which can come with government spy ware.

I have no doubt that if if they want to target somebody that they can do it.

I think that is just a bunch of publicity to make the general public think that they are weak and impotent. Also, consider the fact that it has been reported that the government uses parallel construction to hide where the evidence really originated...

</comment><comment><USER13> Intel SGX could be this backdoor. Just have Intel hand over the key for each device to the Government and job done.

<comment><USER14> Only for programs that use SGX remote attestation. Which is at the present time zero programs. Additionally, it's not clear why you'd need it to do local encryption of your own data.

<comment><USER13> Huh? It's not even available yet, so of course there aren't any programs using SGX remote attestation. Regarding your second point, one of the main use cases is likely to be the cloud computing market where you want to do remote computation over sensitive data (requiring it to be decrypted inside an enclave). If an attacker knows the machine's built in key then it can read any encrypted pages. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So it's like the early 90s where they want to weaken encryption and make industrial espionage easier?

</comment><comment><USER16> We're in a weird time. I just read the writeup about moot's challenges moderating 4chan. But we will soon have an unmoderatable "crypto 4chan" built on blockchain technology that mechanically cannot be censored. Ethereum, Maidsafe, et al are building the infrastructure right now.

Government officials are concerned about this direction, as they should be. We will soon start seeing crypto-murder software that cannot be censored. Imagine Bitcoin, except instead of mining, you get paid to cache weaponized drones in remote locations so that they can do the blockchain's bidding.

These are not science fiction fantasies, the infrastructure for this is planned to be completed within the next few years. We can laugh at congress for thinking there is some obvious way for them to backdoor PGP, but they have good reasons to be concerned.

You might argue that this is a separate issue from the simple cryptography issue that congress is debating. But in my mind they are parts of the emerging phenomenon of information tools which are impervious to physical violence. For the state, which derives its power from physical violence, the entire movement is an existential threat.

I'm actually more concerned about this issue than the whole "AI superthreat". The kinds of tools the AIs would use to harm us will already be in the hands of bad people, long before the AIs wake up.

I am in no way suggesting these technologies are bad. People are already dying because they don't have access to food, shelter, and healthcare, and I belive crypto-technologies will save far more lives that way—providing universal logistics support to all humans—than they will facilitate deaths.

But so far IT has been sufficiently insulated from the physical world that technology feels somewhat safe... A long weekend in Vegas with fun games and a lot of money to be made. No one is really dying because pets.com went awry. But that is changing. Robotics combined with blockchain technologies enable information systems that are very much "of the world" and yet are not subject to the same mechanics of control as humans are, due to them not needing food or physical safety. That's not a smal change, it's a huge one.

Sometimes I wonder if this jump won't set us temporarily back towards a more totalitarian state. The obvious solution is to ban robotics and crypto, with a censorship regime like China has. I don't know how many "bad robots" or "bad blockchains" would need to exist for that scenario to trigger with wide public support.

I honestly spend most of my time trying to solve problems with these technologies so I haven't spent much time thinking about harm mitigation strategies. But I don't think it's silly to have that conversation. And we should help congress to have the right conversation, not mock them for failing to understand a problem that, frankly, none of us really understands.

</comment><comment><USER17> yawn. This is really overhyped</comment>


Ask HN: For those of you who hated public school, how would you change it? - <AUTHOR> Currently enrolled in one right now, and I am curious to how public schools could cater to:
-autodidacts
-ambitious kids in mediocre environments
-fixing the college is the only respectable path mindset
-implementing more freedoms in terms of courses (I fail to see why literature would be useful to a math-minded student)
I strongly feel that the US public school system is broken for all of the reasons above being neglected. I'm curious to what solutions there could be to these issues. <comment><USER2> Public school is designed to teach a broad array of fundamental skills to a large audience. It's also an educational complex (industrial complex) in itself - a lot of people make a living in the public school space. Not just the visible people like your teachers or office staff, but custodians and district administrators, organizations and unions behind the scenes and all the logistics chains that sell all the goods the school consume. It's crazy huge and won't easily be changed which is why it doesn't change.

Even with that said, It's not designed for autodidacts. However, you should take away from school the skills on HOW TO LEARN. Then use those skills to teach yourself whatever you want. Public school serves as a base or platform, ie not the education to be achieved but the platform you use to then achieve want you want to learn.

It might also seem trivial that public school repeats or overlaps a lot of the same topics year over year, but this is to improve your comprehension. Think of it like watching your favorite movie, each time you watch it you notice something different. Each time you read, write, solve an equation, etc, you are increasing your efficiency and/or effectiveness to do those things better the next time, and next time, ad infinitum for life.

Fast forward both of the above, you're now in your career and able to out think, out maneuver your coworkers. If you start a business, you now can out think and out maneuver your competitors. It's far easier to change yourself by getting the skills you want out of school, then necessarily changing the school to give you those things.

Set goals, polish your lense, and put in the work - it all pays off later.

</comment><comment><USER3> Class size is a biggie on the repair list. I believe if you have class size of 10, your first 2 issues go away.

For the 'college of bust' mentality, there are multiple issues here. I believe it is a failure to rate schools/teachers. Without a better method the only yard stick left is: how many go on to college. Germany has an interesting system. Although I have had some German friends say they hate it.

Your last point, and when I was your age, I agreed with. However, somewhere around the age of 35 I realized it was a good thing. I cannot promise you the same, but I can safely say, the smart money is betting that way.

Your last point, and when I was your age, I agreed with. However, somewhere around the age of 35 I realized it was a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think that at least two of your four points are primarily concerned with gifted and talented students (autodidacts, ambitious kids).

I would like to point out that calling the US public school system broken because it doesn't sufficiently serve exceptional students seems to ignore the plight of many kids who face problems including but not limited to: bullying, learning disabilities, domestic instability, or food insecurity.

Just my 2 cents. Sorry for not really answering your question.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Unschooling" might interest you.

</comment><comment><USER6> My public magnet high school was a weird setup where the kids had a huge variety of educational backgrounds.

It was striking to me to be alongside kids who were naturally intelligent and gifted but who had gone to really crappy elementary and middle schools. I remember a math class in 10th grade where the boy next to me was really struggling through his work and shyly asked if I knew what he was doing wrong. I, in my arrogant 10th grade way, told him "don't you know about the commutative property??" And he gave me a blank look in response. When I explained it, he immediately understood and flew through the rest of his work with no issue. That was when it really hit me that I was no smarter than him, I just had the privilege of an elementary and middle school education that didn't suck. That boy has gone on to get a Masters from Yale and I think he might be working on his doctorate now, but he had to work hard to fill in some fundamental gaps.

