Break down of a C64 demo effect - <AUTHOR> http://nurpax.github.io/posts/2018-06-07-c64-filled-sinewave.html <comment><USER2> David Murray, the 8 Bit Guy on Youtube, he doesn't have the best delivery but he's a fascinating watch with a lot of his videos. His favorite is the C64 and has done some amazing videos about the hardware and history, etc, and has talked about how various tricks like this work. It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell.

<comment><USER3> > It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every > little aspect were/are clever as hell.

If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. It was the only way you'd get anything done and if there is one thing that will bring out the hacker in people it is a bunch of unreasonable constraints and a job that needs to be done anyway.

<comment><USER4> A lot of demo effects are almost like magic tricks --- before you understand how they're done, they seem like impossible magic; but once you do, you think "that's so simple, why didn't I think of that?"

Animation by essentially "panning" inside a larger pre-rendered image is one of those tricks:

[http://norecess.cpcscene.net/the-elders- scrollers.html](http://norecess.cpcscene.net/the-elders-scrollers.html)

<comment><USER5> Old-school demos have another common trait with magic. Like the best stage magic, you _know_ you are being fooled - but even after seeing how the trick is done, you remain amazed by it.

The best one I have seen: Cubase-64 [0]

0: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=artEQkifGG0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=artEQkifGG0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> VGA has redefinable character sets. I tried doing some animation with them back in the day, but I ran into some kind of limitation that I don't recall. I was trying to accomplish an animation effect by altering the character definitions in realtime, which I recall being very slow. It never occurred to me to do something like this. Now it'll be everything I can do to stop myself from trying this on an old PC! Goodbye weekend productivity!

<comment><USER7> Redefining the character set was how some text-mode programs like the old Norton suite got "graphical" mouse cursors and the like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who spend half their teenage years drawing on graph paper creating custom character sets for use with graphics and large sprites, this is a pretty cool and novel way to do an animation.

</comment><comment><USER9> I loved this writeup, original author of it, whenever you see these comments. Thanks for writing this up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Clever stuff. I like that the author used modern techniques (python) to generate the custom C64 character set.

<comment><USER11> That was usually the case "back in the day", people would use their Amigas and Ataris to prep work - I'd use my Atari ST and GFA Basic to generate all sorts of lookup tables which was too tedious to do on the C-64 (esp. if all you had was a "datasette")

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Old schooler here, mainly Amiga 500. If you want to drown in old and new c64 stuff, visit:

[http://www.cascade64.de](http://www.cascade64.de)

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice demo. Reminds me of a well done Galaxians clone for Atari 400/800 that used programmable character set animation for the aliens. It was impressive.

<comment><USER7> Fun fact: The Commodore VIC-20 lacked hardware sprites, so programming the character set was how you did any animation on it. There were still some pretty amazing games given that limitation.</comment></comment>


Presentation Matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzM7aadofZk

<comment><USER2> This guy pitched his business on the Canadian Dragon's Den (inspiration behind Shark Tank) and all the VC's turned him down.

It's a great novelty, and has been a hit with CND consumers ever since</comment>


How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ <comment><USER2> What was suspected about government abuse of power turns out to have been nothing compared to the scope of it.

Here are some of my suggestions in response: 1\. Stand up on mass, digitally and in person, for what you believe in - don't shy from people sneering or judging that you are distrustful of the existing structures of powers. 2\. Exclude the people who support this type of spookery, from investment bankers, to hawking politicians, from polite company. Whether you meet them at a party, or a plane, shun and shame them. 3\. Crank up the noise. Write, make, do what you can to get more stuff out there. 4\. Don't be singular. Be the complexity. 5\. Never believe again. Demand evidence, oversight, & review processes. Demand transparency. 6\. Commit to fixing what's broken. Fix the drug wars, fix the election system, fix the income inequalities, fix the racial divide. etc. 7\. ? what else?

ps. Any obligatory comments about the obligatory NSA jokes?

<comment><USER3> > 2\. Exclude the people who support this type of spookery, from investment > bankers, to hawking politicians, from polite company. Whether you meet them > at a party, or a plane, _shun and shame them_.

This is a remarkably effective method to alienate people who are "on the fence." These are precisely the people that you need for suggestion #1 to be effective.

<comment><USER2> I guess I wasn't talking about people on the fence, I was thinking more about those that either participating by proxy, or participating directly. However, I may disagree with your claim that social pressure would alienate people on the fence. Bush's 'you are either with us or against us', was surprisingly effective politics at the time.

<comment><USER3> > _Bush 's 'you are either with us or against us', was surprisingly effective > politics at the time._

I am curious how you came to this conclusion? Maybe this is more of a personal observations and is colored by your political leanings and those that you are surrounded by? I know a lot of people that were not turned on by the "with us or against us" line. I also think that it did not go over well in the international political arena.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps it only appeared effective in shifting the center in support of the war. It didn't have much effect on myself or those around me. But I think that there has to be a social function to be able to call out the people who are doing this work, or who are supporting this work. It's people who are doing this - not some nameless bureaucracy or some autonomous machine. People are responsible for this, and we need to find ways of holding them accountable. Socially or otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber > world"

This isn't just an attack on the internet, as Greenwald portrays it, it's an attack on people and free will. It's intended to get people to do or say something that they might have done differently otherwise, in response to the "crime" of being a pain in the ass, or even a threat, to the powerful.

> In fact, the discussion of many of these techniques occurs in the context of > using them in lieu of "traditional law enforcement" against people suspected > (but not charged or convicted) of ordinary crimes or, more broadly still, > "hacktivism", ...

Is this the best we can do with this civilization, to wear away and destroy people because they're inconvenient to the powerful?

<comment><USER5> To me, the scariest part of JTRIG is how targets are "determined." The actions taken against said targets by the NSA/GCHQ seem extrajudicial yet they can ruin these peoples' lives. The word "hacktivism" is itself a moving target, which gives these opaque agencies unimaginable power.

<comment><USER4> > The actions taken against said targets by the NSA/GCHQ seem

> extrajudicial

That's why it's _secret_.

<comment><USER6>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wherefore art thou tptacek? I can't wait to hear how this is totally not surprising at all and how this is absolutely what spies have been doing since forever and therefore no action need be taken. I'm also missing my daily dose of his irrelevant ad hominem FUD against Greenwald, Barret Brown, Snowden et al.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Stasi has done the exact same thing, it's called "Zersetzung". [http://www.ddr-wissen.de/wiki/ddr.pl?MfS-Richtlinie_1-76](http://www.ddr- wissen.de/wiki/ddr.pl?MfS-Richtlinie_1-76)

<comment><USER9> Is this a good thing or a bad thing that the Stasi has pursued a similar course of action?

Personally, I am disgusted by not surprised that the same authoritarianism can be found all over the world, even in a nominal democracy like the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ruining someone's reputation is not something only a government could do. Companies with enough money and a few (black-hat) SEO experts might be able to pull a large-scale reputation-kill to anyone who is an upcoming competitor or a pain-in-the-ass person. Small-scale reputation hacks happen all the time. What the heck, there is an industry where you can pump your own reputation up legally.

So the question is: how can we protect ourselves from any of these efforts (may or may not be coming from a government)?

<comment><USER4> The question one day may devolve to: how can we use these techniques in reverse?

<comment><USER11> 1\. Get a government contracting job with a high-level security clearance and broad levels of access.

2\. Assimilate significant quantities of incriminating information.

3\. Disseminate this to the world via a leaking portal or sympathetic journalist.

4\. Profit!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Once again, let's not go overboard.

This is real, but so is companies just having people online who naturally do these things. God knows you can't poke Google around too much without a Googler making an impassioned plea for them. Same goes for Facebook, or any of the other large SV employers.

And then there's just fans. Seems like I remember Amazon coming to the conclusion, after digging through spurious bad reviews of products, that many of them were just from people who had other brands and didn't like that one. So they made up fake reviews. That's not some mysterious spy agency; that's the guy who runs the garage down the street.

And that's why these things are so effective -- they blend into the noise that is the crap that is the internet at large.

I'm concerned about this in general, but I need more information about how this is being used as part of an extra-judicial punishment before I start bouncing off the walls.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not sure how I feel about this.

1\. If you're stupid enough to get caught up doing illegal crap online in PUBLIC domains then...yeah...I mean do you think they're NOT looking?

2\. this is actual spy-craft and when applied abroad, I have NO qualms about using it to the USA's advantage

3\. How is any of this new information? After Operation Mockingbird, how is anyone surprised?

<comment><USER14> Since the source document is from GCHQ (Britain's NSA, if you like) it seems valid to ask whether similar workarounds by internationalisation are in place for disinfo (which this manifestly is about, right?) as seem to be in place for collection.

Which is to say that US netizens are quite likely among the prime targets here.

The practices alluded to - a battery of psychological techniques designed to influence group dynamics of, and disrupt the sharing of information by, online communities - seem at least as suitable for controlling dissent as for action against overtly illegal activities. How does destroying the reputation of a company help with the latter, for example?

