The Future of Ideas is now Free - <AUTHOR> http://lessig.org/blog/2008/01/the_future_of_ideas_is_now_fre_1.html

<comment><USER2> Sounds good - I read parts of the first chapter, about the filmmaker, and it is very scary. I knew about those issues, but somehow hadn't thought that it would be so bad. If you think about it, in fact most of what we do today is already illegal, like publishing photos on Flickr. There could be part of a building visible in the background that is copyrighted... I remember a case in germany were an artist sued a city for publishing photographs of a sculpture that had actually been funded by the city.

Makes me wish to strive for a "creative commons" lifestyle. I don't even want to listen to unfree music anymore, or watch unfree films, or read unfree books. I would like my government to pass a law that whoever wants to build a building in my city has to put it under the creative commons license so that people my photograph it freely. And so on... (Thereby, if a filmmaker ever wanted to make a movie about my life, they should have no problems doing so ;-) )

Yes, artists have to live somehow, but human society also builds on the free flow of thoughts. The only irony about copyright laws being perhaps that now finally capitalism will stiffle free thought in the same way that communism did, thereby losing it's evolutionary advantage.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here it is: <http://lessig.extf.net/thefutureofideas/download-pdf>

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're into podcasts, then there is a good introduction to the topic in this presentation <http://tiny.cc/lessigmp3></comment>


Tatsuo Horiuchi is painting pictures on PC with MS EXCEL - <AUTHOR> http://pasokonga.com/index.htm <comment><AUTHOR> For excel art drawing instructions by T.Hiriuchi, see [http://pasokonga.com/KakikataPageAA.htm](http://pasokonga.com/KakikataPageAA.htm)</comment>


Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/kindness-emotions-psychology/ <comment><USER3> When I was working on evolutionary dynamics in the late 90s, a group of us from across the world were trying to build an evolutionary model that showed the emergence of altruistic behaviour.

It was really really difficult. Even knowing exactly the kind of behaviour we wanted to show, it wasn't trivial to stack the dice enough to roll that outcome.

I have since read a lot of arguments, a lot of post-hoc reasoning that justifies why altruism might be a positive contributor to fitness. It is no coincidence they are almost all hand-waving, narrative arguments.

I don't buy them. Show me the math.

Evolution is a perfect subject for handwaving and post hoc rationalisations. I do not think all of evolutionary psychology is bunkum, like some have claimed, but I do think a lot is unfalsifiable, motivated reasoning. My advice would be, unless it comes with good predictions of evidence from the historical biological record, or good experimental evidence from mathematical models of evolution, it was too easily come by to be considered knowledge.

<comment><USER4> > When I was working on evolutionary dynamics in the late 90s, a group of us > from across the world were trying to build an evolutionary model that showed > the emergence of altruistic behaviour.

OK, math.

There are 200 people in Group A. Each has the choice of taking 1 point for themselves or giving 2 points to the group. If everyone gives 2 points then everyone gets 2 points. If everyone keeps the 1 point then no one gets anything from the group and everyone has only the 1 point. But if you keep your 1 point and everyone else gives 2 points then you get 1 + 1.99 points = 2.99 points. You can obviously see how everyone might end up defecting here.

But there are also groups B and C who are all under the same rules. After each iteration everyone in the group with the lowest average _dies_ , is ineligible to receive points in any future iteration, and is replaced in the next iteration with a new group that behaves randomly. Each individual gets to accumulate points for 100 iterations before being replaced, unless their group dies first.

Now what happens?

<comment><USER3> Try it. With actual evolving populations with inherited strategies, and without hard-coding group selection.

Without hard-coding the groups as separate evolving units, you'll have a hard time.

In general, it is easy to show the group behaviors you want if you can treat the group as atomic for the purpose of the model. But you've just moved the goalposts, your 'individuals' are not the unit of evolution any more, and you've simply set the required behavior in the fitness function.

So try it and see.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean when you say "without hard-coding group selection"?

Are you saying the simulation is not valid unless collaboration between individuals arises as an emergent behavior?

<comment> dumb-saint If you hard-code group selection (setting the group as the unit of evolution), then you are already assuming what you want to prove.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really sloppy. Altruism is also the basis for Altruistic Punishment which can promote some of the most vicious behavior that humans are capable of. Social systems are much more complex than this simplistic reductionism.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention that altruistic behavior towards members of the in-group is often paired with extreme violence towards outsiders.

Humans are literally Jekyll and Hyde.

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- party_punishment#Parochi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- party_punishment#Parochial_Altruism)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Kindness is a poor word choice, except in its most literal sense. Care is much more apt. Mammals' key evolutionary advantage over reptiles is that they care for each other, forming social groups which enable greater fitness. Likewise with primates > mammals, and humans > apes.

(One could argue that intelligence and brain size have more to do with evolutionary fitness, but I would speculate that intelligence is a result of increased care, not the other way around. Give a thing more time, space, and resources to grow, and it will.)

As a species, the more we collectively care for each other--through actions, not feelings--, the greater chance we have for survival and growth.

<comment><USER10> It's (part of) agreeableness in the Big Five: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Five_factors)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In 'The God Delusion' Richard Dawkins mentions a few ways altruism and compassion etc could've evolved in humans (by way of selfish genes).

I remember one fascinating example about Arabian babblers which use altruism to assert dominance. They seek out increasingly dangerous positions to alert the herd of potential predetors. And by feeding others as a way to say 'look at me I am so superior to you I can afford to feed you'. Of course, they are rewarded by getting all the mates.

<comment><USER12> The Arabian Babbler is a bird, for anyone else who was imagining a babbling Arabian human.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_babbler#Behaviour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_babbler#Behaviour) \- interesting

<comment><USER13> I was thinking it might be a sub group of Arabians I'd never heard of, like berbers.

<comment><USER14> Berbers aren't a "sub group of Arabians"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Whenever conflict arises at work, I usually just take a pause and buy the other person a drink and get to know each other on a more personal level. Its fun doing this and usually it ends up with me understanding my coworker on a more human level and we come to an agreement and work better together. A few years ago I would have fought to have my way and as satisfying as it was to win (occasionally), the attitude is very divisive and alienating for both parties involved.

<comment><USER16> I'm doing Polyamory for the better part of my adult life and I learned much about conflict resolution. Because when you have multiple partners and they also have multiple partners you just end up with problems more often. If you take too long to fix these, the whole thing isn't viable anymore.

This also helped me in my career. I stopped thinking about "relationships" from a monogamous romantical point of view, but in a more generalized way.

