Today I launched FitLabs, my first web product - <AUTHOR> http://www.fitlabs.co/blog/fitlabs-launch/

<comment><USER2> It looks pretty good and it rather snappy UI.

I don't fully understand what makes this better/different then DailyBurn.

I would be interested to know what kind of conversion rate you have at 10 dollars a month. A lot of fitness tracking / and calorie counters have turned into a commodity to users I feel like. Selling things to gym and trainers seems like it is very hard from what experienced for a few reasons (most notably, they make little money and they are not interested upselling their customers unless it somehow directly results in them getting leads for doing more personal training sessions).

A couple quick notes / suggestions:

1) Adding connections to Facebook / Twitter / or internal social networkings will only result in a win for you. We see this very clearly with Lose It! (the product I work on)

2) When clicking on top level nav items that only have one subsection (Notes and Program) it should auto-select (ie. navigate) to the subsection. Otherwise it is just 2 steps to get everywhere.

3) The visualizations are not that compelling which I think is a combination of 2 factors. First, they are simply line graphs of numbers the user has manually entered. There is no depth / substance to the graphs. Moreover, in the demo there is so few data points it really amplies how shallow they are.

4) Ont he goals tab there is a lot of data and I don't really follow what is showing. Perhaps since I am not a avid weight lifter myself. There is also switching between different date formatting in that chart and there looks like there is some kind of escaping bug where it says \"Christine\"

5) Under Strength tab when you click into the textbox for "Reps Until Failure" the text from "Click to Enter" does not clear. Seems like that is would get very annoying.

6) If you are going to expect users to enter so much data manually I suggest also adding a data export feature and also create nice looking printable summaries of their progress.

Anyways, it looks good. Excellent work on launching, thats always the hardest part. I wish you the best luck and welcome to the health and fitness industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Great feedback. I'm actually currently testing between multiple price points. I had a higher price point but a lot of my testers said it was way too much, so I'm lowering it and seeing what effect it has on my conversions.

Right now there is not much differentiation between this and other fitness tracking apps. Its specifically catered to Crossfit athletes though. I do have some ideas for making the graphs more revealing. I also want to connect workouts to nutrition much better other than just listing stats. We'll see...lots of experimentation to do!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is like the software side of an idea I had maybe a decade ago. My idea would be to modify workout machines with sensors. Think of those Nautilus type pulley machines. You would swipe your card (magstripe, RFID, barcode, etc) when you sit down (start time recorded). Then you select the weight you want to lift (weight setting recorded). As you lift, various sensors would record the time per rep, range of motion, speed, etc. The idea would be that you don't have to waste time writing in a log, and the computer could capture data that you couldn't (like the fact that your last 4 reps only had 85% extension, vs your first 2 which had 98%). With sensors on all the machines in a typical gym (weight machines, treadmills, elliptical, etc.), you could get a full picture of how your workout went. Plus you could see how you progress over time. The challenge would be to get a big gym to allow you to wire up all of their machines, or work with a manufacturer to get them to include these sensors.

<comment><USER4> Made me think of this:

[http://www.telemetryweb.com/display/PUB/TelemetryWeb+-+The+C...](http://www.telemetryweb.com/display/PUB/TelemetryWeb+-+The+Cloud+Platform+to+Make+Your+Devices+Smarter)

Could be a good combination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW: I think having a user create an account is kinda useless if you don't give access to all the features (specifically graphing). My recommendation would be to setup a demo account with seeded data so people can get a feel for the service.

Also I may take heat for this but for me personally that price point is too high. I'm not saying you should lower it but I wouldn't purchase the service based on that alone (at least not in it's current form).

There you go two cents from a random stranger. I hope it's helpful and wish you the best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Feedback is definitely noted!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can you add medals similar to wii fit, pc games and foursquare? This might add to the fun factor and help in people feeling more like they have achieved something.

So the more you use the better you do the more medals you get. Then people can show off their workout stats and medals on their blogs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am impressed with the UI. It's fast. Great work. What technologies have you used?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm not a designer so for right now I got an awesome theme off WooThemes. The product itself is a theme off of ThemeForest.

The front end is Javascript MVC and Jquery. Backend is PHP and MySQL. Payments are done by Stripe (more on that in a later post). Charting is done with Highcharts and a custom data API, and I'll prob move to d3.js once I figure out some more visualizations to put in.

<comment><USER7> How big a team was involved in the build? Just the build, not the testing team. I am thoroughly impressed by the effort. I would surely like to use the service...</comment></comment></comment>


The truth about Norwegian lemmings - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141122-the-truth-about-lemmings

<comment><USER2> Nice photos but low on detail. Here's a more interesting account of Myodes lemmus from August 1877 edition of Popular Science:

[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume...](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_11/August_1877/The_Norwegian_Lemming_and_its_Migrations)

To give you an idea of just how massive these population explosions are here is an excerpt from the article:

"Mr. R. Collett, a Norwegian naturalist, writes that in November, 1868, a ship sailed for fifteen hours through a swarm of lemmings, which extended as far over the Trondhjems-fjord as the eye could reach."

The 3-5 year cycles drive the whole arctic ecosystem. When there are lots of lemmings there are lots of everything. More lemmings means more food for predators so tundra-nesting birds do really well, fledging lots of chicks since the predators can stuff themselves senseless with lemmings. In years with low numbers of lemmings then the birds get hammered hard until the number of predators crashes also.

<comment><USER3> But given the claims of this article, can that source be trusted? I tried to dig deeper, found zillions of copies of that quote and [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1877....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1877.tb01388.x/full), very likely Collett's article, but behind a paywall, where I have to register to even see the price of the article.

Also, that 'fifteen hours' doesn't say much. Speeds of sailing ships differ a lot, depending on the ship, wind direction relative to ship direction, and, of course, the density of the lemmings in the water. The fjors is about 130km long, though, and the eye would reach (depending on height above sea level and weather) around 10km.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> " _Tweetable truths about Norwegian lemmings_ […]"

What? Pre-made tweets? I see. It's not enough to make up hashtags for people to create trends with, nowadays you have to _write the entire tweet for them_.

</comment><comment><USER5> The morals of the 50's seem to be a bit different than those of the 2000's...

</comment><comment><USER6> The real revelation is that I can read this bbc.com article. Apparently they've stopped blocking British people!

</comment><comment><USER7> a real eye-opener. was planning to use lemmings in a startup demolition company, but now i know they won't do. will have to get back to the drawing board...</comment>


Apache OpenMeetings: open source replacement for GoToMeeting/Webex - <AUTHOR> http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/ <comment><USER3> All of these "webex-replacement" solutions seem to have a horrible case of feature creep.

SOAP API? Private Messages? Calendar?

Isn't there a plain and simple solution? Something like an open version of the google plus hangouts

<comment><USER4> WebRTC.

<comment><USER5> WebRTC seems comparatively low-level, and I'm not sure it would support the basic use case for webex, gotomeeting, etc.: i.e., conference calls with audio, screen-sharing, and (less importantly) video of participants.

We use GoToMeeting (Citrix), and find we also regularly relay on the ability to call in from a regular phone, so this has become a requirement.

Customers calling in, anyone non-technical who's having issues getting the web client working (even the technical folks sometimes have trouble with it... they have a Java applet install/launch client software), or anyone with a flaky internet connection need this (that last one seems to happen quite frequently whenever anyone is traveling...).

<comment><USER6> I have rarely experienced a web meeting where the first 15 minutes were not spent twiddling thumbs because one or more participants were having issues getting connected, seeing the video, dropping connections, etc. It even happens more often than not on a simple conference call, where all you have to do is dial a number and enter a code or two.