I'll tell you what though, fascinating though this is, I wish we had got the 'real poop' \- materials which must surely exist for the training alluded to, fleshing out the practical details, with illustrative examples!

<comment><USER13> Frankly, even though this is clear proof of what ANY informed person SHOULD HAVE ALREADY KNOWN...I want the REAL raw information.

I want the data on false flag stuff and covert James Bond missions.

Snowden needs to drop the REAL gems.

<comment><USER14> I agree.

Hey, any GCHQ 'magicians' here? C'mon, the cat's out of the bag... Lighten up! Strut your magic here and show us how it's done!

You know that story about the soccer match between the trenches.. This could be that, right?

<comment><USER15> The Christmas Truce is a fascinating subject. See eg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce) (I can recommend [http://www.amazon.de/Der-kleine-Frieden-Gro%C3%9Fen- Krieg/dp...](http://www.amazon.de/Der-kleine-Frieden-Gro%C3%9Fen- Krieg/dp/3442153034) if you can read German.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You could make an 'Illuminati' card-game expansion set out of a few of these slides.

<comment><USER17> Is it just me or do these slides make GCHQ look like a bunch of frustrated PUAs? Jump forward to the slide following the text "The documents lay out theories of how humans interact" to see what I mean.

<comment><USER15> It's tough being taken seriously for GCHQ when compared to the likes of NSA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everything in (press coverage about) the docs so far makes it seem pretty clear GCHQ punches _way_ above their weight class (in terms of budget, and general UK military strength) compared to NSA.

<comment><USER17> They also seem more brazen than NSA. GCHQ scares me more than NSA does. NSA is existentially terrified over losing budget. GCHQ doesn't act like they're worried about anything at all.

<comment><USER7> NSA is bankrolling GCHQ and in most respects the latter seems incredibly subservient to the former. In light of that, your position doesn't make much sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this not just what spies and covert agents have been doing for centuries? But now with extra __* INTERNET !!! __* added, which somehow makes it worse? I would be more worried if our spy agencies and intelligence organisations did _not_ have this sort of capability, and could only manipulate and deceive using TV, newspapers, talking, joining societies, clubs and associations, following people and so on.

<comment><USER19> The net permits it to be done with unprecedented precision, scale, ease, and deniability.

<comment><USER20> It isn't just the net though. It's also deep pockets of the defence industry.

If we really want reform, the uncomfortable truth is that the only way to reform the system is to reduce the amount of money flowing to defence contractors. Unfortunately I think, aside from a total economic collapse, pigs will sooner evolve wings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The "Five Eyes Alliance" bothers me. What lines in the sand are drawn in each country? Are there some that the NSA isn't allowed to cross but GCHQ can?

Is it a matter of saying "Hey GCHQ we have a guy who is in the US who we can't do these things to but he's related to this guy over here in foreign country ?" Wouldn't traditionally that example include the CIA/FBI instead? Or for less oversight would it make more sense to use one of the Five Eyes Alliance nations. I think that in that example that's troublesome in that it undermines what for better or worse where bureaucracy protects the citizenry of the US.

Edit to include the CIA

<comment><USER22> "What lines in the sand are drawn in each country?"

The line is drawn officially at the point they can use legalese verbiage to avoid any problems. So that line was supposed to be, at least for the NSA and CIA, "Never spy on American's without a warrant." (according to William Binney, Thomas Drake, et al) The real line though, is whatever they can get away with. The USUK (five eyes) was setup in 1947, and has been used as a giant loophole of sharing ever since.

The real issue though, the one everyone likes to ignore, is the origins of the US and British intelligence world in the first place, as a covert arm for banker elites in Wall Street and in The City (London). These are entities and groups of entities who have very little allegiance to a single nation (British aristocratic royalists as the rare exception) and use nation against nation as if they were simply pieces on what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls the "Grand Chessboard'.

I am continually awaiting the day that everyone realizes the NSA/CIA/DIA/DoD...etc violations of privacy are simply a small part of a larger issue, namely, that the supranational corporate elite realized that technology has finally gotten to the point where if they make a power play now, they or their grandchildren can be "gods" among the proletariat masses. Our entire American government system of checks and balances is utterly corrupt, including all three branches and the fourth estate.

I used to be part of their action arm (USMC combat vet), and it took many years of study since I got out to come to these conclusions. What really frustrates me though, is that, just like the NSA issues before Snowden, no one is going to realize or admit these things until they stare them in the face. The irony is that the main reason people won't is because of the much larger than realized mass propaganda efforts (including the efforts described in this latest documentation) which keep a large enough of percentage of the populous distracted, apathetic, afraid, or even complicit enough to render any real opposition power null and void.

The main issue I have been debating for the past few years is: "Should we be going underground subversive now, or should we make one last stand?" Either way, I fear freedom will be a long lost memory until the days that people can travel in space freely, if we don't destroy the planet and the species by then.

As cliched as it is, the rabbit hole is not only deeper than most realize, but it's actually really uncomfortable to explore. (especially when you have a hand in the game, like many on HN)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> More foil hat nutter stuff that is turning out to be quite real...

<comment><USER23> If you RTFA, calling out someone was a tin foil hatter is one of their techniques.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Honest question: is it poor logic or not that I tend to believe these slides are truly from the government they are supposed to be from based solely on how large of an eyesore the design is?

However, surely by now people like Glen Greenwald have heard such feedback so if someone from the other side of the aisle wanted to reverse false flag they would just use atrocious designs.

However, now the govt. has read THIS, so I clearly cannot choose the cup in front of me...

<comment><USER25> One would think that if the documents were fabrications, they would be dismissed as such by the people and organizations that they indict.

I mean, I could fabricate documents that detail how the moon landing was faked, but I would be called out on my fabrication immediately. In this case however the only people floating the "the documents are fake" theory are third parties with no unique insight into the allegations, notably _not_ the accused.

<comment><USER24> That's not really true b/c even leaked to the public top secret documents remain top secret in government circles. It's why government employees are specifically told not to seek out wikileaks or snowden documents - you can't gain "legitimate" access to those documents through the public.

Unless through all the noise I've missed where the govt. has said this or that document in particular is in fact genuine. I'm not saying it hasn't happened but I haven't seen it. Even acknowledgement of a program (PRISM, for example) isn't acknowledgement of PRISM slide #4, although it does make it's authenticity more likely than not.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I'm not talking about random DoD employees calling out the documents as fabrications on Reddit...

My point is that although the government has not officially declared the documents to be authentic, their _failure_ to merely laugh them off as obvious fakes created by a kook is _more_ than telling.

<comment><USER26> > My point is that although the government has not officially declared the > documents to be authentic, their failure to merely laugh them off as obvious > fakes created by a kook is more than telling.

Um. It's ridiculously bad PR to respond to every such claim. The best possible scenario is that a couple people will take your word for it. Most people will instead just take such a response as a legitimization of the criticism. You might be particularly credulous and accept the government's say-so, but I wouldn't.

<comment><USER25> > _" Um. It's ridiculously bad PR to respond to every such claim."_

There have been responses, just no accusations of fabrication....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think we should make a new list of laws. Basically, a list of laws that still apply to the US Government. The "does not apply" list is getting a little top-heavy.

</comment><comment><USER28> Julian Assange should read these two slides:

[https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp- uploads/2014/02/de...](https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp- uploads/2014/02/deception_p48.png)

[https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp- uploads/2014/02/de...](https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp- uploads/2014/02/deception_p24.png)

</comment><comment><USER29> So, besides tptacek who are the other astroturf accounts used to infiltrate and manipulate HN?

</comment><comment><USER30> There is no source or link to the actual slides. They might be authentic but this site might also be doing the very thing they claim the agencies are doing. Its essentially a blog with some slides with "top secret" written all over it with damning information.

No source, no link, nothing.

<comment><USER31> It's linked under 'Documents' at the top of the page:

[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/documents/](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/documents/)

[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/02/24/art-d...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/02/24/art- deception-training-new-generation-online-covert-operations/)

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1021...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1021430/the- art-of-deception-training-for-a-new.pdf)

<comment><USER24> A slideshow does not an original document make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> metabunk.org . nuff said

</comment><comment><USER33> If you want to look for examples of companies in the US and elsewhere engaging in activities mentioned in this article against political dissidents, look no further than the HB Gary email leak of years back. I referenced such works here[0] after Obama's announcement of NSA 'reforms' that hinted at offloading more sensitive data to private companies.

I would like to bring the attention of people who read this article back to the tactics such as the real-time spying on Wikileaks viewers. Tactics discussed by the likes of HB Gary's Aaron Barr like going after activists by their families and careers, or the US Chamber of Commerce's interest in such work.

There is a profound amount of moral hazards here that companies are wading deep into for cash and possible immunity such as what AT&T was granted.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7078402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7078402)

<comment><USER34> Do note that those emails were all talk. Other than the failed attempt to expose the "leadership" of Anonymous, none of Barr's big plans were even tried, let alone successfully carried out. His own employees (all two of them) mocked him and refused to participate. Aaron Barr was one guy, dealing with a failed marriage and a failing company, and he just lost the plot there for a bit.

