Our path to listing SEC-regulated crypto securities - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coinbase.com/our-path-to-listing-sec-regulated-crypto-securities-a1724e13bb5a <comment><USER2> > If approved, Coinbase will soon be capable of offering blockchain-based > securities, under the oversight of the US Securities and Exchange Commission > (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). This step > forward is being made possible by our acquisition of a broker-dealer > license, an alternative trading system license (ATS), and a registered > investment advisor (RIA) license.

> ...

> This is all being enabled by our acquisition of Keystone Capital Corp., > Venovate Marketplace, Inc., and Digital Wealth LLC.

If I'm understanding this correctly it's very impressive. They were able to acquire existing companies with those licenses and convince the SEC to let them retain and expand them to cover the entire business. It's like the reverse acquisitions of small banks to enable a new player into the tightly regulated bank market (which is an incredible pain to get new approval for), but now applying it to crypto.

<comment><USER3> This is relatively standard practice in the broker-dealer space. (It's how I started my first company.)

<comment><USER4> Interesting.

Slight off-topic looking at your profile, it says "Trade private equity stakes in technology companies". Curious how does that work?

<comment><USER3> What is your e-mail address?

<comment><USER5> Will one of y'all just post whatever this person emails you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >> This step forward is being made possible by our acquisition of a broker- dealer license (B-D), an alternative trading system license (ATS), and a registered investment advisor (RIA) license.

Great sentence in the press release. My thought was that someone (obviously would be Coinbase given their massive amounts of funding) was out looking for a BD. But they went a step further with the ATS and RIA licenses.

Coinbase is, in some sense, "backdooring" their way to becoming regulatory compliant in the US. That's fine - its a way of jump starting the process.

What it ultimately means is: 1\. more legitimacy for crypto as they are now regulated by the FINRA and the govt (SEC) 2\. If Crypto continues it slow rise - every BD and ATS will get into the game. So expect some realignment in this space.

<comment><USER7> I wonder what the account requirements are for a BD. Will they have to deny services to foreigners and kids?

<comment><USER6> I do not believe there is any US regulation that denies brokerage accounts to foreigners or minors. If they do, it may be an independent decision by brokerage firms simple because they don't want to deal with the extra paperwork.

Being a BD means a whole ton of paperwork, compliance and regulation. You have to abide by KYC and AML rules (Know Your Client and Anti-Money Laundering). People in charge of accounts need to become registered reps and take 1 of the Series Exams administered by FINRA. I imagine there will be some changes to incorporate crypto into the licensing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Buying ... expanding... when they cannot reply to a support email for more than a month. This is one of the most customer unfriendly companies.

<comment><USER9> Try six months on funds they made disappear from open orders. Even their own reports show the missing funds - still, support slow as a snail. The exchange space needs more competitors, but it looks like you need bank level funding to pull that off.

<comment><USER10> At that point I'd suggest it's not support you need to be talking to, it's a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This a great step in the right direction for the post-ICO-craze phase. Once we are over the bullshit utility tokens we can go back to building valuable companies with a whole new way of funding them.

<comment><USER12> >we can go back to building valuable companies

Like what?

>with a whole new way of funding them.

What's wrong with US Dollars?

<comment><USER11> Crypto securities don't replace the US dollars. They replace the shares you're buying when you invest in a company. You are welcome to use US dollars for that if you want. Chances are depending where the companies are based, getting the money in USD to them could be tricky though.

What company people are going to build is anyone's guess, but mine is that there's going to be a lot of them. Silicon Valley is only but a small dot on the face of the Earth. A lof of potential is going to be unlocked.

<comment><USER13> Shares provide ownership and voting. Tokens provide .. no legal guarantees of anything at all?

<comment><USER11> Not all shares provide voting, as I'm sure you are aware of.

But essentially, the paper the shares are printed on doesn't provide any legal guarantees by itself either. The fact that ownership is tokenized doesn't prevent companies from issuing guarantees to token holders.

See my comment on the comment next to yours for more:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17255832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17255832)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This sounds great until people realize that only qualified investors will be allowed to trade security tokens.

<comment><USER15> Social network Gab is attempting to issue security tokens [1] under Regulation A+, which allows the general public to invest. The SEC hasn't approved it yet.

[1] [https://www.startengine.com/gab-select](https://www.startengine.com/gab- select)

<comment><USER16> People here hate Gab and its founder. He's quite unpleasant. Expected to be downvoted into hell.

<comment><USER17> Gab and it's crowd are quite abhorrent, but I don't think most people here are going to care about the mention that they're trying to do a token.

<comment><USER16> He was kicked out of HN. You underestimate how petty the mods here can be.

<comment><USER17> I don't think kicking the guy behind "Twitter, but for White Supremacists" is petty. But I also don't think that the mere mention that they're doing a token in a comment is going to be that harshly dealt with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If all of AAPL stock is tokenized, and someone hacks a custodian of say 30% of AAPL, is the hacker now owner of 30% of AAPL?

<comment><USER19> The hacker would suddenly discover the various international justice systems.

The tokens would be tainted, unspendable, and worthless.

A wild guess at the potential reward for unmasking the hacker? ($950B * 0.3 * 0.001 --> ~300 M USD).

After the first such hack, companies might add a clause to the bylaws enabling the company to re-issue stock to the aggrieved party, restoring balance to the universe.

<comment><USER20> > The tokens would be tainted, unspendable, and worthless.

No they wouldn't because the whole "decentralized system" makes it so you have to get EVERYONE to agree to blacklist those tokens BEFORE THEY ARE TRADED or else it fails because the hacker can tumble those tokens across dozens of different cryptocurrencies on every exchange across thousands of accounts. You will never be able to hard fork every cryptocurrency for 1 mistake.

The only hack that I have ever heard of that was successfully reversed was the DOA and that was because they had 30 days to work out a hard fork on 1 wallet!

Cryptocurrencies are good for one thing only and that is blackhats.

<comment><USER19> It only takes a few countries imprisoning people who trade in tainted coins/tokens before they become untouchable.

Public ledgers are public. If the US IRS, perhaps coordinated with Interpol, publishes a blacklist of coins, those coins are toast.

<comment><USER21> Uh, so wait. If the IRS/Interpol becomes an effective source of truth on which coins may be legally transferred and who rightfully owns them, what was the point of the blockchain?

<comment><USER19> We are all going to find out.

At the very least, the blockchain provides a degree of global immutability that was previously impossible.

<comment><USER20> That immutability is terrible feature. Type one letter wrong on your wallet address and your money is gone forever.

I myself have experienced something similar when a bank teller provided me with a routing number from a chase bank in a different state then I originally set up my account. Thus, my entire direct deposit pay for a month of $6,000 went to an account set for a chase routing number in a different state. Fortunately, I went to the bank soon after and they fixed it by putting the money in my proper account.

If they had used a cryptocurrency, I would have lost an entire months pay.

<comment><USER22> You have something like a 1 in 4 billion chance of entering a valid bitcoin address if you made a typo, whether it's "one letter wrong" or some other combination of changes (there's a 32 bit checksum). So actually this never happens.

<comment><USER23> This sort of thing happens all the time. Hackers routinely attack web sites and change wallet addresses [1]. They setup fake Twitter accounts, fake web sites, muck up exchanges with fake listings, and in some cases even hold fake investor meetings. By some estimates hackers have stolen $400m from ICOs [2]. All of this nonsense is possible precisely because crypto transactions are irreversible so the currency users have absolutely no recourse.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/17/coindash-website- hacked-7-mi...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/17/coindash-website- hacked-7-million-stolen-in-ico.html)

[2] [http://fortune.com/2018/01/22/ico-2018-coin-bitcoin- hack/](http://fortune.com/2018/01/22/ico-2018-coin-bitcoin-hack/)

<comment><USER22> Yes, cryptocurrency institutions get hacked and their customers lose money (more often proportionately, it seems, than their dollar equivalents). I was replying, however, to the ill-founded claim that people lose money by mistyping a single wrong letter in a bitcoin address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What is sad is that the competition is at the legal level, US has a regulation complexity, and no fintech sandbox, that makes almost impossible to compete.

It is like Uber where you can explain the funding in terms of legal expenses because technically everything else is relatively simple.

</comment><comment><USER25> I for one am looking forward to the securitization/tokenization of student loans

<comment><USER14> When are token default swaps coming?

<comment><USER26> [https://dharma.io/](https://dharma.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Has the SEC classified crypto coins yet as securities or commodities?

<comment><USER28> apart from saying that bitcoin isn't a security, no. Just yesterday this infuriatingly vague video came out [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YtZJRUak8E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YtZJRUak8E)

But they refused to actually say if any specific coin was/wasn't a security besides bitcoin.</comment></comment>


Learn how to develop canvas scenes using Scrawl-canvas JavaScript library - <AUTHOR> https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/learn <comment><AUTHOR> I'm posting this link not to show off my "awesome JS library" (TM pending), but rather to invite people to check out the lessons and - if they have time - offer me feedback on how useful they are.

I find it difficult to judge how much information in a lesson is "too much" or "not enough". Because I've lived with the code for so long information that seems obvious to me, and thus not worthy of mentioning in the lesson, may be vital information to other people. Similarly it's possible that the stuff I'm trying to hammer home (especially in the first lesson) will bore potential users who just want to know how to do X/Y/Z with minimal fuss.

Pointers to excellent lessons/tutorials that people have come across when learning (any sort of) new software would also be very welcome!</comment>


Basecamp moved their blog (37svn) over to Medium. Should we all do so? - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-moves-to-medium-c8083ce19686?source=featured--- <comment><USER2> I trust them to make the best business decision for their company but this goes a bit against my personal philosophy. That said, since Medium lets them use their own domain, they are only giving up temporary control.