I have feelings for every person I meet in life, some I love, some I like, some I find sexually attractive, some I find intellectual inspiring etc.

I want to be on good terms with all of those who I consider to be in my life for longer time, so I can't work with secrecy, fighting or passive aggressive behaviour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is in line with recent game theory studies. In iterated prisoner's dilemma, the introduction of kindness wipes out always-defect strategies in the long run, and is competitive with tit-for-tat.

<comment><USER18> Can you elaborate on this? How do you implement "kindness" into the prisoner's dilemma? Got any links to the relevant studies?

<comment><USER19> One way I might do that is, occasionally throw in a 'cooperate' independent of whatever other strategy I've got.

Doing that will tend to convert tit-for-tatters and might flip other strategies into cooperating. If you grade by the total number of cooperate moves in the group, the group wins by 'kindness' flipping a variety of strategies into cooperate mode. It'll tend to expand pockets of cooperation. No immediate personal benefit, but tends to make the environment better which may seem like a benefit.

I don't think 'survival of the fittest' has to mean 'kneecap all your opponents and rent-seek', but that's the popular interpretation in Western capitalism :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is a thoughtful book on this topic called "Love is the Killer App" that makes the argument that in a commodity based economy the most ruthless prevail (think 20th century steel industry), but in an information based community the most altruistic prevail (the internet). I didn't agree with all of it but it was a good read and a helpful counterpoint to the widely held view that being ruthless is good for business.

</comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps I'm completely cynical at this point, but I think recently I have seen altruism used in the sense of "please contribute large amounts of free work to this project I'm heavily invested in."

That said, kindness, in the sense of, willing to make an attempt to understand, and take into account others views / opinions / needs, definitely makes for nicer people to be around.

<comment><USER22> > _Perhaps I 'm completely cynical at this point, but I think recently I have > seen altruism used in the sense of "please contribute large amounts of free > work to this project I'm heavily invested in."_

A bit cynical in a way you put it, maybe, but what you saw is true. But it's just what comes out when you consider helping someone and _actually getting an effect_ over helping to just get warm feelings in your belly about how good you are. It so happens that in a technological civilization, spending our time as specialists to earn money and giving it to different specialists is a better way to help than trying to help directly in areas we're not specialized in. It's how professional specialization works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> None of this exists independent of environment.

Mismatch your behavior to the environment, and you're screwed.

People consistently compliment me for being "such a nice guy." And I've made, and valued, many alliances with contemporaries.

But the power brokers? They've screwed me right over.

If you are unmitigatedly kind while hoping for reciprocity in matters essential to your own well-being.

Well, either you are weakening yourself, or you are not really being "kind" by failing to respect the particular circumstances and the other party. Or some combination of these.

People become less and less comfortable with you, and continued kindness is actually perceived negatively.

Unmitigated kindness is another false, simplistic lesson that has been counter-productively fostered in recent decades.

</comment><comment><USER24> It was never survival of the fittest- it is survival of the most adapted to a situation. If the situation rewards kindness- survival of the kindest- if the situation rewards being a heartless, survival of the heartless. If the situation is constantly fluctuating, survival of the system swinging between the both, by adapting to environmental clues. Can we please let go of 1930 evolution papers wording and thinking and move on?

<comment><USER25> "It was never survival of the fittest- it is survival of the most adapted to a situation"

Isn't that exactly what "fittest" means? First definition from Oxford: "of a suitable quality, standard, or type to meet the required purpose."

<comment><USER26> It's one of the meanings, and presumably the one that was in mind when the term was coined.

But an awful lot of people seem to take it to mean the other sense - "in good health, especially because of regular physical exercise", and extrapolate that out to mean that it's always the strongest/fastest etc that survive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me of Peter Kroptotkin's idea of Mutual Aid [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution)

Full book: [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4341](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4341)

</comment><comment><USER28> In modern society, this is so obvious that it seems not worth writing about. Most successful people I know are kind and considerate while people I have known who are not so successful in life tend to not consider other people. OK, I am making a generalization, but one that is usually true.

<comment><USER16> The more problems you have, the less time you have for others?

<comment><USER29> Or, the less you give to others, the more problems you'll have.

In my experience (and I'm speaking very much from personal experience of having suffered from - or been punished by - this phenomenon), the causality is not exclusively in either direction.

Rather, it's a self-perpetuating cycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One quarter of people in Asia has Chengis Khan's genes. He is probably the most genetically successfull male in the recent millenia. I am not sure he got there by altruism alone.

<comment><USER31> Except Ghengis was around Millenia ago, if we all lived like him now, then we would be in pretty bad shape.

It seems taking more than our fair share has caused some pretty bad situations with regards to the environment, we can't keep operating just for ourselves for much longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Feels like there is a type mismatch error in the title. Survival of the fittest covers all fitness functions, so we can't contrast it with kindness. Something like "survival of the cruelest" or the "strongest" would be more correct though it doesn't read as well.

<comment><USER33> The title does not infer contrast between fitness and kindness, it infers that (were one to write a fitness function that was made up of a conglomerate of every human personality trait) kindness is the prime mover in what separates the fittest from the least fit.

I also think you might misunderstand what the word kindness means, as you refer to cruelty and strength as some measure of adequate relation to what would be deemed fit in some similar function.

I think it's a fairly cogent statement, as great and influential persons are, by and large, incredibly kind. Of course, if one thinks that power equates with influence, or that fitness is best represented by wealth, I would posit that there is a huge correlation between wealth, kindness, and authority. For instance, President Obama is quite obviously an incredibly kind man. William Gates, Jr., a philanthropist (read: about as far away from unkind as you can get), Her Majesty the Queen of England, the titular head of an Empire, leads a family that donates a huge amount of their wealth to the citizenry of the United Kingdom, and is as sunny as anyone in her position could possibly be (have you ever once seen her upset in public, because I haven't), these instances alone give clear indication that kindness is, indeed, perhaps an indisputable barometer of what is meant by being fit for survival.

By contrast, who do you know who is sought by society for capital punishment? The unkind, that's who. Those who are cruel are brought up before magistrates, tribunals, and high courts and told in no uncertain terms that their survival is undesirable by the masses.

Fitness in a world of more than a few is entirely dependent on symbiotic, cohesive, gentile (in the French sense, though Christ is an inordinately germane example of kindness too) behavior.

<comment><USER10> > The title does not infer contrast between fitness and kindness

The titel "Forget X, it's Y that matters" is pretty close to the definition of a contrast.

