History of Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia <comment><USER2> I was co-maintainer of PhpWiki those times. Jimbo contacted us in 2001 with this crazy idea, if he could use our software. We were all pretty active around Ward's wiki and the UseModWiki meta site, with thousands of articles, and established standards. But Jimbo was a newbie and demanded totally crazy things from us, which we denied. Like representing a space in a title as _. You cannot just break the 1:1 relationship of titles to 1:n. Every legal page can only start with an uppercase char. Totally silly ideas. But we still liked the crazy idea of these folks. eg one of their first pages was PoliTics, explaining that this consists of two words, the first meaning Many and the seconds Blood Sucking Insects.

Eventually they took our diff implementation written by Jeff Dairiki, but unfortunately not our much better page, template and plugin solutions, which was extremely safe to use and to extend, not as horrible as their adhoc written MediaWiki SW. This was more like the Sourceforge SW. Well, another example of Worse is better.</comment>


Apply HN: Agora – social network for debates on local and other issues - <AUTHOR> What – Agora is an online site for discussions about issues in real time. Main UI will show "debate topics" selected using user's location, profession, and preferences. Any topic starting posts require: "initiator" (image, link, keyword references to set topic), minimum word-count text, and at least two "evidences" (image, link, keyword references). Responses only require text, but allow all. User profiles are sparse and private.
Why – We often see socially motivated posts across news sites and on social networks, showing the need for a dedicated site for these conversations among citizens. We foresee Agora expanding the existing news media within 3 years. Agora will host solution-oriented discussions to help improve lives.
Competition – Agora's UI will be visibly different from forums. Medium is a similarly open platform for public to speak, but it doesn't encourage P2P conversations. Quora's Q&A format is sufficiently dissimilar.
Business Model - Premium posters can pay to advertise themselves in an isolated section. If needed, sufficient local distributions of same premium thread can be created for ease of providing individual attention. As it currently stands, we will only allow news media (in all forms), government bodies, and socio-politically registered organizations to advertise on Agora.
Challenges – Agora only has one founder. I agree that start-ups grow too fast for one person to manage. I am not currently looking for a co-founder. If I am to be funded, I will pay ramen salary and offer considerable equity to a determined and ambitious programmer to come on board for at least three months. Our goal would be to launch the product and secure funding for next phase before this funding runs out.
Domain expertise of founder – Finishing PhD in Electrical Engineering from UCR. I have medium proficiency in programming, but I am a resourceful learner. I am also an active debater online, with posts on many sites. <comment><USER3> This seems really similar to Jürgen Habermas's Public Sphere idea (in a good way). One thing I would suggest is to make sure to stand on the shoulder of giants. There is a lot of academic work written on what worked and what didn't work in communities like Slashdot, kuro5hin, various bbForums, 4chan, Usenet, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Best comment! Agora/Dais, as you said, is _really_ similar to the new philosophical concepts you've introduced me to. I was not aware of him before, but how I see this company agrees exactly with what I've read so far. Thank you for sharing this. This has not only sparked my intellectual curiosity, but also has become a learning responsibility as a founding member of a company working in the area of public discourse.

I also agree with your latter points, which are no less important. All early members including myself are investing significant amount of time to research now, and will continue to do so long into the company's lifetime. We will also establish a company culture that emphasizes learning among employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How will you acquire your first batch of enough users to reach critical mass, where the site becomes an interesting destination rather than a ghost town? This will be your biggest challenge by far.

Your competition is not only existing blogs, newspaper comment sections, and discussion forums that already host socially-oriented debate, but also any other place where people spend their free time: Netflix and XBox.

How will you reach the people who would be interested in participating in such a forum?

When you do reach them, how will you overcome the initial "ghost town" chicken-and-egg problem, where nobody will want to use the forum unless lots of other people are using it already?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for bringing up more highly relevant questions for our company! Our idea does indeed face a chicken-and-egg problem. The following strategies will be implemented to address concerns mentioned above -

i) We will aggressively market toward a niched group to find early power users. This group can be college students. A higher proportion of all college students are likely to resonate to Agora/Dais. This will be enormously valuable for the company during the early stage to a) fight off "ghost town" issues, b) gain feedback for iteration.

ii) Early employees, all with equity stake in the company, will be encouraged to regularly participate in the social network. We hope to make debating a part of company culture. This will also fight off "ghost town" problem.

iii) We aim to funnel the constructive and creative energies currently visibly abundant yet mostly wasted across social sites, blogs, comment sections, and discussion forums. We are similar to hacker news in this sense, that it is the first and _most uniquely designed_ forum for hackers (in the broader meaning of the word). Agora/Dais aims to be such a thing for debaters of sociopolitoeconomic issues.

iv) Effective marketing of our values will help us find users who share the spirit of debating. Our challenge is to show that Agora/Dais can add value to the user's life by being able to talk about issues that affect them directly, and by being able to share in each other's knowledge on specific topics. Our "north star", the thing that gives value to our users, is each time a user gets a response. This is our _metric of interest_.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish to take the liberty to clarify myself, since the down vote is worrying.

My post, at its surface, appears full of "marketingspeak" and cliched language. But in essence, each of the points are directly implementable solutions that address the challenges raised by HN user in parent comment.

i) I provide a viable (albeit well known, but this doesn't make our strategy weaker) early growth strategy that targets a specific user group.

ii) Another well known but nevertheless essential custom for early startups. I understand that mentioning such basics may take away from my credibility, but we must realize that startups often fail because they forget the basics.

iii) I suspect this comment can be deemed too vague. It is encompassing the uniqueness of Agora/Dais, and expressing it by invoking comparisons to hacker news. My purpose is not to cozy up to the user base here, but to state the truth. Hacker news is highly unique in how well its content is organized and displayed. HN is also unique in how its user base interacts (content-oriented as opposed to profile-oriented). Agora/Dais respects HN and will learn from her best points. But we are not direct competitors. Targeted social capital of our product, its UI, and the targeted user base are all differentiated substantially.

iv) This point states a fundamental company operating principle. The vision of Agora/Dais is to dramatically improve the quality and quantity of debates held online and offline on relevant topics, and to see our platform become a facilitator for improved quality of life among our users. This is a very important point that will be highly featured in all of our presentations to VCs.

<comment><USER4> This is indeed pretty vauge. The question was, "how will you acquire users?" and the reply was "We have a way to acquire users."

OK, what is that growth strategy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OK, I need you to give me a typical profile of a user (what they like to do, etc.) to understand why the user would join the site and contribute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the question. A typical user would belong to one of following groups - professional/blue-collar family men and women, housewives and househusbands, and youth in their twenties. Users belonging to such groups are most situationally motivated to talk about issues directly or indirectly affecting them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like this idea. Have you checked out the Economist's debates: [http://debates.economist.com/](http://debates.economist.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing this. What I loved most about the debates held at the Economist was the participation on the part of the users. Although the focus was on the selected panel of moderator and the two experts, there were 29 comments made by users that were largely well thought-out. I believe the Economist is going in the right direction by holding debates on critical issues on the web that are open to public. But we will take it further by significantly moving the platform toward the public. In Agora/Dais, the center-stage of the debate definitively belongs to the general public.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to clarify that the 29 comments were on the particular debate I visited while answering this question. I don't have access to their user statistics at the moment. This number likely doesn't tell us about average user participation in their site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dear moderators, I've made a mess of things while naming my company. I failed to thoroughly search the name before having decided for it. Please either - i) delete this so I may rename my company and start another thread, or ii) replace all mentions of "Agora" in above post with "Dais".

I am happy with this second name. It refers to a platform or a podium, which goes with the purpose of our company. I have decided to not keep the previous name due to the extent of its affiliation with another entity.

</comment><comment><USER7> That s look cool. I thought Brigade app was trying to do something similar. But appears it is more restrict to political debates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for bringing this up. There are a significant number of apps already in the debate space, as listed below. The presence of competition in this space means that the potential market size these startups are trying to tap into is large. However, none of the startups have been able to capitalize on the idea. As a result, most people still meet their "debating needs" by making long comments on ESPN or Huffington Post or Facebook. Dais/Agora is confident it can capture this market in a manner Google did with search engines, or Facebook did with networks for friends.

 _Brigade_ \- User scrolls through topics and scrolls through multiple one- line statements within said topics. Then user chooses between "Agree", "Disagree", and "Unsure". User bonds with others who share similar percentage agreement on various issues as decided. Dais/Agora is at least 70% different. Even though Brigade has an active blog section and claims that it "is a free app that lets you express your opinions on news and politics", it does not give voice to the issues the way Dais/Agora will.

 _DebateMe_ \- Last updated 10.6.2015. There were 4 total debates going on worldwide. They are one- or two-liners, with ability to include images. Dais/Agora is at least 40% different, and will work hard to be a more vibrant community.

 _Debate.com_ \- Has about 30 total "debates" and "polls" in database - ranging from super bowl ads, death penalty, gun control, math vs. english, Abraham Lincoln vs. FDR, Deadpool vs Starwars, etc. Few votes and views, very few comments. We are 60-70% different.

 _State_ \- Established app in this space. Shows "opinion mixes" that are one- liners and gives user following choices to act in response - i) pick up to 3 words, ii) search, iii) pick from words featured. Dais/Agora is 65% different.

 _Lighthouse_ \- One of the more similar ones. Hosts conversations on local and national issues. User feed and profile are adjusted by gaining agree/disagree/neutral feedback on one-line issues. Users participate in conversations via texts ranging 2 or more sentences.