I use blogger with my domain but it is the freedom to revert to hosting my own blog content that makes me feel comfortable with blogger. I am going to take a closer look at Medium as a writing platform.</comment>


iOS 12 Safari Array reverse bug - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52390368/array-state-will-be-cached-in-ios-12-safari-is-bug-or-feature/52392901 <comment><USER2> Finally we've discovered why people are asked in interviews to reverse an array.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can also see the bug on macOS with Safari 12.0.

I find it quite worrying that devs already wrote a lib to fix the issue but didn't fill a bug report to Apple and shared it on SO. Anyway, a trendy HN post might be enough to get the attention of some Apple devs and I've pinged a dev just in case: [https://twitter.com/ArmandGrillet/status/1042339847384518656](https://twitter.com/ArmandGrillet/status/1042339847384518656)

<comment><USER4> Does Apple have a halfway decent public issue tracker? I don't recall ever seeing one, but I've never gone out of my way to look for one either.

<comment><USER5> I would say it's exactly "halfway decent". There's very little feedback and bugs tend to get closed as duplicates but since it's not public you can't monitor the state of the duolicates.

<comment><USER6> Having had direct experience with this, this is the reason people don't file bugs with Apple. It is an exercise in futility.

<comment><USER7> I reported a UX bug with the new iOS feature Screen Time when the first developer beta hit. Through the entire beta releases the only updates I got were "we pushed a new release, can you test again?".

Needless to say the bug made it to the final release of iOS 12. I'm done filling out bug reports for this reason.

<comment><USER8> Same here. I have a little "blog" where I collect such things (with workaround if any), and then hope google would redirect people there suffering the same issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And now we'll have array-reverse-polyfill showing up as a 6th-level npm dependency on our projects for years to come.

<comment><USER10> Really? Why not write a for loop instead?

<comment><USER11> Much easier to add a polyfill that uses a for loop than to refactor a large codebase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It appears this was already reported and fixed in WebKit - [https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188794](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188794) but not specifically for the Safari browser.

<comment><USER13>
      Array.prototype.reverse modifies JSImmutableButterfly

You have to wonder how an immutable butterfly can be modified?!

<comment><USER14> I would be most grateful if someone could please explain to me what "butterfly" is meant to be ... a metaphor of some sort I assume.

<comment><USER15> Internal data structure of JavaScriptCore representing objects, presumably called a butterfly because it starts in the middle and spreads in both directions in memory. One side is properties of the object, the other members of its array aspect.

See e.g. [http://phrack.org/papers/attacking_javascript_engines.html](http://phrack.org/papers/attacking_javascript_engines.html) section 1.2

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-robertson This bug is very much like the most common mistake I see on Common Lisp stack overflow where one tries to mutate constant (quoted) data.

However JavaScript has no similar notion of constant data but implementations try to infer it as an optimisation. In this case that inference was wrong.

I think the memory structure looks something like:

      arr -> box1 -> 1,2,3,4

Reversing:

      arr -> box1 -> 4,3,2,1

But the data occupying the same region of memory before and after the sort. So then when the page is refreshed the JavaScript doesn't change and the literal data must be included in the "parsed/compiled" form that is reused and so it is initialised as

      arr -> box2 -> 4,3,2,1

The correct behaviour should be as follows:

      1. arr -> box1 -> loc1: 1,2,3,4
      2. Reverse
      3. arr -> box1 -> loc2: 4,3,2,1
      4. Refresh
      5. arr -> box2 -> loc1: 1,2,3,4

The "box" corresponds to the JavaScript object for the array (so mutating the array data can change the box, the data it points at, but not just the reference "arr" as the object might be pointed to from elsewhere). And this box has another pointer to the data for the array (and presumably some bit flag to say whether that is copy-on-write or not). This allows for more efficient array functions when the data doesn't actually change

</comment><comment><USER16> The weirdest thing about this is the fact that the bug occurs after a page reload. Does safari cache jit code and the javascript heap/objects between pageloads?

<comment><USER17> When JavaScript is parsed by jsc, it's compiled to a cachable bytecode, this includes gc allocated constants for constant expressions - numbers, strings, and the _underlying_ storage for some complex types like arrays and regexps.

The cachable code is kept in a big function source->bytecode hash table.

The cacheable bytecode is then "linked" to a bytecode that is optimized for execution speed. That bytecode has things like create_array, etc that can take the _immutable_ backing store object we generated earlier.

This means that if you have multiple functions with identical source code you only have to do the expensive parse+compile step once, and you end up with multiple independent functions using the same constant/immutable backing stores. This saves memory and helps performance.

Unfortunately it adds complexity - now the mutable is objects have "immutable" backing stores, so you have to implement copy-on-write semantics in order to not share state between different instances of the linked code. In this case it appears that a required CoW check was missing :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think Apple has to consider separating Safari (and other bundled apps) from the iOS release so that users can update a quick fix through the App Store without waiting for a new iOS update.

There was a serious WebAssembly regression in iOS 11.2 that makes wasm effectively useless [1]. Devs had to disable wasm and wait for _months_ until iOS 11.3 is released.

Apple never releases a iOS hot fix just for a single Safari bug. Then why Apple don't let users to update Safari separately?

[1]: [https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181781](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181781)

<comment><USER19> Because this isn't "a single Safari bug." It's a bug in JavaScriptCore, which is a public system framework. Safari uses it, but so does any other app which links against it.

Fixing this bug requires shipping new versions of system frameworks, which is pretty much the definition of an OS update.

Or, they could bundle a separate version of the WebKit frameworks just for Safari (like the Safari Technical Preview does) – but then loading a website in your app would use a different stack of frameworks than loading that site in Safari, and no one wants that either.

<comment><USER18> That makes sense. I didn't know the Apple's system framework structure. Thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bug does not trigger on "Safari Technology Preview Release 65 (Safari 12.1, WebKit 13607.1.5.2)" on macOS 10.13.6. Fixed already, or not yet introduced?

<comment><USER20> The shipping Safari is 606, the preview Safari is 607. So 'not yet introduced' seems unlikely.

<comment><USER21> It appears to be fixed at HEAD and in Safari Technology Preview per [https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188794](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188794)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This sounds like a very bad bug, I wonder how bad it is "in the wild".

<comment> dan-robertson I suspect bad. Literal data is common. Reversing is (reasonably) common. The spec required that whenever one constructs data with a literal the resulting object will have a different identity, and that (regular) arrays with different identities do not alias.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if `splice`, `shift`, `unshift` and other methods that modify arrays in-place are also affected.

<comment><USER24> I've played with it a bit and no it doesn't. Also any modification to the original array before calling `reverse` makes bug disappear

<comment><USER23> Good to know, thanks for testing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Woah. I think I ran into this last night after updating to Safari 12 on macOS. I was typing my message into messenger.com (facebook messenger), and all of my typing was reversed. I even took a photo of it

<comment><USER26> Are you sure it wasn't accidental Right-to-Left input?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm not seeing Safari 12 in the App Store (macOS 10.13.6). I wonder if they pulled the update because of this? I have Safari 11 still but my colleague got Safari 12 through the App Store.

<comment><USER17> Safari updates on Mac come down as part of system updates, so until the Mojave timeframe updates appear

<comment><USER28> I got the update for Safari yesterday, and i'm still running High Sierra

<comment><USER17> Safari and webkit updates are pushed out to at least one, maybe two? (not sure exactly how many) major releases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Isn't this part of the faster loading that some Web browsers do? Essentially the idea is that the browser muddies the idea of a closed page in favour of being able to restore it faster.

<comment><USER30> It shouldn't be black-box observable like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Should we hold off on updating then?

</comment><comment><USER32> >I wrote a lib to fix the bug. [https://www.npmjs.com/package/array-reverse- polyfill](https://www.npmjs.com/package/array-reverse-polyfill)

everyday we stray further from god

<comment><USER33> What is extra frustrating is that this is an answer _StackOverflow_. The whole point is to give clear, educational explanations. Well, the solution is only 21 lines, so why not explain the code snippet instead?

        (function() {
          function buggy() {
            function detect() {
              var a = [0, 1];
              a.reverse();
              return a[0] === 0;
            }
            return detect() || detect();
          }
          if(!buggy()) return;
          Array.prototype._reverse = Array.prototype.reverse;
          Array.prototype.reverse = function reverse() {
            if (Array.isArray(this)) this.length = this.length;
            return Array.prototype._reverse.call(this);
          }
          var nonenum = {enumerable: false};
          Object.defineProperties(Array.prototype, {
            _reverse: nonenum,
            reverse: nonenum,
          });
        })();

Look at how elaborate the repo is by comparison:

[https://github.com/fanmingfei/array-reverse- ios12](https://github.com/fanmingfei/array-reverse-ios12)

<comment><USER34> ? The snippet you showed is literally the exact code of the module: [https://github.com/fanmingfei/array-reverse- ios12/blob/maste...](https://github.com/fanmingfei/array-reverse- ios12/blob/master/index.js)

The rest is just tests / npm config / license

<comment><USER33> When I posted this, the snippet was not part of the answer being discussed. There was only a link to a node module.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Fixed. Scheduled. Coming to iOS 15 in 2022...

<comment><USER36> This has already been fixed in Safari Technology Preview, and Safari usually tails a release behind.

<comment><USER37> Yay for the incredibly slow bi-yearly update schedule.

<comment><USER36> Safari updates significantly more often than twice a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does Apple not believe in unit tests or something? This and the password login bug from a few months ago make me pretty concerned.

<comment><USER17> Webkit has hundreds of thousands of tests running on every check in (check build.webkit.org iirc).