I'm truthfully alarmed by the "free college" debate because of credential inflation. Our high school diplomas are nearly worthless, a bachelor's degree has become compulsory for a lot of careers that shouldn't need it, and graduate school is leaning the same way. I would rather see us as a country fix elementary and middle school education so we can make high school education meaningful again. While we're at it, my county took away stuff like auto shop and any kind of trade school class, which is ridiculous and even criminal IMO.

Of course, so much of what we talk about when we talk about education is inequality. In the haunting (paraphrased) words of one teacher that I heard on a podcast, "How am I supposed to teach them long division when they haven't eaten in days and they're going to get raped tonight when they go home." That whole "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" study didn't control for household income, so all it really showed was that kids who are food insecure do way better on standardized tests when they eat anything at all beforehand.

There was also an interesting article in The Atlantic[1] recently discussing the really strange US practice of teaching skills instead of knowledge. The idea is that kids learn how to learn, but the outcome is that they're horrifically confused and don't know what or why they're learning anything. When teachers switched back to knowledge based curricula, the measurement of skills went way up.

I suppose this is a rambly non-answer. I grieve the state of public education in the US where so many good people face so many barriers (poverty, clueless administration, their own food and housing insecurity, etc.) to doing good work.

[1][https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/the- rad...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/the-radical-case- for-teaching-kids-stuff/592765/)</comment>


Microsoft finds underwater datacenters are reliable, practical, and sustainable - <AUTHOR> https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/project-natick-underwater-datacenter/ <comment><USER2> "The team hypothesized that a sealed container on the ocean floor could provide ways to improve the overall reliability of datacenters. On land, corrosion from oxygen and humidity, temperature fluctuations and bumps and jostles from people who replace broken components are all variables that can contribute to equipment failure."

None of this have anything to do with being underwater except perhaps temperature fluctuations.

Temperature fluctuations should be easy to manage on land without using energy, you can just run them as hot since no-one goes inside.

> Microsoft finds underwater datacenters are reliable, practical and use > energy sustainably

Given a stack of money why wouldn't this be possible? This says nothing.</comment>


DigitalOcean Data Leak - <AUTHOR> Just received the following mail:<p>> Hi there,<p>> Yesterday we learned that a DigitalOcean-owned document from 2018 was unintentionally made available via a public link. This document contained your email address and/or account name (the name you gave your account at sign-up) as well as some data about your account that may have included Droplet count, bandwidth usage, some support or sales communications notes, and the amount you paid during 2018. After a detailed review by our security team we identified it was accessed at least 15 times before the document was taken down.<p>> Our community is built on trust, so we are taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again. We will be educating our employees on protecting customer data, establishing new procedures to alert us of potential exposures in a more timely manner, and making configuration changes to prevent future data exposure.<p>> We believe in holding ourselves accountable to our customers and that includes when we make mistakes. While we can assure you that your Droplets and other systems you run on our platform have not been impacted by this mistake, we are committed to being transparent anytime we feel your data has been used in a way that does not align with our values.<p>> We welcome the opportunity to talk through any questions or concerns you may have — just reply to this email.<p>> Thank you,<p>> Trust @ DigitalOcean <comment><USER2> I just received the same and i would have much appreciated if they also shared the actual data with us, only MY OWN data obviously :)

<comment><USER3> hey dud3z, Tyler here from DO Security. If you respond to the note we sent you, we can share back specific details. In all but a small number of cases, it was the email address and name you entered for your DO account.

<comment><USER2> I already replied back at the mail from my business account (@r31nv3nt3d, need to un1337 it) with some questions minutes after receiving it, looking forward for a reply there, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just noting that I've been a customer since 2014 and didn't receive this email.

<comment><USER5> Not every customer got this e-mail, because not every data was leaked

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Got the same. Did they say somewhere how many accounts were affected?</comment>


How I Got To Startup School - <AUTHOR> http://philcrissman.com/2008/04/09/how-i-got-to-startup-school/ <comment><USER2> My estimation of the business acumen of Dharmesh just went through the roof. $300 bucks for a series of articles that's guaranteed to get good traffic is a great deal. Smack a touching story of "one guy's struggle to get to Startup School to help him follow his dream of being an entrepreneur" on top, and you've got a blogging goldmine. OK, maybe just an interesting series of articles, but still a good deal.

I saw someone suggest this very idea in a thread here...but it didn't click that it'd be a brilliant marketing move for whoever picked up the (paltry) tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure whether I should take this as a compliment or not. :)

In any case, I think it is more a testament to my laziness than it is my business acumen. I haven't been posting to the blog much lately, and thought this would be a good way to get some insights that I'm sure to be good and my readers will get value out of.

<comment><USER2> Of course it's a compliment!

I suppose if you wanted to worry over whether I'm interpreting your philanthropic effort as a cynical marketing ploy, then you could take it as something other than a compliment...but that's not my intent at all. I think it's both good business sense and a nice thing to do.

"Laziness" is a virtue when used appropriately. I really need to work on my laziness maximization skills...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> By the way, thanks to both Dharmesh and Phil for offering to provide us with notes. I think it's wonderful that you're putting in the time and money to create a comprehensive recap.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's great, congratulations :]

BTW, your blog totally breaks in Safari... might wanna take a look at that.

<comment><USER5> Urg. Yes, that happened before (Safari breakage), I had thought it was fixed. Thanks for the tip, I'll have to take another look.

<comment><USER6> Opera (9.27, Linux) too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Phil if you read this - Thanks! I decided not to apply to Startup School and this makes me feel better.

The more interesting posts will be your post-Startup School ones [one, two, three months afterwards]. I really hope you are inspired and start a thread on your blog on how you are doing/doing it, post-startup school. Followup is everything.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's nice to see that random acts of kindness still have a place in this world.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool! I hope it works out.</comment>


From McKinsey: How top companies excel with digital and analytics - <AUTHOR> From McKinsey Insights: How top companies excel with digital and analytics<p>https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/how-top-companies-excel-with-digital-and-analytics?cid=soc-app <comment><USER2> Oh the good old stock photos with smiling people having meetings.</comment>


Venture Investing On Track To Hit Six-Year High - <AUTHOR> http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=17&artnum=3&issue=20071022&rss=1 The third quarter saw venture capital funding increase for cleantech, as well as Internet, biotech and medtech, says a report by the National Venture Capital Association. Software companies, however, continue to receive the biggest share of VC funding. <comment><USER2> the thought of a bubble scares me, especially with all these high profile, ridiculous valuations (skype, google, facebook, etc).</comment>


The seeds of the next housing crisis have been planted - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-next-housing-crisis-is-pending-2016-05-04 <comment><USER2> Some good thoughts on this topic I read recently: * Quantative Easing (eg printing money) floods the economy with money, it has go somewhere. * Since the real economy (manufacturing / information) isn't growing, the money flows into assets (eg real estate or stock bubbles) * When there's zero interest, it exacerbates the problem, because if you've got capital, it's impossible to find anywhere to invest it to get a return. Hence you're incentivised to put it into assets. * Basically you're not seeing assets (houses/stock) going _up_ in value, you're seeing money go _down_ in value. It's basically out-of- control inflation, it's just that the inflation isn't spread evenly yet.