A point to note is that most of the apps have gone for instant gratification methods because they followed the success of Facebook and Twitter. These companies are not providing the debating population with what they want (which is why they haven't succeeded). Dais/Agora realizes it is a radically different company from the existing successful social networks, and has a vision for itself.

Dais/Agora has the task of using technology to bring back conversations that used to exist in a village, but has been systematically alienated due to urbanization. In Dais/Agora, issues such as an incompetent teacher in some neighborhood school will be able to reach a larger number of people more frequently, thus gaining momentum in the community more often and being addressed as such. We only hear one or two such cases on nationally televised media every month, and perhaps the number increases to three or five - <USER2> local media. However, well-ingrained and systematically-inbred transparency in such a massive civic society as ours remains a major hurdle for human civilization to overcome.

edit: cut text "(which is desired)"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Online debate is a really tough space. Sam Altman had a very famous recent tweet about the productivity lost to online debate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not aware of Sam's tweet. This being a tough space is an encouraging sign for a start-up. It was a founder of YC who encouraged start-ups to not avoid "schlep" business.

Edit: I realized that your reference to a tweet was in effect a questioning of the validity/purpose of Dais/Agora. I'd like to answer this. Unorganized debating and commenting is inefficient due to their delocalized nature. Dais allows the true values of debating to shine by creating appropriate space, and via structured guidance (see differentiated visuals compared to competitors).

By creating the first proper online space for debates, Dais gives birth to the possibility of entire cities, states, and nations being involved in issues (from temporary and local to far-reaching and international) at a level not observed since urbanization began, thus allowing unparalleled civic activism to flourish. This is the vision of Dais/Agora.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Overall I like the idea. My main question would be how do you keep it from becoming an echo chamber or an all out brawl?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for two very relevant questions! We will develop an algorithm that will compare "debate topics" by analyzing their "initiators", text content, and "evidences". This algorithm will assign a correlation factor to all possible one-to-one comparisons from domain of "debate topics". Any two "debate topics" with factor exceeding a threshold may be integrated together.

Required minimum word counts for all responses, post flagging system at user- end, and algorithms searching for abusive language will all be used to prevent all-out brawls from breaking out.

These are among important parameters that will be under observation starting in the development stage. We will learn from our experience and improve our algorithms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You might want to change the name if you don't want to be associated with the largest online drug marketplace.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow I wasn't aware of this! Just looked it up. In Ancient Greek city-states, "agora" was the central square where they'd gather for important discussions. I really like the name and would hate to give it up.

I will have to understand all of the implications of having the same name as that of a major marketplace from the deep web. This is pretty shocking to me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could Android offer an API identical to the iOS? - <AUTHOR>

Would it be legal for Google to "reverse engineer" the iOS API so that iPhone apps can be ported to Android seamlessly? That way, iPhone apps could run on Android and vice versa. Would it be a good thing? I'm asking because it seems that Oracle's lawsuit might force Android to drop Java. <comment> Asa-Nisse Android "is" java, you cant drop java from android. Oracle is just pissing around. Java support in android just wont go away.

Secondly you cant reverse engineer iOS "API", its a language (Obj-C) and a API. The API consists of surely patented and copyrighted routines. Most of it is called Cocoa and personally I would say it sucks balls. Its a totally different metodology than what most other languages use.

iOS development is if anything even more cumbersome than android-development. I just dont see the point.

Also, there are initatives to crosscompile code (in LUA for instance) to both iOS and android.

<comment><USER2> In my experience, iOS development is easier than Android, and it is basically because the docs, and surprisingly the community, is way more complete.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that's too surprising. The iOS development community is larger and more established. Should Android development ever make it to a similar scale, I'd imagine the community would be similarly complete.

Documentation, on the other hand, is entirely dependent on Google. And we all know how much engineers love writing documentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I applaud any way to merge OS's. That would be novel and in the spirit of Google!

-jp wikispeedia.org "Back Seat Driver"</comment>


If Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange, There Should Be Ample Evidence - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/11/27/it-is-possible-paul-manafort-visited-julian-assange-if-true-there-should-be-ample-video-and-other-evidence-showing-this/ <comment><USER2> > In 2015, the BBC reported that "Scotland Yard has spent about £10m providing > a 24-hour guard at the Ecuadorean embassy in London since Wikileaks founder > Julian Assange claimed asylum there,"

Except that guard was discontinued in October 2015[1] and it's pretty disingenuous to not mention that and leave the reader with the implication that it's still going on and therefore Manafort would necessarily have been spotted. Fudging such an obvious point as that makes me wonder what else has been fudged.

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and- order/119266...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and- order/11926650/Scotland-Yard-end-24-hour-guard-on-Ecuadorian-embassy.html)</comment>


Update on Christmas Issues - <AUTHOR> http://store.steampowered.com/news/19852/?snr=1_550_552&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter <comment><USER2>
       "There are only two hard things in Computer Science:
        cache invalidation and naming things."

       -- Phil Karlton

<comment><USER3> This is a famous quotation but in my experience it is not true. I have implemented web caching a few times and while some RPC-style forms/APIs have been difficult I've never put a cache in and had it go seriously wrong. Naming things is sometimes tricky but never profoundly difficult.

The hard problems are probably things like doing something concurrently or maybe implementing the right feature...

<comment><USER4> It sounds like some people forgot a `Vary: Cookie` header while they were all running around with their hair on fire because of the DDoS.

<comment><USER5> I, and many other ops-ish people I know, cringed at the obvious caching error that seemed like the most likely culprit.

The "in the middle of a DDoS" makes it make a lot more sense, and while this is still a cringeworthy situation, the cringing at least on my part is now more sympathetic than horrified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a pretty solid public postmortem. Props to Valve. Usually when something bad happens in the gaming realm, it just gets swept under the rug.

<comment><USER7> Valve is (was?) known for being silent too often - at least concerning Dota 2 (the diretide event 'scandal'). Maybe they're trying to correct that, after so many complaints about their poor communication, which is nice.

<comment><USER8> I think this was big enough that they _had_ to comment. Publicly leaked personal information might be enough to start a lawsuit (IANAL). But I agree, props to them for going against their SOP, and actually communicating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really hope this catalyzes Valve to create a proper customer support team, one that can publicly address these issues in a timely manner as well as handle day-to-day customer support problems. It's ludicrous that a company as big as Valve has got away with it for as long as they have, and that's due in large part to an extremely devout fanbase that's only now starting to get fed up with them.

<comment><USER10> I don't think the Valve fanbase is even close to being fed up with them, unfortunately.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, there's just no competitor big enough to force them to care

<comment><USER9> gog.com is becoming really popular, and I actually had a really good experience dealing with EA Origin's support earlier this week. Sure they're not as big as Steam yet, but they're getting big enough to be competitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice to see the update and I'm very interested in how many people they determine deserve compensation, and why them (if there is any distinction between severely affected and no-big-deal effects). The error seems "basic"...in the sense that everyone who knows devops knows how to prevent it, but according to their account, the circumstances were extreme (plus, it was the holidays) and so mistakes were made. Just like how only a seemingly moron of a surgeon could operate on the wrong limb of the wrong patient...but such catastrophic mistakes often happen when the ER is in a state of chaos.

</comment><comment> vive-la-liberte >Valve is currently working with our web caching partner to identify users whose information was served to other users, and will be contacting those affected once they have been identified.

How will they be able to do that?

<comment><USER12> Analyzing log files, I presume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> They're glossing over over this a bit. Many sites use the last 4 digits of your cc number as validation so the last 2 digits + email + phone suffix setup is valuable information and is definitely an addition to any cc database for liveliness of credit cards or accounts to go after on steam.

</comment><comment><USER14> Do people get fired for making these kind of mistakes?

<comment><USER15> Probably not, unless it's one of a series of similar issues. Hiring and training people is expensive, and everyone screws up sometimes.

Firing people for a single mistake is for fast food restaurants, not for billion dollar tech companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While an expected response, it's hard to forgive Valve for taking 5 days for _any official acknowledgement of the issue_ (not even a Tweet on the Steam Support Twitter accounts, which you would expect to be the primary source of information), especially since personal information leaked.

To quote a NeoGAF moderator:

> To be honest, I think people would have been willing to give them 5 days > (irrespective of what the professionally appropriate timeframe was) if their > initial response wasn't so tone-deaf.

<comment><USER17> Valve did make an official statement to the press on the day of[0].

[0] [http://www.pcgamer.com/warning-steam-is-revealing-private- ac...](http://www.pcgamer.com/warning-steam-is-revealing-private-account- information/)

<comment><USER9> Call it petty, but hearing their official statement secondhand makes it feel disingenuous to me. They have more appropriate channels in place for that sort of thing, including email, their two official Twitter accounts, and their very own web site, which would communicate directly to the customers affected.</comment></comment></comment>


Free Dropbox Accounts Now Only Sync to Three Devices - <AUTHOR> https://zapier.com/blog/free-dropbox-account-three-device-limit/ <comment><USER2> For anyone looking for an open-source self-hosted alternative: I've been really happy with Syncthing [0]. It's as invisible as Dropbox once set up.

It supports arbitrary topologies (two peer machines syncing, one central always-on machine and lots of clients, etc.); with a VM in the cloud it can closely emulate Dropbox (sans web-based file browser), but it will also support e.g. just a desktop at home and a laptop that syncs when it's on the LAN. Pretty useful!