If ANYONE ever figures out a way to make this technology really work, they will be swamped with demand.

<comment><USER7> Practice has a lot to do with it. We have a lot of telecommuters at work, and their first few meetings are problematic while they figure things out, but eventually the problems die down and things run smoothly.

Most of our meetings run without problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a company in the current batch of YC companies that is in this space as well, Screenleap. To share your screen with me, you go to screenleap.com, click the share button, and get a 9 digit number. You give that 9 digit number to me, which I then enter on the same screenleap.com, and I can see your screen.

No visible revenue stream, but those are overrated anyways, right?

<comment><USER9> This app is a bit beyond basic screen sharing, Screenleap is more of a competitor to Join.me and this is more of a competitor to WebEx etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anybody else see the coincidence between the Apache announcement of the new Citrix sponsorship (platinum level) and this? What does Citrix gain out of sponsoring an organization that competes with their product line?

<comment><USER11> An excellent recruitment program to find talent for their own projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I thought the real issue here is that you either need server infrastructure or sufficient intermediate nodes to do NAT hole punching (like Skype)?

</comment><comment><USER13> Google Hangouts are a nice replacement honestly. Just wish there was some calendar integration and performance was better.

<comment><AUTHOR> The 10-user limit and no dial-in option limits its usefulness.

The screen-sharing also doesn't work very well, at least on linux. You either have to share your entire desktop, across all screens, or a single window of an application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Flash? I mean really? Shouldn't it be using HTML5 etc? Flash is so '95 - <USER2> impression I get more and more from new projects at Apache. It starts to look as if Apache becomes a dump store for old code.

<comment><USER15> What is the HTML5 alternative? I didn't think there was any accepted standard for this stuff yet.

<comment><USER16> The great thing about having no real definition ('HTML5' is beyond meaningless at this point as a name for real, actual technology) is that it means you can theoretically use it to do _anything_ at all!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks great, I agree with the other comments based on those screenshots they have a lot of work to do on usability if they want people to use it. Looks like the microsoft word of webinar software.

<comment><USER18> I was thinking the same thing. I wonder how hard it would be to totally reskin this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> i have worked with Red5 previously. Its a good streaming server for putting together a POC quickly but not the best tool for scalability and reliability. I wonder how this new effort scales on top of Red5

Apache OpenMeetings seem to have got all the features of a typical webmeeting but I wonder if it would be usable by a typical non-geek user

<comment><USER20>
       but I wonder if it would be usable by a typical non-geek user

I'm working at one of the largest chip design companies, so you can assume that the engineers around me have a sound understanding of technology (I mean we know how to use all the EDA tools, if there wasn't SAP software I'd say that's the most complicated software you can get :). We use WebEx heavily for intra and inter company communication. Still many of us have trouble using it, and explaining its workings to first time users almost always takes a lot of time (and nerves!).

I'm eager to have a look at OpenMeetings. But assuming it already has all the needed corporate functions I'd say concentrating on usability (especially for new users) would be a major differentiation factor to other products in this space.

<comment><USER21> You can also try BigBlueButton: <http://www.bigbluebutton.org/>

<comment><USER22> Thanks. This looks like a winner.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Dad, you talk funny." - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/44281386812/from-the-mouths-of-babes

<comment><USER2> >"Son, in my time I could multiply two three-digit numbers in my head." "Dad, you talk funny."

"We" probably doesn't cover a huge segment of the population. I know in my case, the "RAM" I have disposable for that sort of thing is around 3 numbers, not more.</comment>


Trump, Having Denounced Amazon's Shipping Deal, Orders Review of Postal Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/politics/trump-postal-service-amazon.html <comment><USER2> The USPS is my favorite shipping company. I hope it survives for a long time. I have two reasons why I like them so much:

* They can't inspect packages without a warrant. I don't ship illegal things, but I like privacy.

* They're the only shipping company that I trust to deliver to an apartment building. Seriously. I've had nightmares with every other company delivering to apartments

<comment><USER3> I find it hard to believe that the us government would snoop in your emails and in your IM messages, but somehow not submit your physical packages to some amount of noninvasive scanning

<comment><USER2> Reading emails is a lot easier than scanning packages that people get mad at not arriving on time. I'm sure there's some inspection. But the other companies are most certainly worse.

<comment><USER4> ^^ this. even cursory x-ray inspection is a huge undertaking.

I once worked for the USPS in a Middle Eastern country, and it was our job to assist local customs officials as they scanned / inspected every piece of inbound mail.

They ran each piece through an x-ray, and whenever they spotted a banned item (liquor bottles, sex toys--hell, they even inspected optical discs to make sure they weren't porn), they opened the package and confiscated it.

We cleared about 1 mail truck of mail every night, and it took 5-10 hours. No way that's sustainable on the scale of domestic mail throughput.

<comment><USER5> What about scanning for moderate amounts of items that could be automatically detected by machines, like cash, or assessing groups of packages in bulk for drugs or explosives with canines?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If he's talking about the UPU and shipping rates for China to the US, he's right.

But, if so, it isn't something the USPS can change.

<comment><USER7> It's one of the things being discussed:

"GOP Senator moves to close shipping loophole that helps Chinese businesses on Amazon. ... In general, the system is set up so that wealthier countries pay more than poorer nations, but in recent years the UPU has provided a huge opening for foreign manufacturers, particularly those in China, to cheaply get products into U.S. online marketplaces like Amazon."

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/senator-bill-cassidy- ending-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/senator-bill-cassidy-ending- needless-delivery-subsidies-bill.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not that Amazon needs the help, but isn't the purpose of the postal service to support commerce and not make a profit? Make it's time to rethink that, but I have little faith this is anything more than a political stunt or personal grudge.

</comment><comment><USER9> USPS Registered Mail can be insured up to $25,000 including cash or jewelry. Good luck doing this with another shipper, who strictly speaking to not sell insurance but rather a declared value with all kinds of limitations. [https://consumerist.com/2013/06/12/ups-doesnt-offer- insuranc...](https://consumerist.com/2013/06/12/ups-doesnt-offer-insurance- even-if-an-employee-tells-you-it-does/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Laws concerning US mail privacy are old, dating back from the American republic times. They are hard to revert. The electronic communications snooping is how we operate now- with vague and flexible "living document" style laws.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am pro-free market and fiscally conservative and don't get why Trump is picking this fight with Amazon. Amazon is fantastic for consumers. Sure they have put ton's of American small brick and mortars out of business and even brought down retail institutions such as Sears and perhaps next Macy's. Yet they provide an outlet for small niche makers to sell their products to a huge online market for essentially no-overhead. Market decides, and the market has chosen the Amazon model.

In terms of them "dodging" state taxes, as far as I know they are fully compliant. If president Trump wants to make them pay their fair share, then adjust the laws. Wasn't this the same argument Trump made about not paying a ton of taxes, he said it is just smart business and he is totally compliant within the law.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's hard to get why. Punishing Bezos for Washington Post.

Edit: I dislike Bezos and am boycotting Amazon. I quit my prime sub and stopped buying from my Amazon account. And this is still obvious to me.

<comment><USER11> I don't buy that. That is what the media wants you to believe that it's a petty personal vendetta. Think about the conflict of interest there from the media.

<comment><USER13> I don't think Trump thinks attacking back is petty. He pretty reliably attacks anyone who attacks him.

[http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the- administration/322...](http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the- administration/322878-the-presidency-hasnt-changed-the-donald)

<comment><USER8> When you're POTUS that's petty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We are not a banana republic. Whatever the merits of Trump's complaints regarding Amazon, this is not how the system is supposed to work. The president is ordering a review of the Post Office because of a personal grudge against a newspaper. This isn't acceptable use of power.