Disclaimer: These aren't my ideas, i'm merely parroting. But i thought they were clever and worth sharing.

<comment><USER3> These ideas are more than just clever, they are exactly what is happening due to money printing and zero to near-zero interest rates. You restated the facts well.

As to those who claim QE ended, and other nonsensical ignorant claims, that is irrelevant. The money went to reliquify the broke banks' balance sheets, and so of course did not immediately leave their digital vaults. That takes time, and we are slowly (technically not at all slowely) watching the destruction of the dollar's purchasing power via mass inflation, beginning with the assets closest to the money printing spigot: real estate, stocks, fine art, and other elite assets.

<comment><USER4> and yet the dollar is not substantially weakened vs other currencies, it is quite strong. This isn't a dollar specific phenomenon at all.

It seems a more appropriate statement would be destruction of all currencies purchasing power. Which leads me to wonder - what is the impact of that exactly?

Should the dollar be allowed to strengthen greatly (relatively to basket of all other currencies), is that what people are proposing? Can we guess at what the dollar based economy might do in that instance?

<comment><USER5> "is quite strong"...yes currently, but the decline has already begun against major currencies, e.g. JPY: [http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=JPY&view=1Y](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=JPY&view=1Y) Also checkout the dollar index: [http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy](http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy)

<comment><USER4> My point is that other currencies are not static. All the world economies are jockeying to have relatively weak currencies, in order to attempt to spur inflation and ease their debt loads. It's all relative. The US is not in some particularly bad spot, certainly Japan and Europe finance ministers would trade places with ours any day of the week. We have a remarkably strong economy (and everything else, really) in comparison (which is all that matters).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The anecdotal example of Brooklyn is a bad example IMO. Everyone knows how gentrified Brooklyn has become. As a result, real estate prices for those areas are going way up. For those in SF, the same is happening to Oakland.

Also, having just got a mortgage, I can anecdotally counter that despite Quicken's claims with Rocket, getting a mortgage, at least a "good" mortgage loan is still incredibly difficult. Thanks to 2008, 2016 loans require a shit ton of disclosures. So, if there's a bad loan lying around, you best bet it's going to be hard to disguise it.

As for the < 20% down? That's not a sign of a bad economy per se. I'd factor that more to a generation of poor savers. NPR recently had a whole segment on how little the current generation of millennials saves.

Home prices increasing is due to the fact that it's a seller's market. But, rent prices are increasing as well. IMO you could look at it from a different perspective. Recent homeowners are buying because it's currently cheap to borrow and the long-term result is that they actually save money because rent is increasing at such a dramatic pace.

All said, I do agree w/ the headline, just not with the author's anecdotal proof.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Talking about there being a housing bubble like the one that popped in 2008 would need a whole hell of a lot more than mentioning how some of the most expensive places in the world are expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Since government agencies back about 80% to 85% of new loans..." That's the problem right there: government is underwriting the risk. Get rid of GSE's like Fannie Mae setting standards and underwriting risk, and you will return to a more normal market fluctuation.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this story shows why it's so important to remember how credit-rating agencies and investment banks added so much fuel to the fire of the last crisis. Otherwise you will think the whole problem was silly people taking out mortgages they couldn't afford and say "this is just like 2007".

Anyway, I could buy the idea that once again some portion of homebuyers can't really afford what they're buying, but there won't be the crazy systemic effects that happened last time, unless once again bad mortgages are being sold as good ones, buried in financial derivatives.

Personally I think the situation is worse than a bubble- I think this is just how things are now, if you want to live in a city. The demand really is there to sustain these crazy valuations, and young people and those of us who don't own are just screwed.

<comment><USER10> I agree. I think it's not really a bubble. It might go down a little, but not -30% like it did in 2008-2009. Which means we are all going to pay lots of $$$ to live in desirable areas.

QE benefited people who bought in 2009-2012

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Give a whole bunch of loans out. Profit!

2\. Loans pay for houses to be built. Profit!

3\. Credit crunch.

4\. Take back homes in foreclosure.

5\. Fed prints money to buy the defaulted mortgages. Profit!

6\. Lend new bailout money to private equity buddies to buy the foreclosed houses. Profit!

7\. Rent houses to previous homeowners. Profit!

All this is necessary because banking is the foundation of our economy, the most important sector of our economy and the source of all jobs and growth in our economy. There is no sacrifice too great that our country must endure to save the banks in step 3 as the whole economy revolves around the glorious "doing God's work"[1] cycle detailed above.

[1] [http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/goldman-chief-says- he...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/goldman-chief-says-he-is-just- doing-gods-work/)

<comment><USER12> A nation's banking system reflects its core values, its culture, its fundamental values

Not the other way around

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> And why wouldn't this happen again?

All the people and corporations whom profited dearly from the 2007 scam got off completely scot-free and were made then whole on the backs of the US taxpayers (actually, their grand or great-grandkids, because the money used to pay the bills was borrowed and added to the $20tril debt)

They fully expect to be bailed out again, so again I ask...with big money to be had and almost zero risk to the players, why would anyone think its not happening again?

</comment><comment><USER14> The very first point is key. Unless you work at a realty company, when guys at the office are trying to get rich flipping houses we've reached the peak.

<comment><USER15> Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful

<comment><USER16> Buy When There's Blood In The Streets

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Mortgage-default rates are currently very low, but that shouldn't be any source of comfort because they are always low when the economy is doing well and home prices are going up," said Oliner. "That can turn around quickly if there is a recession."

A chart of 2006-2016 mortgage default rates is instructive: [http://au.spindices.com/indices/specialty/sp-experian- first-...](http://au.spindices.com/indices/specialty/sp-experian-first- mortgage-default-index) (set the time period to ten years)

The first mortgage default rate doubled from August 2006 to September 2007. It then doubled again by November 2008, peaking at 5.67% just three years after it was at 0.79%... which is roughly the level we're at today.

These things can turn around quite quickly.

</comment><comment><USER18> the article lacks the major fuel of the current housing bubble in US/CA: the Chinese buyers. there is an estimated $500B capital outflow from China in 2015. guess a large part of that is in SF/BC/NYC/London real estate.