Checking arbitrary complex interactions isn't trivial so more complex classes of bugs can only get testing when they're discovered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Now they will release iOS 13 for this :)

P.S. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8bNDw6Ftc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8bNDw6Ftc)

</comment><comment><USER40> Ironically, I got an ad banner for Apple at the top of this page. Saying "Engineer in Europe. Innovate at Apple."

However, this bug sounds pretty serious! :-S</comment>


Frankfurt kitchen - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_kitchen <comment><USER2> Interesting! What really intrigues me is how very familiar, at a very very hindbrain level, this layout is to me. If someone asked me to sketch a generic kitchen, I would certainly draw something recognisably similar. Sets me wondering how much else that fades into the scenery day-to-day in the modern world has its origin in someone's deliberate design.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is also known as a "galley kitchen" similar to those found in the galley of ship:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_(kitchen)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_\(kitchen\))

<comment><USER4> Correct me if I'm wrong but a galley kitchen is just a kitchen of certain dimensions(that is, long and narrow), whereas the Frankfurt kitchen is a complete layout, involving location of drawers, appliances, etc.

<comment><USER3> From the link:

>"The term galley kitchen is also used to refer to the design of household kitchen wherein the units are fitted into a continuous array with no kitchen table, allowing maximum use of a restricted space, and work with the minimum of required movement between units.

The first mass-produced galley kitchen design was known as the Frankfurt kitchen, designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky."

The Frankfurt Kitchen was a type of galley kitchen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My house has a vintage-1959 galley kitchen, which is Taylorist along the same lines as the OP, and I have to say: it is a really efficient work space. You don't have to waste steps walking around. I (personally) prefer the galley layout to the square layout (vintage 1920) that I previously had.

</comment><comment><USER6> This video has a lot more pictures and information: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJiFBHU2ZMM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJiFBHU2ZMM)

</comment><comment><USER7> Only learned about this because of highly ranked r/DIY post from someone in Germany just the other day.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've seen these in person and the thing that always struck me is how much smaller people used to be. The heights of counters, everything.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been trying without success to find a picture of the Stuttgart kitchen mentioned in the article. Anyone?

<comment><USER10> Possibly this: [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/1b/42/571b4248477766f98f58...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/1b/42/571b4248477766f98f5802f397741599.jpg)

Or one of the pictures here: [http://www.worldcat.org/title/weissenhof- houses-5-9-kitchen-...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/weissenhof- houses-5-9-kitchen-by-erna-meyer- view/oclc/123980853/editions?referer=di&editionsView=true)

Very low quality, but I suspect you won't find much better without a physical copy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting as we have basically spent 2.5 years building a Frankfurt kitchen without the humans...</comment>


It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/biztech/it-is-cheaper-to-fly-to-us-than-buy-adobe-software-in-australia/story-fn5lic6c-1226576920561 <comment><USER2> There is no excuse why downloadable content should cost more -- economies of scale, shipping costs, and differences in taxes and exchange rates are all irrelevant. Even in the case of physical goods, the disparity is often drastically more than can be accounted for by the above reasons. This comment sums it up quite well: [http://news.cnet.com/8618-1001_3-57568633.html?assetTypeId=1...](http://news.cnet.com/8618-1001_3-57568633.html?assetTypeId=12&messageId=13633335)

There is a parliamentary committee currently looking into this disparity in pricing: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57568633-92/apple- microsoft...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57568633-92/apple-microsoft- summoned-in-australian-pricing-probe/)

<comment><USER3> Why would they need an "excuse"? Pricing is only indirectly related to costs; doubly so with software, where gross profit margins are often higher than 90%. Why is this particular arbitrary price bad, while other arbitrary prices aren't? Sure they'd still make money if they charged the same, but so what?

<comment><USER2> Maybe because it's particularly insulting to the intelligence, especially when your customers are computer savvy people who know just how arbitrary region- based pricing of digital goods is?

<comment><USER4> Exploiting human irrationality and stupidity is one of the most venerable, time-proven ways of making money.

If you feel your intelligence insulted, then don't buy it...?

(aka, vote with your wallet, and let others do the same)

<comment><USER5> I'm not saying it's without merit, but my blood pressure raises a little every time I hear this argument. It comes across as, "STFU and don't buy if you don't want it!"

When in reality, the original consumer considered this but would rather pursue a more active response than to sulkily and more important silently use something else.

Yes "voting with one's wallet" is certainly an option. But it should not be the sole option as you seem to suggest.

<comment><USER4> That's fine, there are indeed more options! Nobody mentioned silence :)

You can start a newsletter, informing fellow inflicted customers. Tell your friends and family. Launch a slandering campaign on facebook/internet (within the bounds of law, preferably!). Support a competitor. Promote fewer business regulations, so there are more competitors. Post on Hacker News. Etc &c, depending on one's disposition.

But my blood pressure raises every time I hear someone's blood pressure fluctuated and _they want to pass a global regulation affecting everyone (incl. me) because of it_. No, thanks.

<comment><USER6> I, personally, don't want global legislation. I want either companies to not act like total dicks (Pricing in Ethiopia _should_ be lower, pricing in Australia _shouldn't_ be twice as much) OR for the AUS and US governments to make a joint agreement to, at the least, issue a large, nasty "Please Explain" from a body of authority.

But I am also coming from a background where the governmental consumer watchdog is very powerful, so that colours my opinions on what can/should usefully be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's all the fault of Aussies themselves - if they want to fix this, they simply need to ensure (through their lawmakers) that the first sale doctrine applies fairly as intended, and within a week there will be redistributors selling legal boxed Adobe software (imported from US) for decent prices.

It wouldn't be equal to USA prices, since VAT and some markup would apply, but if there is any competition whatsoever, there won't be a markup of $1000 for a single box.

<comment><USER8> There's nothing stopping anyone from ordering from the US (eg. on amazon), apart from the extra GST (10%) added on top by aussie customs. On Amazon its only $2166 + 10% GST

[http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-65167117-CS6-Master- Collection/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-65167117-CS6-Master- Collection/dp/B007R0RJRS/)

In fact you can get the software locally for as low as $3550 if you shop around - [http://www.softwaresite.com.au/adobe-software-/69-adobe- cs6-...](http://www.softwaresite.com.au/adobe-software-/69-adobe-cs6-master- collection-.html)

The main issue is the RRP (recommended retail price) put out by the developer (Adobe) which is totally ludicrous. My favourite is Microsoft AU's official RRP for the Windows 8 Pro Upgrade at AU$399. In the US its $199.

In my opinion, home users tend to shop around more and will be able to spot a bargain, but business users will probably be the ones being ripped off.

<comment><USER9> "Ripped off" is really the wrong term for the pricing discrepancy created by having different places to buy the software within one market. The better term is "price discrimination".

Business users of everything are less price sensitive so intelligent sellers of services, software, hardware etc. attempt to capitalize on them through price discrimination.

In this case, Adobe (or distributors) are aware that businesses would rather not have someone shopping around for software when they could be doing something else more productive so they would pay more. The seller is able to capture the surplus. This is a good article that at least early on focuses on inconvenience as the mechanism for price discrimination: <https://www.rca.org/page.aspx?pid=2995>

Because of the comment before your's, I am not sure whether Adobe is using price discrimination against Australian customers but pharmaceutical companies do price discriminate based on geographic location. (There is also a mention of this in the article above).

Effective price discrimination is a way to extract the correct price from various customers and ignores costs.

If a customer nets value by purchasing a product, the product is priced fairly to them. Different users of the same product get different values, so every seller should try to figure out a way to get price as close to the value gained for each purchase for each customer.

The effect of price discrimination is higher profits for the seller, but it also spreads the cost of R&D more fairly based on value received by buyers. Theoretically PD should drive increased innovation long term.

<comment><USER10> I've always thought first-sale doctrine is an interesting and important check on price discrimination. People usually get angry with the concept of price discrimination, it seems to grate at the idea of fairness. Poorly or improperly implemented price discrimination coupled with a strong first-sale doctrine will lead to interesting new arbitrage opportunities.

The pending case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc is a good example of arbitrageur vs price discriminator. The result of witch will be really important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These articles take the wrong perspective - it's not that Australia is much more expensive in tech matters, it's that the US is much more cheap. I don't know where the recent Australia-specific articles are coming from, but it's been like this since as long as I can remember - that the US is much more cheap than any other country I'm familiar with for tech stuff, including Australia, but also almost every other country.

For example in Europe, the same suite mentioned in the article costs USD 4552.14, or $200 more expensive even than Australia.

<comment><USER12> Australia is extremely expensive for a lot of stuff. Europe is too, but less so (having lived in both).

Part of this is that the AUD has appreciated in value so much over the last few years, and retailers are just not willing to drop their prices in line with the new purchasing power of the dollar. They also haven't caught up with the modern world in a lot of ways, considering that they still have a captive audience that can't just order off the 'net.

Part of this is down to protectivist legislation, for instance the price of books over there is huge and that is in part due to measures put in place to protect local authors and publishers. The net result though is that bookshops go out of business because people just get stuff online, delivered from other parts of the world. There are also weird legally-backed 'exclusive importer' agreements that result in the same phenomenon with other goods.

Part of the problem is retail rental rates are so high that traditional retailers have to have high prices, and in Oz the online services are usually run by the same folks. So again, business goes abroad.

Part of the problem is that some foreign businesses (Blizzard, I'm looking at you) just gouge Australians. Starcraft II was a hundred bucks to buy online from Australia!

So there's a whole culture of stuff just being expensive over there. The government needs to clean up their own act, but looking at what the private sector tries to pull is also interesting.