<comment><USER15> Add it to the long list. At this point, we are a banana republic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is that the right pay grade?

</comment><comment><USER17> To my knowledge, the USPS has been struggling for a while, and making it more sustainable is something that's critical.

In typical Trump fashion, the core issue has been latched to a very clear & tangible scapegoat (in this case, Amazon) so that people (and media) debate _it_ ad nauseum instead of the core issue (streamlining the USPS)...which is something everyone should agree is important no matter what.

<comment><USER18> Most people have the wrong idea. It is actually profitable but back during the Bush years a law was passed requiring USPS to set aside enough money to fund a 75 year retirement liability, and gave them 10 years to do it. They "lose" billions each year only because of this requirement to set aside billions for pensions.

[https://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432](https://www.cnbc.com/id/45018432)

[https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you- assume](https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you-assume)

<comment><USER19> So what you're saying is it's hemorrhaging money during the unprecedented explosion in package shipping volumes.

Remember, that "pension" everyone likes to mention is there because USPS pays its workers peanuts compared to eg UPS.

<comment><USER20> I worked at both for a short time in the early 2000s and I got paid more at USPS than I did at UPS. USPS was more reliable than UPS as far as employment and overall a better place to work. As a matter of fact UPS ranks as one of the worst places I ever worked at. The amount of screaming and yelling between management and workers that goes on there is some of the worse I have ever seen at any work place I've been at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it's worth knowing whether or not his claims about Amazon are actually true. Worst case, it'll save taxpayers some money, best case we can be done hearing about it and know it's a moot issue.

<comment><USER22> I think the worst case is substantially worse than that. Look at the so-called "voter fraud commission". They pretend-investigated a non-problem, creating a lot of news that could only reduce confidence in the US electoral system. And then it was abruptly shut down in a way that certainly added no clarity to the issue.

There's no particular reason to think the task force will actually be either equipped to investigate this usefully or disposed to investigate it fairly. So the worst case for me is something more like, "Politicized task force produces woefully biased report in order to indirectly attack the free press, further reducing confidence in American government, increasing uncertainty for businesses, and reducing economic growth."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Finally!!!!

It's a well known fact that Chinese sellers are using USPS to get illegal opioids into the US, fueling the fentanyl crisis

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress- opioids/chin...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress- opioids/chinas-illegal-opioids-enter-u-s-through-postal-service-gaps-probe- idUSKBN1FD340)

also, it's a well known fact that USPS allow Chinese sellers to send cheap products that infringe on IP into the states, thus bankrupting small sellers in US

[https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/why-does-amazon- al...](https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/why-does-amazon-allow- chinese-sellers-that-ship-from-china/351616)</comment>


A forgotten hero stopped the My Lai massacre 50 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wiener-my-lai-hugh-thompson-20180316-story.html# <comment><USER2> I wouldn't call him forgotten - while I'm bad with remembering names, when I saw "My Lai", the first thing that came to mind was "that badass helicopter pilot who landed his helicopter between civilians and US soldiers, and threatened to open fire to protect the civilians".

What I _didn 't_ know was that he took so much flak for that - from statements that _he_ should be the one punished to death threats and dead animals on his porch. Unsurprising, yet sad.

His name was Hugh Thompson, and today, let's remember that name[1].

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

<comment><USER3> An extra point: his "helicopter" was about the smallest thing you could get and still call it a helicopter. It provided no cover or protection for the people inside. Had the soldiers engaged, Thompson and the others would have gone down instantly.

Photo: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hiller_UH-12_(H-23)_bw....](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hiller_UH-12_\(H-23\)_bw.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for this. In my mind, a "helicopter" is something like a Huey. This is a rotor with a tail!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> High point: _Thompson told the American troops that, if they opened fire on the Vietnamese civilians in the bunker, he and his crew would open fire on them._

Talk about courage.

Low point: _He concluded — after a decade of research in Pentagon archives and more than 100 interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors — that Americans killing civilians in Vietnam was "pervasive and systematic." One soldier told him there had been "a My Lai a month."_

Courage seems far too scarce a commodity.

<comment><USER5> Hasn't really stopped either. Read up on things like the shoddy evidence that goes into drone bombing or the crimes of Seal Team Six or the many other horrific acts the US military has done in recent years and decades. If anything it seems like we are getting better at sweeping this stuff under the rug.

<comment><USER6> The US military studied Vietnam a lot:

No more draft, career soldiers only Control the media One year tour of duty (they broke this one in Iraq because they were running low)

<comment><USER7> \+ use mercenaries

<comment><USER8> "Oops, who could have imagined they'd be a little liberal with the bullets. Oh well."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are a lot of people who use the My Lai massacre as an example of the 'real' America. There are a lot of My Lai's and William Calley's in other countries throughout history. But far fewer Hugh Thompson's and to me that's the 'real' America.

In Michigan we've got the recent example of Dr. Hanna Attisha and the Flint water crisis. She was vilified by Flint officials, state officials and by the state's universities. The state health director called her irresponsible and execs at her hospital wanted her fired.

Worries made her physically ill. I do not know how she stood courageously for so long but she did. Eventually a Detroit Free Press article supported her and in time everyone withdrew their opposition.

[https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/10/10/h...](https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/10/10/hanna- attisha-profile/73600120/)

<comment><USER10> _> There are a lot of My Lai's and William Calley's in other countries throughout history. But far fewer Hugh Thompson's and to me that's the 'real' America._

There were a lot of My Lai's _in Vietnam_. Biggest misconception is that it was some kind of fluke. But in a "war" where entire civillian populated areas were designated "free fire zones" where you could kill anything that moves, civillian massacres were the norm. Not every solider did it of course but it was a regular feature of that war.

It is good to recognize brave soldiers that resisted. But we must be respectful enough of those who were murdered to not attempt to rehabilitate the image of America in Vietnam by pretending those resisters were the norm or represented the true spirit of America and what it was aiming for or some such sentimental nationalist nonsense. As the article notes, a My Lai happened every month in Vietnam. Civillian mass murder was an explicit goal and the U.S. was very good at it.

<comment><USER11> As the article quotes one soldier there was a mai Lai every month. You make it sound like this was a fact in the article. One unnamed soldier claimed that.

And I think the free fire zones were much more centered on artillery and air strikes and not ground infiltrations just walking and shooting whomever they wanted to, but it's still horrible the disregard for human life.

But to state as you do that civilian mass murder was the goal, that's false. The goal was war of attrition of actual combatants. What they did was not care or let civilian casualties stop them from trying to carry out that goal. Still horrible but come on there is enough bad stuff to point to without exaggeration and misleading.

<comment><USER10> That is pure unresearched wishful thinking.

They would fly helicopters up to farmers on a field who would look up at them in confusion and do nothing. Then they'd turn on a siren and when the farmers scattered they shot them all down for taking "evasive action", making them "combatants". There'd be reports of raids with hundreds of "viet cong" killed and a few weapons recovered. The killing machine was about body counts. Kissinger ordered "anything that flies on everything that moves." Villages were leveled in indiscriminate, massive bombing campaigns that exceeded twice the ordinance dropped in WWII. Millions were killed.