Regarding your other thoughts: it'd be great if it were that easy, and I even agree that the sort of kindness Bill Gates and Barack Obama exhibit is probably a useful trait.

But the causality isn't quite clear. My impression is that these success stories are the result of combining (a) extreme intelligence and (b) extreme happiness, and that kindness is the natural result if, for example, they have absolute confidence in themselves and no longer feel any kind of threat from competition.

But I'd say the "Big 5" model provides a more complete set of traits that have become more and more relevant over time:

\- Openness to experience \- Conscientiousness \- Extraversion \- Agreeableness \- (Lack of) Neuroticism

There's also absolutely no doubt that aggression, the desire to punish wrongdoing by others and other violent traits have at some point been important for survival of the individual and the group, and probably still are, at a diminished level.

> Fitness in a world of more than a few is entirely dependent on symbiotic, > cohesive, gentile...

Let's not forget the immune system. It's one of many "magic" inventions that made larger societies possible.

<comment><USER33> The title is inferring that in modern society, the more successful are those who are kind instead of those who are ostensibly (like, say, a pro athlete) faster/stronger/more dexterous. In other words, if you socialize better, you're more likely to find a partner. That's essentially the gist. The contrast, if you wanna characterize it as that, is to give credence to the people who do well by helping society thrive instead of browbeating it into submission.

The Big 5 model is incredibly limiting and is only successful _because_ of its brevity, not because it is sufficiently explanatory of the kaleidoscope of human traits. Its reductionism at it's most hubristic, and let's keep it real here, no five personality traits are adequate enough to span the dynamism of human emotive.

I believe in a thing called cosmic consciousness, and that is (albeit somewhat challenging to explain) what drives my defense of why kindness is such a pivotal factor in human social interaction. There is a line in Gladiator "what we do in life echoes in infinity" and because that resonance exists, the kindness we exhibit is important enough to outweigh other traits, and actually points to a larger issue of whether or not our judgmental, rather vindictive mindset of late is ultimately counterproductive to the existential state of civilization. In other words, when we are kind to one another, we facilitate a happier, healthier world, thus insuring the survival of those who promote that non-violent, what I would call, state of Grace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> We certainly have this kind of adaptation for tribal structures. The question is how this plays out on a larger scale.

BTW Jordan Peterson's latest podcast goes deep on this issue. His podcast is here: [http://jordanbpeterson.com/2016/12/podcast/](http://jordanbpeterson.com/2016/12/podcast/)

</comment><comment><USER35> How trade creates wealth: "Trade is made of win" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0gGyeA-8C4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0gGyeA-8C4)

</comment><comment><USER36> In summary, I dismiss the article as flawed (false and overly simplistic). No matter how noble (kind) your society, if the next society practices savagery and you are not prepared, your society will fail.

The level at which you pitch the concept of kindness is essential, as is the environment. To illustrate, many comments in this thread fail to hold for an example like the Mongols, or may argue that the Mongols wiping out civilisations was altruistic or kind. In a simplistic way, the Mongols survived through cooperation (as their society had some cruel rules that were definitely not kind), cruelty to outsiders and through theft. However, you could also contrast Chinggis Khan with Darius I of Persia who demonstrated far more kindness throughout his reign than Chinggis did. Both leaders in their own way were quite successful.

If you consider individuals, the dynamics can be quite different from those of nations, depending on the environment. If you limit the view to modern, first world societies, cooperation with ones peers is still essential and almost certainly more important than kindness. To illustrate, if I give everyone around me all of my money, that could be considered kind (think of a lottery winner). However, ultimately, such kindness (no matter how misguided) will usually lead to little or no benefit for the individual. Even if you compare two similarly cooperative people, the most competent cooperator will usually out perform a kinder cooperator. It will depend on the society as to whether an individual's empathy for those in need will add to the success of the individual and/or the community. For example, where a society has social welfare, an individual can point to the welfare system rather than directly contributing to the welfare of those in need.

Family dynamics are yet another level of complexity. Does a priority of kindness go to the family or the local community? What constitutes success of the family? Families that cooperate are more likely to succeed beyond those that are purely kind to each other. However, family cohesion is almost certainly dependent on both kindness and cooperation.

There are also work place environments, community group environments, local community environments, state and territory and country environments. In order to be successful, these environments require competency and cooperation. Kindness may or may not be required.

Regarding kindness. In my observations of modern society (collectively), I observe that there are some examples that complicate concepts such as kindness. For example feminism* insists that domestic violence is something that only happens to females (through ignorance of statistics or for less savoury reasons). Ultimately, what this demonstrates is that kindness can be selectively applied and still be recognised as acceptable.

In summary, I don't see kindness as essential (at least not in all circumstances). Kindness can be selective (eg. Feminism's human rights failures with respect to domestic violence by representing only one gender) and, yet, such kindness can be seen as socially acceptable. Kindness can also be handed off to community and government groups in some circumstances. However, unlike kindness, cooperation is essential for individuals and groups.

* to be clear, feminism can not and should not be interchangeably used with female. Not all feminists are female and not all females are feminist. I think of feminism more like the KKK. Not all white people support the KKK and a criticism of the KKK is not a criticism of white people collectively.

</comment><comment><USER37> Tell that to the Mongols.

<comment><USER8> The ones whose empire started falling apart almost as soon as its founder died?

<comment><USER37> Genghis Khan was probably the most fecund male in human history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Title should indicate this is from 2009.

<comment><USER39> Yes, from the first question "a book that _was just released_ called Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life" is from 2009:

[http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/born-to-be-good-the- sci...](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/born-to-be-good-the-science-of-a- meaningful-life)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> -

<comment><USER41> You're getting a lot of downvotes but no-one is helping you understand why.

> "kindness" in the human world is similar to kindness in the animal world. It > translates to weakness, which is why evolution naturally weeds it out of > most animals.

Kindness among kin groups translates to stronger groups, so There's a reason that humans are naturally altruistic and punish crimes against their in-group so vigorously: A solitary human outside of civilisation will struggle and probably die. A bunch of humans working together rules the planet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Kindness? Among bacteria, fungi, cells and viruses?

How does kindness fits into population genetics?

<comment><USER43> The article is about humans

<comment><USER42> Are humans or any part of their biology exempt from the evolutionary forces?

<comment><USER43> No. Your point is?

<comment><USER42> That competition for survival and reproduction is _the_ main factor which outweight everything else. Family and social bonds are also among the most powerful forces, but it is the selfish aspect of favoring and protecting one's relatives what matters.