<comment><USER19> In London there are tens of thousands of new build properties which have been built through Chinese investment. Currently unaffordable to most (£1m plus for a 1 bed) and so rather unpopular with Londoners. Many developments are 50%+ sold in China before they are advertised in the UK. however I am beginning to think the Gov may having been playing a clever long game.

Massive outflows from China the last couple of years. Encourage funds into the UK, mostly London, property market. Build huge number of new homes with Chinese money. Once (hopefully) the market crashes, glut of thousands of relatively affordable properties become available.

I am not sure whether this was purposeful, however I have stopped complaining about foreign funded real estate investment here as it will be extremely fruitful if the bubble pops. Unfortunately for those in the states mentioned, it seems the money isn't going into building new properties, but inflating a low and severely restricted stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> While not mentioned in this article, perhaps real estate agents are also insisting that buyers bid over the asking price thereby inflating prices.

Last week I was told by my first buyer agent he would not write my offer despite being 3% ABOVE the asking price for property that listed that day. I then called the listing agent for the same property who insisted she wouldn't write my offer unless I offered 25% above the listing price. We eventually negotiated to 10% above as my first offer. There are only 10 offers on the property so it isn't as if they were flooded with buyers.

Is anyone else finding your own buyer agent or even the listing agent refusing to write an offer if it isn't well over the asking price ?

Note I am in the SF Bay Area.

<comment><USER21> If there are 10 offers on the first day of listing, you're wasting everyone's time including your own, by not offering above asking, as the offer simply would not be competitive against the other 9.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The American Enterprise Institute does too much lobbying for me to trust them as straight shooters. Looking at case-schiller [1] it looks a little worrying, but looking at construction starts [2] the market doesn't seem that overheated yet.

[1] [http://www.multpl.com/case-shiller-home-price-index- inflatio...](http://www.multpl.com/case-shiller-home-price-index-inflation- adjusted/)

[2] [http://www.census.gov/briefrm/esbr/www/esbr020.html](http://www.census.gov/briefrm/esbr/www/esbr020.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> The very top of the market is already plummeting. I am talking about the nosebleed part of the market of 10+ million dollar apartments in new york, london and miami. These are already falling in prices as most hedge funders had a very bad 2015 and decided to liquidate some of their housing investments.

This effect should start working itself down the price ladder soonish. In new york developers are already splitting up mind bogglingly expensive apartments to form higher numbers of merely crazy expensive apartments.

So I would not be investing in housing that I do not need right about now.

<comment><USER24> At the upper end you see a lot more real estate purchases for investment purposes. At the lower end you see people wanting to buy their first home. That lower end demand is not going to disappear--do you have any data to suggest that this will in fact work its way all the way down to that lower end for people who are not "investing" in housing but instead buying a place to live?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Planted? In most major cities they've been growing since basically the last housing crisis. Land in First World cities has become the new gold, and it has caused an unsustainable bubble for those of us who actually need somewhere to live.

<comment><USER26> You have plenty of places to live, you just don't want to live there.

<comment><USER27> It's always interesting to me how many people think they have a right to live in a specific location. It's a strange mental model that I haven't fully grasped.

<comment><USER28> It's more interesting to me how many people think money should, and inevitably will, trump all other interests.

Maybe if you're a 20-something programmer uprooting your entire life to live somewhere else after decades in a location because financial pressures outside your control make your home and everywhere near it impossible to afford that's not such a big deal.

But for fuck's sake, think about this for a second. Most people _do_ have things rooting them to a particular location. Maybe it's a social circle. Maybe it's support network. Maybe it's their career, or their children's schooling, or their health and the local climate.

At the end of the day we as a populace get to decide public policy. Taking people being priced out of their homes as fait accompli because them's the market breaks is heartless enough, but then saying disdainful things about just how painful and difficult it is is worse.

<comment><USER27> Here is the thing, there is only so much room for people. You are either saying "fuck you" to the young people of the community that want to get a house in the place they have roots, or you say "fuck you" to the people that can't afford to live there. I don't see how it's particularly fair for a person to feel entitled to an area they did not purchase property in over another that just didn't happen to be there as long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's a lot of pressure to buy now, which makes me think its probably not a good time to do so. Its really difficult to make any long term decisions when it might be at the top of the market.

<comment><USER30> But rates are extremely low. There is never a "right" time; there are only particular circumstances.

<comment><USER31> Rates being low is a bad thing for buying a house. If interest rates were higher, it'd be harder to qualify for a loan at a particular value, so the house you're interested in would be cheaper. Plus, you make money refinancing at a lower rate, and there's no room for rates to fall when they're this low.</comment></comment></comment>


VCs leave Sand Hill Road, seek out new hot spots - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_29566101/vcs-leave-sand-hill-road-seek-out-new <comment><USER2> They're moving a whole hour's drive from where they started? What a dynamic and innovative segment of our industry.

I'm sorry, did that sound sarcastic? It was supposed to.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _That means entrepreneurs no longer have to make the trek to Menlo Park -- > instead, VCs will come to them._

Ha! A whole 15 minute trek. And no, no VCs I know of "come to them". For anyone who's not familiar with this area, this article is a big fat non-story. The only interesting thing here is that there a number of VCs based outside of Sand Hill that are competing with Sand Hill VCs for returns.</comment>


SpaceX ISS launch webcast starts at 4:15 am EDT - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/webcast/ <comment><AUTHOR> From [http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/tud1w/spacex_webcast_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/tud1w/spacex_webcast_page_is_up_webcast_starts_soon/c4pt8nu):

"[T]he Apollo program was a major effort by the most powerful nation in the world. Falcon/Dragon is happening because a young genius decided to become a Heinlein hero, and so started a rocket-ship company. It's sad that most people have not yet realized it but the most interesting story in the world is unfolding right now."

<comment><USER2> > Falcon/Dragon is happening because a young genius decided to become a > Heinlein hero, and so started a rocket-ship company.

Also, because it's happening 54 years after NASA was setup.

The kind of reading you linked to is disingenuous in the extreme and this kind of stuff seems common in SpaceX fans. Falcon/Dragon comparable to Apollo 11? No, not even remotely, Apollo 11 was the first event of its kind, SpaceX is currently attempting something which has been repeatedly achieved for the last 50 years, something which is almost routine for many nations nowadays: putting payloads in low orbit.

I don't want to put SpaceX down, what they're doing is great and opens the door for cheaper and simpler commercial exploitation of low-orbit, but comparing it to Apollo 11 is infuriatingly off-base and insane. And it's an insult to all of those who came before SpaceX, all of those who've worked in space agencies the world over (and especially NASA).