If you really want to research what happened in Vietnam start with Nick Turse's _Kill Anything That Moves_.[1] It's a polemical title but it's based on a ton of primary research, e.g. the Pentagon's War Crimes Working Group and the National Archives and interviews with over a hundred veterans. And that stuff will make any good soul polemical.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250045061/ref=rdr_ext_tmb](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250045061/ref=rdr_ext_tmb)

<comment><USER12> > The Vietnam population did not see the kind of drop you would get from > widespread systematic ethnic cleansing over a 19+ year war. 2.7 Million > Americans went to Vietnam and a tiny fraction did some horrific things, but > this was far more limited than often portrayed.

And deleted before I could reply - for anyone else interested and just two quick examples, read up on Free-Fire Zones and the Strategic Hamlet Program. The former is the indiscriminate killing of anyone found in the area and the latter is forced relocation of civilians and forced labor to build said new hamlets.

That's top down strategy and can't be put on people losing their composure in the field.

<comment><USER13> The Strategic Hamlet Program was adopted from the British, who used it to quell the Communist insurgency in Malaysia. Basically, round everybody up into a small group of villages for their "protection". Assume everyone who doesn't stay in the village is the enemy.

Notwithstanding the abuses in Malaysia (I'll leave it to others to question the necessity and efficacy), it _definitely_ didn't translate to the Vietnam context. For one thing, in Malaysia the Communists mostly came from the ethnic Chinese community, who were a minority and _already_ highly concentrated in the cities.[1] Vietnam had/has a similar ethnic Chinese minority (wealthy, urban, etc), but they were Capitalists, not the Communists. The pool of Communists was everybody else, the largely rural population.

[1] Interestingly, to this very day Malaysia still has laws which prevent Chinese from owning certain types of rural property, ostensibly to protect the rights of the rural Malay population. I don't know, but I presume such laws have always been in effect in Malaysia, even before the colonial era. At the time of the insurgency rural Chinese were probably already a suspicious group. In hindsight the insurgency was just an excuse for the powers (British, majority Malays) to reinforce the stable status quo, which is why the program "worked". In Vietnam the status quo was increasingly untenable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > On the 30th anniversary of the massacre, Thompson went back to My Lai and > met some of the people whose lives he had saved. "There were real good > highs," he told me, "and very low lows. One of the ladies that we had helped > out that day came up to me and asked, 'Why didn't the people who committed > these acts come back with you?' And I was just devastated. And then she > finished her sentence: she said, 'So we could forgive them.'

[http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wiener-my-lai- hug...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wiener-my-lai-hugh- thompson-20180316-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Another hero, whom I as a judge advocate personally admire, is Captain Aubrey Daniel III, the prosecutor in the case against Calley. While still on active duty, he wrote a letter to President Nixon urging him not to intervene.

Thompson displayed both physical and moral courage, whereas Daniel was never in any danger to life or limb. But his moral courage is courage nonetheless.

[https://www.famous-trials.com/mylaicourts/1623-daniels- ltr](https://www.famous-trials.com/mylaicourts/1623-daniels-ltr)

</comment><comment><USER16> Most people would find it easier to just go along or look the other way.

These guys were true war heroes and had courage under fire. They should be held up as examples what soldiers should be.

<comment><USER17> That's scary, we all like to judge others' actions in order to feel morally superior, but what percentage of people would actually do something when they see their peers, friends, colleagues and superiors doing bad stuff? It'll be always easier to go along and just fool yourself and say "I'm just following orders"

<comment><USER18> It is not as simple as that though. We know from war and concentration camps how many people 'just follow orders'.

Briefly...

In WW2 the Nazis learned from the Soviets that mass graves were a bad thing if discovered. They also knew that the Final Solution was an actual crime, the leaders acknowledged this but deemed the crime to be necessary for the survival of their own imaginably 'Aryan' race. Hence they got the Sonderkommando Jews to exhume mass graves and to build huge funeral pyres that they then used to burn the bodies. The Sonderkommando guys just followed orders until they were expected to build one final funeral pyre after all of the bodies were burned. By then they twigged that they were expected to meet their own fate that way. Only then, at the last chance, did they try to do something, e.g. try and escape or sabotage the gig. So long as there was someone in front of them in the queue these poor souls could be forced to do the unthinkable.

The Germans had it all worked out, they could get people to shove their own mother into the gas chamber. They had enough bullets to make this fully possible. They could get practically anyone to participate in the criminal venture. Even if life was a misery in the concentration camp they could get people to want to stay there another day because life under such circumstances was better than being actually dead.

I am certain in my own mind that everyone I have ever met in my entire life could be made into a Sonderkommando if push came to shove. This includes people in my family so quite a claim.

I am also sure that everyone I have met has heard of the holocaust. Yet I do not imagine any heroics of the Schindlers List type of Hollywood movie.

On the other hand, most regular soldiers do not like killing people, even if they are engaged in an 'honest war' and not a known crime. Some soldiers deliberately miss. Some go AWOL. Some play football with the enemy on Christmas Day.

But then you have situations like Abu Ghraig where atrocities happen but the people involved do not believe they are committing a crime and have no fear of being found out. These people really do have a psychological problem, they are actually 'sick in the head'.

However, during wartime the overwhelming majority of the population are not on the front line or anywhere near. Due to fear, propaganda and circumstance (e.g. being a parent, being too young, being too old) this bystander population passively goes along with the war, even if they do not fully subscribe to the doctrine of the day. These people have no skin in the game, they mostly support the doctrine and they don't think that far outside of what they are told to think, even if they laugh at some of the lies told to them. When the likes of MLK talk of being alone, it is these bystander folk that hurt the most.

<comment><USER19> Regular German army was part of ethnic cleansing and committed a lot of atrocities. It was not just camps, it was also random violence against citizens.

They did not missed on purpose. They burned whole villages.

You did not needed to be on the frontline to be killed by them, anywhere in occupied territory was enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our awa

I'm in Mexico :/

<comment><USER21> Welcome to Europe mate. The place has always been a bit weird and I see no problem with Mexicans being considered Europeans. I'm British (we are properly strange)

May I also welcome you to the world of IP to location nonsense. Quite large chunks of IPv4 have been shuffled around the world to the point that geo location on IP is nonsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A thing more oft than not forgotten about war, is the individual element. I was in my countries armed forces, while necessary. I saw many different types of commanders during that time. One thing not to forget is that a person is still a human even if a soldier. My commander ordered things I hated to do, while a person in a similar position was hung for failure to perform duty, allegedly because of his belief in human life.

</comment><comment><USER23> Seymour Hersh, the reporter who's largely the reason we know about the My Lai massacre at all, recently published his Memoirs.

[https://www.amazon.com/Reporter-Memoir-Seymour-M- Hersh/dp/03...](https://www.amazon.com/Reporter-Memoir-Seymour-M- Hersh/dp/0307263959/)

He's probably one of the most important investigative reporters to have ever lived.

</comment><comment><USER24> Some of you may find the recently-staged monodrama focused on Hugh Thompson with the Kronos Quartet of interest. The NYT wrote it up [1], but excerpts can also be found elsewhere. I found it a fitting tribute to his memory.

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/arts/music/my-lai- review-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/arts/music/my-lai-review- vietnam-kronos-quartet.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> He wasn't "forgotten", he was energetically smeared and condemned by the most right-wing, racist and nationalist elements of the government, media and US population; and all of the people who committed the massacre were acquitted but one, and that one was ordered released from jail by the POTUS during trial with his life sentence ultimately commuted to 3 1/2 years of house arrest.

<comment><USER26> It's easier to think he was forgotten, than that he was hated and attacked by his own government and country.

If the latter is true, well - introspection is hard, and this is getting uncomfortable, so I guess I'll go check Twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I read the wikipedia article about this article. There is picture of a woman seconds before being killed. She is with her children. She was recently sexually abused and was trying to tie her buttons. And it is really devastating. How did United States get away with this? All that captain got was a 3 years house arrest?!