Altruism and kindness are also minor factors, but the weakest ones, and, obviously, cannot be thought as replacement for the general laws of ecosystems based on survival and reproduction, which basically means lifetime ongoing competition for everything that is related to passing of the genes to another generation.

Reframing of evolutionary forces to be more humanistic is, of course, bullshit.

<comment><USER43> Ok I see that makes sense.

Austruism and kindness might be beneficial at a tribal level as you will likely meet the person again and they or their family may pay back the favour. Even if that isn't a conscious thought by the person being nice.

Nowadays this is less obviously beneficial in our big cities and jet set lifestyles.

And as you said kindness is part of a bigger set of factors and perhaps a lesser one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The best evolutionary strategy for a human is to pretend to be nice but to be selfish and manipulative behind the scenes.

Even if you make a mistake and damage your reputation, you can still move to a different city/country and start over with a clean slate.

<comment><USER45> As long as you don't want a family or career.

<comment><USER44> Family, maybe. But being manipulative and two-faced is great for career - <USER2> long as no one ever finds out.

There are lots of safe strategies that one can use to make sure that no one ever finds out about your double dealings.

Successful people know how to lie and cheat effectively; but they know where to draw the line.

I guarantee you that practically every financially successful person ever has used lying and manipulation to get what they wanted.

The ones who didn't cheat or lie and still managed to succeed just got extremely lucky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > _A psychologist probes..._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science)</comment>


How FPGAs work, and why people will buy them (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/195.php <comment><USER2> > FPGAs are a programmable platform, but one designed by EEs for EEs rather > than for programmers.

This is the problem with FPGAs. Their performance and utility is not really disputed. Working with them is so un-ergonomic that it's frankly embarrassing.

The EE world is notoriously closed/proprietary making it incredibly difficult to explore novelty or customize tooling to suit specific needs. The situation is reminiscent of the pre-gcc era proprietary C compilers. Sure synthesis / place and route are much harder problems than compiling to machine code but I would guess that fact amplifies the need.

One can't really expect software's current development comfort without acknowledging its driving force (GNU/the free software movement).

<comment><USER3> Actually I recently bought a Spartan 7 based FPGA board after taking the nand2tetris course and started playing with the free version of the Vivado suite.

If your complaint is principle based on the stuff being non free software, then it holds. If it's on usability - not sure it does. While lengthy, the process of compiling and getting something running on silicon didn't seem any more complicated than Grade/Maven etc all based Android Studio builds.

<comment><USER4> > While lengthy, the process of compiling and getting something running on > silicon didn't seem any more complicated than Grade/Maven etc all based > Android Studio builds.

I'm not sure many people would share your opinion that Gradle/Maven are uncomplicated.

Personally, I would say they belong to the 20% most complicated build toolchains I have encountered - which would make the FPGA process still not very uncomplicated in comparison.

<comment><USER5> Maven is just right click + build to build. Or file + import to import a project.

The last time I worked with Vivado, I remember our interns couldn't manage to create a project or use an existing project after a whole week. It doesn't help that there are no tutorials from the vendor or the internet, or that projects can't be stored in source control.

<comment><USER6> I went on an interview once where part of the process was "here is a development board. Here is a computer and the internet. Make a full adder, connect the inputs to push buttons and the outputs to LEDs. You have all day, by yourself, in a cubicle."

I was told it cut out something like 95% of candidates who looked good on paper. It was an interesting approach.

<comment><USER5> That's what the interns were trying to do. Get a push button to a LED working, on a Xilinx SoC, with the Vivado IDE. They couldn't figure it out in days.

I don't blame them. I tried and couldn't get it working in a day either. We were lucky we found another guy in the company who worked with that board on a different project. He showed us and he had extensive notes to get the environment working.

Embedded development really sucks.

<comment><USER7> Not all embedded. Thankfully there is a sort of standard embedded mcu arch showing up via arm (would love risc v but I'll take what I can get). This has support via mainline clang/llvm and gcc, and isn't much work to get a more modern setup going via cmake, c++17, and clion.

But the amount of people who are still going the raw c route for often times unfounded reasons (c++ is slower or has more bloat), prefer one large c file, don't do code based testing, etc, in embedded is staggering.

And for more niche areas (like FPGA) it's extremely behind the times. Not to say c is behind the times, it has its time and place, but 99% of the time they aren't bale to properly articulate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In case there is some interest in learning hardware

        iCEBreaker FPGA

The first open source iCE40 FPGA development board designed for teachers and students.

[https://www.crowdsupply.com/1bitsquared/icebreaker- fpga](https://www.crowdsupply.com/1bitsquared/icebreaker-fpga)

full disclosure: I will likely get an enthusiastic "Thank you!" for dropping this here.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been considering getting an Arduino MKR Vidor 4000, which has an integrated FPGA and is fairly new. Does anyone here have any experience with this as a learning platform for FPGAs? (I already have reasonable experience with Arduino) Any suggestions for alternative boards/tech?

<comment><USER10> Whenever people ask this question, I'm the broken record with the same reply: start out with the cheapest kit possible, an Altera EP2C5TQ144 development board.

[http://land-boards.com/blwiki/index.php?title=Cyclone_II_EP2...](http://land- boards.com/blwiki/index.php?title=Cyclone_II_EP2C5_Mini_Dev_Board)

They are old, and you need a slightly older version of the Altera Quartus software suite, but they are dirt cheap.

Go to eBay, search for EP2C5TQ144, and you can find development kits _including programming cable_ starting at $3.50.

The FPGA is tiny, but it has quite a bit of RAM, a bunch of hardware multipliers, and a sufficient amount of logic gates to create your own 32-bit RISC processor if you feel like it. And because it is so tiny, full synthesis and place & route run will take a few minutes.

You may be tempted to go the open source route with a Lattice ICE40 FPGA. There are now tons of board out there with this FPGA, and being fully open source is great. But once you start debugging, you'll be without all the goodies that come with Altera, especially SignalTap (an on-chip synthesized logic analyzer.)

Chances are that you will never outgrow the EP2C5 FPGA because you'll lose interest and move on to something else. But if you outgrow it, all you've wasted was one latte at Starbucks.

<comment><USER11> I'd advise people to start with a Cypress PSoC MCU, they have the taste of FPGA, but have a lot of useful stuff for various projects, and I bought 10 MCUs for $10.

<comment><USER10> I just googled it and they seem to be MCUs with no programmable logic?

What feature gives them a taste of an FPGA?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cypress call it 'UDB'.