<comment><USER17> Since this appears to be the basis of the notion that Palantir is a branch of the NSA: the one Palantir person known to have been involved was a 27 year old sales engineer who was subsequently terminated from the company and rehired after the legal investigation Palantir launched on itself for coming within a mile of Aaron Barr cleared him. (This is based on reporting of what happened, not any kind of firsthand knowledge about Palantir, of which I have none).

<comment><USER33> Palantir is not a branch of the NSA, they are backed by the CIA[0].

[0] [http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cia-backed-palantir- technologi...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cia-backed-palantir-technologies- raises-200921615.html)

<comment><USER17> So was Decru. I suppose storage encryption is also a CIA plot. So was FireEye. I suppose killing zero-day is also a CIA plot. So was Inktomi. I suppose caching web traffic, &c &c.

I could go on, if you like. In-Q-Tel has backed a _lot_ of stuff.

<comment><USER35> In-Q-Tel is an interesting company. They've invested in Google (OSINT), and Keyhole (GEOINT/IMINT). Google went on to acquire Keyhole, to create Google Earth [1].

[1] [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google- cia...](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> One wonders if Glenn's persistence in reporting this issue is due to being targeted by NSA contractors like Palantir, regarding Palantir's work against US activists. A "Spotlight" as the email says: [http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2LJZSZknE-I/TVpg4sNeUHI/AAAAAAAAC6...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2LJZSZknE-I/TVpg4sNeUHI/AAAAAAAAC6Y/0wmuTWTDaZs/s1600/steckman.png) Via street nigga's thread.

<comment><USER37> Someone will be along shortly to tell us all that Palantir would rather everybody just forget about their dalliance there.

<comment><USER17> _Exactly_ what is Palantir --- specifically Palantir, not nutball HBGaryFederal head Aaron Barr --- accused of doing unlawfully or unethically in this "dalliance"? Collecting public information for law firms isn't unethical.

Having one of your 27-year-old SEs eagerly working alongside Barr to move a deal forward has bad optics. But believing that Glenn Greenwald should be thwarted is an opinion that, while obviously objectionable on HN, not actually unethical.

<comment><USER36> Thwarting a journalist from reporting by targeting him and his career, not actually unethical according to tptacek.

<comment><USER17> Could you explain _exactly_ how Palantir is accused of attempting to unethically damage Glenn Greenwald's career? In more detail than "one of their SEs was in an email thread with Aaron Barr"? Because what you just wrote is a straw-man version of my comment.

<comment><USER36> I'm sorry but I am responding to this:

"believing that Glenn Greenwald should be thwarted is an opinion that, while obviously objectionable on HN, not actually unethical."

Are you trying to say that an employee for NSA contractor Palantir discussing targeting a journalist because of his work on a topic is separate from the employee's beliefs, therefore is not actually unethical?

How exactly did the journalist, or his career get brought up in a conversation between federal contractors about solicitation for work again? Was it to talk about of the reports they liked from him?

<comment><USER17> Here is a reason one might ethically believe Greenwald should be thwarted: because they believe that Greenwald is deeply dishonest, making up details about stories in order to fill in the gaps of his narrative and reporting them as if they were facts, so that half the Internet now believes that Google, the one big Internet company known to have actually invested real resources in opposing dragnet surveillance, is instead in league with the NSA, and instead of using Google Mail we should all support incompetent kooks like Ladar Levison.

Now, some important caveats:

(1) It is _obviously_ possible to _unethically_ thwart any writer's agenda. Publishing things you know to be untrue, even in the service of what you believe is a higher truth, is unethical; it's exactly what someone might accuse Greenwald of having done. For that matter, invading Greenwald's privacy by, I don't know, stealing his bank records would also be deeply unethical. But Palantir hasn't been accused of either of these, or, for that matter, anything else unethical w/r/t Greenwald. Feel free to enlighten me here.

(2) If you can't tell, I'm not a major Greenwald fan. Having said that, I also believe the best antidote for bad speech is good speech, so orchestrating a campaign to suppress him doesn't seem like a good strategy to me. It apparently sounded like a good idea to one of Palantir's SEs, which ended up getting the guy fired.

<comment><USER38> While many misinterpret the the facts, there's a kernel of truth in those discussions that you gloss over.

GMail is not secure against the NSA or even a state judge's warrant. That has numerous advantages for society but regardless it's not and never will be secure against government orders. That's never been its design. Levinson's service was secure against them for certain clients.

The reason the anti-NSA crowd is intrigued by him is the same reason sources told their secrets to Bob Woodward. He proved willing to protect Deep Throat's identity despite immense effort to out it. Similarly Levinson was willing to risk his business and contempt proceedings to protect Snowden.

<comment><USER17> Am I reading this comment correctly? Is this a comment that argues that Lavabit, which "encrypted" mails serverside and didn't even have forward secrecy enabled in its TLS configuration, was more secure than Google Mail?

<comment><USER38> I'd assume not since your reply misses the point.

The government's wiretap order and the subsequent contempt proceedings suggests that despite the technical problems of Lavabit, the government did not get the data they sought. Had Snowden used GMail, do you believe the government would have received the information they sought?

This isn't security in the sense you'd use it in an audit. It's just a design decision. In the vernacular, designs that permit the release of private information are sometimes called insecure.

<comment><USER39> Lavabit was just as susceptible to a state warrant though. That's why Levison had to shut it down (despite having no objection with complying with other warrants previously).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Decoys, diversions, repetition, statistics, mimic, story fragments, baiting, ruses, exploits, feigned incompetence, gaming rankings, creating bottlenecks, disruption, infiltration, plausible denials, leaks, honey traps, spoofing, fake victim, fake rescue, competitor surveillance...

All of these are standard practise in business. Any business that doesn't do them get demolished or taken over by one that does.

And any person who doesn't do them gets knifed by one who does, not only in business but also in open source software so I've found out. Perhaps the NSA/GCHQ have simply been taken over by business people.

<comment><USER9> You are working for the wrong companies.</comment></comment>


Alexa for Business - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/alexaforbusiness/ <comment><USER2> So now we're putting always-on amazon microphones everywhere in our companies too?

How exactly are companies going to be ok with private, trade-secret conversations? How about confidential meetings? How about Amazon competitors? How about employee law about potentially being eavesdropped on, all day?

<comment><USER3> Isn't Siri and Google's 'Ok google' thing basically the same? Everyone in the room has that running all day everywhere they go.

<comment><USER4> If you allow cellphones and don't use a noise generator like rabbler, your meeting isn't secretive enough

<comment><USER5> so do opsec like tony in the sopranos and leave all you mobiles out side the room

<comment><USER6> You mean, where someone can easily get to them to install a sniffer/ copy all content?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That image next to "Alexa helps you at your desk" is 17.5 MB as of now at at a resolution of 5720 x 3240. Pretty impressive to see an image loading line by line like back in the days.

It will be interesting to see what WeWork ends up using this for.

<comment><USER8> Jesus, it's the same size when I view the page on my smartphone. It doesn't even look as good as you'd think for 17.5 MB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be nice if the Alexa team actually cared about people building business skills for the platform and treated them different than people submitting fart apps.

Disclaimer: I build business tools for voice with actual paid users. Looking to abandon Alexa for Google Assistant and Cortana. Apple, please do Siri right when you open it up properly.

<comment><USER10> I'm curious, what's the difference you're seeing between those three platforms for your use case?

<comment><USER9> The biggest is invocations – as more skills crowd the platform, getting Alexa to recognize our invocation is getting unusable.

Training for our specific pronunciation isn't available on Alexa. Our app is called Tali, pronounced "tally", and to get it to work now you have to say "Tay-lie". Whereas Google Actions can be trained with custom pronunciations.

I should also say that Dialogflow is magnificent.

<comment><USER11> Have you written up your experiences in a blog post or talk or something?

I'm on the same boat right now, was asked to build a POC in Amazon Lex, an Alexa Skill, Microsoft LUIS, Wit.ai and Dialogflow.

So far I've gotten to LUIS and Lex/Alexa, I'm glad to read Dialogflow is better :) (had high hopes for it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Alexa, deploy project aardvark.

OK, deploying project aardvark, now on version 5

Alexa, roll back project aardvark.

OK, rolling back project arc, now on version 21.

Alexa, I said roll back aardvark!

OK. Rolling back project arc, now on version 20.

Alexa, stop everything!

I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.

<comment><USER13> This is why no company has dared to choose HAL as the name for their digital voice assistant yet.

<comment><USER14> They're missing out. I would buy HAL as a system or a personality for any existing system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is actually quite brilliant. Something that started off as a pure consumer in-home device makes total sense for conference rooms and hotels (as long as they know what they can ask it to do). Much better than trying to find remotes or switches.