<comment><USER3> Most of the SpaceX fans I've seen aren't raving about SpaceX's technology (which, you rightly point out is a direct descendant of NASA). What they are raving about is SpaceX's _economic_ model.

<comment><USER2> > What they are raving about is SpaceX's economic model.

That doesn't strike me as making much sense, why would government contracting be something to rave about? Because it's government contracts in space?

<comment><USER3> Because their model isn't based strictly on government contracting. It is based on minimizing costs to build a self-sustaining, privately operated space program. Contractors give you the space shuttle: it doesn't matter how expensive it is if it's what was in the RFP.

It's the difference between the government contracting out the F22 versus going to Boeing to buy a 737. And that difference is what makes it exciting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ignition aborted, launch failed. Sigh.

<comment><USER5> Next window is Tuesday, so not too long. I was really impressed that they were able to abort nearly 5 seconds after ignition.

<comment><USER6> Is this the first time a rocket has been aborted after ignition and for it to have not blown up?

<comment><USER7> No. Mercury-Redstone 1 had a launch failure after ignition and launch:

Video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O4V7JfeTSU>

Description: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury- Redstone_1#Causes_of_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury- Redstone_1#Causes_of_the_failure)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you wonder when that is in your local time:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4%3A15+a.m.+EDT+in+loca...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4%3A15+a.m.+EDT+in+local+time)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Coverage here as well: <http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html>

<comment><USER9> HD Stream via UStream <http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html>

<comment><USER8> This NASA stream is already live (the official spacex one is not yet). And it's showing an interview right now.

So there's something to watch while we wait for the launch.

<comment><USER9> That is the NASA stream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Launch scrubbed just after ignition. Waiting to hear what went wrong.

Next launch window is Tuesday, 22nd May.

EDIT: Abort on "engine 5 chamber pressure high."

</comment><comment><USER11> "News conference coming up at 5:30AM Central time. Watch live at <http://www.nasa.gov/ntv> [1]

[1] <https://twitter.com/#!/NASA_Johnson>

<comment><USER12> "There will be a short briefing at 3:30 AM PT / 6:30 AM ET on NASA TV" <https://twitter.com/#!/SpaceX/status/203776815850991616>

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6%3A30+a.m.+EDT+in+loca...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6%3A30+a.m.+EDT+in+local+time)

50 minutes after this post

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> About 3-5 min before the launch time there were many voices chiming in to say "ready". I remember one of them, "OSM" had to be asked twice before they responded ready, which was different than all the rest. Anybody on here know what "OSM" stands for? Is it orbital station module? Anyways, I was just wondering if it might have been connected with the abort (such as they saw the high pressure build up in engine 5).

</comment><comment><USER14> The anchorman is Ron Burgundy's less successful brother.

<comment><USER15> Elon Musk tweeted that joke too. I find it pretty annoying, he's a senior staff engineer, and that is pretty rude to denigrate him in public like that. Hopefully they know each other well and it's a running joke or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good luck SpaceX and Elon Musk. True pioneers.

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't get me wrong, I think this is supercool.

But, what does this make possible that wasn't possible before? How is this truly disruptive?

<comment><USER14> more disruptive than instagram or facebook, or both combined for that matter.

<comment><USER18> That is quite an unfair comparison. Instagram and Facebook are disruptive with respect to their own fields.

<comment><USER19> What is Instagram disrupting? Non-grainy photos?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fluids over solids any time. Pity it didn't go through, better luck next week!

</comment><comment><USER21> I grew up in Cape Canaveral and this was awesome to me! We have to work on the naming though. Star Wars deserves some love!

<comment><USER22> > Star Wars deserves some love!

I disagree. They should sport the Pan-Am logo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> sigh...will be rooting on Tuesday

<comment><USER24> Careful: <http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html#R>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ignition Aborted. too bad

<comment><USER24> Ahh what happened?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Or... next launch window.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ouch.... that was expensive.

<comment><USER28> A lot less expensive than an explosion on the launch pad. Plus, this demonstration of ability to detect a possible problem and abort the launch in progress will likely pay off with NASA trust down the road.

<comment><USER27> True, that did impress me a lot to be honest. I kept expecting it to go boom when they cancelled launch after lighting the engines. Is a very cool capability.</comment></comment></comment>


Notice of DMCA Removal for TwoBitHistory from Google - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/TwoBitHistory/status/1227426179512250368 <comment><USER2> usgs.gov

merriam-webster.com

They are in good company.</comment>


Why Lifesaving Drugs May Be Missing on Your Next Flight - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/health/drugs-airplanes-faa.html <comment><AUTHOR> _Citing chronic drug shortages, however, the Federal Aviation Administration has granted airlines exemptions that permit passenger planes to fly without a complete medical kit if the airlines say they cannot replenish the drugs. The exemptions apply to international as well as domestic flights.

...

The medicines include two doses of epinephrine, one to treat severe allergic reactions and one to treat cardiac arrest; atropine, which is used to treat a slow heart rate; dextrose, to raise dangerously low blood sugar in people with diabetes; and lidocaine, to treat irregular heart rhythms but rarely used these days._</comment>


To win big, shrink a market. - <AUTHOR> http://redeye.firstround.com/2006/04/shrink_a_market.html <comment><USER2> One reason this works is because the established players will be afraid to compete directly with you because that would mean undermining their existing business.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fun exercise- think of a large company- one whose products you know. What new product / package would terrify them? Not just show up as a competitor, but really make them sit down and say "well, we're going to have to reinvent ourselves, because this [whatever] makes our product completely obsolete." For software companies in particular it's not impossible to come up with a product that you could start working on now...

</comment><comment><USER4> I have never really considered it in terms of shrinking markets. I guess what it all boils down to is how much of an affect your growth has on the competitor. Seems like if you are a small startup initially you would want the market to grow so you go unnoticed and then eventually shrink as you get enough momentum behind you, right or wrong? Any one else got other interesting market resizing points?

</comment><comment><USER5> Seth Godin suggests (paraphrased) - Look at an industry as it exists currently.. Think of the Sacred Cows- "This industry ALWAYS....", and then question what would happen if they weren't there.

What would happen if "Enc. Britannica didn't need door to door salesmen to deliver a product"?

</comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft expanded quite a few markets before it shrunk the encyclopedia market.