[0] [https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

<comment><USER3> In my experience, syncthing works as advertised, however the UI is a bit of a mess(as many open source projects have).

Especially the android app. The status of what the program is doing at the moment is not communicated very well. The refresh rate for status updates seems to be very low, and so you have connection status being disconnected, then jumps to connected after a few seconds of frustration("why isn't it connecting!!"). Then it sits there at 0% ("whats wrong!), and jumps to 64% after a few seconds, then 99%. Then sits there("is something wrong?"). Eventually it finishes and everything is fine("yay it worked!").

Love the project. Hope they get UI experience down though, as it is the main thing holding it back in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> Try Nextcloud, the UI is quite good (both the website and the app).

<comment><USER5> PHP, ultra slow in comparison with Dropbox or Google Drive.

<comment><USER4> Slower than Dropbox but much, MUCH faster than Google Drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh well. Instead of paying $10/month for a terabyte with Dropbox, I can pay $10 for:

\- Office 365 with Word, PowerPoint, Excel for 6 users each with a terabyte of storage.

\- iCloud with 2 terabyte that I can use to back up all of my devices.

Or I can get Amazon Cloud Storage up to 1TB for $60 a year.

EDIT: Corrected iCloud and OneDrive storage.

<comment><USER7> Try those companies' sync apps and you'll be back to Dropbox in a hot minute. I once tried to use the OneDrive app and it said my files would take 9 hours to back up, after an hour I gave up and tried Dropbox and it did it in an hour.

<comment><USER8> Your first sync will be slow but after that onedrive is no different for me than dropbox on Mac OS. In fact I put all my files in the onedrive folder now. Integrates with office at work so I can save stuff to my personal laptop and phone pretty easily.

<comment><USER9> I don´t trust Microsoft with my data since they deleted all my mail history back when they took over the Hotmail.com.

<comment><USER6> That was back in 1997....

I'm sure they aren't using the same infrastructure.

But that being said. My pictures and videos are automatically synced to:

Google Drive: (free, resolution reduced theoretically)

OneDrive

BackBlaze: iPhone -> OneDrive -> BackBlaze.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the point of having a freemium model if people can't actually use your service as intended to see what benefits a full version will provide? If I'm trying to open a file on my phone and the app won't let me log in, my reaction isn't going to be "guess I should pay to upgrade" but rather to hit uninstall.

<comment><USER11> they did what many other companies do. Use the freemium model to gain users and publicity, then try to reduce costs and convert free users to premium by destroying the free tier.

<comment><USER12> This seems... Unsustainable?

<comment><USER13> Why is it unsustainable? After enough time, most people who would use it for free already are. Now, the goal is to either get rid of the free users or convert them to paid users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been using a self-hosted Seafile[0] instance since 2014 hosted on my Linux server. It's written in Python[1]. I have never had an issue with it. I sync to my desktops, laptops, phones, etc. It works on all major platforms. It has an online browser just like Dropbox too, supports link sharing, WebDAV, etc. Its server-side storage is based on git[2].

I was really impressed with all the upgrades throughout the years. The upgrade scripts that come with their installations which I run on my Linux box are clearly labelled (e.g. 5.1_to_5.2.sh) and run successfully without giving me random obscure messages that you might sometimes expect.

I recommend people check it out to see if it could work for you.

The only downside really is that since it's git-based storage, you can't just specify "this is the directory I want to serve", rather you have to upload everything via Seafile and it will write it out in its git filesystem (which means it's duplicated if you already have a copy on your filesystem.) This is in contrast to OwnCloud[3] I think, which will let you access/serve remote files from their original location.

[0] [https://www.seafile.com/en/download/](https://www.seafile.com/en/download/)

[1] [https://github.com/haiwen/seafile](https://github.com/haiwen/seafile)

[2] [https://manual.seafile.com/develop/data_model.html](https://manual.seafile.com/develop/data_model.html)

[3] [https://owncloud.org/](https://owncloud.org/)

<comment><USER15> Agreed. BTW, parts of the server are actually written in C.

Best thing about Seafile is its syncing performance. Worlds better than owncloud/pydio, and it doesn't choke on large directories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As expected, the large majority of comments, on a site dedicated to starting up a business, are how to use free alternatives or stop using it altogether.

<comment><USER17> Dropbox is no longer a startup. I think they'll be just fine without the support of a niche internet circle.

<comment><USER16> Sure they will be just fine, my point was about how so many are eager to get paid, yet vocal to pay for the work of others.

<comment><USER18> It is ironic, you're right. But we all know Dropbox was never really respected by the userbase here, beyond being a magical money making endeavor.

All the initial comments were about how Dropbox simply repackaged the abilities of free built-in linux tools.

<comment><USER16> Surely Dropbox wouldn't have been a sucessful business if it was more than just a repackaging of built-in UNIX tools.

<comment><USER18> Hahahhaa. Ha. That's rich.

You don't think Facebook is a rebranding of friendster and myspace?

<comment><USER16> Actually one could even think beyond them to stuff like Hi5.

But no, there is the business value and the added services that the competition failed to offer to stay in business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there any open-source file syncing apps out there that you can point to your own AWS account? Sure you are still dependent on another service, but S3 costs are negligible compared to Dropbox or others.

<comment><USER19> NextCloud supports S3 as primary data storage.

[https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/13/admin_manual/configurat...](https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/13/admin_manual/configuration_files/primary_storage.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Previous discussion 65 days ago, 52 comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19362778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19362778)

</comment><comment><USER21> It's worth noting that only devices (PCs, mobiles) using the official Dropbox app count as devices.

I've never used the official app to connect to Dropbox, so now I guess I never will.

<comment><USER22> How do you sync files? Do you just manually upload them throw browser and download them from another?

<comment><USER23> It seems like the OP doesn't use Dropbox's killer feature, which is seamless and faster syncing than anything else out there.

I don't see the point then of using Dropbox exclusively in such fashion. All cloud storage services used like that are interchangeable.

<comment><USER24> Just like OP I'm a paying Dropbox customer that doesn't use the official client. I mainly use it to backup my 600 Gb and counting music library via Arq [1]. There's no way I'd store something as critical as my music collection in the default Dropbox sync folder. Plus, I only need a one way sync that preferably happens at night. So I have no need for the official client.

I know there are dedicated backup services like Backblaze, however occasionally I also need to share a large file or two with someone or need to offer a public download. It's often enough that I don't want to use wetransfer or similar services. Even more often I need a service that syncs data and settings of various iOS apps. While iCloud is fine, Dropbox is widely supported on iOS. I basically need a general purpose web storage and Dropbox seems to be the only one that handles all these use cases fine.

[1] [https://www.arqbackup.com/](https://www.arqbackup.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This really happened a couple of months ago, and really sucks. There aren't that many alternatives to Dropbox if you require both Windows, Mac and Linux client support. I ended up settling on Nextcloud (ownCloud fork) hosted by Hetzner[1].

So far it's pretty good. Photo sync works from Phone works perfectly, and the desktop apps are decent enough. I did get bitten by a recursive folder-sync bug [2], which is certainly not of Dropbox quality but at least pull-requests are welcome.

[1] [https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud](https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud)

[2] [https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/1000](https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/1000)

<comment><USER26> I switched to Nextcloud about a year ago and I've been very happy.

Firstly, I now have as much disk I need, and secondly, the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you know your files are now in your own control :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Feeling some deja vu, as it's quite similar to what Evernote did (also equally feeling like shooting themselves in the foot in regards to user goodwill). Well, at least I already have a crapton of devices synced and they didn't retroactively disable it like Evernote did.

</comment><comment><USER28> This started 2 months ago. I deleted Dropbox.

<comment><USER29> I had Dropbox installed on all my devices, but wasn't really actively using it, that was until it kept asking me to upgrade to a paid account, that's when I moved all my files to iCloud and deleted my Dropbox account.

Since I only use Apple products, I don't really have to worry about cross OS compatibility.

<comment><USER30> You may still want to worry about platform lock-in, if only for the option value of being able to leave when Apple inevitably makes a decision you disagree with.

<comment><USER31> No matter what decision Apple makes, it'll likely never be so bad I switch to Windows, Linux, or Android. Married to the ecosystem for better or worse.

<comment><USER23> I sometimes worry about becoming unemployed and then having my main machine die on me. I wouldn't be able to pay top dollar for an Apple machine.

Using commodity hardware gives me peace of mind regarding this scenario, unlikely as it sounds.

<comment><USER32> Yep I'm married to the ecosystem as well, but if my main MacBook from early 2015 breaks in the next few months while not being employed, I'm not sure what I'd do. I mean I know I'd probably use my family's older 2011 MacBook until I get a new MacBook later on. But if that MacBook isn't available, I might have to switch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm weirdly fine with this. I've noticed over the years that I'm using dropbox less and less as competitors have sliced up the file-syncing and sharing problem in different ways. For example, one of the things I used to use DB for was to make sure documents or other media were available on all my devices. Now I just host them with an ebook server or plex or whatever. Lots of my office document needs are covered with Google drive or Office 365.

My work uses OneDrive extensively and it integrates _really_ well across devices and the web for on-line editing. Dropbox never really had a better use-case than syncing and missed the boat on using the easy u/l mechanism for various kinds of sharing/social activities. I'm more or less considering moving to OneDrive for home use as well even if the sync isn't quite as good because it works better than DB across almost all other parameters.