</comment><comment><USER28> If there was any justice in the world, the US officials who dictated military action in Vietnam would be tried for war crimes.

<comment><USER29> If there was justice in the world, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, and Obama would all be in The Hague, in irons.

There is no justice in the world.

<comment><USER6> Thats far too easy. In a democracy YOU are the state.

I wonder what would happen if we could live cast our military deployments so that every voter has access to every war crime committed? Maybe then people wouldn't be so quick to sign up for another war. Or they would at least be honest about it.

<comment><USER30> Watch films and TV shows where blatantly illegal actions - including Geneva convention war crimes - are committed by the heros. I'm not persuaded the public wants less of this. And politicians sometimes play to this, asking for action that's of dubious legality

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I want to add to what chris_mc and others said confirming this horrible instance is used as a training exercise for lots of the US military.

When I did USMC boot camp in the late 2000s this and other less publicized examples were used to enforce disobeying unlawful orders and encouraging critical thought.

To quote a West Wing episode (AFAIK): "All wars are crimes." I'm glad we try to do better by teaching from our mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've known several soldiers over the years and all had struggles with depression and possibly PTSD. I obviously wouldn't want to present these limited data points as conclusive evidence, but I've been struck by the extent to which combatants pay a high price for their jobs. I feel sorry for them, because no-one tells them about this when they're recruited. It's a real bait and switch: promises of comraderie, glory and a trade and what you actually get is a thumping case of depression and PTSD. I don't believe in karma, but this looks a bit like it to me.

</comment><comment><USER33> Lets also remember Aubrey Daniel who worked hard to prosecute these war criminals.

</comment><comment><USER34> When I hear about Vietnam, I think about the 13 young men I grew up with in a town of 6000 who _didn 't_ get a chance to be grandfathers.

Nobody 'wins'. We all LOSE.

</comment><comment><USER35> "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. ..."

So much for the _World Wide_ Web.

Someone give me back the web 1.0 before 2000, please.

<comment><USER36> [https://outline.com/pvdxgM](https://outline.com/pvdxgM)

And 100% agreed, particularly for a major newspaper.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for the link. I hadn't heard of outline.com before, but seems like a useful service.

<comment><USER38> It is pretty nifty. They have a Chrome extension too, but that seems like massive overkill so I threw together a quick bookmarklet [1]. You need a decently new browser to use it.

      fetch(
        "https://outlineapi.com/parse_article?source_url=" +
          encodeURIComponent(window.location)
      )
      .then(res => res.json())
      .then(body => {
        if (body.error) {
          return alert(`Outline Bookmarklet Error: ${body.error}`);
        }
        window.location.href = `https://outline.com/${body.data.short_code}`
      })
      .catch(err => {
        alert("Outline Bookmarklet Error. See console for details.");
        console.error(err);
      });

Or minified to be copied directly into bookmark:

      javascript:fetch("https://outlineapi.com/parse_article?source_url="+encodeURIComponent(window.location)).then(o=>o.json()).then(o=>{if(o.error)return alert(`Outline Bookmarklet Error: ${o.error}`);window.location.href=`https://outline.com/${o.data.short_code}`}).catch(o=>{alert("Outline Bookmarklet Error. See console for details."),console.error(o)});

[1]: [https://gist.github.com/giodamelio/c97f71a12eec5c142f21f757a...](https://gist.github.com/giodamelio/c97f71a12eec5c142f21f757a6ba4d8a)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's a bit strange that we are remembering the "hero" but not the 500 or so innocent vietnamese men, women, children and infants who were raped, tortured and/or killed. Strange how we always have to make ourselves the good guys. The "heroes".

If you look at the war photos. You'll see infants. Such a horrific war.

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

It's also strange that we say this is the worst event in vietnam war, when we dropped napalm on people ( chemically burning them to death ) and more than 4 million people were killed in that terrible war. God knows how many vietnamese women and children were raped. My Lai was one of thousands of my lai incidents in vietnam.

<comment><USER40> See also: people who claim that the atomic bombings of Japan saved lives, and the people who claim that white people deserve credit for being the people who ended slavery in the United States.

<comment><USER41> As a student of WW2, millions of Japanese lives were saved by the atomic bombs:

1) Japanese military leaders were planning to continue fighting until no citizens were left: "even if the Japanese people die, their spirit will live on."

Surrender rates in previous island battles were on the order of 1% (ie. 99% killed or seriously injured.)

2) the Japanese people were facing starvation had the war continued. The early surrender helped with the rebuilding effort and prevented the nation from literally starving to death.

3) American leaders chose to bomb secondary cities, rather than completely destroy Tokyo, a capital city

4) had Russia invaded Japan, they typically would de-industrialize the enemy by transporting power plants and other facilities back to Russia

5) Japan actually refused to surrender to the USA. The emperor's broadcast never used the word, and the leader who signed the surrender document was approx. #10 in the leadership hierarchy.

The emperor was a serious amateur microbiologist and realized what an atomic bomb was, so did not need convincing that the war was lost.

(He was against starting the war with China and the USA and said so, but faced assassination and constitutional issues if he made a serious effort to change sentiment.)

<comment><USER42> This is not true, serious military figures in the US armed forces concluded that Japan was utterly defeated and was making peace feelers. They were basically defenseless at that stage of the war, against the bombing raids.

The civilian massacre could have been prevented by merely demonstrating the bomb. However they chose to experiment by dropping it on an city.

<comment><USER43> I think this ignores the historical context. The US had air control and been bombing the mainland relentlessly for a while. The firebombing of Tokyo had already caused bigger loss of life than the Hiroshima bomb did. So it was clear to both parties that the US did have the destructive capability and were willing to use it. This did not cause the Japanese to surrender. Why would it have made any difference to "demonstrate" the bomb, if actually bombing the capital and killing 100000 did not have that effect?

Even after the second bomb, just before announcing the surrender, there was an attempted coup d'etat by high ranking officers to prevent the surrender. So its not like surrender was a given after seeing a nuclear bomb.

It is only in retrospect it seems obvious that the nuclear bomb would lead to surrender. Even taking about "the decision to drop the bomb" as it was some unique moral dilemma is kind of anachronistic. Of course they were going to drop the bomb, just like they used any other weapon at their disposal.

<comment><USER8> Don't forget demonstrating both ability and willingness to the keen onlooker standing eagerly in the wings: the Soviet Union. It was ready to take on a weakened Japan in a drawn out conflict. Also, who knew what ambitions there were for Europe?

Best nip any grand ambitions in the bud.

(The Soviet Union was still some years away from having nuclear bombs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Oblig: [https://xkcd.com/206/](https://xkcd.com/206/)</comment>


Tabula Secures $108 Million for 3D Programmable Logic Devices - <AUTHOR> http://www.tabula.com/newsletter/03282011.html

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a PR-heavy video as well: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfFMpO4f3YM></comment>


NSTask when the Cocoa API fails you - <AUTHOR> http://getitdownonpaper.com/2009/09/22/nstask/

<comment><USER2> I always wondered what makes ppl keep reinventing wheel in a weird manner like this NSTask. What was wrong with POSIX, i.e. execv() and friends ?