<comment><USER7> Whenever you shrink a market by creating wealth, you'll grow other completely unrelated markets. The money left in consumers' pockets is unlikely to simply remain in their pockets indefinitely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That was a good post. All of the recent big "winners" have not only shrunk markets but redefined their industries altogether.</comment>


Introducing Watching, a New TV and Film Website - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/arts/television/introducing-watching-tv-movies-what-to-watch.html <comment><AUTHOR> I found this to be particularly interesting:

> _If you give us your streaming preferences, we can weed out content that > does not appear on your particular services._

IIRC, Netflix typically shuts down external show-aggregation services. I'm not sure about the others that the NYT is aggregating here. I wonder whether the NYT has enough brand recognition that the services will let this fly.

Looks like they're currently indexing Netflix, Amazon Prime and Video, Hulu, VUDU, iTunes, Google Play, and YouTube.</comment>


Easy Video Embeds - <AUTHOR> http://easyvideoembeds.com

<comment><USER2> How are you going to handle the bandwidth costs of hosting and streaming videos? also the animation is a bit annoying for repeated visitors.

<comment><USER3> ^ This.

I don't really understand the model. All you are doing is allowing people to host a video file with you and doing some trivial code snippet generation. How do you make money to pay for the hosting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> May I recommend <http://typing.io> for the typist in the video? Disclaimer: my webapp

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow that is an incredibly frustrating banner video.... why would you put that?

aside from that, cool

<comment><AUTHOR> I originally thought it would be a cool demonstration of the html5 video tag.

Unfortunately, it was implemented poorly. This will be the first thing I fix in the next iteration.

Sorry for the annoyance

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The fact that you have to watch that shitty stretched out video before using it every time is hilariously idiotic. Nobody will ever use this.

<comment><USER7> Don't be a jerk. Calling someone's work idiotic is mean.

What did you build today?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats on launching your product.

Who do you imagine using this? What is your ideal use case?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I think embedded video, when implemented correctly, can make for a very compelling web experience.

One great example of this is kickstarter's team page - <http://kickstarter.com/team>

In terms of users, my hope is that one day, all web developers look to this site as the easiest way to embed videos on their sites.

Ideal use case - A web developer wants to incorporate a video on their site. He or she wants to have the freedom to customize the video experience, but doesn't want to worry about video hosting. Instead of using youtube or setting up their own video hosting platform, they go to this site to have their video embedded within their site in minutes!

<comment><USER3> Can you explain why you think people wouldn't just use Youtube/Vimeo/etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out the very bottom comment. In short, youtube/vimeo gives you their native interface by default and has limited customization options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this better than using Vimeo (or YouTube, for that matter)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both Youtube and Vimeo use Iframes to embed their content, which means you get their native interface by default and limited customization parameters. With this site, your video is embedded using an html5 video tag, which gives you much more control over your content.

One cool application of the html5 video tag is the kickstarter team page - www.kickstarter.com/team

Hopefully with future iterations, the difference between EasyVideoEmbeds and Youtube will become more obvious. A few features I will be adding soon include

\- Dynamically generate code, ie. Custom start time, video cropping, auto-play toggling

\- Video conversion (from any video format to html5 supported format)

\- Analytics

<comment><USER9> I guess it depends what you're doing with the video... most of the time I'm happy to use vimeo - as then you get stats etc through their player as well as discoveries through that site as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC:Community Building - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone!
You guys have served as both inspiration and reality check over the time of my membership.  So who better to turn to when I have a pressing question!
As many may know from my last post (what would you do with 50K)  I am now full time on my startup and I have started fully developing my prototype.  But there is one element that seems so scary to me.  Community building.  Any and all ideas to help build a social community/ userbase for a gaming SaaS.  I have an answer for every possible question concerning my business except how to quickly, yet efficiently build a community and user base.
A few details - my offering is free to use with premium offerings.  Thanks for your help!!!! <comment><USER2> if its a gaming-based startup, i'd suggest you look at kongregate. they've really hit the social community nail on the head for gaming, imo.

(mostly. some of their things are kind of lame, but it gives you a spectrum of things to look at)

<comment><AUTHOR> Kongregate has a great community. The only difference is theirs is more of a developer community than a casual gaming one. How did they begin to grow their users? Is viral marketing and press releases enough? Thanks for all your help!</comment></comment>


BP Knew of Deepwater Horizon Problems 11 Months Ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30rig.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> This article was posted (and extensively discussed) yesterday in the comments on the other Deepwater Horizon story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389647>

The WSJ also has a lot more detail on how the rig was being run prior to the accident:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870402620457526...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704026204575266560930780190.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> All of this is hindsight. Every piece of equipment has "problems". It is just a matter of how many failures happen at once. A bit like airliners.

<comment><USER4> A valid point, but I would hesitate to agree with this until someone can put together the numbers of how many rigs fall under this "it's a problem, but it's not a risk so go ahead anyway"

In terms of the Horizon, the reports I'm hearing basically state that _every single major safety device_ on the well fit this category.

<comment><USER5> I have a few numbers. Almost 1 billion wells have been drilled, and about 100,000 offshore wells.

<comment><USER6> I saw you mention this yesterday. Can you cite your source for this? I find it a little hard to believe there is (or has been) one oil well drilled for every ~6 people on earth.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for challenging me, because while in my head I thought "million", I wrote down "billion", and I feel like an idiot for doing that.

<comment><USER6> No problem :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just wait until their deepwater Atlantis fails, it will make the Horizon failure look like a puddle.

[http://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-sues-to- stop...](http://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-sues-to-stop- atlantis-bp-rig-from-operating)

Half of it's critical systems that were installed were not reviewed or tested.

</comment><comment><USER8> I posted this yesterday, but it didn't get picked up on. It appears that the Niger Delta experience a Deepwater Horizon every single year....

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390246>

Direct link: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills- niger...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria- niger-delta-shell)

</comment><comment><USER9> I just hope for all of our sakes that this is the final nail in the coffin of industry self-regulation. It does not work when it is against your interests to be safe; after all, we love to take risks.

I also hope that America begins to realize that large corporations rarely have the interests of the population in mind. There needs to be checks and balances here.

<comment><USER10> Excellent. So let's talk about regulating all these dot com companies...

<comment><USER11> Name a dot-com with $1bn+ in liability and we can talk about regulating it.

<comment><USER10> I see. It's all those _other_ people that need to be regulated. Got it.

<comment><USER12> This is a pretty straw-mannish argument. It's clear to me that if a company is big enough that its irresponsible actions can cause this much harm, it should be regulated. (I note you haven't actually named a dot-com with more than a billion in liability.)

 _Capitalism is not a suicide pact._

<comment><USER10> I see nothing here that explains why dot coms should not be regulated.

<comment><USER12> I see you've shifted your argument. What happened to "Right, just the _other_ guys should be regulated?"