Also nobody here's mentioned Amazon Drive which I find interesting.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is what happens when a great company/product decides they want to squeeze money out of their customers.

I saw this happen with Evernote. It's starting to happen with Dropbox.

I wish there were a company really focused on the long term, and that cared about customers more than bottom line.

Dropbox / Evernote competitors: please, show up.

<comment><USER35> It's free. FREE. Free costs money. Give me a break. I use Dropbox & Evernote free tier. I can't complain about the limits, either I pay up or shut up and use it or find an alternative.

<comment><USER36> The problem isn't having limits on the free tier. The problem is _changing_ the services for existing accounts (free or otherwise), in this case to completely cripple free accounts. I wouldn't even complain if they only applied the 3-device restriction to _new_ free accounts

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Bitrix24 is another decent Dropbox alternative for group accounts. Available both on-premise and in cloud - [https://www.bitrix24.com/features/docs.php](https://www.bitrix24.com/features/docs.php)

</comment><comment><USER38> What about BitTorrent Sync? Is that still a thing, and didn't do Dropboxy type things?

<comment><USER39> I don't remember details but the last time I tried it the program didn't work reliably enough for me. Nowadays there's Syncthing which does the same thing but better.

<comment><USER40> It is not the same thing. SyncThing's model of having to add every host to every other host (possibly with introducer nodes) is much more complex. With Bittorrent/Resilio Sync, you can just give someone else a read-only or read- write key for a folder, and they become part of the swarm. Also, Resilio Sync supports encrypted-only nodes, which participate in the swarm by providing bandwidth, but only see ciphertext. This makes it possible to use e.g. an untrusted VPS as an always-available node.

Unfortunately, Resilio had to ruin it with complex enterprice-y license schemes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I just ran into this because I use Dropbox sync with 1Password.

My 1Password standalone license is now limited to three connected devices as a result. Very disappointing.

Can't say I'll be giving dropbox my business.

<comment><USER42> Uh, you didn't give them your business earlier either, because you were using the free tier?

<comment><USER41> Why would I give them my business now, after being kicked off? If I'm going to pay for a service, I'd sooner pay for Google Drive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I would be curious to learn/hear some of the backstory on how they picked 3, since where to draw the line with freemium seems like it's hard to get right.

<comment><USER44> If I had to guess: Computer, Tablet, Phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> So, you set up Nextcloud in snap a [0] on some home computer or server and then leave it like that... or, if you must, point Dropbox to the the same folder on said pc/server (remember to use Ext4 people, ugh) and group clients like that. But at this point, I'd be looking for alternatives.

[0] [https://snapcraft.io/nextcloud](https://snapcraft.io/nextcloud)

</comment><comment><USER46> All the previous noise about explicitly disabling itself on ZFS (non ext4-filesystems) on Linux made me kind of disenfranchised with Dropbox.

It's no longer the universal solution it used to be. That _was_ it's one unique selling point its competitors didn't have. Good job ruining it!

If my next phone is an Android, I'll probably move everything to syncthing and call it a day.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wonder how much of this is related to them being public now. It's still useful for me with only 3 devices so I wouldn't be ready to start paying them though.

</comment><comment><USER48> "Fortunately" they also dropped support for XFS so I can't even use on my work computer anymore...

</comment><comment><USER49> I moved to seafile. Excellent alternative covering all dropbox features.

</comment><comment><USER50> Well... I guess they have to try to make money somehow

<comment><USER51> Don't we all?

<comment><USER50> So meta

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> So glad I left Dropbox after they got hacked.

</comment><comment><USER22> How many people have more than 3 devices to sync between anyways?

I bet normal use case is to sync between desktop, laptop, and phone.

And I'm sure now some people will comment how they use Dropbox to sync stuff to their whole extended family for some obscure reason and that is fine. Then the free version is just not for you.

For me it seems to still work like it used to.

<comment><USER51> Yours is a fair argument, but you are being downvoted for a contrarian view. I too have two devices I ideally have to sync between.

Also, why do we expect corporations to dole out free goodies for everyone? Dropbox has a good product, they should be able to charge for it.

<comment><USER36> I expect them to honor the agreement I had with them when originally signing up with them, and promoting them to others (earning 20GB of storage through referrals). If they want to reserve new features for paid accounts, fine, but don't cripple existing free accounts to make them effectively useless.

<comment><USER53> And where exactly did Dropbox make a legally binding agreement with you that allows you to sync 20GB to an unlimited number of devices for perpetuity? The agreement you're referencing doesn't exist.

<comment><USER51> We are civilized people and don't need to shove contracts in each other's faces for everything. Somehow we have gone from being too violent to too litigious. Not bad compared to violence, but can be better.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Windows Terminal Preview v0.10 Release - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-preview-v0-10-release/ <comment><USER3> Def going to give this a try today. With CLion now supporting WSL as a toolchain I've now found myself in a strangely productive environment where Windows + WSL is my primary environment and I barely notice the transition between the two -- apart from the sub-par terminal experience. Looking forward to this...

<comment><USER4> I rly love 0.9 version. The only thing that annoys me is resizing. When you open a tab and then you increase the window size, the actual terminal size is not increases with it. At least on my computer :-)

So I always need to first make the terminal fullscreen and then open tabs.

Anyone having this as well?

<comment><USER5> This should be fixed in 0.10

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They seriously need to add a tab rename feature. Right click and rename. I am using it for development (along WSL2) and have 4, 5 tabs opened most of the time - a server, webpack, some ssh stuff, another server, something else.

All tabs have the same generic title name. There is a github issue, but it does not look like they take this feature seriously:

[https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1079](https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1079)

Edit: I am happy with it - they've been improving it constantly (for the last 4 months at least).

<comment><USER7> Not as good as right click but can be done from the command line (PS) $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = "Corona"

<comment><USER6> This does not work on WSL2 (Ubuntu), but thanks.

<comment><USER8> Pretty much every shell has its own mechanism for updating the title - <USER2> parent comment just shared the `powershell` way of setting the title. I'm confident that if you search for "set title from <your shell here>", you'll find plenty of posts on how to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Disappointed that this release appears not to be supported on Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019, which is what I have available:

Add-AppPackage -path .\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_0.10.761.0_8wekyb3d8bbwe.msixbundle

Add-AppPackage : Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80073CFD, A Prerequisite for an install could not be satisfied. Windows cannot install package Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_0.10.761.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe because this package is not compatible with the device. The package requires OS version 10.0.18362.0 or higher on the Windows.Mobile device family. The device is currently running OS version 10.0.17763.1098.

<comment><USER10> It's not this release, but like since forever. There's a note in the github readme: > Note: Windows Terminal requires Windows 10 1903 (build 18362) or later

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow. I downloaded and launched this, and immediately wanted to change the font size. Took me a good minute to find the settings button (cmd and Powershell both have a right click menu on the title bar, this one does not), and clicking on it opens a JSON config file with Visual Studio. Guess it's far from <s>ready for everyday use</s> release quality at the moment.

Disclaimer: I'm primarily a Mac user developing on macOS and Linux. Swears by iTerm 2.

<comment><USER12> It's actually very ready for everyday use, even for a 0.1 release. It's the best terminal I've used so far on windows and Linux.

<comment><USER13> Do you not use italics or strikethrough, then? Or scrolling regions? (Full- screen TUI programs rely upon setting scrolling regions to significantly speed up pane scrolls, so don't start by saying that you never use them.)

You are not the first person to go overboard calling it the best terminal ever. It clearly is not, yet. The developers themselves acknowledge that there's a way to go, yet, and maintain to-do lists of the many things that it as yet lacks. It does make me wonder, when it has simple deficiencies compared to the likes of XTerm, how seriously the people who claim "best terminal ever" have actually exercised any of these programs.

<comment><USER12> Italics/strikethrough and TUI programs aren't in my use case at all. I'm on windows I'm using my terminal for my shell and not for UI programs.

> It's the best terminal I've used so far on windows and Linux.

Again its the best that I'VE used for MY use cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a tmux user the missing mouse support was a deal-breaker. It seems like I have no excuses left to remain on mintty. :)

<comment><USER15> Each to their own and all but I've always found it weird that some tmux users would spend hours setting up their keyboard driven interfaces (the terminal) and then prefer to use the mouse to switch between different applications running on it. Particularly when tmux has such a great support for keyboard hotkeys. I'm not out to criticise anyone's preferred workflow but it is a pattern that has always taken me a little by surprise.

<comment><USER16> For things like altering split-pane layouts, mouse remains king for both quickly & precisely adjusting width and height - at the same time, no less. Quickly moving focus to 1 random pane out of 6+ is also a single input, whereas with keys it can be up to ~(total number of panes - 1).

It's also a single config option to enable all mouse functionality, whereas setting up keybindings do just the resizing takes several lines.

<comment><USER15> > _For things like altering split-pane layouts, mouse remains king for both > quickly & precisely adjusting width and height - at the same time, no less. > Quickly moving focus to 1 random pane out of 6+ is also a single input, > whereas with keys it can be up to ~(total number of panes - 1)._

You're not taking into account moving your hands from the keyboard and to the mouse, shacking it to find which where and on which screen your mouse cursor is located, and then putting your hands back on the keyboard after the resize.