Incidentally Apple seemed to me to be one of the few organisations that were not overpriced over there, comparing US and AU prices on their store it was always pretty even (when tax was accounted for)

<comment><USER13> _Part of this is that the AUD has appreciated in value so much over the last few years_

Yep, many other countries have had economic downturns lately, a lot of australian economy is based off mining, which is going OK. Ergo, currency appreciates.

 _Part of the problem is retail rental rates are so high_

DANGER WILL ROBINSON! That's partially a sign that the property market is in a bubble or inflated. Many other countries have been wrecked when the property bubble pops. It _might_ happen in Australia.

<comment><USER14> Property bubble has been predicted in Australia for _years_ now. I was waiting for a market crash for years too, but now I'm not entirely convinced. With high urban sprawl, poor transport options, growing population and generally high income, I'm not surprised property costs as much as it does now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised no one mentioned the exorbitant prices of electronics in Brazil compared to the US. For example, the top of the line Macbook 15" retina in the Brazilian Apple store costs R$12599 which is around $6395USD, while the same in the US is $2799. A Brazil/Miami return flight is also around $1000 depending on the time of year. So theoretically it's cheaper for Brazilians to go to Miami, have a nice weeklong vacation, buy a Macbook Retina, iPhone, iPod, iPad, clothes, and much more, than buy a single Macbook here and still wait for shipping. The problem is the government/customs knows that and thus catches and taxes a lot of people who try to bring over $500USD worth of products. And for whoever mentions that the cost of living is cheaper in Brazil, the big cities like Sao Paulo is the same or worse than NYC if you factor in salary.

<comment><USER16> > The problem is the government/customs knows that and thus catches and taxes > a lot of people who try to bring over $500USD worth of products.

Does this mean the difference in the price of the Macbook is entirely taxes? Or, after paying an import duty at the airport, would the overall cost still be lower than buying the hardware domestically?

<comment><USER17> My friends in São Paulo just did that with an iMac - bought it in Arizona during their Christmas trip to the US, declared it at Guarulhos airport, paid the import imposts and still came in with a huge discount to the local retail price.

<comment><USER18> Cost of flight to AZ + Cost of iMac + Cost of Imposts was a huge discount or just the Cost of iMac + Cost of Imposts?

<comment><USER17> Yeah, still at least a headline discount of 20-25%. And they were going to AZ anyway, so it felt like 40-50% to them. Everyone was wearing new shoes too, prices in the US are significantly cheaper than in São Paulo

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What I never get about this and the differences in pricing in movies, music, books, branded clothes, etc. is that this is all tacitly approved by all the governments. That Nike or Adobe or whomever can stop people from buying it cheaper in one country and then selling it at a profit in another country is frankly bizarre.

But then they'll throw a fit at each other if one country says 'no, you can't sell you're cheap bananas here' and all start blathering about free trade.

Free trade is good in everything apart from IP apparently.

<comment><USER20> The government doesn't have much to do with it, it's all contract law. Adobe makes a deal with a local distributor -- we won't sell directly into your territory, we will label our goods so you can discriminate (e.g. not provide service or upgrades for "grey market" products).

The real scandal is that the sftware (or hardware) company sells its products at a wholesale price to the local distributor that prices in support, but has not agreed not to support it, and the the local distributor prices support into the local price. So you get lousy (lousier) support and are denied mothership support you paid for.

I don't know who the local distributor is in Australia (it might even be Adobe itself -- doesn't usually matter, it effectively works the same way) but back in the good old days it was firmware design (at least for macromedia products) and if you asked for support and the locals were no help and you persisted they'd simply escalate it to the US vendor. So you paid extra for friction.

It used to be worth flying to the US to buy a Mac. It's nice that Adobe is doing its part...

<comment><USER21> Its the government that gives out copyright protections. It is the state that grant monopoly power to Adobe. The Australian government could have any rules, laws and consumer protection in place in return for this granted monopoly, and thus limit how companies like Adobe abuses this granted monopoly in Australia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you buy the US version of Adobe software then using it in another region is not allowed in their EULA. So it's almost the same as torrenting it except you paid for it. After a quick look I found these in their EULA:

"Adobe grants Customer a non-exclusive and limited license to install and use the Software (a) in the territory or region where Customer obtains the Software from Adobe or Adobe's authorized reseller or as otherwise stated in the Documentation ("Territory")"

"4.9 Territory. Customer shall only use the Software and access the Adobe Online Services in the Territory and in a manner consistent with the activation policy described at <http://www.adobe.com/go/activation>. Adobe may terminate the license granted herein or suspend the Membership or access to the Adobe Online Services if Adobe determines that Customer is using the Software or Adobe Online Services outside the Territory."

<comment><USER23> So... technically, that means that if I (an American) go on a business trip to Australia, open my laptop and use my paid-for copy of Photoshop, Adobe could terminate my license?

How absolutely lovely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As an Australian (now an NYC resident), I am no stranger to the price gouging that Australians have had to suffer although I must say that how it is now is much, much better than it was 10-20 years ago.

First, it's worth noting that US prices don't include sales tax. Australian prices include a 10% GST.

Second, international companies will end up doing their accounting in one currency. For tech companies unsurprisingly this is US dollars. Transactions in foreign currencies get converted to USD. Companies hedge themselves against FX risk by locking in exchange rates and giving themselves a buffer so they don't need to change prices every day. Ergo, things in foreign currencies will always cost a little bit more.

So if a Macbook Air costs US$999 and A$1099 (hypothetical, the Apple store is down so I can't check what the actual price is) then that's about right (given A$1 = ~US$1.04).

That all being said, high prices in Australia largely come from it being a small market and, more importantly, consumers putting up with it.

Books are the worst example of this. UK companies get the distribution rights for Australia. Australian copyright law largely protects them from imports (although this was relaxed by the previous Howard government in a 1am Senate vote). Yet what costs $10 in the US will cost $25 in Australia.

The Dell E6x00 laptops routinely cost <$!000 in the US but cost ~$2.5k in Australia for no readily apparent reason (it's been a year or two since I looked at this so it may have changed).

The "waterbed effect" seems to play a part too. The US is a large single market so has a lot of purchasing power compared to pretty much any other market. I've thought that cameras are cheaper in the US (than Europe or Australia) for this reason more than anything else.

To give an Australian corollary to this: Dan Murphy, the largest alcohol retailer owned by one of the two supermarket conglomerates (Woolworths), is killing smaller competitors because their purchasing power is so large they can often sell things (at a profit) for less than non-chain stores can buy them wholesale.

For software in the era of digital distribution there's no justification for Adobe's prices here. It's the same software in the same language. Perhaps they needed different TOS/EULAs for Australia (or at least have them reviewed to make sure they are compliant with Australian law). That's about it.

One thing to be thankful for is the ACCC in Australia actually has teeth and through the Trade Practices Act and Corporations Act has a lot of power. The FTC in comparison seems to be a partisan paper tiger in comparison.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for bringing up the currency risk - while certainly not responsible for the entire price difference, the cost for hedging risk against foreign currency in Australia has increased quite a bit according to the Australian central bank (from 5-10 basis points to 30-40 - [http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/fsr/2010/mar/html/box-b.h...](http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/fsr/2010/mar/html/box-b.html)) which will definitely put a dent in your profit margin if you start accepting Aussie dollars.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for looking that up and providing some data. But 30-40 basis points = ~0.35%, which is ~1/300th of the ~100% difference in price, so it seems like it's not a significant factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The same thing happens in the UK. Napster for example charges more than 50% more for a download service in the UK, than in the USA. Completely ridiculous for an internet based download service.

I was going to subscribe until I learned this. Can't support business's gouging their clients.

<comment><USER28> Is it possible that the royalties Napster has to pay in the UK to PRS, PPL, etc. are higher then what they have to pay in the US to ASCAP, BMI, etc.?

<comment><USER29> VAT also adds 20% to the price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Voila, monopoly in action.

I have both a grudging respect and an intense dislike of Adobe for their complete ownership of the creative software space. It's kind of amazing, and it's the clearest example of a monopoly that I experience in my everyday life. Well done, I guess?

<comment><USER31>
      > Adobe for their complete ownership of the creative
      > software space

How is that their fault? What should they do, develop an alternative to Photoshop themselves?

<comment><USER32> They probably shouldn't have been allowed to buy Macromedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There are two ways of looking at this, as a consumer and as a company.

As a consumer obviously we want everything to be cheaper, not just compared to elsewhere, but in general. Who wouldn't like Apple products to be cheaper, or cheaper DSL, cheaper cable etc.

As a company you're in it to make money, period. Pricing is one of the most complicated and imprecise things a company has to deal with. Once you set a price you basically anchor yourself to it in case you later find out that that price was low and you could have charged higher. If you set the price too high then there is always the option to go lower, or offer discounts. You also need to take into account different categories of customers, based on region in this case, and try to price discriminate such that you are able to charge the price that would bring maximum profit (not revenue) and where people cannot go across these categories to buy another comparable product. For example, senior, student, children discounts for movie tickets. Then there are com parables you need to take into account, like Coke and Pepsi are substitutes to an extent, Photoshop and Gimp are not. IntelliJ and Eclipse are, so IntelliJ has to make sure it is offering value for which it can charge.

Microsoft also does regional pricing, and its products are dirt cheap in China and other economies where there is rampant piracy, since there it is effectively competing with its own product being offered for free.

Companies always try to maximize profits and if they can get higher profits and are not anchored to a lower price, they will do so. There is nothing wrong with it, its just business, which pays our salaries and also for entrepreneurs keeps our investors happy.

</comment><comment><USER34> Its not only Aus.