I'm not sure what's not clear about the notion that large risk should be regulated. If a company is capable, due to size or what have you, of harming a large number of people due to malice or incompetence on the part of its corporate governance, then sanity demands it should be regulated.

However, small companies should be regulated as little as possible. I mean, assuming you want a working economy. I'm not sure you do - actually, I'm not sure _what_ you want, but from the standpoint of pattern recognition of your strawman attacks, I'd assume you want to regulate _all_ business as little as possible.

Where I suspect we differ is the degree of "possible".

In my opinion, any business that can destroy hundreds of miles of coastline for other people while still having a banner profit year? Yeah, that should probably be regulated, since the Invisible Hand ain't gonna do it. Look up the Tragedy of the Commons sometime; you might find it instructive. (Or perhaps not. It's hard to tell how honestly you're approaching this.)

<comment><USER10> There's no shifting here. It's the same topic.

The original subject was that large corporations can't be trusted to regulate themselves. But of course that's exactly what we're doing with the large dot coms. They're minimally regulated, certainly in comparison with the oil industry, which is in fact highly regulated.

Why do we trust large dot coms to regulate themselves? Because we think their leadership is somehow more trustworthy? Are they just naturally better people? On what basis do we make that judgement?

If Apple or Amazon or Facebook or Microsoft or Google had malicious, greedy, or incompetent leadership do you not believe they could cause massive harm? Sure, it wouldn't make ugly pictures on tv (or would it? I can imagine ways in which it could), but that doesn't mean the potential damage is any less real. Why do we trust them to regulate themselves?

If you trust present leadership, what about the next generation, those that are just MBAs from the same schools that turned out the leadership of BP, Shell, and Exxon?

So, again, why do we think they shouldn't be regulated?

<comment><USER12> Ah. "Large" dot-coms. Well, I think your intuition tells you that "large" dot- coms are also capable of incurring public liability that is not held in check by their nominal liability. I'd argue that it's improbable that Apple or Google could do damage to the public on quite the scale that BP or Goldman- Sachs or Enron managed, but you could well be right.

But I think you really need to think about regulating _risk_ , not classes of company - except insofar as classes of companies are in fact associated with certain categories of risk. Apple will not be causing a vast oil spill. Microsoft - well, Microsoft _might_ be capable of destroying the global financial markets, but probably not as directly as AIG.

I consider the category of "dot-com" to be entirely orthogonal to this question. It's the risk, not the company. And moreover, it's instances where the risk to the public is far larger than the risk (or cost) to the company in the worst case. That's where regulation has to adjust the balance.

For instance, Google could accidentally deny email to about 176 million people at once, and that could arguably cause some damage. They could choose to stop offering free email with no notice. You could argue that this would cause them enough ill will that they wouldn't do it - but that argument clearly doesn't work for BP or the financial giants. So you might have an argument there.

<comment><USER10> It's almost in the definition of a dot-com, large and small, that the impact of any particular action they take is greater than the cost of that action to the company. That's why tech startups are so appealing.

But if you have such leveraged benefits, you also have such leveraged risk. The same leverage that lets a small team create great value also puts them in a position where they can cause great harm.

I used large dot coms because there was some insistence in the thread that regulation was only worth talking about with large companies. A red herring, of course, since the mom and pop corner dry cleaner is a regulated business, and for the common good. Size isn't really an issue.

The difference is that it's almost a tautology that dot coms have influence, good and bad, far out of proportion to their size...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How the U.S. Military Uses IRC to Wage War - <AUTHOR> http://publicintelligence.net/tactical-chat/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps the funniest/scariest snippet of the article is a chat transcript:

      [03:31:27] <2/1BDE_BAE_FSE> IMMEDIATE Fire Mission, POO, Grid 28M MC 13245 24512, Killbox 32AY1SE, POI GRID 28M MC 14212 26114, Killbox 32AY3NE, MAX ORD 8.5K
      [03:31:28] <CRC_Resolute> 2/1BDE_BAE_FSE, stby wkng
      [03:31:57] <CRC_Resolute> 2/1BDE_BAE_FSE, Resolute all clear
      [03:32:04] <2/1BDE_BAE_FSE> c
      [03:41:23] <2/1BDE_BAE_FSE> EOM
      [03:41:31] <CRC_Resolute> c

It's a like a normal botnet, except it's commanding our troops.

I thought it would be cool to do something like this as a hackathon project proof-of-concept; apparently I'm too late. Doing something like this for civil defense purposes would be pretty cool.

<comment><USER3> The funny bit is that it is almost exclusively referred to as "mIRC chat."

I don't know how extensively it is used elsewhere, but IRC is considered a primary communications method (and often the preferred vs. land lines, sat phones, and secure radios) for UAV pilots communicating with Air Traffic Control and the Control and Reporting Center.

<comment><USER4> I thought the funny bit was "Fire mission, POO".

A friend of mine worked in dis/connections support at an ISP+phone company. Proof-of-ownership was something they needed for any connection, and the acronym was used regularly throughout the workday. But she said on the phone, you'd sometimes forget and ask the customer things like "what poo can you give me?".

<comment><USER5> POO = Point of origin for indirect fire

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Upon reflection, I find that it's not at all surprising that IRC is so widely used in the military establishment.

Military operations are, by definition, carried out by different coordinating groups sometimes thousands of miles apart. IRC is ideal for such a task as it provides a conferencing platform that is easy to use, develop, and deploy (in both the software sense and the military sense.)

It's unconcerned with the transport layer, so a wide variety of transport systems (which can include any manner of authentication and security) can be used: from a General or Admiral at a desktop client to drones mid-flight to boots-on-ground soldiers carrying a pocket-sized device. IRC is also a common technique for C&C in certain malware families.

<comment><USER7> I remember being in irc channels used for organizing tactics and strategies in browsergames. It was widely used for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The main advantages of using IRC over radio comms is that:

* It's way more reliable than radio comms (you don't need to ask people to repeat everything all the time, you read your grids right the first time).

* It's concurrent, you can have multiple units reporting at the same time.

* It's buffered, you can skip stuff and come back to it later.

* It's cheap, anybody can get a window opened on the current ops and see what's going on, without needing all the hardware of a radio.

* It makes the reporting very fast.

* It makes collation/data collection much easier.

* It's scriptable, you can automate the collection of some messages, or the emission of some others.

They got that integrated at pretty much every level, and I think it's one of the most enabling thing available right now for C2C nodes, in many armies (not just US).

</comment><comment><USER9> The creator and developer of mIRC - Khaled Mardam-Bey - is Syrian and Palestinian, I wonder how often his software is used for tactical purposes against those countries?