<comment><USER3> IIRC, NSTask is just an objc way of calling fork() and exec() to run the task.</comment></comment>


Randall Munroe's (from xkcd) newest idea - <AUTHOR> http://kolodny.github.io/secrets/blog/2013/11/10/make-news-more-fun/

<comment><USER2> Someone posted similar js when this xkcd was discussed yesterday ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6696355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6696355)), but also missed that js lets you grab nodesets using xpaths directly:

      var snap = document.evaluate('//text()',
        document, null, XPathResult.ORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
        null);
      for (var i=0;i<snap.snapshotLength; i++) {
        t=snap.snapshotItem(i);
        t.textContent = replace(t.textContent);
      }

In addition your code uses \s\s* when you just mean \s+; also you are using case-insensitive matches for the 'dictRegex' pattern with case-sensitive matches for the individual patterns, so you replace eg 'election' (lower case e) with 'undefined'.

Like the other js implementation you're not matching word boundaries (\b).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the ignoreCase problem, I fixed it. I actually was using a \b in the link but forgot to update the source accordingly. The reason I use \s\s* over \s+ is because I once saw that it has some performance benefits, although it really doesn't make a difference

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Time to find a text version of cspan</comment>


Show HN: GHEdit: web-based GitHub-integrated code editor forked from VS Code - <AUTHOR> https://spiffcode.github.io/ghedit/ <comment><USER2> Some screenshots would be nice before I give you access to my repositories.</comment>


Aquagenic Wrinkling of Skin: A Screening Test for Cystic Fibrosis [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.indianpediatrics.net/feb2019/109.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Most people don't know what aquagenic wrinkling is. It's a medical term for what most people call "getting pruney" in a long bathtub soak, only people with CF rapidly get severely pruney.

It's an interesting study on a potential cheap, quick and effective screening test for identifying children in India with a high confidence level for purposes of additional testing.

There are few CF testing centers in India. Due to cost and distance, it can be a hardship on a family to travel to one. This suppresses identification of this deadly disorder in the Indian population.</comment>


Frequent cash withdrawals land Springfield man in court - <AUTHOR> http://www.news-leader.com/story/news/crime/2016/04/24/frequent-cash-withdrawals-land-springfield-man-court/83470570/ <comment><USER3> I'm not sure what kind of reporting news-leader.com generally does, but I feel like most of this story is missing.

Sure, he was structuring, which seems as ridiculous as 'precrime' to me. But why was the guy trying to flout reporting requirements? Why were they looking in to him? I'm positive that my bank transaction history would, at times, look odd- especially as I was ramping up to buy a house and move to a different state while starting a new company. Also, my credit union was always in Oregon, even when I wasn't- which lead to weird contortions like mailing myself a $5,000 check and a $2,500 check to then snap check them in to my business account with the same credit union because I hadn't taken the time to link them properly yet and the max you can snapcheck is $5K, and I didn't want to take the time to find a partner branch.

Maybe someone looked into it behind the scenes, maybe they didn't. Either way, my money never got frozen and I never got in trouble. Why? Because I wasn't up to no good. I'm not touting the "if you've got nothing to hide..." crap about being happy to give up my liberties, but in general, even when they're stomping all over our constitution you don't go to jail for no reason.

<comment><USER4> The DOJ states that he admitted he was structuring to bank employees, whereas the article says he admitted it to his employees. Either way, he knew he was avoiding reporting requirements, so he would have been able to figure out that it was a crime. Admitting it to the bank employee was probably what started the legal investigation.

Additionally, there are newer reporting requirements that deal with a change in behavior of deposits/withdrawals, not just a fixed floor of $10k per transaction. I know this has been talked about since at least 9/11.

If I were you, I wouldn't admit on a public website to skirting a law, but I'm not sure that "snapcheck" is a law vs some company's risk-limiting policy.

I generally agree that this seems like a non-crime being prosecuted, but it's the law. Until people stop deferring all safety/security decisions to police and prosecutors (which is why we have such a ridiculously bloated criminal code), we will continue to have laws like this for the nanny state to save us from doing the "wrong" things by keeping us in a nice, safe prison cell for 10 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's insane that 10 years in prison is the potential penalty. No wonder the US "leads" the world with it's prison population.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. American prisons are overflowing with guys who got caught pulling $220k out of the bank in a structured fashion. This is the real source of our prison overcrowding.

<comment><USER5> Your comment is sarcastic, uncharitable and unproductive.

Obviously the narrow specifics around this case are not the sole cause of prison overcrowding. It's been driven by a massive expansion of criminal codes and decades of ratcheting minimum sentence guidelines upwards and get tough on crime efforts such as "three strikes" laws. The result has been a flood of people imprisoned for money laundering, recreational drugs, petty theft and an even larger number who are simply awaiting trial. The specific case in this story is just one example.

<comment><USER6> Are you asserting that overzealous prosecution of money laundering is a significant source of prison overpopulation? I'd love to see some sort of supporting evidence for this claim.

As it stands now, it looks to me like you're just lumping nearly every crime together and insinuating that because some are overpenalized that all are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I understand that structuring may reveal a pattern for an illegal activity (money laundering, fraud, etc) and that law enforcement can used it as a hint to discover these activities.

But is structuring illegal by itself ? If so, it seems that presumption of innocence is ignored.

Am I missing something ?

<comment><USER4> If you know that structuring is illegal and you tell -y-o-u-r- -e-m-p-l-o-y-e- e-s- your bank[2] that you are doing it to evade reporting, you admitted a crime to a witness. It doesn't matter what you are doing with the money after it is withdrawn. If he was using the money for money laundering or other illicit business, that is a separate crime from the one described in the article.

Dennis Hastert, former Congressional House Speaker, was convicted of the same charge[1] when an investigation into his (alleged) extortion/hush money used the same tactic to avoid financial reporting. AFAIK, he wasn't actually convicted of child molestation or statutory rape, but was convicted of the money laundering-related crime (because that was easier to prove).

Whether avoiding financial reporting is a reasonable statute is beside the point, but perhaps what you were commenting on.

The way I look at it, it's like a seat-belt law. It's only reasonably enforceable after you've already been pulled over for some other moving violation.

It seems to be in-line with most of the federal code which is designed to give federal prosecutors outsized leverage in plea negotiations. The more charges and the more years of prison they can throw at a defendant, the better the odds they will come away with a conviction. Sadly, this also leads to a lot of largely innocent people taking plea deals to avoid getting railroaded by vindictive prosecutors and less-than-rational juries.

[1] [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/dennis- hastert-s...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/dennis-hastert- sentenced-15-months-prison)

[2] [https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/springfield-business- ow...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/springfield-business-owner-pleads- guilty-structuring-financial-transactions)

<comment><USER7> >>> It seems to be in-line with most of the federal code which is designed to give federal prosecutors outsized leverage in plea negotiations

That's what I thought. It's only that I find it - in general terms - <USER2> unfair and abusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's [2016], here is the original source:

[https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/springfield-business- ow...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/springfield-business-owner-pleads- guilty-structuring-financial-transactions)

</comment><comment><USER9> He admitted to structuring, why is it surprising he was convicted?</comment>


Ask HN: I am bored. What programming language should I learn ? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I know C, Python and Scheme, and I'm looking for an exciting or exotic programming language to learn.
Any suggestions ?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Haskell (e.g. <http://learnyouahaskell.com>). Learning Haskell is exciting (when the headaches subside ;)) and although becoming more popular Haskell can be considered exotic. The best part imo is that learning Haskell's functional concepts is useful for other languages as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> What platforms or areas are you interested in?

You know C, have you tried network programming or games programming or C on embedded systems?

You can learn a lot by taking an existing language into a new area, it will sharpen up your skills better than learning a language without having a use for it.

Experience is what makes good programmers not a laundry list of languages that you have never used in anger.

<comment><USER4> I agree - C or an assembler - anything close to the metal.