Not sure about Alexa at our desk — it'll have to do speaker separation and still it sounds quite annoying to everyone around.

<comment><USER16> It makes total sense until a human named Alexa joins your team.

There are humans named Siri too (it's a diminuitive of Sigrid) and, given the peculiar conventions of Thai nicknames, it's doubtless there's more than one human named Google.

You really can't win, short of being able to change your voice assistant's name (the humans won't change for a damn machine!).

<comment><USER15> You can change it to answer with "amazon."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So with most companies employing an open floor plan isn't there a tremendous amount of audio overlap. Are all the devices linked and Alexa now smart enough to differentiate between multiple users?

What kind of work is really practical when done via voice vs secure authenticated terminal access? I talk to my co-workers to exchange ideas and come up with new ones. Talking to my computer or my office space seems awkward and aurally intrusive since people are trying to work and not hear you asking Alexa to, I don't know, make you a coffee?

<comment><USER18> I suppose it's not for offices where people are sitting next to keyboards anyway.

* A conference room (no remote controls in sight): "Alexa, turn on the projector".

* A hotel room (from a coach): "Alexa, turn the air conditioning off."

* A workshop (everybody's hands are busy and greasy): "Alexa, mark order 2348 completed, bill ten dollars extra for urgency."

This makes certain sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I couldn't find it, but I wonder if there is any way that you can ask it ONLY to run the skills which have been deployed/approved by the company. Can think of plenty of use-cases where I work, but I know it'd be a non-starter if it could, just like at home, be used to order products,tell jokes, play jeopardy, etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> The sign up flow is confusing. I clicked the button, but was sent to AWS. Finally signed in there, and was taken to a support level sign-up flow. Went back to the original link whilst logged in, and kept getting redirected to AWS when I clicked the button.

</comment><comment><USER21> Could be helpful at work: "Alexa, open the pod bay doors"

<comment><USER22> I tried. She replies in a pissy voice that she's not HAL9000 :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Alexa for Business lets you build your own private custom skills for your workplace, your employees, or your customers to use. You can make these skills available only to your shared Alexa devices, and your enrolled users. Alexa for Business provides an additional set of APIs that provide information about device location, which lets you add context to your skills._

This is huge! This is the corner we needed to turn to be able to make really useful skills for the enterprise.

I'm pumped for this!

<comment><USER24> I'm half interested in what capabilities Alexa for Business offers you, and half suspicious that this is sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Brings to mind Will.i.am's startups pivot to enterprise voice controls[0] which they call Omega [1]

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/06/will-i-ams-start-up-i-am- rai...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/06/will-i-ams-start-up-i-am- raises-117-million-in-enterprise-pivot.html)

[1][https://iamplus.com/enterprise/](https://iamplus.com/enterprise/)

</comment><comment><USER26> My clients would stop doing business with me if I had these in my office, and I wouldn't blame them.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is noone afraid of the vendor locki-in with these always-on listening devices these days?

</comment><comment><USER28> What's the revenue model for Alexa? I see all these companies designing Alexa integration into their IoT farting widget, often for uses that don't involve buying stuff from Amazon. Do manufacturers pay a license fee or something?

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems like catch up to what Google has available through the assistant APIs.

</comment><comment><USER30> Putting the privacy aspect aside, this is gonna be hilarious with people "abusing" Alexa for jokes etc. As far as I now, Alexa can't be restricted to the voice of a single/some people.

<comment><USER31> except that it does [https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/11/16460120/...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/11/16460120/amazon- echo-multi-user-voice-new-feature)

<comment><USER30> wow. That's not easy stuff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sounds useful, but so scary from privacy point of view.

All of your sounds can be recorded by hacker, even if you decide not to buy Alexa you still may ended up in staying in hotel with Alexa for business. reply

<comment><USER33> You can already be recorded by a hacker. Your phone can be hacked, it's always on you. In a meeting room, the phone of any individual is enough. The conference computer can be hacked. Any individuals laptop can be hacked.

This is just one more item in an already long list. It's not particularly special.

<comment><USER26> Increasing your attack surface is never a good idea, even when you're already potentially at risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The anthem of our future dystopia will be the annoying music that plays in every Google/Amazon/Facebook product showcase.

</comment><comment><USER35> The only unanswered question is how many of them are needed per square meter.

p.s. first hand impression: one per small or medium room.</comment>


Memory Journey. New free game for Android please try - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.softwavegames.memoryjourney <comment><AUTHOR> I just publish my first game in life, please try and say how you like it, that would be very helpful :)</comment>


Ask HN: I need a co-founder Where do i start? - <AUTHOR>

I am 18 years old and a student in university. I have built 3 web apps in the past and allowed them to die because of school work. I build web apps because i love coding (hobby). I recently built poplytics.com and still working on it but i don't want it to die off. I have no idea how to market it and do customer development. I have had a bad run with bloggers when trying to get them to review my service.<p>How do i get a cofounder who would focus on marketing? Advice pls.. <comment> T-hawk How did your previous ones "die"? Software is not mortal. Why can't your past web apps be product material for a startup? Did you just lose interest?

You may not like this answer, but the actual hacking and coding is a very small part of launching an independent software company. Your "marketing cofounder" is really in for more like 90% of the work. If all you want to do is code, well, you're in competition with millions of coders worldwide who are willing and able to work more cheaply.

patio11, one of HN's most respected members and best contributors, makes his living on a product that he himself characterizes as "hello world hooked up to a random number generator." His business building was all in figuring out and optimizing AdWords and email responders and the payment pages and logos and colors and so on. Does that truly hold your interest to dive into?

<comment><USER2> Strongly agree.

Back when I was running my own consultancy I had this belief that if I made something "cool" then it would become a hit almost (as I understand now, in retrospect) by magic. And it was easy to just move on to something else when the magic didn't work.

I've spent some time working in a bureaucratic organisation for nearly 3 years now and, despite all the obvious downsides, this has been a positive experience because I now think I have more of a "business head" to think with. (The regular salary helps a lot too!)

Coming up with ideas for web apps is, I think, fairly easy for the the type of person who hangs out here on HN. Not all of those ideas will be good, of course, but one in ten might be. It's probably also very easy for you to make the damn thing.

But the only way to ensure you give an idea its best shot is to really stick at it and spend a lot of time and effort on the things that don't traditionally come easily to us programmer-types: marketing, design, sales, customer support.

Disclaimer: I make hardly a penny from stuff I've made in the past (and I've abandoned more ideas than I care to remember) but I'd like to think that my work experience (and the experiences shared by fellow HN members) will help me ensure my next venture is more successful.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had that same idea at a point in time. I decided that i wasn't just going to build but make sure people use it. I have people using my web app which is encouraging but not enough for me to be happy to continue development. It might be too early to determine that. Marketing is easy to say but really hard and frustrating to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why are you studying pharmacy if you love coding?

It will be very hard to reconcile school, hobby and actual entrepreneurship when they are all in diverging areas (and "coding" has very little to do with entrepreneurship). My advise would be to find better alignment in your activities. Otherwise you will end up doing all three just well enough to fail.

For example, you could do an internship in a bioinformatics start-up. Learn about entrepreneurship, network and still get to practice your interests/skills - all in one shot. Not everything has to be about Web2.0...

<comment><AUTHOR> I really love your advice. I have tried really well in aligning them to extent where i have no time for regular activities, friends e.t.c... You got me thinking now!

<comment><USER3> I have been in your shoes: At the peak in 2007 I was a full time PhD student (Physics, CS & EE), full time startup founder/exec (35 staff, acquired in 2007) and new father (child born on acquisition day - no kidding). Without really strong alignment (and great colleagues in both arenas) this would have torn me apart.

Don't set yourself up for failure from day one by shooting in all directions. If pharmacy is your passion then try to weave it into all your activities. Always remember, Web2.0 entrepreneurship accounts for 99% of online buzz but less than 30% of actual investment activity. In fact, biotech is currently the largest investment and M&A sector if memory serves from the last PWC Moneytree report. If you like coding then by all means code, but don't feel like the only possible entrepreneurial experience comes from hacking websites.

Disclaimer: I am not a biotech guy, nor am I saying that Web2.0 ventures aren't a good choice. They are just not the only choice.