</comment><comment><USER10> It surprises me that IRC is used. In part because IRC is old and crufty and, I fear, not very secure. Also because IRC isn't some milspec contract that made some insider hundreds of millions of dollars. It's great to adapt an existing chat technology but it surprises me.

I recently read "Predator: The Remote-Control Air War over Iraq and Afghanistan: A Pilot's Story" and it talks a lot about how UAV pilots hang out in chat rooms sharing intel during operations. Asynchronous text is the perfect medium for this kind of thing; low bandwidth, doesn't require a lot of attention. Just crazy to think it'd be IRC.

<comment><USER11> I often come across these types of comments about the IRC protocol being 'crufty,' 'old,' etc. I recently (a year ago) implemented a subset of the IRC protocol for a project and I thought it was fairly modern, and not difficult to work with.

Yes, IRC has some problems, it wasn't built with security in mind. I think dsl below offers a solution to some of these concerns.

But this still leads me to ask the question, what does a modern distributed chat protocol look like?

<comment><USER7> Uh, how does dsl offer a solution?

<comment><USER12> dsl the user: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5148079>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the Manning pretrial:

      Defense (Coombs): D6 machines used primarily for...?
      Fulton: Analysis.
      Defense (Coombs): mIRC chat as a baseline?
      Fulton: Yes.
      Defense (Coombs): In fact, mIRC chat was installed on your machine as an executable desktop application?
      Fulton: I think so.

I wonder if they have netsplits over there.. gives a whole new meaning to EPIPE (Broken pipe).

</comment><comment><USER14> The really amusing thing is when they buy huge LCD TVs and projectors to run IRC clients in an operations center.

And then call it "mIRC" because that's the crappy Windows client they use.

<comment><USER15> I actually miss mIRC... xchat is the best I've found for ubuntu, whats a good alternative?

<comment><USER16> irssi <http://www.irssi.org/>

<comment><USER14> Indeed, irssi is the only acceptable choice.

<comment><USER17> Combined with Screen. I suppose that goes without saying.

<comment><USER18> I've found it vastly more convenient to run ZNC (or the like) on the server and use irssi locally. Otherwise I typically have to fight with key bindings and finicky settings on each machine (some of which I can't change). This also lets you use any number of clients.

For example, I'm running irssi on my laptop, colloquy on my iPhone, and a few scripts which handle pushing notifications, all from the same connection.

<comment><USER14> I've always used screen, but may switch to a bouncer next, mainly to get better support on mobile, and the ability to route notifications. It does seem like a more elegant solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> IRC is great and relaying on such a simple and well understood process is smart. It provides group chat, persistency, and is much clearer than trying to decipher a dozen people talking on a radio frequency.

<comment><USER4> The company I have just started at uses skype for its chat requirements. I hate it for a few reasons, but mostly because you can go back and change an existing chat message, leaving no trace that there'd been an edit.

<comment><USER20> I loathe it because of the repeated privacy concerns, reliance on a central company for not only its development but its OPERATION, and the presence of many competitors.

VoIP PBXes for "phone call" style video/audio

Mumble/Vent/Teamspeak for audio/text chatrooms

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The SF guys I hung out with had/were using IRC on their laptop back in 2004 to communicate with other elements and their HQ which was God knows where. I was airborne infantry and we had an SF team on our camp, we worked mostly separately but hung out together a lot. After he showed it to me he told me the call signs were never to be repeated. I couldn't remember them if I wanted to. They had the laptop hooked up to sat coms. It was pretty cool for back then.

<comment><USER22> I read that as San Francisco and wondered why a bunch of hipsters from the Bay were being so retro :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That my work may be used for highly unethical purposes such as waging war is one reason that makes me think twice before releasing software.

<comment><USER24> I think about this sometimes, and I think it ultimately comes down to how society acts as a whole, which is mostly out of our direct control. Society can use any tool for good or evil; just as a knife can cut bread or hurt a person, so too can Apache serve Wikipedia or serve the MPAA/RIAA's intranet.

There's definitely a cutoff point (if you're designing a nuclear-tipped rocket, there's usually just one reason for that) but stressing about whether or not the general-purpose software we create will be used for evil will only frustrate the cause of good.

<comment><USER25> > a nuclear-tipped rocket

What if your nuclear arms are never meant to actually be used, but the implicit threat of having that capability will keep your country from being bullied by other countries?

Not even nuclear weapons are entirely black-and-white.

<comment><USER26> Frankly, I find that about as black as black gets.

Playing chicken with the future of the whole world in order to gain a little bit of negotiating leverage? Pure evil.

<comment><USER27> You seem to imply that "a little bit of negotiating leverage" is of trivial consequence rather than a question of how many people were at the mercy of a corrupt and perversely-incentivized bureaucrat or an abusive factory owner.

We didn't fight the cold war over which side you butter your bread on.

<comment><USER26> _a question of how many people were at the mercy of a corrupt and perversely- incentivized bureaucrat or an abusive factory owner_

I can't tell if you're complaining about the USSR or the USA...

Joking aside, I know the reasons the west fought the cold war, and I don't think they were justified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What really saddens me is the high probability that they spend billions of dollars every year to build custom, fancy comm protocols that nobody uses

<comment><USER29> To be fair, I'd imagine that the majority of this money and effort is spent on highly secure and fault-tolerant transport protocols, and IRC is just a layer on top of those. So it's likely not being _totally_ wasted.

And even the comm protocols designed to replace the IRL level? Think of those from an agile-development perspective; if they don't build it to test their assumptions in the real world, then they could be making an inefficient product. And in this business, an inefficient product can mean lives lost.

<comment><USER29> EDIT (since it's too late to actually edit the post): IRC, not IRL. There's some sort of pun dangerously close to surfacing here, but since this isn't Reddit, I'm not going to resist taking the bait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if they've compensated the developer of mIRC.

</comment><comment><USER31> Looks like a LARP channel

<comment><USER32> Well, it's about as live action as you can get, and they are playing a role . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wow, Khaled Mardam Bey (author of mIRC) must be rolling in gigantic piles of US Military cash if they have standardised on it.

</comment><comment><USER34> And I thought they had real time satellite monitoring with command & conquer like interfaces. I'm so disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER35> If they fight on IRC... I can win.</comment>


Show HN: Rogue AI Dungeon, javacript bot scripting game - <AUTHOR> http://bovard.github.io/raid/ <comment><USER2> Link to github repo: [https://github.com/bovard/raid](https://github.com/bovard/raid)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty clever little idea for a game/programming practice. Very neat.

</comment><comment><USER4> After looking at the tutorial the game mechanics are still not clear to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> __javascript</comment>