Example: price of Creative Suite® 6 Design Standard is USD1,299 versus GBP1,227, despite the fact that the exchange rate is around 1.55.

For some stupid unknown reason, Adobe will usually charge the same unit price in GBP as they do in USD. They will quote "cost of operating" is higher in the UK, but 55% higher? Bullshit.

<comment><USER35> Don't forget the 20% VAT which is included in the British price. The US price doesn't include any tax.

<comment><USER36> though VAT makes up for some of the difference, it doesn't make up for nearly 1:1 USD:GBP pricing.

If they can charge it, they will.

That assumes all companies charging an extra percentage are actually paying their VAT bills as well.

<comment><USER37> VAT is avoidable, but the tax man makes that sure that no one is going to.

However, corporate tax and a few other bits and bobs payable on overall revenue are perfectly avoidable if you channel it out and about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can someone explain why tech stuff in general is quite a bit more expensive in Australia comparatively?

<comment><USER39> Two main reasons.

1\. Australia is a small market, so for a lot of things there are poor economies of scale and/or cozy oligopolies.

2\. Exchange rates.

Then along came:

3\. Artificial market segmentation.

Region encoding, per-country versions and so on. There's no technical reason for this, it's done simply because (thanks AUSFTA) it _can_ be done.

The artificial segmentation didn't used to be a big problem until the AUD shot up against the USD. Now that our dollar is at approximate parity with the American, it's very easy to compare prices.

Mix in the fact that retail prices have remain steadfastly fixed in place _in spite of the change in exchange rate_ , and consumers have correctly deduced that retailers and distributors are simply taking a windfall and running with it. That nobody is aggressively undercutting goes back to 1.

<comment><USER40> You've got to wonder why they haven't tried artificial market segmentation between US States yet.

<comment><USER41> Could there be something in the constitution to prevent it? The Australian constitution is derived from UK and US, and section 92 mandates free trade between states.

Update: it seems there is. [http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=2010032513551...](http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100325135519AAfEVen)

<comment><USER39> This isn't relevant; it only governs the actions of the US Congress. Australia has similar language to prevent the Commonwealth Parliament from discriminating between the states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Looking for a Photoshop alternative ? Please take a look into Gimp, I'm using it for a long time now. If the money you pay for licensing Photoshop was put in new creative ideas in Gimp, I'm pretty sure it would look as awesome, as Photoshop! Take a look please :)

<comment><USER43> This is the real solution to the "Adobe problem". They are still living in the old world of high priced software and are able to charge these ridiculous prices because they don't face any real competition. Gimp is pretty good but still needs lots of work and/or a killer feature or two to convince people to abandon Adobe. Contribute to Gimp if you can!

<comment><USER42> That's so true! What I see is, there's so many creative people using Photoshop, putting so much money into Adobe. They could contribute with their own views, ideas, needs, etc. Gimp would become ridiculous good just because of that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Or you could just get a VPN for $10 and buy Photoshop online from the US website.

<comment><USER45> Are you allowed to do that? Or to put it another way, if you got raided by the BSA, would they have a problem with that?

<comment><USER36> how would they differentiate from someone like me, who has software bought in the US, while living in the US, but who now lives in the UK?

<comment><USER45> I imagine it's pretty easy to find out if someone has been living in the US within the past N month or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> You want to know the real reason prices are so much higher in other countries? It has to do with historical exchange rates and companies not adjusting prices when the exchange rate improve in their favor.

Let's look back 10 years ago. Around 10 years ago AU$1 was worth about US$0.60. So, at the time if the US version sold for US$2500 you would need to sell the Australian version for about AU$4166 (before any tax difference) to make the same US$2500.

Now, fast forward 10 years. Over this period Australians have become used to paying about AU$4k for the product but in the background the exchange rate continued to improve in favor of the AU$, to the point where today were the two currencies are worth about the same (AU$ are actually worth slightly more now). BUT because Australians are used to paying the price, there has never been any incentive for Adobe to reduce the price. The same applies for video games, or just about anything else on the market.

Now, I'm not defending Adobe, but from a business perspective I can understand how this happened. You have an exchange rate that slowly creeps up over 10 years. You don't see sales dropping, so why reduce your price, right? This is now the predicament they're in, they kept the price steady and now they have to pay the price with media attention. So, what t

Had this been the other way, and the exchange rate declined for the AU$, you can be damn sure Adobe would have taken corrective price action.

</comment><comment><USER35> I wonder how the piracy rate in Australia (for CS and more generally) compares with that in the US.

Anyone have any figures?

<comment><USER47> I work in the design industry in Australia, and it's very rare for anyone to have a legitimate copy. By no means quantitative data, but the piracy rate is probably quite high. Adobe doesn't exactly make it easy by dropping backwards compatibility for a version behind.

<comment> dorian-graph Alternatively, I also work in the design industry and have friends who do and aside from students, most have a legitimate license from my experience and also speaking for myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I once asked how much it cost for the Jonathon Coulton song on iTunes in the U.S. as opposed to the price in Australia. I was downvoted to oblivion. [1]

It's been known for some time now that Australian are being gouged by multinational and local corporations. There should be no real reason why iTunes is more expensive in Australia than in the U.S. - our exchange rates are on a par with the U.S. (and in fact, at times exceeded the U.S. dollar!) and there is no real tangible transport costs. Even a 10% consumption tax doesn't explain the difference in prices between the two countries, for the same product.

1\. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123513>

</comment><comment><USER49> I have always held off buying Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom for myself, because it is very expensive. One day about 2 years ago, I saw an ad somewhere, that I could buy a bundle of both pieces of software for 800USD (I think it was). Seems fair, I thought and went to buy it online in Adobe's shop. But as a European, I was forced to the store of my country (Denmark) and the price was at least double. I tried buying from the us shop (since no physical delivery was needed), but was rejected for using a Danish credit card.

I still don't own Photoshop and Lightroom and Adobe is out 800 USD.

</comment><comment><USER50> Seems they've fixing it: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732488050457829...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324880504578299313556370482.html)

</comment><comment><USER51> I make sure my software my company creates and sells is more or less an equivalent price no matter where you buy it from. In the age of digital delivery, it seems the correct way to do it.

<comment><USER52> Then again, even books sometimes have a 'mass market edition' for countries like India, that costs about a fifth than the US paperback.

I'm not sure it makes sense to sell at the same price all over the world. What does it even mean 'to sell at the same price', who defines the exchange rate?

The exchange rate of some currency often reflects market forces and speculation, and the purchasing power parity exchange rate can be wildly different. In some countries, such as Zimbabwe, the exchange rate with the USD depended strongly on who you were and where you bought it! [0]

Maybe you could define a hourly-rate-equivalent-price: if a Photoshop license costs $2500 [1] in the US and one hour of the median Photoshop-using professional is worth $25 in the US, then Photoshop should cost like 100 hours of work in the country where you sell it, so maybe 500$ in India and $200 in China.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_dollar> [1] All the numbers that follow are pulled out of my own ass

<comment><USER53> I buy the Mass Market Edition books in India. They're printed in much cheaper paper, many times in greyscale. Not the same.

<comment><USER52> True, but are they worth so much less? Do you think that any publisher would sell their textbooks as ebooks for the same price to US students and to Indian students?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This reminds me of a story[1] around 8 years ago of the eye-watering costs of ADSL in South Africa. Whereby it was cheaper to fly to Hong Kong and download 100GB of data in an internet cafe than it was from home using the incumbent telco provider, Telkom.

[1] [http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/cheaper-to-fly- than-u...](http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/cheaper-to-fly-than-use- adsl-1.258692#.URuo-tdcZNo)

<comment><USER55> I remember that! We also had the "Carrier Pigeon paster than ADSL" saga - we've made progress in SA!

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Same with cars, only the workaround is expensive or impossible. For example take a brand new Subaru wrx:

US starts at $25,795 Australia starts at $44,377

In both cases the car needs to be imported and also falls under Australia's luxury car tax so the comparison is reasonably fair. The more expensive a car is the worse it gets (a Nissan gtr will set you back 170k+).

Sure a little bit of this is first world problems, still annoying though.

<comment><USER57> Actually, a WRX won't have the luxury car tax applied to it; from Wiki: The LCT threshold is currently $59,133.00AUD. Car pricing in Australia is pretty horrific, which is probably due to both taxation and the government trying to protect local manufacturers.

<comment><USER56> You are quite right. I meant to say underneath the lct threshold. Thanks for clearing that up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Old news. Adobe is currently at Creative Suite 6. Here's an article about Creative Suite _3_ : UK will pay £1,000 more for Adobe CS3 [http://www.zdnet.com/uk-will-pay-1000-more-for-adobe- cs3-303...](http://www.zdnet.com/uk-will-pay-1000-more-for-adobe- cs3-3039286561/)

It would appear people keep buying it or Adobe would have changed the policy.

</comment><comment><USER59> Nothing new here. An article from 2008: [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1048488/adobe- cs4-p...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1048488/adobe-cs4-pricing- completely-bananas) TLDR; it was cheaper to fly to NYC from London, buy the suite there, then go back, than it was to just buy it in the UK.

<comment><USER60> When I was living in the UK in 2005, it was cheaper to fly to new york and buy a IBM Thinkpad Laptop, than it was to buy one in the UK. The US price in dollars was the same as the UK price in pounds, even thought $2=£1. And the return flight to new york was only £200. Buy two, and you could make a nice little profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> This reminds me of working for a software tools company in the late 90's, selling IDEs and metrics tools to investment banks and telcos. One day, a potential customer called to ask about the price of a license. "1500", my boss said. "1500 what?", asked the customer. "Where are you?". It's a good thing the customer wasn't in Japan...