[https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/no-bitbanging- necessa...](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/no-bitbanging-necessary-or- how-to-drive-a-vga-monitor-on-a-psoc-5lp-programmabl/)

<comment><USER10> That's much more FPGA-like than I expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone have experience with cloud-hosted FPGAs (e.g. on AWS), and if so would you recommend this platform to get started with FPGA programming?

<comment><USER13> You should not use AWS F1 instances if you are just starting out. They will burn a nice-sized hole in your wallet and the only thing you'll get in return is confusion and frustration as a beginner.

The AWS F1 devkit and APIs are largely oriented around making OpenCL-based designs easy and fast to develop (using Xilinx's "SDAccel" framework), but if you're just starting out you almost certainly want to start with classic RTL development using Verilog or whatnot. But "traditional" RTL development is substantially more involved. The documentation and the environment itself is largely oriented with the assumption you're a semi-experienced RTL developer and there's no real way around that part. (For example, even when using OpenCL, you're going to have a hell of a time optimizing anything without understanding real RTL/digital design principles.)

The F1 also has a non-trivial build system, meaning you have to do literally everything on AWS. Not a deal-breaker, but considering the equivalent of a "Hello World" will take you something like 30+ minutes to compile using something like a t2.2xlarge, and anything beyond that will be multi-hour (yes, this isn't an exaggeration) -- you probably don't want to just be spending money on every minor iteration.

I would suggest getting a cheap Lattice FPGA and using Project Icestorm, which is a free FOSS Verilog toolchain, in order to get started. This will cost you closer to $20 USD. [https://www.latticesemi.com/icestick](https://www.latticesemi.com/icestick) and [http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/](http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/) \-- there are allegedly good books on Verilog, but I'm afraid I can't recommend any myself...

After that, when you've got a big enough design where the monstrous VU9P -- the Xilinx chip used in the F1 -- is relevant to your interests, you'll know. :)

Source: I worked on moving/porting our designs to the AWS F1 (traditional RTL based stuff, not HLS/OpenCL -- and it was surprisingly challenging, up-to and including talking with AWS engineers directly to resolve bugs in their datacenters. And I was the software guy!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article makes me wonder if adding FPGA units to existing CPUs and GPUs that integrate with existing silicon makes a lot more sense than having a completely separate FPGA.

<comment><USER15> Integration of cpu and fpga has been done for years.

<comment><USER16> But not in household CPUs which I think is what GP meant. CPU speeds don't increase anymore, having an FPGA that can be programmed by software such as photo editors or encryption engines, things can be sped up a lot. (At least for crypto, one reason to stay with particular algorithms is hardware support; we'd be more agile if we could implement that in software without sacrificing much speed.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if FPGAs would make good crypto devices, e.g. for disk encryption? If you implement AES on an FPGA, is it fast enough to keep up with at least a SATA 3 SSD?

<comment><USER13> Yes, they can do traditional cryptography pretty well (depending on the algorithm, of course.) AES-128 in an FPGA can encrypt a full 16-byte block every clock cycle when done right. With 100Mhz clock that's about 2.3Gbp/s, well within SATA 3 transfer speeds. You can achieve that with a last-last-gen FPGA that will cost you a couple bucks out of pocket, and it will use a fraction of the power/thermal footprint of any desktop/mobile processor that doesn't have AES support. Likewise, you can easily scale this up -- 10gig/s isn't even worth mentioning because it's trivial, so you can think closer to 40Gbp/s and beyond (which, today -- still not that impressive, I'm just giving you an idea.)

The thing is, if you're going to do ubiquitous encryption for something like your SATA link at scale, with a lot of units being sold -- you're better off just using a dedicated ASIC with a fixed algorithm, and your performance/power profile will skyrocket even further.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or maybe, if you're going to do ubiquitous encryption for something like your SATA link at scale, with a lot of units being sold, it would be nice to only update the FPGA firmware when the exploit will be found in the implementation of your crypto.

<comment><USER13> But no hardware engineer would think of it that way in such a hypothetical product scenario, if they were designing it. Because:

\- If many units are being sold, BOM choices matter. People optimize part choices down to fractions of a penny on individual units when scale is large; ASICs and FPGAs are differences in _dollars_ , it's a completely different order of magnitude. Power usage is similarly important for the same reasons. Cost is king, and nobody will buy/integrate your 20x more expensive SATA adapter when another alternative exists that does the same job, cheaper, faster, with lower power. So what about all that alleged 'security' advantage when nobody uses your chip at all?

\- There is no indication cryptographic agility is actually advantageous for any given design, it can only be assessed in the context of a threat. It may in fact be a detriment due to exposing further attack surface (e.g. you now need a secure update mechanism). This is important because the design phase is absolutely critical and takes substantial amount of the overall development/market time -- so you don't introduce extra complexity if you don't have reason to believe you need it. (And it's also why you just tend to buy many components from other vendors, because paying a bill to them is cheaper than paying your engineers to recreate everything while assuming they won't fuck up. I'd guess that very few actual FPGA/RTL engineers actually implement AES cores outside of university, as opposed to just reusing an existing one...)

Ultimately all of this comes down to your design requirements for the product, but flexibility can come with costs and in terms of money it _definitely_ is not free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice article, but it's from 2013.

<comment><USER19> And to be fair, since then FPGAs have exploded in non ASIC prototyping use cases.

They're even starting to be used for some consumer electronics.

<comment><USER20> I'm interested in seeing some examples of their use in consumer electronics. I think this article would be a lot more compelling if it had a section on "You've already bought one if you have a (hypothetically) Roomba vaccum/ Tesla Model S/ Thinkpad laptop/ Ubiquiti router." I'm pretty sure most of those don't have FPGAs, but would be curious to see a list of things which do. I am by no means a representative consumer, but I know there's an FPGA in my:

\- Rigol oscilloscope

\- National Instruments DAQ equipment

\- Mecco laser cutter

\- DJI drone

Any others where I might not have taken it apart and seen the big QFP with "Xilinx" or "Altera" on the circuit board would be interesting!

<comment><USER19> The iPhone 7 has a iCE5LP4K. Those little CPLDs (which are full FPGAs these days, but fighting that terminology seems to be a losing battle) are in everything. Which is fair, they're fantastic power sequencing controllers and great for coalescing I2C and SPI buses into something more easily consumed by the application processor. Think an FPGA that constantly polls sensors, wrapping their chip specific format in a way that let's them filter on the CPLD and only wake up the application processor when something interesting happens.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Twitter Files For IPO - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130912/twitter-files-for-ipo/?mod=atdtweet <comment><USER2> Advertising.