At the risk of breaking some kind of HN rule, I have a bit more info on how to achieve such alignment on an old blog post: <http://bit.ly/hJmCEQ>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it's time to network. I'm about your age too and I also develop web apps. Does your university have a marketing program? Maybe you could get connected with some other students who are interested in marketing and your idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a pharmacy student so it is not easy to network with other students with the bulk of work i have to do. I would check for the marketing program. Hope they have

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.google.com/search?q=cofounder+site:news.ycombinat...](http://www.google.com/search?q=cofounder+site:news.ycombinator.com)

<comment><USER6> I agree; one of your best bets would be right here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not what you are asking for, but you should add some screenshots to poplytics.com. I don't want to sign up for something before I can see what it does.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that. I had a tour page but pulled it because most people did not like it. Working on a new version of poplytics which would have a new tour page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> where are you located? there are meetups specifically setup to help you find a co-founder in austin tomorrow night and in nyc next week <http://www.centernetworks.com/co-founder-meetup-nyc-austin>

<comment><AUTHOR> Too bad i am not in the US. I stay in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would be interested in having a conversation with you about this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey DM me your email on twitter @sammville or send me a mail sam[@]poplytics.com</comment></comment>


Elon Musck talks about his role models [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhoh4gAf-fQ&feature=relmfu

<comment><USER2> It's Elon Musk</comment>


How to Look at Mondrian - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-elkins/post_1036_b_756669.html?view=print

<comment><USER2> A very interesting look at the painting. I do wonder at times if art historians and other afacionados place too much importance on every minute detail as intentional rather than a mere artifact, even for painters known for perfectionism. Specifically, in this case, whether the technique used was intended to be a part of the "user experience", the work of art?

<comment><USER3> I agree that it is interesting, but not necessarily relevant to Mondrian's intent. While brushwork and other painterly touches do add interest, and a subtle complexity, I don't think it was Mondrian's intention. His work presaged Albers, Stella, Noland and others, who specifically sought to remove painterly marks from their work.

Mondrian's work is generally considered to be hard to copy due to the subtle balances of color and form, not technique. Simplicity arrived at as an end point does not correlate to a simple approach in the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't really think that's how to look at Mondrian. I doubt if he was as concerned about the minutiae of how his work was composed, in the same way. Though the details are interesting, it would be more insightful to try to consider his mindset when creating a piece than the exact technical steps for how he made a certain line.

</comment><comment><USER5> Who knew. Everyone jokes how his paintings can be replicated by an infant _, but I guess there's a lot of subtlety. Very cool.

(_I wouldn't claim this, as its easier to copy something once it's already done.)

<comment><USER6> Oh, I wouldn't call Mondrian the work of an infant.

The work of a bathroom tiler, maybe.</comment></comment>


Tagged Pointer Strings - <AUTHOR> https://mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2015-07-31-tagged-pointer-strings.html <comment><USER2>
        I speculate that Apple originally intended to use a
        fancier variable-length encoding, probably based on a
        Huffman code. This turned out to be too difficult, or
        not worth the effort, or they just ran out of time, and
        so they dialed it back to the less ambitious version
        seen above, where strings choose between constant-
        length encodings using eight, six, or five bits per
        character. The weird table lives on as a leftover, and
        a starting point if they decide to go for a variable-
        length encoding in the future. This is pure guesswork,
        but that's what it looks like to me.

A much simpler explanation is that someone just copied and pasted from the Cocoa string character frequency table.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recall a long time ago reading something about potential uses of a 128-bit CPU architecture with 128-bit addressing.

Obviously 128-bit addressing isn't and probably never will be needed to address memory, at least not in this geological epoch. But that's not the point.

Instead, 128-bit addressing would allow every pointer to have 64 bits of tag information that would allow all kinds of VM optimizations. Not sure if the additional memory bloat would be worth it though. Like some RISC architectures it might die by memory bandwidth constraints.

<comment><USER4> > I recall a long time ago reading something about potential uses of a 128-bit > CPU architecture with 128-bit addressing.

Go back to the IBM System/38 and the AS/400 and that is exactly what you have. Programs are actually 128 bit oriented bytecode, so the actual CPU architecture isn't visible, doesn't matter, and has been upgraded many times over the years.

They also did virtual memory differently. Everything is in the same address space, which means everything can (after access control) communicate and cooperate. Task switches are also very fast. They also use tagged pointers, but it is a single bit outside of what the apps can see, and marks a pointer as modified. Consequently pointers can be given out, and the kernel knowns if the app has tampered with them.

I highly recommend reading the architects book about how all this stuff worked, mixed in with how business machines should behave. Many things are very different than conventional Unix/Linux/Windows NT kernels, and a good way of broadening your mind. The second edition book is good - later editions may have removed earlier interesting detail. [http://www.amazon.com/Inside- AS-400-Second-Edition/dp/188241...](http://www.amazon.com/Inside- AS-400-Second-Edition/dp/1882419669)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about "interning" strings [1]? This is also useful for storing larger strings.

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

<comment><USER6> Constant strings have always been interned. I don't think any others are, though I haven't looked into it in a while.

<comment><USER7> It's not NSString, but it's interesting to note that Objective-C selectors are just interned strings. By interning them, they can be compared with a simple pointer comparison. Because they're just C strings, you can print a selector by casting it to char *. (But don't do this in production code, debugging only!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> this is an interesting trick, but it only really has benefit if used this way when things are dynamically late binding. the cost of the check if an pointer is tagged can even exceed the cost of any simple operation /in total/ on a static, compile-time known object (e.g. a comparison with no branch, small copies, simple arithmetic etc.). for something like NSNumber this is probably very measurable (compared with, say NSString)

if objective-c had more mechanisms to enable baking out the run-time lookups and operations at compile-time then i think that this would no longer be a valuable optimisation. maybe they are there but are just not easy to find or use... having the ability to use C or C++ does make it unnecessary.

sure, you can use C types in a lot of cases and the C library, but being able to do more with the object-orientation functionaliy would be nice, rather having to do OO by convention in C or using C++ to be seriously fast or efficient - swapping NSDictionary for an std::map or std::unordered_map is an optimisation i've ended up making multiple times in situations that aren't really even tight inner loops, where the difference has even been as great as making the difference between a severe, perceptible hitch (approaching a second run-time) and something you can't even notice (millisecond or less run- time).

as a rule i use Objective-C only as much as the platform forces it, and stick with C++. its enormously harder to make slow and inefficient C++ code by accident. e.g. you can loop over thousands of objects and do things with them in << 16ms without special efforts. on some devices this is impossible with objective-c even if what you are doing with the objects is a nop... this is why gamedevs, for instance, avoid it like a plague.

(however i'm sure there could be other, interesting, uses of tagged pointers...)

<comment><USER7> Tagged pointers really have nothing to do with late binding. They're useful anywhere you have a data that is sometimes small enough to fit within a single pointer-sized chunk, and sometimes isn't. Strings are a good example of this: short strings can be tagged pointers, and long strings can be dynamically allocated. As another commenter mentioned, some C++ implementations use tagged pointers for std::string.

Another example might be a big number library, where numbers smaller than the pointer size could be implemented as tagged pointers, and larger numbers would be dynamically allocated. A C++ big number library could easily do this.

Whether it's worth the cost depends on how expensive memory allocation is, how expensive pointer indirection is, how many objects are able to fit within a tagged pointer, and how expensive the tag check is. Typically the answers are, a lot, a lot, a lot, and a lot. And dynamism doesn't change the answer much.

<comment><USER8> erm. why are you even using a pointer if its not late-binding?

this is what static, stack, scopes and global variables are for with references as needed...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting--the kind of trick you'd normally see in an interpretive language.

Marshalling a string object ref to an actual value (before it can be used for string manipulations internally) must incur a fair bit of CPU overhead.

I guess they decided the unboxed memory savings were worth it.

<comment><USER10> It's not really CPU intensive. To turn a 5-bit char into an 8-bit one, just do a lookup into a tiny constant array. Doesn't even introduce any new branches. Roughly the same performance as iterating over every character. (which you're probably doing anyway if you need the conversion)

The savings aren't just memory, it's probably a performance improvement too. Fewer allocations, fewer pointer indirections, and some operations (like equality checking) become O(1) instead of O(n) for these tiny strings.

<comment><USER11> The other way round (deciding whether a newly minted string of length 10 can be put in a tagged pointer) is slightly more complex. Also, for tiny strings (the only strings that this supports) on modern hardware, I'm not sure that O(n) takes much longer than that O(1).

I would think the avoidance of allocations and the pointer indirections are the big wins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks very similar to the way in which numbers / strings / objects are represented in Javascript (and earlier in some Lisps).

The nice thing is that for pointers, tagging is "free", for the lowest 4 bits of a 16-byte aligned pointer are not used anyway.

<comment><USER13> It's more complicated than that -- x86-64 systems only use 48 bits of addressable space. JS engines use all the remaining bits for tagging, not just bits resulting from 8- or 16-byte alignment. This works great until you want to run on another CPU architecture that actually has 64-bits of addressable space and uses it regularly...

<comment><USER14> I'm surprised they need so many bits.. you really just need to know if the item is an object (so the type can be embedded in the object), or a primitive type. But there are not so many primitive types.

Some dynamically typed systems put the tag at the beginning of a page: so all items of a particular type are allocated out of a page tagged with that type. You don't waste any bits from the pointer or data, but you do have to do some masking and worse, a remote memory access to get the type.