</comment><comment><USER62> Some price comparison site should set up a how-much-it-would-cost-you-in- America feature for Aussies. You search for a product, see a few local prices, and the US price alongside.

Local vendors would scream at this sale-killing feature, and the PR win would be something amazing. It might even lower local prices.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a bug with the copyright system. The software is copyrighted and only Adobe can sell it. So they can sell what they want.

One copyright reform I'd make, would be removing copyright protection from works like this where are sold as massively different rates between markets. You'd need to look at average wage in the country and compare (rather than a simple metric of 'can you fly to $OTHERCOUNTRY and buy it for less overall?'). If this was the law, then in this case, the software would not be copyrighted in Australia and people could bootleg it legally. Adobe would only get copyright protection if they offered it for sale at a fair price.

Another advantage of this approach is that TVs/Films/out of print books are only copyrighted and 'locked up', when they are actually for sale. A film hasn't been released in UK but is in USA? No copyright protected in UK! Force them to release at same time. (NB: an online shop that ships anywhere counts as "for sale in that country")

But instead, there is global copyright without any restrictions.

<comment><USER63> _One copyright reform I'd make, would be removing copyright protection from works like this where are sold as massively different rates between markets. You'd need to look at average wage in the country and compare_

Just thought I'd try and run such numbers.

The median Australian household income in 2007-2008 was US $69,085. [1] The median US household income in the Northeast in 2010 was $53,283. [2] So a 31% difference versus the 66% difference in the software's price.

However, the Australian price probably includes GST of 10% which when deducted brings the difference to 51% vs 31%.

So yeah, there's a correction waiting to happen there unless other duties or taxes are causing the problem.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income_in_Aust...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income_in_Australia_and_New_Zealand) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Median_income)

<comment><USER64> GST is not relevant. The UK has a 20% VAT tax[1] on many things that are substantially cheaper in the UK than in Australia. Legal software is cheaper in Thailand than Australia (where the market for legal software is smaller). The only reason this is happening is because the companies can, and will. Making a profit is why they exist.

[1] <https://www.gov.uk/vat-rates>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> AFAIK the basic cost of living and salaries are higher so is this really a problem?

Its the opposite of people moaning that people in _some_ 3rd world countries earn so little but this isn't usually a problem as every day essentials are actually much cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER66> Same story in the UK [http://www.davidarno.org/2008/09/15/fly-to-new-york-and- buy-...](http://www.davidarno.org/2008/09/15/fly-to-new-york-and-buy-your- software-its-cheaper-than-buying-in-britain/) (2008)

</comment><comment><USER67> Does a company that will buy software in the US and then ship it to someone in Australia upon request exist?

</comment><comment><USER68> Or even cheaper, just use a mail forwarding service to send it from the US to Australia.

</comment><comment><USER69> Australia just needs to pass a law requiring a price match for online products.

</comment><comment><USER70> What torrents no longer work in AU?

</comment><comment><USER71> TPB -_-</comment>


Let's Build a Simple Interpreter, Part 7 - <AUTHOR> http://ruslanspivak.com/lsbasi-part7/ <comment><USER2> If people are interested in language compilers/interpreters, another route is to look at PL/0\. There are several C implementations that are pretty easy to grok even if you don't know C (very well).</comment>


Cars, Batteries and Dual-Class Stock - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-22/cars-batteries-and-dual-class-stock <comment><USER2> I personally think this is a good move for Tesla and Solarcity with many cities and power companies blocking net metering for new solar homes. This way Tesla can utilize the full battery production it is expecting with its giga factory even if the Tesla car production isn't ramped up. And this would allow Tesla to buy all of Panasonic production as well without loosing it to competing car manufacturers. Tesla could probably sell the solar panel based charging system to Tesla car owners. As they have market for environmental conscious Tesla owners who feel filling up with coal or gas based electricity is not enough.</comment>


A 12-Minute Routine That Improves the Immune System and Alleviates Anxiety - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andrewseanryan/a-twelve-minute-routine-to-boost-your-immune-system-and-lower-anxiety-a4664fe5d3af <comment><USER2> I've been doing the WHM (Wim Hof Method) for almost 3 years now. They have a free app, which is pretty good for tracking and has some videos to show you how it is done.

I use WHM as part of my daily meditation. I don't find that I have had the experience Andrew has had or witnessed. I have a few friends who also do it, and when I asked a few months ago, they said they enjoy doing it, but it isn't a magical feeling.

At the same time, I have experimented with Holotropic breathwork, and that is a whole different animal. I also tried Somatic, but it just wasn't for me. Seemed a bit more like a guy trying to cash in on a fad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Pete. Thanks for mentioning Holotropic breathwork. I've never tried it but I want to dig deeper into the breathwork world since I have found success with the WHM. It sounds like you have been doing this for quite some time so I would imagine you have given WH Breathing a fair shake. It took me a solid 20 times or so before I got the effect I now get but it seems I am able to recreate it in most others on their first go lately.

I will check into Holotropic!</comment></comment>


Rate My Site - www.winningnynumbers.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.winningnynumbers.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I ran into an old friend, who, believe it or not, had over 30 years (since 1977) of New York Lottery data...I asked him if I could play around with it and wanted to see if I could garner interest on a site, so I threw this together quickly on Drupal - so it's not perfect, and the design isn't great, but, I didn't want to waste my time with something that I wasn't positive would even have a crowd!

</comment><comment><USER2> Hey mate, I went to adwords.google.com and used their keyword tool to see what people are searching for. Here's some top results:

ny lottery - 450,000 January searches

nys lottery - 110,000 January searches

pick lottery numbers - 18,100

lottery past numbers - 14,800

new york lottery results - 12,100

Other interesting results: ny lottery org (12,100), nyc lottery (9,900), new york lottery com (6,600), nyc numbers (3,600), www ny lottery org (2,400)... and finally ny winning lottery numbers (1,000 - first mention of winning in combination with the way I typed the words in).

So, yes, these terms are getting searched. A lot of people are looking for the newest numbers, so if you could automatically have those post up, that'd add value to your site. Now, the way you'll get traffic to this site I'm guessing is SEO - so start thinking about a domain and keywords you want to go after. Monetizing? Totally doable I'd imagine, but not sure how you'd go about it. Links to playing or buying lottery something-or-other online might be good. Maybe sit in a convenience store and ask everyone who buys a lottery ticket if you can talk to them for a couple minutes, and ask them like five questions about their interests.

Do people who play the NY lottery like horseracing? The Yankees? Hot dogs? Going to Miami? It seems to me like you could get traffic with some effort, and could monetize with some effort, but the effort thing is key here. You're going to have to mess around and experiment to figure out the monetization side, and going to have to spend some time getting pagerank and relevancy if you want high traffic. But - it seems doable, and I'm going to guess you could carve out a few hundred bucks a week without too much effort, which is pretty cool. Good luck with the endeavor.</comment>


What is Ethereum? – A high level intro to the problems Ethereum can fix - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@quickleft/what-is-ethereum-cfea3902010 <comment><USER2> SO many problems are being solved on the same plane they were created with. What I love about Ethereum is the _direct action_ approach where rather than simply request that those in power get their act together in any meaningful way, we just create the damn thing ourselves and proceed as normal...

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't heard it put that way, but now having heard it, I like it a lot. Thanks for giving me a new way to talk about this sort of thing.</comment></comment>


What is happening in İstanbul? - <AUTHOR> http://www.whatishappeninginistanbul.com/ <comment><USER2> It started as a civilian resistance for excessive police force. Unique and special part of this movement was political distribution of people in it. Erdogan's party rule 3'rd times the government. At this point they changed from independent, democrat, liberal party to totaliter one. So people in the movement is consist of multiple former Akp (Erdogan's party) supporter, too. That's why it should be important for Erdogan. But instead he's arguing that most of them provoked by other forces so ignoring. But now, 3'rd day of activity, it changed from civilian movement to anarchist, provokative anti- governmental and mostly illegal movements. That's why now people should calm down. Because initial point of movement succeed it's purpose. Park is safe (court decision), police is off the Taksim Square.

ps: i'm talkin as person who was in activity actually and hurted by police brutality. #direngeziparki

<comment><USER3> I read his son secretly owned the park and sold for a huge profit to an extremely wealthy individual who fell in love with the location.

People have also written that the new rule banning alcohol at 10 pm is making secular society nervous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been there in Ankara protests last 2 days / nights.

I have several light burns around my body. Got hit by a gas canister. Seen people shot down with plastic bullets and got sprayed with an orange liquid that burns like hell.

The PM says social media is a damnation of god and we had several outages of twitter and facebook.

Meanwhile, CNN Turk shows penguin documentaries.

<comment><USER3> Solidarity!

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

Peace and love to you all.

</comment></comment><comment> mc-lovin While I'm glad that people from Turkey are voicing there opinions here, I think there is also danger in being too credulous. The people who use English speaking social media are not necessarily representative of the whole population and the fact that people are able to spread their message on social media doesn't make them right.

I am still waiting to see confirmation of the existence of a media blackout in Turkey by the mainstream media, and the more general claims about the current regime are even harder to judge for an outsider.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps you can watch these videos of police brutality while you are waiting for the official statement from The Ministry of Censorship.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqQjPHtAZ6c>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPsPC4TPAMc>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XThjR-7F0io>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQHOo2rOmWc>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y409ZrNLFqM>

Of course, just because the cops are assaulting unarmed civilians doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong.

(edit: added one more video)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Uh, I am moving there at the end of the summer. That is pretty much last thing I want to see at the moment. I am hoping they manage to finish this thing before.

Although, I would prefer Turkey to be peaceful, I do understand and agree with these protest.