Three of the largest, most influential and defining technology companies of our lifetime (Google, Facebook, Twitter) make money pretty much solely through advertising. Is there no other way companies can use this data to generate revenue other than to sell ads? I don't have anything against ads, but I'm just trying to understand how (if at all) this could change in the near future. What is the future of advertising? Will it continue to remain relevant 10 or 20 years down the line in its current form, allowing so many massive companies to be built on its back?

<comment><USER3> My personal impression is that the rise of advertising has emerged from the collapse of disposable income. In a world where everyone has wealth to spend, it is better to just make more goods people want to buy as efficiently as possible. In a world where everyone is poor, and losing money to capital siphoning through the rich (who do not evenly reinvest this capital into the economy, and expect reliable returns meaning more long term concentration of money), advertising becomes more relevant because you compete over scarce dollars and more so need to motivate purchases through psychological breaking down of a targets resistance to splurge buy something of yours.

When actually making more goods doesn't make you more money (at least commodity goods, there is a growing market for the absurd luxury goods targeting those that own dividend stocks and have multiple houses and personal chefs) your alternative is to use psychological manipulation to drive the limited dollars towards your goods, even if it means the per-unit cost is higher. You make the gambit - persuade someone to buy, or don't sell at all because your product isn't really that competitve anymore when you are spending upwards of 30% of your budget on ads.

Look no further than the evolution of the video game industry - since it is so new, it also shows this effect strongly, where the biggest titles like the CoD games can see 80% of their budget spent on advertising (cursory google search to get these numbers on the latest title, Black Ops 2, turned up nothing citeable). If you spend $28 million making a game, and $120 - 200 million on ads, your economic model must be fucked.

So because you compete for scarce dollars, customers aren't coming to you, you need to manipulate customers into spending money they don't have. Hence why advertising is so huge, even with 1% click-through rates. All that concentrated wealth getting reinvested has limited alternative options of where to go, so you just try to pry more money out of people through bombardment.

<comment><USER4> _who do not evenly reinvest this capital into the economy_

Huh? Do most rich people have their money under their mattresses?

Rich people try to maximize their returns as much as anyone else, which typically means a mix of stocks (that's capital for businesses to grow) and bonds (capital for cities, states and nations as well as businesses).

<comment><USER5> _Do most rich people have their money under their mattresses?_

Apple has a hundred billion dollars sitting around not doing very much.

Landlords in The Bay Area are capturing extra money available to FaceLinkGoogTwitIPO Heads and pocketing it themselves.

Most rich people aren't investing in startups. Most rich people are probably corrupt doing borderline, if not flat out, illegal things, and are only interested in hoarding more wealth for themselves.

<comment><USER6> "Apple has a hundred billion dollars sitting around not doing very much."

Couldn't be further from the truth. Apple runs one of the world's largest hedge funds: [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-30/presenting- worlds-b...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-30/presenting-worlds- biggest-hedge-fund-you-have-never-heard)

Not even going to bother with your other statements.

<comment><USER7> Hedge funds have very little impact on the economy. The same dollars would have a much bigger impact if spent or left to consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So much pessimism in the comments about the viability of Twitter as a business model. I've heard multiple sources (Chris Sacca, Ron Conway) not only say that Twitter has perhaps the best monetization opportunity of any web 2.0 company but dump as much money as they can into the stock. I've advertised on Twitter for quite a while, and the returns destroy Facebook and Adsense.

Advertising makes _a lot_ of money if the audience is big enough. Twitter's audience is huge, connected, well sorted, and interested.

<comment><USER9> Advertising makes money when the audience has intent.

People search google for "Best washing machine". Google shows them adverts for washing machines, customer buys washing machine.

Where is the intent on twitter? To gossip? I just don't see it.

If someone is about to buy something, they're likely to go to google and search. They're not likely to go to twitter. Google gets them at the crucial point _before_ they buy something.

<comment><USER10> One of these companies(FB, twitter, YELP, Goog, etc) is going to rethink and reinvent advertising. All these companies use old models on the web(playing an ad before a video like tv, banner ads are like magazine or classifieds ads).

That's kind of the name of the game. "How can we show people ads in a new way that integrates seamlessly with their experience?"

What if Twitter found a way to do it? Facebook seems to be getting the hang of it with their newsfeed ads.

<comment><USER11> > "How can we show people ads in a new way that integrates seamlessly with > their experience?"

Imho Google does this pretty well with Adwords (those that you see in the search results).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My guess is that profits will be low. And they should be. Declared profits are basically a way of saying, "We can't figure anything more useful to do with this money than put it in the bank or give it back to our investors."

That's fine for a large company in a stable market. But Twitter is a young company battling to establish market share with products they hope will last for decades or centuries. [1] If the management really can't think of anything useful to do with cash, they should step down and help hire somebody who can.

[1] Yes, centuries. The New York Times started publishing in 1851. It's reasonable to think that the World Wide Web will have a historical place similar to print periodicals. And network-effect businesses are notoriously hard to dislodge once widely adopted.

<comment><USER13> The web is _very_ churny; waves of people move from service to service over 5-10 year adoption cycles. Eventually people will declare twitter "uncool" (perhaps as a result of abuse problems?) and move onto the next thing.

<comment><USER12> The modern web has been very churny, but I think we have been witnessing the equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion [1]. Eventually both tech and behavior will settle down. Some evidence for that was the rapid churn cycles in social tools from 2002-2008 or so. But Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn could well be where the musical-chairs game stops.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ironically, I think this is both the sign to buy twitter and stop using it at the same time.

I no longer trust American companies to do right by the user the moment that their stock becomes public. When wall street is banging on the door for a quarterly result, most CEOs end up listening.

I'm not deleting my account just yet, but I'm wary from everything I've seen in the last decade.

<comment><USER15> Glass half full: There might be another 5-7 good years, if it's similar to Google (2004 IPO).

<comment><USER16> I would not even go that far either, and I am not saying Google is free of problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe this will get buried, but as a huge fan of Twitter and the team I can't help but think they can try making more cool stuff? This huge _benevolent_ profitable business with amazing developers has a shot at making more than a web application, I suppose. Others may say it's unfair for the big guy to cannibalize business ideas though.

<comment><USER18> I gotta disagree with you on "benevolent". Twitter's been mistreating their developers for quite some time now.