Probably safest and fastest to do something like: struct { int type; union { char *s; int n; double d; }};

<comment><USER15> Many JavaScript engines use IEEE-754 double-precision floats as their immediate value type, and fit pointers and integer within the NaN payload of the double representation. See [https://wingolog.org/archives/2011/05/18/value- representatio...](https://wingolog.org/archives/2011/05/18/value- representation-in-javascript-implementations) for a discussion of a few similar approaches and the tradeoffs of each.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Note that 8 bits per character isn't ASCII, but ISO 8859-1, which Unicode is a superset of. I expect the string "née" would become a tagged pointer string, for example.</comment>


Measles wipes out the body's immune memory - <AUTHOR> https://hms.harvard.edu/news/inside-immune-amnesia <comment><USER2> I wonder if this means that something about the measles virus could be useful for knocking out "immune memory" for autoimmune issues.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking the same thing! I'm excited by the possibilities.</comment></comment>


Pen and Paper Coding - <AUTHOR> https://www.penpapercoding.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw this advertised on the nyc subreddit...I'm posting it here not as an advertisement about the class, but about the method of teaching that it espouses (which it goes into pretty good detail about). I'm an experienced programmer and I'll doodle pseudocode when my eyes get tired from staring at the screen...but I can't help but think that such an exercise would be super abstract for a non-programmer.

I do agree with the OP that technical syntax snafus can greatly hinder a novice programming class...on the other hand, using an interactive shell or running scripts from the text editor allows for immediate feedback, to the point where show-stopping errors like misplaced semi-colons can quickly be debugged.

I am interested in how well students brought up in this pen-and-paper coding can quickly transfer their conceptual knowledge to writing code on the computer...anyone have much experience with this in a classroom?</comment>


Bitcoin back over 300$ - <AUTHOR> https://bitcoinwisdom.com/ <comment><USER2> It is always difficult to tell with bitcoin whether the price rise is from new adoption due to AFK events like capital controls or if it is people within the bitcoin community buying btc in the hope that external parties will be brought in to the fold, essentially buying more prior to an expected influx of users.</comment>


The cloud has failed. - <AUTHOR> http://struct3.com/has-the-cloud-failed-before-prime-time/ I was thinking about this, is the premise of 'the cloud' as an infrastructure failed even before it got well out of the gate? <comment><USER2> The actual title of the article is " _Has_ the cloud failed?", can we please not put our own editorial spin on things when submitting articles? We'll read them and make up our own minds.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair."_

When your server fails, you know how to fix it. When the cloud fails, you hope that somebody will be able to fix it soon. When p2p fails you're probably out of luck for a long time.

<comment><USER2> _When your server fails, you know how to fix it. When the cloud fails, you hope that somebody will be able to fix it soon._

Well, not really. If your application is in a datacentre somewhere, whether that's a hosting provider or somewhere within your organization, then it might be a physical box, or a VM, or a running in a cluster or a cloud, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that there are capable infrastructure specialists on-hand to deal with any issues. That hasn't changed and won't ever change.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, interesting view...Did not think of it that way.

FYI, This article has been quoted intensively: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_failures_serious...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_failures_serious_time_t.php)</comment>


Ask HN: Obstacles to entering the B2B market? - <AUTHOR>

One of my ideas for a startup is as follows: A student course registration application univerisities would use that would help students choose and register for the right classes for their degree plan. the current state of these apps (from what I've seen at Texas A&M and Texas Tech) could use some improvement.
My concern: The industry of enterprise software seems pretty buddy-buddy, and I wouldn't know where to start in demoing and selling the application.
Have any other HN'ers faced unique challenges posed by barrier to entry in a B2B market? <comment><USER2> I would love to see a well done course registration system. I go to the University of Michigan and from what I understand we have one of the better registration systems but it still leaves a lot to be desired. Just a few minor improvements would make their system a ton better. I'm not positive about this but I'm pretty sure UofM's system is made in house.</comment>


Comparing Standard ML and OCaml - <AUTHOR> http://adam.chlipala.net/mlcomp/

<comment><USER2> Regarding build systems, ocamlbuild is included with the standard ocaml distribution and gives a high-level interface that is much simpler to use than ocamldep and friends. Especially when combined with findlib.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this is really old. I remember seeing it six years ago when I started using OCaml.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nothing said about multithreading and parallel processing? Seems like a big omission if you're comparing languages.

<comment><USER5> The user group explicitly rejected multithreading at the OCaml Users conference a couple of years back. (There was a working implementation called oc4mc).

The reasons were that it will slow down single-threaded performance, and threads as a programming model is not robust (compared to, eg. forking, message passing, MPI etc). Also actual graphs of 4- and 8-way SMP performance showed pretty poor scaling for real problems, so the benefits aren't that great compared to going for full MPI, which you have to do for NUMA anyhow.

<comment><USER6> GHC has a compiler flag to enable multi threaded runtime. Why can't OCaml have that? It is a bit rigid to have to build two versions of a binary, but for folks who run their own code, no problem at all.

<comment><USER5> Sure, you can run OCaml and oc4mc. You'll also end up with two different binaries. oc4mc isn't as well tested, so I guess you'll hit more bugs. This still doesn't solve the horrible programming model [I've been cursing a multithreaded C program in the past few days. It's amazing how much stuff you have to remember and how much simply doesn't work in C when you've got threads]. Nor does it let your program scale past the limit of a single NUMA node. Whereas message passing a la Erlang lets you scale over NUMA and across machines and networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Urgh! I want to see Jocaml posts around here!</comment>


Disney Chairman Bob Iger to forgo salary amid virus crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-walt-disney/disney-chairman-bob-iger-to-forgo-salary-amid-virus-crisis-idUSKBN21H2TA <comment><USER2> In addition they're reducing:

"... vice presidents by 20%, senior vice presidents by 25%, and executive vice presidents and above by 30%..."

Niiice. Good start.</comment>


Coronavirus diary: Ethically sourcing data for the fight against COVID19 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/joshua-s/coronavirus-diary/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md <comment><AUTHOR> Need more developers:

* security engineer

* iOS engineer

* Android developer

* Dart engineers

* Flutter developers

* Engineers with health industry experience

* backend infrastructure

* backend security</comment>


NSA Whistleblower Speaks Out on Verizon, PRISM, and the Utah Data Center - <AUTHOR> http://libertasutah.org/interview/nsa-whistleblower-speaks-out-on-verizon-prism-and-the-utah-data-center/

<comment><AUTHOR> _LI: "How much data do you estimate will be able to be stored at the NSA facility in Utah?"

WB: "I simply took what was commercially available off of cleversafe.com, which is 10 exabytes in 200 square feet. Then I divided 200 square feet into the 100,000 square feet of storage that will be at the facility. Then you get 5,000 exabytes stored in that area. That's five zetabytes. What that means is around 500 years of the world's communications, if they used all the space for that purpose. I figure they wouldn't have to do more than 100 years, and the rest of it they can use with parallel processors to try to break codes."_

5 zetabytes? wow.

Also, here's a video of a different interview from last year.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590cy1biewc)</comment>


A Novel Theory About Amazon's Power - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/amazon-antitrust-monopoly.html <comment><USER2> The number of shortcuts and preconceptions in this article is astounding... "We know that Amazon is bad, I've found a new contrived way to tell you why"</comment>


Skype for Web - <AUTHOR> https://web.skype.com/

<comment><USER2> Still requires a proprietary platform-specific plugin to work. No thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> It's irritating that they still need their crude plugin.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like skype for Desktop</comment>


Ride through Wuppertal on 'the flying train' in clear footage from 1902 - <AUTHOR> https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/08/the-flying-train-moma/ <comment><USER2> A side-by-side view of 1902 vs current:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TqqdOcX4dc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TqqdOcX4dc)

As an aside, I find it interesting that this steel wasn't reclaimed sometime during WWII when the industrial machine was desperate for iron/metal.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing, this brought back some great memories. I grew up in Wuppertal and took the Schwebebahn all the time, fantastic ride to avoid traffic. You can still book the classical Kaiserwagen I believe for special occasions, although I think it may not be possible now during COVID.

[https://www.wuppertal.de/kaiserwagen](https://www.wuppertal.de/kaiserwagen)

<comment><USER4> covid or other reasons - it will be available again presumably in autumn 2021.

> Der Betrieb des Kaiserwagens ist derzeit nicht möglich. Wir gehen davon aus, > dass der Kaiserwagen im Herbst 2021 wieder fährt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Born and bred Wuppertaler here! The so called "Schwebebahn" is not only a tourist attraction but really a ubiquitous means of transport - my mother used it for commuting on a daily basis.

However, from what I heard they introduced some new trains which have severe issues (heavy attrition, scratching noises etc) so that currently, the Schwebebahn is actually "closed" for a whole year! (Having never experienced this in my 19 years living there, I assume it's a very rare and unfortunate situation)

<comment><USER6> What a neat system it is; I traveled there in 2015 specifically to ride the Schwebebahn, and I was absolutely astounded by this system. What a pleasant presence, so graceful. It really opened my eyes to what was possible at the turn of the 20th century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In 1999 the Schwebebahn had the first fatal accident when a train ran into a claw that was fixed to the rail by a repair crew and was forgotten to be removed again.