However what we're really arguing about is negligible micro-optimisations anyway so it's a little silly to say one is faster or slower than another. :)

> _It 's also a single config option to enable all mouse functionality, > whereas setting up keybindings do just the resizing takes several lines._

Keybindings for selecting and resizing panes are already defined in tmux's defaults. You don't need to configure nor enable it. However it is something you'd need to look up, commit to memory, then muscle memory after. Which I guess creates enough of an hurdle that many people haven't bothered to jump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How does Windows Terminal compare to say Cmder

[https://cmder.net/](https://cmder.net/)

I tried terminal 0.9 and it crashed almost immediately (probably related to Japanese or something) so I don't yet have confidence in Windows Terminal

<comment><USER18> Cmder builds on top of cmd.exe, and Windows Terminal is on PowerShell.

Cmder has a super precise and verbose settings UI. WT is config file for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can't really put it to good use unless they release WSL 2 to Windows 10 1909 stable. Opting into the Windows Inside Program requires that you enable full diagnostic data being sent to Microsoft.

<comment><USER20> > Can't really put it to good use unless they release WSL 2 to Windows 10 1909 > stable. Opting into the Windows Inside Program requires that you enable full > diagnostic data being sent to Microsoft.

I use WT and native SSH (windows 10 now has openssh compiled for it and I think it's in default install these days) to connect to Linux boxes instead of say Putty.

<comment><USER19> As do I, but in that case there are few practical benefits opposed to Alacritty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 2020\. v0.10 of terminal

<comment><USER22> Microsoft had to catch up sometime?

<comment><USER23> Finally a great terminal (although still bare bones) for Windows! Just 20 years late... we wanted that back in 2000. Instead if we had to use Windows, we got CMD.EXE that could easily resize vertically and not horizontally.

<comment><USER21> I would say 40 years late, but our point is the same!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Tried Terminal Preview and Hyper and Alacritty to get a decent working terminal, finally ended up using SSH and PuTTY that actually looks okay and works okay. Still has problems with some unicode characters. But PuTTY is mature and had support for mouse since when? 10, 15 years ago?

<comment><USER25> You do realise the difference between a console and a terminal app?

The terminal app is no replacement for PuTTY - they're orthogonal use cases. Terminal is a host app for text-based shells, no more, no less.

<comment><USER26> Console = terminal in my lingo. PuTTY is a console/terminal, plus an SSH client. What definitions are you using by comparison?

<comment><USER13> That is not the widely-used terminology of Microsoft Windows where a console is a specific I/O mechanism, different from a terminal.

* [http://jdebp.uk./FGA/tui-console-and-terminal-paradigms.html](http://jdebp.uk./FGA/tui-console-and-terminal-paradigms.html)

That the word "console" may denote other things, including a part of a pipe organ, is irrelevant. When discussing _Windows Terminal_ one is almost always talking about the _Microsoft Windows_ I/O mechanism, that's been around since Windows NT 3.

* [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/console/consoles](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/console/consoles)

(The parenthetical "terminal" is a relatively recent addition to the doco. Not a wise one in my view, because it confuses more than it clarifies.)

<comment><USER26> That definition isn't really used consistently by Microsoft as far as I've been able to tell (though I think it was in the past). If you go by that traditional Win32 definition then "CreatePseudoConsole" should've been called CreatePseudoTerminal or CreatePTY... after all, Windows already has real console functionality; it doesn't need a pseudo-console. It needs a pseudo- TTY. And if you go by that definition then IMHO the "Windows Terminal" would need to be called the "Windows Console"...

But honestly usage of the word "console" was clearly not what the parent's argument was about, which makes it kind of irrelevant to the whole discussion...

Edit: Regarding your edit linking to where even Microsoft says "A console (or terminal) ...": you can dismiss it all you want, but I rest my case.

<comment><USER13> It's only irrelevant if your immediately equating console and terminal in response, and then _asking for_ a definition, was irrelevant. Were you irrelevant? (-:

I dismiss it because there's a mountain of usage contradicting that johnny- come-lately parenthetical. It's a well-known distinction; documented by lots of people, including me for about two decades now (actually longer, 2000 is simply when I wrote the FGA).

And if your case is based upon the Win32 API function naming scheme, your case is founded on sand. I should not need to explain why to any Win32 developer. (-:

In reality, the thing that ConPTY gives one is _not_ a pseudo-terminal, because the wrapped applications are talking to _consoles_ as far as they are concerned. It's not the simple implementation that I would have chosen ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818942)).

It's a much more ambitious architecture, that aims to let terminal I/O applications talk to Win32 consoles as if they were old 1980s terminals, to let 1990s and later Win32 console applications have their I/O driven via systems that ship terminal I/O, and to let both the old 1980s terminal I/O applications and the 1990s and later console I/O applications almost seamlessly share a common screen and input buffer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't know if this is by design, but Ctrl+V still doesn't work. Shift+Insert does though.

<comment><USER28> Meanwhile my corporation just bought new HP ZBook 14 which don't have Insert key. Instead it has dumb phone keys and something with a monitor painted on, 3 useless buttons instead of proper keys. No sysrq, no pause/break either. And this modes is supposedly for "work", not for gaming or media (from marketing point of view).

It is so frustrating to press extra keys just to have ctrl+ins and shift+ins.

<comment><USER29> Can't you give it back to the corporation? Else, this is only the beginning of your frustrations. The next upgrade would almost certainly be worse.

<comment><USER28> This is a centralized upgrade, so they won't change the contract just for me and we don't have a BYOD policy here. Anyway - external KB alleviates it mostly, I'm just ranting at a corporations making "Pro" or "Workstation" devices clearly downgraded for these same categories - professional workers. Macbooks without F keys, lenovo cutting keyboards from best in industry to "meh" and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Any good tips and tricks on how to get the max out of Windows Terminal?

<comment><USER31> tmux

<comment><USER32> There's a great guide on how to set up tmux on WSL here: [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/a-linux-dev-environment-on- wi...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/a-linux-dev-environment-on-windows-with- wsl-docker-tmux-and-vscode)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there a way to resize a pane? Normally one of my panes is just to run a process (like a local server) where I don't need to see output from it and 2 or 3 lines would suffice

</comment><comment><USER34> looking good -- looks like they're taking the good parts of iterm2 and other terminal emulators -- keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER35> Windows desperately needs a decent terminal. The parody used in cmd or the Ubuntu app is ludicrously bad.

<comment><USER36> This is what you're looking for. Windows Terminal is very good and very rapidly improving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> OK, now I am really confused...

I can, right now, launch 4 different "terminals" in windows:

      > cmd -- gives me the old dos-like command line
      > wsl -- linux bash shell, which distro.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      > ubuntu -- ubuntu distribution, "on-top" of wsl?
      > powershell -- new microsoft command line

Now, there's a "windows terminal"??? I don't get it. Is it supposed to be a "terminal emulator" like putty or terminus that can use any of the above 4? Does it emulate a VT100? with mouse?

This is confusing, how do these 5 things fit together?

<comment><USER38> Yes, Windows terminal can run any of those shells.

Shell = interactive program.

Terminal = thing that displays a shell and sends input to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Why is she using PowerShell Core (v6) instead of PowerShell 7? This kind of shows that Windows Terminal developers are not that excited about PowerShell.

What's the relationship between PowerShell and Windows Terminal anyways? Which are you supposed to use for what? Are you supposed to run one within the other?

<comment><USER40> > What's the relationship between PowerShell and Windows Terminal anyways? > Which are you supposed to use for what? Are you supposed to run one within > the other?

Seems quite clear to me. Powershell is a shell, while Windows Terminal is a console. Windows Terminal can run any shell, such as Bash, Powershell 5, Powershell 6, cmd.exe, git shell, azure shell, etc.

Instead of each shell having its own console implementation, you have one, Windows Terminal.

<comment><USER15> > Windows Terminal is a console

Terminal emulator :)

"Console" can have a multitude of different meanings.

<comment><USER40> Sure. While technically correct that's also confusing to anyone who doesn't know what a terminal was/is, and why it has to be emulated!

The entire terminology is a mess :p

<comment><USER15> I agree but it is what it is. The world is full of terminology that are steeped in legacy and sometimes don't even mean what the words literally describe. Why is a save icon a blue and grey box? What discs are those DJs spinning on their MBPs? Why do people hoover with their Dysons and Google in Bing? Why is fibre internet called "broadband" when fibre optics operate on a narrowband? Human languages are a clusterfuck at times.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best tech conferences? - <AUTHOR>

What do you think are the best tech conferences and why?<p>Feel free to list any cool tech conference but I am particularly interested in conferences about downloadable software. <comment><USER2> I've probably been to a dozen. The best tech conference I've been to was FutureRuby. Single track, two days, great content, well-planned parties. Those guys know how to throw a conference. Too bad it was a two-time event (more of less).

Beyond that, I'd take the annual local Bar Camp over most national/international conferences. A strong local tech community is really important.</comment>


Disney charging ISPs for faster access - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/cable-group-turns-net-neutrality-around-over-isp-access-fees.ars

<comment><USER2> So, broadband companies want to be able to charge their customers for tiered access, but they want laws preventing websites from doing the same thing to them? How does that many any sense at all?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if this is the coming business model for newspapers?</comment>


Has college dropout done the impossible and created a perpetual motion machine? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/300042 <comment><USER2> If you tell me that Newtons theory of gravity is wrong I'll hear you out.

If you tell me Einsteins theory of relativity doesn't hold up I'll hear you out.