If there happens the worst case scenario and real revolution, does anyone have info, how safe it is after that usually?

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry @DocG but I don't think revolutions happen that often to be able to say how safe they are with any kind of statistical significance :)

But as far as I can tell, the government seems to be starting to accept the blame and even Erdogan will probably fall in line in a few days. It probably won't escalate anymore. I wouldn't worry if I were you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Turkey live feed from the protests:

[http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution?utm_source=lsplay...](http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution?utm_source=lsplayer&utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=footerlinks)

</comment><comment><USER7> Great idea, I was trying to figure out the story! I've read there's been an internal blackout -- the turkish media isn't covering the event.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I heard they also placed jammers inside the protest areas. I imagine this didn't help very much. I was unable to find the source again though.

Technology seems to play a larger and larger role in providing freedom by giving individuals a voice and the power to exercise it.

<comment><USER9> Hm, I saw the opposite. Mainly every time there was poor reception it was due to overloaded cells.

TurkCell installed mobile repeaters in Taksim square yesterday. Even in the most heated of confrontions I still had cell, data and voice reception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Might check out 57un's twitter feed. Lot of info on this.

<https://twitter.com/57un>

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for covering this @ekurutepe.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not my blog. I came across it and seemed very accurate and unbiased. Thought I'd share here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is Gezi Park a _public_ or _private_ park?

<comment><USER13> And what does such a distinction mean in Turkey?

<comment><USER5> It's a public park.

There might be parks within the walls of a gated community. Or there might be special parks, like a bird park or a japanese garden you might then need a ticket to enter.

Gezi Park is a public area in the heart of Istanbul. The value of the land must be astronomical. That's another reason why the government has no issues attacking the civilians. And they get this brutal because the value of each individual life (in their minds) is very very low.

(I used to live 500 meters away from Gezi Park, and I have spent a considerable amount of time there)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty sure if Turkey falls we'll end up with a new Islamic caliphate in the next 10 years. Who doesn't see one sweeping over this shattered region. For 90% of its history (600 to 1900) the middle east has been under a single empire or another. What we should really be afraid of is some kind of galvanizing leader or force to come out of this.

<comment><USER15> >> For 90% of its history (600 to 1900) the middle east has been under a single empire or another.

That is so totally wrong I don't even know where to begin. For starters the caliphate was only a political force until the emergence of the seljuk turks. The turkish empire was European focused and never controlled persia or arabia.

<comment> barry-cotter Persia was never an Ottoman posession but Arabia was, or at least most of it was. I'm too lazy to look it up on my phone. Caliph was among the titles claimed by the Ottoman Sultan and his claim was taken seriously by almost all Sunnis, particularly after the dethronement of the Mughals.

They didn't consider it among their more important titles until quite late, preferrimg _Qaysar-i-Rum_ or Emperor of the Romans, but their claim to the Caliphate was long standing.</comment></comment></comment>


China Wants To Buy A Big Piece Of Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/china-wants-to-buy-a-big-piece-of-facebook-2011-6 <comment><USER2> We should sell all of Facebook to China. Now that Google+ and the social network scene is getting hot, let China buy a bunch of hyped up virtual assets (which I think is already plateauing). Then we play the waiting game with China... again.</comment>


Discovering Anomalies in Real-Time with Apache Flink - <AUTHOR> https://mux.com/blog/discovering-anomalies-in-real-time-with-apache-flink/ <comment><USER2> Since I maintain a pretty large ETL (batch) application for a living, I am genuinely curious about this. How do you handle failure in event-processing systems? I mean in batch, it's simple - if there is a record (event) that causes unexpected failure (or the program fails for other reason, for example it runs out of space), we just restart the batch.

But in event processing, unless you can afford yourself to skip events, how do you deal with that sort of thing, especially if the processing needs to keep track of internal state between events?

I read about event-sourcing, which kinda is a solution to that, but add checkpoints and you have pretty much batch processing again.

<comment><USER3> Spot on. Can you recommend some good articles or books dealing with these kind of problems?

My current understanding is that a event-based (in a very broad sense) system are hard to "replay" in the case of a failure (error in data or just a bug), unless you build additional machinery, which decreases robustness. In contrast the task of making a batch processing system perform fast is easy and much better defined.

<comment><USER4> I highly recommend reading Tyler Akidau's article titled "The world beyond batch: Streaming 101": [https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-world-beyond-batch- streami...](https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-world-beyond-batch- streaming-101)

And its follow-up post: [https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-world-beyond-batch- streami...](https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-world-beyond-batch- streaming-102)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The Apache Flink project is a relative newcomer to the stream-processing space. Competing Open-Source platforms include Apache Spark, Apache Storm, and Twitter Heron."

Can someone explain why Apache are creating projects that compete with each other? Why not focus on one?

<comment><USER6> Apache often houses existing projects; sometimes becoming a home for formerly- proprietary software that gets thrown over the wall. Remember Google Wave? That's Apache Wave now. Apache Storm started out as just Storm, open sourced after a Twitter acquisition. Twitter Heron was open sourced by Twitter. Flink is a fork of Stratosphere. Et cetera :) So: ASF is doing no such thing, they're just providing a framework for open source projects to function in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm the author of this Mux blog post and would love to take any questions or comments, as well as suggestions for future posts. Thank you for your interest!

<comment><USER7> Can you elaborate on the "novel anomaly-detection algorithms" used here?

<comment><USER4> Sure! We evaluated several anomaly-detection tools & libraries. They included:

tried-and-true statistical methods like probability density functions

Yahoo EGADS anomaly-detection library

Numenta HTM neural-network anomaly-detection library

We ruled out HTM due to AGPL licensing concerns. It's an interesting product, but wasn't a good fit for us at this point in time. EGADS and other basic statistical methods can actually get you pretty far.

<comment><USER8> And what do you do with this video anomaly information?

<comment><USER4> Mux ([https://mux.com/](https://mux.com/)) collects performance metrics for video delivery & playback on the websites & apps of our customers. These metrics feed into our real-time alerting system. If the error-rate for a customer property (site) or video-title is exceptionally high then an alert will be triggered. Mux customers can configure alert notifications to be sent to Slack & email, and view a history of alerts in the Mux web dashboard. We also offer the ability to view breakdowns of playback failures, video start-up times, and more through our dashboard. This can be helpful for diagnosing playback issues related to specific browsers, geographies, ISPs, and more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to see more about how they used Flink, and less about their system architecture (which give great details, up until the data is processed with Flink).

<comment><USER4> Great suggestion! We'll have a follow-up post soon that goes into greater detail on the mechanics of how Mux uses Flink.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We ditched Spark Structured Streaming for Flink for a Kafka consumer, processing 3B events per day. Its been extremely stable so far, and half the cost of the spark cluster

<comment><USER11> Could provide more details about your cluster setup? How big is your cluster?</comment></comment>


The True Cost of Commuting - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/

<comment><USER2> I refuse to commute. It's maddening and unproductive. I much prefer a medium density mixed use walkable neighborhood. I'm actually working on a documentary about America's great towns and neighborhoods.

I ran an experiment with one of my friends who lived in swamp sprawl built over the everglades where I used to fish as a kid. When I was traveling he'd stay at my house in a walkable neighborhood. It ruined him. He was more productive, had more fun, went out more often, and was much more relaxed than when he was back at the swamp. Living it versus talking about it is a real convincer.

Richard Florida talks about the Creative Class and the Great Reset (both excellent books, though I don't agree 100% with his prescriptions) which dovetails with PG's essay Cities and Ambition.

One area where I disagree is the choice of vehicle. A ten year old hatchback is less than ideal. I twenty year old Porsche, on the other hand, is perfect.

</comment><comment><USER3> My workplace is full of long-distance commuters. I know two brothers who have been with the company for almost ten years, and their daily commute takes whopping 2.5 hours. It strikes me as utterly insane.

People we hire out of college are especially bad at making decisions on where to live. Just like the couple in the story, they grossly underestimate the true cost of commuting. As a result, most of them live 40-50 minutes away, on the basis that they are closer to the beach or to the more hip areas of the county.</comment>


Ask HN: Question on copyright/trademark - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN -
I am in the process of building a startup and have a question regarding the name. The website I have chosen uses the .me TLD, and I intend for that to be part of the name. For example, say my site is Foo.me
Another larger company exists and has Foo.com, and There is a copyright for the  Foo product - however, from what I understand names must be trademarked and are not copyrighted. My product is NOT a copy of Foo product, and I intend the product to be known as "Foo.me" . I cannot find any listing in the trademark database for "Foo". Am I safe in assuming my product name is safe from any infringement on Foo.com's name and/or product? <comment><USER2> IANAL. Copyright isn't an issue. This is purely about trademarks.

The TLD is probably, or at least possibly, not considered when evaluating whether a consumer would be confused.

Are your businesses/products/brands confusingly similar? Are you in the space _general_ space? Have you seen what areas they have applied for/received trademarks for?

If they're selling dishwashers and you're doing a SaaS app you're probably fine. If they're a search engine for dogs and you're a directory of cats you're probably treading on thin ice.

IANAL x 10.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I mentioned the TLD is because that is specifically part of the name of my product/company. ie my product is "Foo.me" and would never be labelled, branded, called, marketed, etc without the tld attached, whereas the other company's product is just "Foo".

<comment><USER2> I know. I think it could only help you to do it that way but not sure the USPTO or a judge will agree with the distinction.</comment></comment></comment>


OpenAI API Is Magical - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/CSe3_u9P-RM <comment><USER2> wonder if it learns from it's mistakes?

like when someone types "I think you forgot the quotes".

does it remember the quotes next session?</comment>


How a Tweet About Getting Rejected Went Viral - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/zero-infinity/how-a-tweet-about-getting-rejected-went-viral-f41a9571128a#.2egsco4ld <comment><USER2> Having a publisher decline to publish your unsolicited article isn't censorship. It's business.