It was considered to be so safe that when someone reported the accident, the personnel at the emergency central didn't take them seriously first.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Wuppertal_Schwebebahn_acc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Wuppertal_Schwebebahn_accident)

<comment><USER8> The most famous incident on the other hand is probably the one where a circus elephant was taken on the train as a publicity stunt in the 1950s, got understandably unhappy and bounced around enough that it and some people fell out of the train into the river.

<comment><USER9> I got curious about this one and read about it on the wikipedia page:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn#Incident...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn#Incidents)

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi)

Those only do only mention the elephant jumping out, but nobody else.

<comment><USER8> indeed, seems I misremembered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here are two fairly recent YouTube videos in English about the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn:

* Tom Scott ("Why Wuppertal's Suspended Monorail Wasn't The Future Of Travel"): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4KZLcvMQWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4KZLcvMQWg)

* The Tim Traveller ("Schwebebahn: Why Wuppertal's Trains Are Much Cooler Than Yours"): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IFh6wFTJiQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IFh6wFTJiQ)

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to compare it throughout the years, here's a video of it in 1993: [https://youtu.be/4_8u7t5q3m4](https://youtu.be/4_8u7t5q3m4)

And in 2015: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgfRq4kEFro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgfRq4kEFro)

</comment><comment><USER12> The 4K upgraded version, with good speed correction and somewhat lame colorization.[1]

Here's a cab ride today, from the back end.[2]

[1] [https://youtu.be/EQs5VxNPhzk?t=17](https://youtu.be/EQs5VxNPhzk?t=17)

[2] [https://youtu.be/uPj0CDfpEm0](https://youtu.be/uPj0CDfpEm0)

<comment><USER13> Somehow the original in B&W seems more lifelike.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, unless you're on LSD, colors don't change on objects like that. The steel legs couldn't decide if they were baby blue or pink or rusty orange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is a famous story about an elefant (named Tuffi) riding in the Schwebebahn in the 50s for some sort of promotional stunt[1]. We'll the elefant got scared leading to this [2] awesome somewhat surreal picture. Supposedly (and surprisingly) the elefant was not injured.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi) [2] [https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/e5041ec1-0001-0004-00...](https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/e5041ec1-0001-0004-0000-000001025133_w1280_r1.77_fpx50_fpy40.jpg)

<comment><USER16> According to WP, what led to this picture is photo editing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article says this style of railway is unique to Germany. I'd say it is also unique _in_ Germany -- as far as I know, there is no other place that has it.

<comment><USER18> Well. There is this. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hshgs3-oRQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hshgs3-oRQ)

<comment><USER17> Oh yes, and this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv8MTufKRQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv8MTufKRQQ)

It is less than 100km from Wuppertal...

<comment><USER19> And you can use it with the _same_ ticket, because VRR.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsverbund_Rhein- Ruhr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsverbund_Rhein-Ruhr)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The colorized video at the bottom has a steampunk appeal to it. I'm surprised this track is still operating today!

</comment><comment><USER21> Great 1900s truss construction. But what a visual blight on the riverfront and the city streets.

I wonder what the town meetings looked like? Did they have NIMBYs? Did Chicago have NIMBYs when the ell was being built?

<comment><USER22> Do you mean the train is a visual blight? I have to disagree, it's magnificent.

The buildings too when compared to modern-day Wuppertal. I wonder how we allowed the postwar construction to be so damned ugly _everywhere_. What would a beautiful building with a proper decorated facade cost these days? Would it really be prohibitively expensive?

<comment><USER23> My main thoughts exactly.

Every city in Europe (that wasn't completely bombed) has a an "old town" or "old city center" where all the tourists stay. The tourists stay there, because the old part is the only part that's considered pretty. It's usually a relatively small part of the city where most buildings are in the same old consistent style with generally lots of details on buildings.

Then there's the rest of the city with post-war/modern absolutely soulless ugly buildings that have been optimized to be built as fast as possible, as cheap as possible and as large as allowed. Just plain depressing minimalist squares with no details. Esthetics are not a relevant part of modern building (engineering) goals in Europe now it seems. To me it is close to "Soviet building style". The only modern exception I can think of in the entire world would be Singapore.

Seeing that German village from the flying train I can't help but think that quality of public life was better than it is now in Europe. I'm referring to: way way way less traffic, almost no combustion engine driven traffic, cleaner air and water (possibly?), larger homes, no AirBNB in the city centers, all buildings look as new, all buildings look super well maintained, tons of space for traffic, green/trees everywhere and most importantly: addictive/toxic constant distractions such as smartphones had yet to be invented. Look at all those people walking around and DOING things without staring at screens! wow! And kids still played outside? woah

Conclusion: definitely not all aspects of life improved with time.

PS: yes, I realize some aspects of life back then where way worse than they are now for the average person.

<comment><USER24> The thing that struck me was the lack of traffic jams on the section over the street, compared to today's Wuppertal.

What happened to all the traffic? Okay, that's easy: population increased.

But before I accept that as an answer, I want to know how a city with population low enough to have essenstially no traffic managed to have enough ability to construct and run such a difficult traffic project? Whereas today, given a town with the same size and amount of trafic as 1902 Wuppertal, the towns I know tend to close bus lines instead of maintaining regular ones.

I have a sad hunch this has something to do with cars and no one caring, but can't really come up with anything real.

<comment><USER25> It's less about the number of people and more about the percentage of them that can afford a vehicle. Horses are expensive (lots of upkeep). Cars are expensive too, but not as expensive as a pair of horses. Society is today quite a lot wealthier than it was a hundred years ago partly because cars are so inexpensive, but it does mean that the roads are more crowded.

<comment><USER24> Now that I think about it, I don't quite remember the number of pedestrians on the streets this century. I _think_ it is slightly higher now compared to then, but the total number of people outside is definitely higher.

Reading the sibling comment, with constant population, this probably boils down to lifestyle choices. Do people live farther away from workplaces now? Are businesses more centralized/spread out? What would have to change to recover the lost freedom from traffic while keeping the population content?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cities look so much more fun to explore when pedestrian-focused

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder what the double wheel the kids were pushing was for.

<comment><USER28> My guess is they went to the wheel shop with their dad's to pick a couple of new wheels for the cart. If you get 2 you can just tie them together and roll them home.

<comment><USER29> Ah yes the wheel shop, of course

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Frame rate was slow when filmed. Looks about right if you slow it down to 50% in youtube. Maybe somebody could run it through some interpolation software...

<comment><USER31> upscaled, interpolated and colorized by AI: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQs5VxNPhzk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQs5VxNPhzk)

<comment><USER32> look, how every house is beige and changes color. I sincerely enjoy the bw- version much more.

<comment><USER31> Colorization is far from perfect indeed. I'm not sure how they model the temporal dimension (recognizing the same object in the prev/next frame and painting it of the same color - unless it has to be different because of shadows, lighting change, etc.) in these neural nets, does anyone know?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Even with 100,000+ inhabitants at the time of construction, it seems to be tremendously expensive to build. At the same time, impressive engineering. For some reason, I imagine maritime design engineers could achieve this most readily, given that it appears to be a 'first article'.

<comment><USER34> The practically non existent land use is a massive savings. It runs down a long valley which is extremely space constrained and mostly sits over the river. By comparison the largest cost of road networks in cities is opportunity cost. Something like 20% of the surface of NYC is roads, that's hundreds of billions of dollars worth of land and massive amount of lost property taxes.

<comment><USER35> IIRC the current form of Grand Central station in New York was built when they buried all the tracks leading to it underground, to free up for building what is now some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

<comment><USER36> You're thinking of Penn Station, not Grand Central. Grand Central was always that way.

Penn Station was originally above ground, and then rebuilt underground in the 60s, beneath Madison Square Garden, built at the same time.

Grand Central has a fairly large and very ornate above-ground structure taking up half a city block.

<comment><USER35> I mean the tracks leading to Grand Central, that were buried and built over: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Terminal#Termi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Terminal#Terminal_City)

(And it's all Internet knowledge, I've never been there.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> And just 20 years or so later, many of the kids in the video would probably be dead :(

<comment><USER38> Stefan Zweig's _World of Yesterday_ captures how much of a shock it was to move from the progress-and-civilisation of his corner of the nineteenth century to the fake-news[1]-and-senseless-violence[2] of the twentieth (Zweig hung on after the first barbaric shock, but gave up after the second. I think _Schachnovelle_ pretty much captures the mood he must've been in.)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23777984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23777984)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23895444](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23895444)

[2] we're all familiar with this; I had had better hopes for the twenty- first...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Would be great to see someone run this through some photogrammetry software. Meshroom is free and open source and would do it. I am pretty busy lately but if anyone wants the glory... download the video with youtube-dl, extract frames with ffmpeg, and pull out frames from one contiguous section (the footage jumps), then run it through meshroom. If anyone does it please share!