Artfy farty stuff might teach you new ways of thinking about problems but not a lot about programming per se.

Alternately - creating a (small) language of ones own and writing a compiler for it would be immensely beneficial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Erlang would be 'different' than those. Java would not be too exciting or exotic, but practical for many things. If you're not wild about Java, try coding for J2ME or Android... there's less BS in those environments than the 'enterprisey' stuff.

</comment><comment><USER6> How about Oz?

<http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html>

With 900 pages to get through you'll never be bored again. ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like you're prepared. Try K/Q. Programming doesn't get much more exciting or exotic than that.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_(programming_language)>

For a taste of what it feels like, see <http://kx.com/technical/contribs/eugene/kidioms.html> . Most everyday programmers should find themselves intrigued at around number 11 (mesh).

</comment><comment><USER8> C: Procedural language

Python: (Batteries included) Scripting language

Scheme: Functional/LISP language

Looks like you should learn either an OO language (Smalltalk, OCaml, Scala) or a Logic language (Prolog).

</comment><comment><USER9> Haskell or OCaml

</comment><comment><USER10> Factor!

<comment><USER11> I second this suggestion - all the interesting implications of learning a new paradigm, but nobody can accuse you of jumping on the Lisp/Erlang/Haskell bandwagon. Also, unlike some other esoteric languages, Factor has a pretty extensive standard library (everything from OpenGL to database bindings, an HTTP server and HTML templating), it has the ability to call functions written in C in dynamic libraries, and you can compile stand-alone redistributable binaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> squeak smalltalk

</comment><comment><USER13> Clojure.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to validate a startup idea? - <AUTHOR> I want to start a company this year, what is the best and cheapest way to validate if my idea is valid <comment><USER2> Try and talk with your potential customers.

* Build a landing page where you explain what you want to build

* Add a pricing page and ask for money

* Ask for users address if interested

* If enough interest is shown - build your first MVP

Here's a more detailed example about validating an idea - [https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers- in-7-wee...](https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks- how-we-did-it)

</comment><comment><USER3> Go out and find first client, validate the idea together. /* merry christmas */</comment>


Parley.co Project Outline: Encrypted Email and IM for Everyone - <AUTHOR> http://parley.co/outline.html

<comment><USER2> I want this project to succeed, and it seems like it's headed in the right direction.

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

The outline would be clearer with a couple of diagrams.

How do I convince my { family, non-geek friends, etc } to give up their gmail when I send them their free invite to Parley? I'm not above using FUD to win converts, but I worry that apathy, inertia, laziness, and fear of trusting small, unproven companies are non-trivial factors to overcome, even with some really good FUD.

Will this be built on standard protocols? It seems like the answer for SMTP has to be yes, because it sounds like parley will receive "legacy" email from non-parley users and be able to send (unencrypted) email to them as well. But it also seems like there's room for something nonstandard on the client side -- will this just be using IMAP+TLS to fetch the encrypted messages and then decrypt them in the client? I guess my real question is: will there be third- party clients? Is it going to work on my { linux, androis, ios, windows, etc } device?

How are you going to handle the inevitable "I forgot my private password, and now all my email is lost and gone forever, and Parley refuses to help me!" ? (Parley can't help, of course, because it's designed to be unable to recover messages...) This, to me, seems like the biggest UX hurdle. It's like offering the most secure door locks for your underground bunker that are available -- it comes with the risk that you'll somehow lock the keys inside the bunker and then be screwed. (Lame analogy but you get the point.)

> (All messages are stored encrypted, but if they are sent > unencrypted then > they are encrypted at the server, and can > be displayed to a logged in user > first.)

This makes me wonder about spam handling. The fact that (unencrypted) messages from outside the system will be encrypted at the server seems like a giant flashing billboard with an invitation for DDoS.

When using webmail to send messages, does the unencrypted message hit the server? In general, it seems like the most secure avenue would be for encryption to happen in the clients. (Including fetching PGP keys for non- parley users.)

Regarding key management, what happens when a user needs to create a new private key? Some key revocation stuff will need to happen on the server, but then there are all those encrypted messages out there too. Will those be decrypted with the old key, reencrypted with the new key, and then the old copies destroyed?

A list of the expected methods of attack and how these attacks are mitigated would be nice to see. (Mainly, so I can see how much my security depends on parley's ops team, dev team, myself, and my correspondents, respectively.) In particular, it seems like it's worth mentioning that rubber hose crypto will crack messages when used on _either_ the sender or the receiver of a particular message.

> Everything will be open sourced in time for the beta, and we > will have a > security audit performed by a reputable firm before > the beta period is up.

This is great. I like this about tarsnap too -- note that "Open Source" isn't strictly necessary, but "source available for inspection" is a real winner. In fact, tarsnap is IMO a great model for how to behave as a service. Colin is not perfect, and tarsnap has had some bugs and an outage or two, but it is clear you're dealing with a _human_ and the communication and level of openness has been without peer (perhaps more open than some "open source" projects).

The other great thing about tarsnap is the pricing. I don't know if this is practical for messaging (and it would make it hard to handle the free invites), but if you were to charge something like $0.50/GB-month for stored messages and $1.00/GB for sent messages it would provide a disincentive for abuse by users, and seems like it would make pricing fairer (for some definitions of fair). I'd guess that at least for me I'd end up spending around $3-5/month, but I'm a relatively light email user. Spam of course makes it harder to charge for incoming messages.

On the flip side: make it clear how users can get their messages _out_ and return to legacy email solutions. Because if you turn out to suck, I don't want to be locked in. (I don't expect you will suck, but it seems like the easier it is for me to get out, the less likely it is that you'll suck over the long term.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your thoughts! In order:

\- We will be releasing less technically-focused promotional materials as we approach the beta. If we can earn the trust of our technical friends to do some pointing and sharing, we're more than happy to do the convincing :)

\- Feedback so far indicates a wide spread of platforms being used, so we're shooting for a cross-platform launch. We will use standards as much as possible, including IMAP and SMTP over TLS, but with an extra HTTPS interface for our clients to use. Since the whole thing will be open source, we would love to see third-party clients emerge, but our first priority will be getting the first-party clients to be flawless.

\- The forgotten password situation scares us, too. It's a really angry blog post waiting to happen. All we can really do is a) make the risk very clear and b) make the "private password" (we'll need to come up with a better designation for each password) recoverable/changeable locally, ie. once a client is successfully installed, the keyring is only encrypted using the "normal" password so we could either store the private password there too or allow the user to re-encrypt the keyring using a new private password. Part of this falls unnder the category of "UX stuff we're still trying to figure out".

\- Spam will be an issue, and I should have included it in the outline (I forgot, and plan to add it at some point). Unencrypted messages hitting the server will be spam-filtered before encryption. We'll have to come up with something smarter once people start sending encrypted spam.

\- Using the webmail feature is _not_ the "most secure" because, as you say, PGP encryption needs to happen at the client. In the webmail scenario, the message hits the server unencrypted and public keys are sought out by the server. The rest of the time, all PGP functions occur at the client. Webmail is really just an "add-on" and we're downplaying it as much as possible because it's causing too much confusion.

\- I don't see how Parley can be compatible with a revoked key scenario, and in practice I'm not sure how that is different from current PGP/GPG use. Do people re-encrypt multiple GBs of data when they revoke their old key? I would recommend that Parley users in that situation download their old messages and store them however they wish, then create a new key and request that their old messages be deleted (we will try to keep backups separated by user account so that this is actually possible). As always, I'm open to any suggestions you might have, and please let me know if you think I'm understating the issue.