But if you tell me that the second law of thermodynamics is wrong I'll tell you you're a crackhead...

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth, you may find the fluctuation theorem (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluctuation_theorem>) interesting. It shows that the second law is incorrect in the same way as Newton's theory of gravity was: both are accurate, in their domain of applicability, but neither had such boundaries well defined. Where Newton's law fails for very heavy systems, the second law fails for very small (though by a far smaller amount).

<comment><USER2> Yes I did find that interesting. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Misleading title.

Form the article:

"There's no talk of perpetual motion. No whisper of broken scientific laws or free energy. Zahn would never go there (...). But he does see the potential for making electric motors more efficient, and this itself is no small feat."

</comment><comment><USER5> I love how these guys never actually, say, create a website that describes the machine. If he was really so keen to have it scrutinised by the scientific community, he'd publish _something_ to go on. You know, enough to allow it to be independently repeated?

With the limited information available, and assuming there's no hidden secrets behind this device (it runs on batteries, say, and the whole thing is an attempt to fool investors) then I suspect the crux lies in the permanent magnets. They're not permanent if you extract energy from them...

</comment><comment><USER6> No.

<comment><USER7> other articles imply it does give a boost.

is it a definite no?

<comment><USER8> Yes. Are you unfamiliar with the fact that crackpots invent perpetual motion machines at the rate of several per year, and that they've been doing so for a hundred years or more?

Believe me, there are few areas of technology that have been raked over as thoroughly as this one.

Articles imply a lot of things. Some journalists will believe absolutely anything.

And who knows what this MIT prof is doing, taking calls from guys like this? Maybe he hopes to gently steer the poor guy into the therapy that he clearly needs. Maybe he likes seeing his own name in print. Or maybe he's a crackpot, too. The fact that he's an MIT professor is hardly very reassuring. I've met some _very_ eccentric Ivy League profs...

<comment><USER9> Interestingly, no matter how many times these people turn out to be crackpots, the next one gets even more media coverage. It must be because the significance of a perpetual motion machine (unlimited free clean energy) brings out wishful thinking in everyone it touches.

That or our nation's physics education is not so hot.

<comment><USER5> If the purported energy source is really unlimited, could we really consider it clean?

<comment><USER8> This is a fun way to approach the paradox of perpetual motion: if we had a machine to generate energy from nothing, (or to magically teleport unlimited amounts of energy from Alpha Centauri, or whatever) we'd soon fill up our Earth with lots of extra matter (matter=energy, don'tcha know), and eventually the planet would collapse into a black hole!

Or, much more likely, we'd heat the Earth up enough that we could successfully radiate the excess energy out into space. Al Gore would not like that plan one bit.

Of course, while you're violating the second law of thermodynamics, I suppose you could always build a second machine that takes the exhaust heat from your perpetual-motion-powered cars and planes and sends it back to wherever it came from.

<comment><USER10> I remember from my Thermodynamics class that modern gasoline engines are only about 37% theoretically efficient (most of the energy is lost as heat). Even if his invention doesn't violate scientific paradigms and is merely a more efficient induction motor, it might build a market.

<comment><USER8> Well, sure, but you've got to ask yourself which is more likely: that the chef with no science education, no professional experience with motors, no understanding of thermodynamics, and so little knowledge of his field that he allows his invention to be branded as a _perpetual motion machine_ (as if that will enhance his credibility!) has made a previously unknown breakthrough in induction motor efficiency? Or that he has merely constructed an insanely complicated-looking but otherwise uninteresting variation on previously known physics?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You may wish to evaluate this fellow with the Crackpot Index ( <http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html> ). The index is like spamassassin for kooks.

<comment><USER12> There's one item on that list that I've always had a gripe with:

> 10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any > flaws in your theory.

This is legitimate, sometimes. See for example the prize offered for cryptanalysis of Salsa20.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salsa20>

Oh, and the Galileo thing ought to be worth at least 75 points.

<comment><USER13> Wolfram offered prize money just recently to somebody to prove that some small automata he found was turing complete.

<comment><USER12> That too. I didn't want to use that example because someone would have retorted that Wolfram wasn't really a false positive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The best way to gain credibility for his device is to employ his invention to create some sort of useful device. Maybe create a car that never needs any sort of fuel, or provide free energy for everyone. If he comes out with that, I'll be a little more inclined to hear him out.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Check this out:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIvZJ9xGutI>

Brighter version: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9UKcGTcfwo&watch_respons...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9UKcGTcfwo&watch_response)

</comment><comment><USER15> i haven't read this, but can confidently answer "no".

</comment><comment><USER16> No. If anything like this is ever legitimate, then it is harnessing of zero point energy. And a big middle finger extended to the universe and the laws of thermodynamics.

Presumably shortly after, if the universe is a VR simulation, it will stop as the people running it get annoyed we hacked into the system/power source.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a hidebound self-appointed defender of the scientific orthodoxy [1], I say this is almost certainly a bunch of bullshit.

[1] <http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html>

</comment><comment><USER18> _Such an unbelievable invention would challenge the laws of physics, a no-no in the rigid world of serious science._

The article contains other hints that the scientific community is a bit like the Church a few hundred years ago -- rigidly attached to the status quo.

That's an odd thing to claim, considering all the new scientific ideas we've had in the last century.

<comment><USER19> "Science progresses one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck

To be fair, revolutionary scientific advances spend a long time in the heresy box. The most recent I can think of was the bacterial causes of ulcers... took 20 years and some dramatic self-experiments before it was taken seriously enough to confirm.

That said, the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence required.

<comment><USER20> _The Nature of Scientific Revolutions_ develops that idea a lot more, for anyone interested.

<comment><USER18> That book is mistaken (it goes so far as to deny the possibility of scientific progress), see instead The Fabric of Reality which comments on Kuhn and provides a better theory.

[http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Reality-Parallel-Universes- Impl...](http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Reality-Parallel-Universes- Implications/dp/014027541X/)

Edit: btw you got the title wrong.

<comment><USER20> Right, it's the _Structure of scientific revolutions_.

How is the book mistaken? Did you read it? Can you condense what you think is wrong?

I don't think he denies scientific progress. He addressed that point in the post-scriptum, if I remember correctly.

<comment><USER18> Page 160 (start of chapter 13):

"The preceding pages have carried my schematic description of scientific development as far as it can go in this essay. Nevertheless, they cannot quite provide a conclusion. If this description has at all caught the essential structure of a science's continuing evolution, it will simultaneously have posed a special problem: Why should the enterprise sketched above move steadily ahead in ways that, say, art, political theory, or philosophy does not? Why is progress a perquisite reserved almost exclusively for activities we call science? The most usual answers to that question have been denied in the body of this essay. We must conclude it by asking what substitutes can be found."

Page 162:

"Viewed from within any single community, however, whether of scientists or of non-scientists, the result of successful creative work _is_ progress."

163:

"These doubts about progress arise, however, in the sciences too. Throughout the pre-paradigm period when there is a multiplicity of competing schools, evidence of progress, except within schools, is very hard to find."

"part of the answer to the problem of progress lies simply in the eye of the beholder."

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-

He also manages to compare scientists to characters form 1984, and claim that we choose which fields to call science based on which ones appear to make progress, so science seems to achieve progress in part through a selection effect.

So, he takes it for granted that we don't make progress in a variety of fields. He attacks scientific progress as subjective -- a matter of biased points of view. He has doubts about progress in general which extend to science. Part of the answer, he says, is that science doesn't actually make progress. And, he says, the last 12 chapters denied the common sense views on why and how science makes progress, and he hopes to come up with a substitute, but he isn't even trying very hard (because he doesn't really believe in progress very much, in general).

OK, I read some Kuhn for you. _shudder_. Someone go read Fabric of Reality now :) It is full of good explanations.

<comment><USER20> Thanks a lot for the citation tracking. From the passages you quote, maybe he does deny progress in some sense, so you were right... Still, his position seems at least defensible, and anyway, that topic wasn't central to the theme of the book.

I thought that the book was very interesting for the perspective it cast on discoveries in the physical sciences. The description of the state of confusion preceding paradigms, the establishment of paradigm, and so forth, that was a nice way of looking at it.</comment></comment>


Terminal Forever - <AUTHOR> http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/12/22/terminal-forever/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure where I came across this concept, but I've heard the use of a terminal described as entering into an interactive conversation with the computer.

That is, where users of a point-and-click interface might interact with a computer superficially, the command-line allows for a fluidity of expression and progression of intent that it's extremely difficult to supplant.

When you realize this, the mistake this comic makes is obvious: the command- line is, for many problem domains, simply a superior method of human-computer interaction. In fact, in many ways, it's the GUI that squanders the immense power we have at our fingertips, as it frequently makes it more difficult to express intent rather than less.

For example, here's a basic task: Find all files in a given directory with spaces in their names, and replace those spaces with underscores.

At a command-line I can think of any number of ways to solve this problem. I'd probably opt for a combination of find, sed, and bash looping.

Now try to do this efficiently in any existing GUI interface that isn't purpose built for this exact operation.

The conversations we enter into on the command-line allow us to iteratively build up solutions to problems, solving them with simple, composable tools. There is simply no GUI equivalent.