[https://alicevision.org/](https://alicevision.org/)

</comment><comment><USER40> A hanging rail train sounds much more complicated than a train running on top of tracks. I wonder why they chose that configuration? Or maybe a 1 rail hanging configuration takes much less material than 2 rails?

edit: sounds like there's some confusion in replies. What I mean is even if elevated, why not elevate traditional 2-rail train tracks, instead of a hanging train?

<comment><USER8> Apparently some local industrialist had an experimental one in his factory, and the proposal won out against competing designs which put a more "normal" rail pair elevated over the river. And back when it was planned any elevated train system was a big new thing, and the difficult bit either way was building over the river.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> More footage about the line: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2roHdZ9UB9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2roHdZ9UB9Y)

I don't speak the language but the auto transcribe and auto translate seems to work ok.

</comment><comment><USER42> Beautiful. I love how few cars there are.

<comment><USER43> I was coming to post this exact sentiment. The city and its people really shine when the roads are used by people, there are many pedestrian bridges, etc. I love seeing spaces used by humans, not by cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Best "cab ride" video ever!

</comment><comment><USER45> This is the infamous Wuppertaler Schwebebahn. What's with people calling cities and towns in foreign countries villages? Being unbeknownst to you doesn't mean it's a village. Wuppertal is home to 350 thousands inhabitants an counting. Wuppertal is the result of th fusion of several existing cities including Ebersfeld which had over 100 thousand people in 1895 and considered then a Großstadt.

<comment><USER46> Often people who are non-native speakers of English don't know the difference between town and village. I hear plenty Dutch people say that they're from a village, while town would probably be a better word.

<comment><USER47> I doubt town and village are used consistently in the Anglosphere either. They tend to be used fairly consistently in New England (though I can think of exceptions) where it's not so much about absolute size but whether they have a town government or are part of a larger entity.

<comment><USER48> Townships in New York are county subdivisions that are large enough to encompass multiple villages. Not what is conventionally considered a town.

<comment><USER47> I think it's similar in Pennsylvania where I grew up. The small groupings within a township (or that can straddle townships) are apparently officially census designated places according to Wikipedia. But the same articles seem to refer to them colloquially as towns or villages interchangeably. I'm pretty sure we called them towns when I was growing up.

There is quite a variation of governmental divisions within the US and what's important or even what exists in one state or region may not be so in another state or region. And informal nomenclature varies as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Calling it a Village is not really correct. Wuppertal had 100's of thousands of inhabitants at that point.

<comment><USER50> Fixed above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is a terrible article. As far as I'm the first in line to bitch about small places calling themselves cities or towns, Wuppertal is far from being a village by any standard.

</comment><comment><USER52> At the beginning there's more people walking and hanging out, than I'm used to seeing (in a sparsely developed area). If it were post WWII US, I wouldn't expect to see anyone outside all day.

<comment><USER53> Post WWII US covers 75 years. As a kid in the 70s I remember there being lots of people outside during the day in suburban Chicago: kids playing, moms walking to or from the store, there was still a guy on a bicycle cart who drove around offering knife sharpening.</comment></comment>


Storyboard Fountain – The best way to visualize your screenplay - <AUTHOR> http://storyboardfountain.com/?hn=true Also open source on Github:
https://github.com/setpixel/storyboard-fountain <comment><AUTHOR> Also open source on Github: [https://github.com/setpixel/storyboard- fountain](https://github.com/setpixel/storyboard-fountain)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to manage passwords in a small company? - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to share the many passwords, with multiple people on the team. Some are not TOO tech-savvy, but savvy enough to know to check our shared folder in dropbox.
I was thinking about creating a txt file in a shared folder in dropbox and just updating that. That's nice and easy to manage if everyone should have access to the same file. But once we reach a point where some people get some axs and not all, it could get hairy.
Are there any simple ways to accomplish this, while providing a good amount of security?
Possibly encrypting the txt file in dropbox, but then given that some users use OS X and others use windows, I suspect there might be issues there? <comment><USER2> <http://keepass.info/help/base/multiuser.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This definitely looks like it would be something that would help me.

Once I set this up with Dropbox, I am good to go.

+1

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.onelogin.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> LDAP? Depends on what kinds of passwords you are trying to share. If it's for internal services and such, I'd suggest LDAP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a specific implementation of LDAP that you have seen that would work for my situation? Considering small company that uses web apps and web tools (i.e. Google Apps for email, rackspace cloud files, etc.).

If I am not mistaken, the versions of LDAP I have seen implemented required Microsoft Exchange Server and major infrastructure investments. That's more than what we are looking for.

For passwords, I am thinking of everything for all my users. E.g. email passwords, passwords for my various hosting accounts, for all the services we use on a daily basis.

The idea being that if someone wants to find out what their password is - without having to do password recovery - they can view one file.</comment></comment>


Ravenbrook: Memory Pool System - <AUTHOR> https://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/ <comment><AUTHOR> Historical context: [https://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/doc/2002-01-30/ismm20...](https://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/doc/2002-01-30/ismm2002-paper/ismm2002.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a really cool system and has a lot of neat features. I used it for experimental Clojure VM.

Here I have library that shows how to use it from Rust with one pre-defined memory layout for the objects.

For people that are interested, here is an example of how to use it for a Clojure like language:

[https://github.com/clojit/clojit- cvm/blob/master/vm.c#L176](https://github.com/clojit/clojit- cvm/blob/master/vm.c#L176)

It lays out the memory like this:

                  0   1   2       4            8
                  +---+---+</comment><comment>-+</comment><comment></comment><comment>-+ <- 0
                  |mps|   |  class|size         |
                  +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+
                  | tagged reference            |
                  +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+
                  | tagged reference            |
                  +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+
                  | tagged reference            |
                  +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+
                  | tagged reference            |
                  +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+ <- size

mps here are a few bits you have to reserve to tell what MPS object it is. Padding and Forward you need to support in order for MPS to be able to move your objects.

const uint8_t OBJ_MPS_TYPE_PADDING = 0x00; const uint8_t OBJ_MPS_TYPE_FORWARD = 0x01; const uint8_t OBJ_MPS_TYPE_OBJECT = 0x02;

</comment><comment><USER3> Unacceptable license for commercial use when there are near-equivalent better- licensed alternatives around.

<comment><USER4> What's better?

<comment><USER3> I reworded my original post.

Boehm GC can be used in precise and incremental mode.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Shall we incorporate when we launch our website? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, my friends and I are working on a website. Our website will be free to use, and we might get people to register at our site with some of their personal information (does not include credit card info). When we launch the site, do we have to incorporate? Say if we cannot incorporate at first,(we are both non-US citizens and hold international visa, besides, we would first like to test the site to see if people like it) will there be any risk involved for us to run the site?<p>Your answers are greatly appreciated!! <comment><USER2> Reasons to incorporate include 1. limiting your liability and 2. establishing a formal agreement between you and your friends. First, if someone were to sue your company and you weren't incorporated (LLC, C-Corp, etc.) then they would be suing YOU personally and you would be liable. If you do incorporate, someone suing you is actually suing the company - the company is liable and only in specific cases can you be personally liable.

The second part is that incorporating typically puts out the terms of your arrangement with your friends - right now, if the hosting is in one person's name, they could essentially be the sole owner of the company (unless you had a lawsuit over IP, or something like that). Incorporating makes clear that the company owns the site and IP, and decides what percentage each party owns of the company.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, so I guess we have to incorporate then, in case someone wants to sue us. But then our main concern is our visa status. I am on a F1 visa and my friend is on a H1B visa. We are the main cofounders. I saw some answers by other people who say that if we incorporate, we can have shares and sit on the board but we cannot work for our company because our visa won't allow us to (While I can use opt, but my cofounder who is on H1B and who is the tech person can't). Their suggestion is to find a US cofounder, but finding a technical cofounder is hard for us...

<comment><USER3> What would the lawsuit be about? Is there a way that you would be sued as the actors "behind" the corporation (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil>)? Will you be a director of the corporation as well? It's very common for people to sue directors of corporations (see D&O insurance for details [[http://www.insurepro.net/html/directors_and_officers_explain...](http://www.insurepro.net/html/directors_and_officers_explained.asp\])).

The liability might be less limited than you think. Liability for debt? Probably anyone that would lend money to you would want personal guarantees.

You may want to consult a lawyer if this could potentially be messy. Lawyers are expensive you say! See my comment below about law schools and clinics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not exactly an answer to your question but it might make the decision easier: If you're currently a university student at an institution that has a law school then you can probably incorporate for free/the cost of filing. Many law schools operate business clinics that are free for students.

</comment><comment><USER4> Actually, doesn't YC suggest you _not_ incorporate when you partner or launch so that if you apply for and get into YC, they can help you form with their preferred structure?

Someone is going to have to show me an assesment of the true liability exposure of a website with no personally identifiable user data, no financial information, and presumably no personal assets to collect against before I'm convinced that's not a perfectly sound initial plan.

We formed a partnership agreement, no incorporation, FWIW. The agreement is binding.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Have anyone run into similar situations? Or most startups have US cofounders?</comment>