[http://developingzack.blogspot.com/2012/09/wait-what- twitter...](http://developingzack.blogspot.com/2012/09/wait-what-twitter- hates-outside.html)

[http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/02/26/falcon-pro- developer...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/02/26/falcon-pro-developer- raises-app-price-to-132-13-to-discourage-downloads-petitions-twitter-to-raise- token-limit/)

<comment><USER17> Yes, I've heard about the API issue. I don't really care anymore. It's wasting Twitter's money to give free access to every dev, and yet they do anyway. If they want to set limits that's their issue. The only real downside I see is that if someone wants to use a FOSS Twitter client it might be harder.

Yes, I know Twitter grew because of these developers. But think about all the good Twitter does, sponsoring the Apache Foundation, not giving into the NSA, etc. They have much higher standards than most mainstream tech corps, imo.

<comment><USER19> Well, I suspect that most tech companies don't really want to give in to the NSA. Twitter have been better though, I do agree.

However, on the sponsorship of the Apache foundation, you may wish to peruse [http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html](http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html) for the list of sponsors. You'll note that Twitter are Bronze, while Goog and FB are Platinum (along with Microsoft, oddly enough).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They have a lot of really sharp talent over there. I'm confident they can make a killer ad platform. Sign me up.

<comment><USER20> Not to be mean, but in the dev circles in the valley, I tend to hear the exact opposite. Just what I've gathered from the rumor mill.

<comment><USER10> I'm a software engineer. I work down the street from Twitter. I hear nothing but great things about their devs.

<comment><USER21> What exactly are those devs doing? I mean, aside from scaling to million and millions of users...which happened a while ago...it's pretty much the same thing as it's always been.

<comment><USER22> If you look at their Github, they are always coming out with great stuff. They also have their name on the biggest frontend framework out there :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Confidentially" meaning they submitted all the paperwork via Snapchat, of course.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome. I use Twitter everyday in a way that can't be replicated by any other service out there - there's zero competition. Once they really figure out monetization, as Facebook eventually did, it will be a home run for investors.

<comment><USER25> would you mind describing in what way(s) you use twitter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great, did they find a way to monetize their service yet?

<comment><USER27> Mainly through advertising, like "promoted tweets"

<comment><USER9> Is there much evidence to suggest that actually brings in value and profit though?

People search google for washing machines, then click on an advert, and buy a washing machine. I can see how that works, and makes google lots of money.

But a "promoted tweet", to people who are tweeting gossip, wasting time, etc? There's no intent there. They're not looking for a washing machine, they're wasting time.

<comment><USER28> What you are describing is direct response advertising.

There is another type of advertising called branding. Budweiser doesn't spend $25 million per year advertising during the Super Bowl because they expect you to see the advertisement and immediately order a beer at the bar. Instead, Budweiser is trying to tell you a story about their brand to evoke an emotional response that will be stored deep in your amygdala such that every time you go to buy beer in the future you will reflexively choose Budweiser.

Google is better for direct response advertising; Twitter is better for branding.

PS: There is more money in brand advertising.

<comment><USER9> I don't buy that. On the web, there is far more money in direct response advertising. Branding is far more prominent in old media.

<comment><USER28> Yes, that's the point. As people spend more of their time and attention on social media relative to other media, where will those branding budgets go? Not to Google (well, actually, that's why they bought YouTube...but not to Google Search).

Twitter is one of the few outlets where brands can effectively communicate their message online. That's the theory, anyway. You can argue that Twitter is a bad medium for branding but arguing that it's a bad medium for direct response advertising is missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm curious if Hacker News would have brought such pessimism to the AAPL and MSFT IPOs as they have with Facebook and Twitter.

Around 500 million users, around 750 million tweets per day. That data might not be worth everything, but it's definitely worth something.

<comment><USER30> A major difference is the valuation these companies are getting. Compare Facebook's $80 billion to $100 billion to Apple's $4.8 billion IPO in today's inflation-adjusted dollars. I think that is a large part of where the cynicism is coming from.

Calculated using: [http://www.quora.com/What-was-Apples-valuation-at- IPO](http://www.quora.com/What-was-Apples-valuation-at-IPO) and [http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

<comment><USER31> AAPL IPO'd in 1980, when there were 1M personal computers in the world. Total.[1] The tech sector was just tiny compared to what it is today, and nobody predicted the WWW or the ubiquity of web-capable devices.

By contrast, when FB IPO'd it had 845M users[2], or _8.3% of the world 's population_. The two simply aren't comparable. AAPL made niche luxury products, and FB had something close to half the potential market engaged on a daily basis.

[1] [http://www.corbinball.com/articles_technology/index.cfm?fuse...](http://www.corbinball.com/articles_technology/index.cfm?fuseaction=cor_av&artID=8878)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offering_of_Face...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offering_of_Facebook#Filing_and_roadshow)

<comment><USER32> Every time one of Apple's products sold it resulted in cash transferring over to Apple. They had a viable, proven business model selling computers to business, consumers, and educational institutions, were leaders of a new industry that everyone agreed had a huge amount of growth ahead of it. Nobody thought that PCs would continue to be a niche product throughout the 1980s.

Facebook owned, and owns, only a tiny slice of the advertising market, despite being so far along in developing their product. Remember, facebook's users and attention is their product. Their customer-base - companies who want to advertise is still underdeveloped.

<comment><USER33> This is an excellent point. Sure, Facebook has the biggest audience, but somehow I only ever see a few companies in my ad rotation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Congrats, Twitter. Another product that was mocked as a "toy" becomes revolutionary and finally going to raise money on public market. I use twitter everyday and it is my primary information network. I'm sure they will be successful!

<comment><USER35> What do you use it _for_?

<comment><USER34> Discovering new content. I follow influential people in the areas that I'm interested in. And they are always sharing interesting links/insights/opinions. And I also share some!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I love that Twitter announced it via a tweet. Good work dogfooding their own product :)

</comment><comment><USER37> As one of the people who decides where and how brand marketing budgets are spent - I would say Twitter's advertising product and approach is far more viable and attractive than Facebook's is (or ever has been).

On top of that, the work Twitter is doing with TV networks, producers, and sporting organisations is unique and has a high chance of success because it provides value to those organisations.

While some have tried, nobody else has come as close as Twitter to accessing and disrupting the $180B (annual) TV advertising market.

I wish them luck. I think they're going to nail it.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm bullish on Twitter for a few reasons.