<comment><USER3> The "conversation with your computer" aside (which basically comes down to "REPLs trump more static solutions"), I find that many really awesome solutions for problems came out of restrictions on resources or interaction possibilities. I assume that Vi and its text operation "language" wouldn't be invented today, even if it never existed; the modern mind wouldn't try _not_ to use a GUI and base everything on keystrokes. It's far more likely that the according programmer would go "well that'd be a nice feature! I'll make a context menu entry for it!".

From a similar perspective: The terminal has by far the best options when it comes down to interacting with program output based on text. There's nothing comparable in the GUI world. Yes, using the terminal to edit pictures would be a Bad Idea™[1][2], but so is using a GUI to do the terminal's job. Pick adequate tools for your job - and if you refuse to: at least don't bother those who do.

[1]: Also, did anyone else note how Blade Runner features the _worst_ user interface for any task in modern sci-fi? I'm talking about the "picture enhancement" scene. That is not the task you want to control with voice input. I imagine terminal-based solutions for image editing would have similar interactions.

[2]: Well, there's Image Magick and the like, but those excel because they're built for repeatability, not interaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is anyone else bothered by the last panel?

The first three have a straight progression from some bulky brick-like computer to something more mobile, and yet the last panel uses projection of some sorts. Wouldn't that be a regression of sorts?

I already have the feeling _now_ that if anything will succeed in killing the terminal, it'll be those tiny touchscreens in our phones. The problem with those is that they're actually _useful_ on the go.

Now I'm left wondering how a terminal would look like if it was adapted to such a small screen (half of which is a keyboard) instead of just copied over from the desktop.

</comment><comment><USER4> They'll have to pry my terminal out of my cold dead hands.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just saying... 1 TB of RAM is likely, but 150 GHz is _extremely_ unlikely.

<comment><USER6> Yep. We have 1TB RAM on our production boxes today where I work; but 150 GHz is pretty far from being true...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll have a buckling spring keyboard for that hologram computer, myself.</comment>


Bitcoinica MtGox account compromised - <AUTHOR> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93074 <comment><USER2> This is starting to prove -- the hard way -- why regulations, certifications, and all that other stuff that feels like meaningless overhead the majority of the time has become a grudgingly accepted part of our lives.

It comes back to the most difficult problem: you inevitably need to trust someone, so how do you minimize your risk in that trust? I always thought the Bitcoin trust issues would revolve around the inability to trust that a service would be delivered once the provider is paid -- something that could theoretically be worked out with their reputation over the long run in a free market.

But it's unsettling to see that breaches like this don't evidently leave the impression with the Bitcoin community that a believer in the free market might hope they would, that providers in this market might not be driven to produce quality and reliability because somehow there isn't the demand for it.

<comment><USER3> As the big banks in the USA have proven, government regulation is definitively not the answer to the question "How can you know whom to trust?"

Seriously. Knock that shit off. It's a red herring.

You can't abstract away the personal process of choosing trust anchors and metrics, no matter how hard you try.

Changing your trust anchor to "the government" just means you end up getting fucked on a larger scale, over a larger timeline.

<comment><USER4> _As the big banks in the USA have proven, government regulation is definitively not the answer to the question "How can you know whom to trust?"_

A common sentiment: "Big Government doesn't work." No, it doesn't work. But in many cases, it's _less broken_ then no government a/k/a The Free Market. I'm reminded of Winston Churchill's quip: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

It could be that trusting democratic governments to manage a monetary system is fundamentally unsound. I'm listening: What alternative do you propose, and how is it going to scale beyond protecting the few wealthy info-elite that can protect themselves?

<comment><USER5> Without _any_ rules, there is no such thing as personal property and therefore a free market cannot exist. You're describing anarchy, where people take what they want by force.

<comment><USER3> > You're describing anarchy, where people take what they want by force.

Like taxes taken by the government with the consent of the majority? Anarchy is solving for the general case.

<comment><USER6> You're free to move to someplace where they do not impose taxes, like Somalia.

Of course, you will have to vie with various competing warlords, all of whom will demand "protection money", but that's the price of freedom from taxation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Unbeknownst to us, Tihan was using the mtgox api key as the password for a > website called LastPass._

Unbelievable. They decide to use a password escrow service... and use a duplicate password to secure it. This is 100% cargo cult security. Clearly whoever did this had no idea what the value of LastPass was, just that it was what all the cool security kids were doing. The choice of the high-value BtGox key was (staggeringly) unfortunate, but any dupulicate would be equally ignorant.

Just unbelievable.

<comment><USER8> It's even beyond using a duplicate password which as you point out is ignorant. They were so unclear on the concept that they used a password that was written down into their source code, and once that source code was stolen they didn't change that password!

They also failed to utilize the two different free multi-factor options LastPass offers (not to mention the premium ones).

LastPass tries to educate people and push them on not utilizing the same password anywhere with a security challenge, but that clearly didn't teach the concept here.

Their last breach involved losing access to their email: firstname.lastname@example.com -- so what email did they use here with LastPass? firstname.lastname@example.com They didn't utilize the security email either.

It is all unbelievable.

How do we drag this out of cargo cult security?

I see some are pushing certifications; If I made a free LastPass certification that both proves you understand the concepts, and that you're currently putting them into practice by showing that you/your company has multi-factor enabled would people demanded it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The app and its infrastructure was created by a single, very inexperienced programmer. The app's original author, Zhou Tong, is only 17[1].

Not that age is an indicator of experience in general, but it's certainly the case here. I'm honestly shocked at the amount of trust placed in Bitcoinica.

An interesting display of the oft mentioned Stockholm Syndrome happening elsewhere on the forum here <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93100.0>

[1] [http://coinabul.tumblr.com/post/24022841613/10qs-zhou- tong-b...](http://coinabul.tumblr.com/post/24022841613/10qs-zhou-tong- bitcoinica)

Edit: added reference.

<comment><USER10> Well I do agree with you that Bitcoinica was not 100% secure. This hack really has nothing to do with the app or its infrastructure.

\- I didn't set the password. \- I didn't have the power to change the password. \- I shouldn't have access to the account.

The root cause is LastPass account being stolen.

<comment><USER9> Agreed that you are not personally responsible for this particular attack, though I see it as the latest in a series of cascading failures, beginning with the initial attack. It's the lack of consideration of security - that can only be baked in from the outset - that's the real root cause.

If the application had been self-hosted in a physically secured location, the attack that exposed the LastPass credentials would not have happened (email reset of root passwords). It may not be cool, but the cloud/consumer-level hosting is not appropriate for applications handling large sums of money.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. But one of the team members explicitly released the source code and that caused the hacker to correctly guess LastPass account. (At least this is the most "right" version of the story I've heard.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't believe people entrust virtual money to sites like these which in general - but consistently - seem to be run by amateurs.

<comment><USER12> AFAIK Bitcoinica was the only site offering BTC derivatives, so presumably some people figured the potential profit was worth the risk. More generally, _all_ Bitcoin exchanges seem to be run by amateurs, so people have to deal with them to cash out.

<comment><USER11> I wonder why. There seems to be a huge gap in the market for a professionally run enterprise here. Or at least, anything more focused beyond students half- assing it part-time.

<comment><USER12> Bitcoin market activity may not be large enough to ever pay back the significant cost of building a secure exchange. Also, as TradeHill and CampBX discovered, people just won't move off of MtGox no matter how bad it is.

<comment><USER13> People won't move off of MtGox for a simple reason: it has by far the best liquidity.

The only way for another exchange to get a foothold would be to offer similar liquidity, which would mean taking the other side of most trades themselves. This would be very risky and they would need deep pockets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Putting aside the way the Bitcoinica account got compromised, I wanted to mention that I learned the hard way that either Mt.Gox is rife with security holes or a lot of these breaches are actually insider jobs from someone working at MtGox : A month back I realized that I had around 40 BTC lying around and decided to sell them on MtGox. First, my Mt.Gox is mostly inactive, so I actually had to reset my password and setup a new one that I had never used before. Then, after I sold my coins, I realized I cannot transfer my money to my Dwolla account; MtGox needs a scanned copy of my SSN! While I was deliberating whether I should trust MtGox with my SSN, 24 hours had passed, and I got an automated email from MtGox saying my money had been converted to bitcoins and has been transferred! Everything gone! So, the fact that : 1\. My account was mostly inactive. 2\. I had recently changed my account password to a new more complex one : 2 upper caps, 5 lower case, 2 numbers and one special character. 3\. My money was sitting in my account for only 24 hours. 4\. The time between my money getting converted to bitcoins and the actual transfer was just a few seconds, as if an automated script scans all accounts and the performs some tasks on them. So, in short, please don't put all the blame on Bitcoinica. Something's wrong at MtGox too :)

<comment><USER15> I've recently had upwards of $10K on mtgox and had no problems. Could it be that you have some malware with a keylogger on your computer?

<comment><USER14> Not that there aren't any keyloggers for Linux, I never found anything suspicious, nor have any of my other accounts been breached into. But yeah, if there is a keylogger, I bet it got installed from the Mt.Gox website itself ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would've thought that no one would keep using Bitconica after their first major breach but here I am, shocked by the fact that people still kept trusting them with their Bitcoins

<comment><USER17> I've lost count of how many times they have been breached. Why don't they get independent pen testers and get them to test their system? Surely paying a pen tester $5k is much better than the amount of negative publicity you get when you lose $350K

<comment><USER9> Three times apparently (from the forum):

      Feb ~ 200k USD
      May ~ 91k USD
      Today ~ 300k USD

<comment><USER18> Someone is going to buy a lot of drugs.