\- We'll try to put together some threat profile stuff at some point. You're right that rubber hose crypto can break Parley in a number of ways, as could the usual other _deus ex machinas_ of security (keylogger on the client, etc).

\- We are _huge_ fans of what Colin has done with Tarsnap. If we together can be half of what he is all on his own, I think that would count as a success. FWIW, we do mean "open source" in the traditional sense, at least for the clients (leaning towards MIT license), and all code will be "source available for inspection".

\- We're not a fan of what Colin has done with Tarsnap pricing. I mean, we like it for _us_ but I don't want to subject "normal" consumers to that. But pricing is hard, so we're still thinking about it a lot.

\- Excellent point. Users will be able to export their keyring from installed clients, and all messages will be retrievable via IMAP over TLS. We'll try to make that as clear as we can without confusing less technical users. (And thanks for the vote of confidence ;) We'll try not to suck :) )

Again, thank you so much for your detailed thoughts on this!

EDIT: Good point about the diagrams, too. We're juggling a few balls, of which publishing information is only one, but we'll try to get some diagrams up eventually!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> To lower the friction for new users to take up Parley, it'd be handy to allow the "import" of an existing email account.

This has little security benefit, since the emails will exist on other servers already (although when I switch mail services, at least my mail will now be stored encrypted). But it would allow me to just use Parley, including for searching or categorising my old messages. I could then delete my current webmail account and there'd be one less insecure node in the system.

IMAP import would bring in old messages as well as category (label / folder) structure. Perhaps there's even a way to pull in Gmail / Thunnderbird / other message filter rules(?). It's all time saved by not having to set things up again.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've thought about this. I think we'd have to charge an import fee; encrypting GBs of data in small, useful chunks is not cheap. It might be something we offer one day, but probably not from the start (especially since, as you noted, there would be almost no security benefit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These guys have their heads screwed on right. Best of luck to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow Thomas, thank you. I think I might have to frame this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We need more user friendly tools regarding online privacy. In this regard (not talking about devs who fully understand and use GPG on a daily basis),... Email is broken.

Most people don't even realize their gmail/whatever account is like them standing naked (literally more naked than any psychanalist would ever dream to see you naked) in [google/whatever]land.

Stasibook is quite good in that regard too. To sortof paraphrase [obfuscated]berg, <<Privacy for the masses is sooo 2008>>.

As long as you keep true to your users, don't store any users metadata except the bare minimum to make the service work, try and be what spideroak is to dropbox, or wickr is to imessage, you have my (worthless but sincere) blessings.

Way to go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your blessings are worth a lot to me; thank you Peter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The big challenge for something like this is being your "default" mail and IM solution, vs. something you just use for one-off secure messages. My experience is that if you go for the latter, no one actually uses it. $5/mo is probably the wrong price even for individuals -- I'd go with free (on the low end) or $10-15/mo.

The big thing would be interoperability with everyone else not already using the service (easy for email, harder for IM), and then providing network- effects benefits if both sides of a conversation are subscribers.

The business/group space is a lot more interesting, I think. $500/yr for a few secure mailboxes (5? 10?) would be less work for you than a few $5/mo individual clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't agree more about needing to be the "default" solution. Pricing is a big challenge... we would ultimately like to offer a free tier that is completely subsidised by business users (and possibly paid consumer plans as well) but getting there is the hard part. We're thinking about fundraising, which would help, but we would still want to have a clear monetisation strategy so that our users know what they're getting into.

We've thought a lot about selling to businesses first (and have discussed similar projects with some clients) and may still choose to go that route but:

       - Businesses already have access to a multitude of solutions for
         secure *internal* communications.
       - External communications face the same network problem as consumers,
         but are compounded by the fact that businesses are far less likely
         to send an invite or buy a "gift" subscription for their
         clients/suppliers/etc.
       - Businesses are far more resistant to changes in process/UX. We think
         UX is going to be a big part of the solution.
       - This may be more emblematic of my own ignorance than anything else,
         but it is easier for me to think of consumer companies that have moved
         "up" to enterprise sales than the other way around. I realise how naive
         this sounds, but the purpose of this project really is to make encrypted
         email/IM usable for *everyone*--it requires a consumer focus at some point.

As always, thanks so much for your thoughts on this. It's likely that our own ideas will be tempered by reality before too long ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One small data point: for the one business-class customer I have that would be interested in this, I think they would be willing to pay a factor or two more than $5/month/account (although they would also need archival, which might be outside your scope).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's really helpful. We mostly based that price-point around Google Apps for Business, but besides offering encryption we also intend to offer way-better-than-Google-because-what-couldn't-be customer service, so I think you have an excellent point. Right now we are mostly focused on a) building an excellent product and b) getting a lot of people to use it, but we will keep your advice in mind when we're ready to offer custom domain support for businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dave: thanks for taking the time to write this up, and being open about your approach and the issues you foresee.

I am really rooting for Parley here (along with many other HN readers I assume). Moving towards secure communication methods, however small a step Parley might turn out to be, is key for the long-term survival of the internet as we know it (and even more important to those suffering under oppressive or totalitarian governments).

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure :) And thank _you_ for your input and kind words. The excitement around the project in the last couple of weeks has been really encouraging; now it's time to put our money where our mouth is and crank out a really stellar product. I would love nothing more than to be a small drop in a big wave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I want this to succeed so much.

Out of curiosity, will there be options in the client to either (a) keep private keys un-synced (but still be part of the public key network), or (b) import an existing keyring? Or other mechanisms for someone who is already using PGP, but unsatisfied with the experience, to join without needing to generate new keys.

<comment><AUTHOR> We hadn't really thought about importing existing keyrings to be honest, but it seems like a good idea. I can't immediately think of any reasons why we wouldn't do it.

<comment><USER9> It would make me very very happy, if that's a good reason to do it. :-) The user experience with encrypted email frankly sucks right now, and if you improve it, I think you'll be getting a lot of existing GPG users as well as newbies. But we all have keys already...

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like a good enough reason to me ;) The only challenge I see is that those users will still have to change their email addresses (it's not a huge extra step, but we don't want to worry about custom domains out of the gate) and some public key servers make it difficult to remove the old one.

<comment><USER2> I'd sign up for a "$8/mo plus four invites" plan (i.e. keep it under $100/yr), but not without custom domains. I bought my own domain a decade+ ago for the exact reason that I never have to switch addresses again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, interesting, thanks. I don't foresee custom domains being a big challenge, and it probably won't take too long for us to add support, but I would just want to make sure we stamped out the lion's share of bugs first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love the idea behind this project, and sincerely wish you the best.

My biggest issue with sending encrypted e-mail is that none of the people I send it to would know what to do with it. Secure e-mail needs to be more widespread, and it sounds like you guys are taking a good first step towards that.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a great project and team. I talked with them a few weeks ago, and have a lot of confidence they'll make the right choices. It's an uphill battle to get something like this deployed widely, but I have a lot of confidence in them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ryan, your confidence means the world to us. Thanks! (And we'll try not to let you down!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is your site not (yet) available over HTTPS?

<https://parley.co/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it's just a static public site. The Parley.co service will most definitely be served over HTTPS :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> try to include that as the standard IM for ubuntu.. maybe as a pidgin/empathy plugin for the instant messager at first.

instant million users.</comment>


Olefile: Python package to parse, read and write Microsoft OLE2 files - <AUTHOR> https://pypi.org/project/olefile/ <comment><USER2> Does it handle v4?

[https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd0003...](https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000392.shtml)

"One major distinction between the versions is that the sector size for version 3 is of 512 bytes and the sector size for version 4 is 4096 bytes."</comment>