Why do people not understand that their right to free speech does not obligate (oblige?) others to give them a soap box or even listen?

<comment><USER3> Indeed, it's someone else's right to free speech that allows them to dictate what speech occurs within their jurisdiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Censored. You keep using that word. I'm not sure it means what you think it means.

</comment><comment><USER5> In what universe is 180 retweets "viral"</comment>


Duct tape and baling twine are essential tools for your startup - <AUTHOR> http://gregmeyer.com/2013/11/25/duct-tape-and-baling-twine-are-essential-tools-for-your-startup/

<comment><USER2> +1 for the MacGyver reference.</comment>


Rubinius Announces Plans for GIL Elimination, JIT Improvements, Targetable VM - <AUTHOR> http://rubini.us/2011/02/17/rubinius-what-s-next/

<comment><USER2> Beautiful example how a combination of open source enthusiasm and commercial interest can generate some first class software. There's no way this could have happened without Evan's initial enthusiasm or Engine Yard's support. TBH I can list off dozens of open source projects that are one sponsor away from another level greatness. :P

<comment><USER3> You mean, can generate some _plans_ for some first class software. ;)

<comment><USER4> my understanding is that rubinius is production ready (and "first class") software today. If they could offer a real performance improvement over MRI 1.9 they would be more compelling. Rubinius is also a much more compelling environment to develop the Ruby language in, but they just don't support Windows and all the 1.9 changes yet.

<comment><USER5> I would say that Rubinius needs to be _significantly_ faster than MRI _and_ production ready to be successful. Otherwise, it's an "option" and having "lots of interesting options" at the level of your language is actually detriment to your development process. As someone said, you want your setup to be "as boring as possible" so you can concentrate on your application code instead.

Having "lots of exciting choices" in your web server, your database, your object server, your language implementation, or monitor size just says your time will be sucked from real work.

<almost a flame> I have been _tempted_ , in the past, to wildly claim that if you compare Rubinius' relative failure compared to PyPy, Rubinius is kind of a poster-child of Test Driven Development's failure. IE, languages need semi- formal specs, not tests that claims they are a standard (no amount of testing can prove two implementation equivalent). </almost a flame>

<CAVEAT>But listening to the PyPy folks describe their process, I realize this stuff is uber-hard and I'd just like to hear what a real compiler developer would say about this. </CAVEAT>

<comment><USER2> This rant seems misplaced. Rubinius adopted a test driven approach for testing Ruby compatibility because Ruby doesn't have a spec, merely a reference implementation. The spec is being worked on, but the fact that it doesn't exist has more to do with Matz and Ruby's culture than Rubinius. Further, your other objections also appear to be rooted in a misunderstanding of Ruby's culture. The fact that there are lots of choices in the Ruby's ecosystem is what Ruby is about. Hell, choice is built right into Ruby with its inheritance model. Python is the opposite, and I'm guessing that's what your background is in.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure not if software development questions should be solved with a reference to "Ruby's culture". Wouldn't "what works best" be a better criteria?

I've done more Ruby than Python altogether. It's true that I am no longer doing Ruby - mostly because it is too slow for anything beyond a fairly simple web platform (I would welcome an improvement in Ruby performance).

I would argue that the time spent on the tests could instead be spent on an actual spec.

<comment><USER2> Did you stop programming in Ruby before 1.9.1? Most common performance issues were fixed in that release. If you need something faster than 1.9.1, you probably should be dropping down to C anyway.

<comment><USER5> C++ for the desktop actually...

The thing is; C# and Java are also fast enough for an adequate desktop GUI. But they're horrible to program in.

Ruby and Python are still in about the same category of slowness even with pypy's success. I'm doubtful of Python desktop apps but I know they are out- there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can also use jruby now. I'm not trying to diminish rubinius, I hope it works out well and I worked with one of the contributors, but I've been using jruby for a while now and it's great.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is really great news: I spent some time digging around in the Rubinius JIT in December, and realized that it wasn't going to generate significantly better code until the byte codes were replaced with an intermediate representation that made type checks visible to the optimizer.

In the long run, Ruby implementations will be at least 1 order of magnitude faster than either MRI 1.9 or JRuby. And I'm glad to see that the Rubinius folks are taking the necessary steps to get there.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does any python implementation have non-GIL threading?

<comment><USER9> Both Jython and IronPython. PyPy probably will in the future, however its not a goal at the moment.

<comment><USER10> pypy also supports stackless style microthreads: <http://codespeak.net/pypy/dist/pypy/doc/stackless.html> but, yes, system level threads are GIL based.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've never been massively keen on the carious implementations of ruby, they're all a bit different and those differences appear to be documented poorly. This is most visible if compared to the python landscape.

<comment><USER12> I don't have a handle on the Python implementation landscape, but the various Rubies all regularly contribute to rubyspec[0] and report on how they're doing. And with rvm[1] it's incredibly easy to test code across rubies. From where I'm sitting, it seems dead simple to find the differences and how they could affect me.

0: <https://github.com/rubyspec/rubyspec> 1: <http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/>

<comment><USER11> I admit I perhaps haven't looked into this as much as I perhaps should have before making that claim.

My understanding is that the rubyspec project (<http://rubyspec.org/>), is an effort to retrospectively document all the stuff the language does.

Compare ruby: <http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?Changes+in+Ruby+1.9>, to python: <http://docs.python.org/dev/whatsnew/2.7.html>

I appreciate this isn't a great example, as python 2.7 isn't a different implementation (ruby 1.8 -> 1.9 is though), but this has been my experience of the way things are documented language-wise.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft tells users to stop using strong passwords everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/16/microsoft-stop-using-strong-passwords-everywhere

<comment><USER2> For better or worse I have a few levels of passwords and their password strength. For most websites I use a simple password that never changes. For shopping websites I have a fairly strong password that changes once in a while and for banks, social networks, Apple ID, and google I use a strong password that changes about every three months.

The problem with this system is many websites won't allow you to use the same password over again. Other services force you to change the password if you submit 3 wrong guesses. (Not to mention the varying rules on what characters your password can consist of.) So between these two rules and the dozens of websites, the system grows chaotic pretty fast. There should be some standardization for changing submitting and handling passwords.

Apple: why is it when I change my Apple ID password, I have reenter it for FaceTime, iMessage, iCloud, and iTunes, on my iPad, iPhone, my home laptop, and my work computer? How about one password entry per device and call it a day...</comment>


Show HN: Newscombinator - <AUTHOR> http://newscombinator.com/#/

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me give some more information. First, lesson learned, do not post on HN when tired. The ups and downs after posting are incredible, even if its just a private project. I couldn't be more thankful for the powerful emotions that arrive when I see my code in the open wild after weeks and months of coding. :)

The tool here is "just a frontend" I've build as an API-sideproject of mine. So, what does it do? In one sentence: Newscombinator gathers news from different sources, downloads it, makes a screenshot, cleans it, natural language process it, and push it through a MySQL DB into a Solr index.

The Solr-select handler is passed through a REST handler. Why that, why not directly the solr select handler? Because the REST handler also exposes endpoints to the MySQL Database. Some things are just not feasible in Solr alone. For example its hard to build aggregation queries in solr (think: SELECT AVG(points), SUM(points) FROM ... WHERE date_news_found ...), I've made that available in MySQL. And its easy to shift all that to a MariaDB cluster, or to an Amazon RDS, just in case...

What is available here is a RESTful interface to a Solr-Index with all Hacker- News articles, selected Reddits, etc, starting from Oct 2014. That is around 200k of articles. Including searchable content. I think that is a good base to start with for me.

Thank you in the meantime HN, I've learned something.

</comment><comment><USER2> For me, neither website renders without javascript. A blank screen's a poor first impression. Maybe it's a pet peeve but I'm sure I'm not the only one who blocks JS by default.

Also, making the panels on the right of the landing page opaque would aid readability.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I'll take is as a valuable feedback for the landingpage, which really needs some more improvement.

Regarding the non-JS users. I am wondering how you can survive in the modern web. That shouldn't be meant as offensive statement, rather than I have the gut feeling that most websites are more like apps currently, running heavily on JS. That really makes me wonder...

<comment><USER2> No offense taken. I use noscript to whitelist websites and grant temporary permissions to others as needed.

To clarify, I have no problem with you using JS. I know I may have to enable it go gain functionality sometimes. My gripe is that on your sites I get zero functionality without it.

I don't mean to cause offense either. Thought it may be something you hadn't considered is all.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right, I didn't consider it at all, shame on me, and a lot of shame. Actually, I didn't even think of it, although that is something I am almost praying when working with clients: make your sites at least usable without JS. Weird that I got caught there. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here, was hoping to get some feedback from the HN community on my tool here. The landingpage for now: [http://nagrgtr.com](http://nagrgtr.com) and there is more to come. Thank you.

<comment><USER3> Newscombinator and the landing page are very difficult to read. There are lots of fonts that are too low-contrast or too small. There isn't lots of good visual separation between different elements.

I don't want to get into a huge usability discussion right now, but it's important, and you should definitely look into it.

<comment><USER4> Everything smt88 just said. It is hard on the eyes, hard to read.

The site itself actually looks like something I would read and share with everyone if the UI/UX issues get worked out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, is there any specific font face or size that you'd recommend? I know ui/ux is always very subtle, but i have the feeling that there must be a golden standard and i miss that...</comment></comment></comment></comment>