<comment><USER19> Please go back to reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> MtGox transfer limit maxed out: 40,000 BTC + 40,000 US$.

At current BTC valuation ($7.66) that's 346,400 US$.

By the way, the full Bitcoinica trading platform source code is posted there: <http://depositfiles.com/files/2p6zvadzs>

<comment><USER20> Doesn't seem to work out of the box.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't had the time to try it myself (still in the office). All I know is it's RoR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Step 1: Throw together a Bitcoin "exchange"

Step 2: Announce you were "compromised"

Step 3: Profit!

<comment><USER22> Step 2.5: Pay tons of restitution or get sued into next millenium

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands This seems like it has turned into a game for the hackers now. Bitcoinica get breached, re-load their defenses and then its just a matter of time before the hackers get in again.

I don't think anything nefarious is going on, but it would appear there is little or no consequences for breaches which makes it a low risk, high reward opportunity.

If I were them, I'd kill the business, completely start over with a new company name, new site, new everything. As long as they're in business, they are going to remain a target.

<comment><USER23> How would a new company name help anything? If they want customers to be able to find them again, surely so will the hackers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it really that hard to imagine that this is an inside job? Come on... 4 or 5 big money-losing breaches? To the tune of what? A million dollars? And nobody is talking about cooperation between insiders and this "hacker" ?

<comment><USER25> Hanlon's razor. If anything, attacking via their hosting company shows bitconica are more secure than the vast majority of internet companies. The attacks took more effort than those on HBgary (a dedicated security firm), LinkedIn, Lastfm (who I know have more clue than most internet companies), ....

Even in 2012, internet security is still a joke. There's no need to invoke conspiracies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hate to say this but if this sort of sloppiness continues, the bitcoin brand will be trampled so badly it will never get off the ground.

<comment><USER26> Too late, I'm afraid. Who, today, uses Bitcoin, except for criminals and speculants?

<comment><USER27> That's a fallacious argument. The reason it's mainly used by criminals and speculators is because it's brand new, as far as currencies go. If Bitcoin _had_ been used by lots of people already who then abandoned it, you might be able to make the argument you're trying to make.

And one thing I've noticed it increasingly being used for is basic (small- scale) financial services - for example, loans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It is worth noting that (some of) the people behind Intersango acquired and took over operations of Bitcoinica just before the recent hack that took Bitcoinica offline since May 2012 (see <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81581.0>)

Intersango is currently the second largest bitcoin exchange after MtGox, and the largest bitcoin exchange for GBP (see <http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/>)

From their site(<https://intersango.com/>):

"Having never suffered a break in or major technical error, we are confident in our abilities to lead bitcoin into its rightful place in the real world."

Some blame for the May hack could be arguably attributed to Zhou Tong, however, having taken over for 3 months since...

<comment><USER29> Mt. Gox offers two-factor authentication methods (Yubikey and Google Authenticator). Neither was used. Lastpass offers two-factor authentication methods (Yubikey and Google Authenticator). Neither was used.

But also, nobody who also works with Intersango had access to either of those two accounts. [Update: I may have been mislead on that as there is now conflicting information: [http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93074.msg1028157#msg1...](http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93074.msg1028157#msg1028157) ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This might explain the unusual rise of BTC vs. USD.

The thief might have just traded those dollars to bitcoins which makes them harder to trace.

<comment><USER31> Another possible explanation for the increasing rate is that someone is offering 7% interest on BTC: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.0>

If that offer is really enough to make the price rise, this might be exactly what this guy is speculating on.

<comment><USER32> You mean 3372% interest— The 7% number is _per-week_.

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure why anyone would believe him enough to send him money. Perhaps they don't understand how absurd that claimed interest rate is? :x

<comment><USER34> If the money were funding a payday loan shop, that's the kind of interest rate they charge to their customers.

ie, take in money via Bitcoin, loan out dollars to poor people as payday loans at very high rapidly compounding interest rate, pay somewhat smaller interest rate to Bitcoin funders.

<comment><USER33> I don't think payday loan shops are ever constrained by the amount of capital they can loan out, though. If they were, it would be trivial for them to borrow money at normal rates (say 10%) from a traditional bank and solve that problem. I'm sure they are much more constrained by the physical locations/marketing/accessibility of customers/etc and no money at 3000+%/year is going to help them solve those constraints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I feel badly for the people that lost money, and hope that some legal action is taken against the organization.

</comment><comment><USER36> Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

<comment><USER37> How about four times? :)

<comment><USER38> I've got a bridge to sell you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I know nothing about bitcoin, can someone provide a tldr about why it is (seemingly) so difficult to build a secure site around exchanging these things?

I don't get how you can simply "Loose" a few hundred grand without a horse head winding up at the food of your bed.

<comment><USER40> If you run a service where you need to pay bitcoins out to users then that means your systems have to respond to user input and send money to them.

It turns out this is pretty tricky to secure.

The current popular strategy is to have hot and cold wallets. A hot wallet is online and can make payouts automatically.

A cold wallet is kept offline (airgap) and brought online by a human being to refill the hot wallet when it is running low. This only really makes sense if your service needs to secure large amounts of bitcoin for a long time without using them.

This recent bitcoinica hack is pretty inexplicable, they were keeping a large amount of coin in an account at an exchange called MtGox. This is effectively a hot wallet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I know there is a temptation to blame bitcoin itself here, but wow... this is just some amateurish security on the part of these bitcoin sites. If the big banks were doing this, it would be cataclysmic disaster. Instead, the big banks have found other ways to drive themselves (and your money) into the ditch, and it dwarfs anything that bitcoin sites can manage to lose.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This looks like the actual BTC transaction: <http://blockchain.info/tx- index/11999735>

</comment><comment><USER42> I assume 'GP' means 'Guilty Party'? If so, it's kind of telling that a community has to use 'guilty party' enough to start abbreviating it...

<comment><USER43> GP means 'General Partner' - Bitcoinica LP is Limited Partnership with a General Partner and a Limited Partner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6mYGcNgKn8>

</comment><comment><USER45> Perhaps this is the work of an insider.

</comment><comment><USER46> Reusing passwords. Check.

Using passwords after they've been known to be compromised. Check.

Storing passwords protecting north of a million dollars in an online password storage system and not even using the provided two-factor auth. Priceless.

This is just like the Mtgox guys claiming the bcrypt was not good after getting caught using unsalted MD5.

This is amateur bullshit and the lack of actual penalties makes me think I should have finished the exchange I started writing. You know, one where I would have the common sense to store financial values as decimals and not floats.

These are such naively simple mistakes, it just is hard to fathom.

The first reply's conclusion is spot on

 _You failed to disable Mt.Gox API,_

 _You failed to protect mt. Gox with a Yubikey,_

 _You failed to change Lastpass password,_

 _You failed to protect Lastpass with one of their many 2nd factor auth. (some free)_

This is embarrassing to watch.

<comment><USER7> Surely you mean integer, not "decimal", right? I'm not an expert, but to my understanding none of the values in the bitcoin protocol are expressed as base-10 fractions.

It's a nit, obviously, but if you're going to ding someone for naive mistakes...

<comment><USER47> Fixed-point DECIMAL representation in the database is just as good as storing Bitcoin values as integers. Baked into the field definition is the amount of precision. And Python and other languages have features to work with fixed- point numbers. This approach relieves the mental overhead and complexity of converting to integers (which might overflow a 32-bit int) and back all the time.

<comment><USER7> I just looked this up (feel free to correct me if you think I've missed something): the value field in a TxOut is a 64 bit unsigned integer. It's true that by convention the unit is 1e-07 BTC (i.e. a decimal fraction), but nothing in the protocol actually cares, the "decimalness" is just in what you call it. Implementing this with decimal math is just wrong, and likely to break your implementation due to subtle bugs. Storing it in a database as a decimal fixed point is plausible as it prints nicely, but in no way would I consider that choice "just as good as" a quantity that was designed to fit in a native machine word.

<comment><USER47> Yes, the internal representation of Bitcoins is the 64-bit unsigned INT, but I'm talking about storing customer account balances, trade prices, etc. I would not use DECIMAL if I were writing an alternative client for Bitcoin or for some other software that must create network transactions at a low level.

Even the RPC protocol for the main Bitcoin client returns fixed-point numbers and expects non-integers for input arguments [1].

But I think we can all agree that using FLOAT for this kind of thing is just plain wrong.

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Original_Bitcoin_client/API_Calls...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Original_Bitcoin_client/API_Calls_list)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Ouch.... <http://qrauth.com> \- Login using QR codes

Password is stored on your iOS device and securely transported to the site you're login into when you scan a QR code. No more excused for duplicate/easy to remember passwords!

<comment><USER49> You should probably put in a disclaimer that you created QRAuth, it looks somewhat spammy.</comment></comment>


React Native Screenshot Testing - <AUTHOR> I've recently published a library for screenshot testing of any React Native application. Please, fill free to use and and leave a feedback. So that I cab improve it. Please, find it here https://github.com/rumax/react-native-PixelsCatcher <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/rumax/react-native- PixelsCatcher](https://github.com/rumax/react-native-PixelsCatcher)</comment>


Rails is slow? Who cares! - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wonsys.net/posts/19-rails-is-slow-who-cares/

<comment><USER2> "The costs of using Rails are much smaller than its benefits."

Can we get that stated in a more...numerically convincing way?</comment>