I think Twitter has a unique opportunity in advertising. I'd be interested in seeing how many businesses are on Twitter and what percentage of Twitter users follow a business. I'm assuming both of those numbers are fairly high. If so, that means that a large number of users expect to see information about businesses they follow in their feed (and thus are ok with receiving marketing/business information/etc.) That in turn means ads are not viewed by a large percentage of the user base as intrusive. I think psychologically that is very important for an advertising company.

In terms of the rumored market cap, all I have to say is there is no way Twitter is worth only 1/10 of Facebook. I'm not sure what Facebook is worth, but I'm sure the gap between those two companies is much closer than that.

I really like the Twitter platform, and while I know they messed up by restricting their API, I think their leadership generally make good decisions.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm skeptical about Tech IPOs. I wonder if as many people are going to buy into the hype as they did with the Facebook IPO.

<comment><USER39> Isn't FB now at a high a year after its IPO?

<comment><USER40> FB is 15% above its IPO; LNKD is 2.6x above IPO; TSLA 8.2x above IPO.

<comment><USER11> > TSLA 8.2x above IPO

Last year around the FB IPO I thought about what stock to buy. Either FB or Tesla.

It boiled down to a company that is revolutionizing transportation with real world products VS. a company that enables people to click on virtual pixel cows without a real business model.

The choice was easy.

<comment><USER41> Really bad advice. Yes, you get to gloat because you got lucky...

However, I hope people stop and think before listening to you. Yes, it's really cool that Elon hit it out of the park, but at the end of the day, that's not the way to make investment decisions. The market is a fickle place. TLSA could be worth have as much in a year and FB could be worth double. Of course, TSLA will still be worth more since its IPO price.

<comment><USER42> Tesla's doing cooler shit, in my opinion, than FB is. Stuff that matters more, again in my opinion, for at least the U.S. and reducing our total dependency on oil. Look here ([http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger](http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger)) for their plan to cover the US in two years, albeit through backwards routes, with supercharging stations. Tesla actually makes a good-looking electric car. This is all about marketing, and Americans love performance and slick cars - they don't care about the happy and petite (though not really, just going by marketing here) Prius or Nissan Leaf. Tesla is gonna' be huge and their stock is going to go up. It could halve, but I doubt it right now. I'm not an investor by any means - I don't have the money to invest, but I've watching them for a while. We should stop relying on oil, and Tesla is one of the few companies selling part of that dream with a beautiful product.

<comment><USER41> Whether they are doing cooler "shit" or not, is irrelevant to investing in them. It's way too geeky to get into one of these Android vs iOS, Steve vs Elon, Microsoft vs Apple, Superman vs Mighty Mouse debates.

Let's just say that when a company like Facebook or Google, which builds large data centers, and has a billion customers, make small changes, or increases in efficiency, they have an opportunity to make a big impact too.

Where you want to rank them in your mind on an absolute scale, well, that's really up to you. It's probably meaningless, but I guess people like to believe in people/companies. It's how we're wired.

<comment><USER43> Basically, from a fundamental investment analysis standpoint Tesla is way more logical than Facebook.

Tesla makes a tangible good for sale with a straight forward business model. You can evaluate Tesla using the same criteria that Ford was evaluated with 90 years ago, same way that Westinghouse, or GE were evaluated. They are a new technology with a potential to revolutionize a major industry, with a high risk of failure and high return on investment if they succeed. For Facebook or Twitter a savvy investor has to first theorize how to even evaluate them.

The investment potential in a facebook or a twitter is there definitely... but its much easier for an investor to evaluate a tesla compared to a facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> [http://gigaom.com/2013/09/12/twitter-files-papers-to-go- publ...](http://gigaom.com/2013/09/12/twitter-files-papers-to-go-public-at- less-than-1-billion-valuation/) \- interesting; secondary valuations are in the $14-15B range per GigaOM. I'm a believer at some level.

</comment><comment><USER45> Nice! Another shorting opportunity.

<comment><USER46> How's the FB short working out for you?

<comment><USER47> I realize this is pure snark, but fixating on daily price fluctuations is no way to think about a FB short thesis. It's always long term play if you're betting against the company. You're waiting for the market to come to its senses, which can take a long time.

<comment><USER48> I thought it was common sense not to short anything long term because the market can take far longer to come to its senses than you can remain solvent.

<comment><USER49> More importantly you have to pay a regular fee to the owner as long as you are borrowing their stock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Delivering ads could be the lesser half. Realtime sentiment analysis on Twitter's scale will explode and hyper-accelerate advertising in ways advertisers cannot yet foresee -but will surely be willing to pay for. They're just getting started.

</comment><comment><USER51> Another bubble appearing I see. Their user base to revenue ratio is pretty average. Their revenue by itself is not that impressive and I'm pretty sure they will be priced in tens of billions. Solely because they are visible and known.

</comment><comment><USER52> What a Dick move.

</comment><comment><USER53> 1.16B in funding, any ideas on profits and how much they ask to get via IPO?

[http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter)

<comment><USER9> profit? What relevance has profit to tech companies?!

<comment><USER54> the prospect of future profit allows them to get funding..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Any idea about their valuation? Facebook is now worth more or less what they claimed at the time of their IPO. Is it safe to assume this is will be around the same range (i.e., $100b)?

<comment><USER56> It hasn't been announced but I think 10-20 billion is the expectation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> twitter presents a unique opportunity to choose the 'people' you want to follow & tailor your own feed. It's like handmade versus machine made feed. The former worth much more than the latter nowadays. I imagine if they could establish a business where people build/manage personalized feeds for others & in turn get paid - that would be fun!

</comment><comment><USER58> Sorry for my ignorance, but what's the general timeline for the IPO process? When could I start buying shares on the open market?

</comment><comment><USER59> I hope they make a cool stock certificates. People were upset that facebook didn't do this.

</comment><comment><USER60> Entertaining. Now will the blue bird fare better than the blue chips ?

</comment><comment><USER61> Well, hope that does not shoot up housing prices in SF area again.

</comment><comment><USER62> I hope they keep the prospectus to 140 characters or less.

</comment><comment><USER63> Why?

<comment><USER11> I guess the investors are looking for a bigger idiot to buy them out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Brace for monitization.

<comment><USER25> i forsee twitter handle squatters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Well, there goes that.

</comment><comment><USER66> Do people still actively use twitter?

<comment><USER67> Only millions of people everyday... Is this a real question?</comment></comment>


Beautifully Documented Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.toolness.com/wp/?p=441

<comment><USER2> I would absolutely use this if it was more generalized and usable with other languages. I wonder how hard it would be to make it work with other braced syntax languages?

[http://hg.toolness.com/ubiquity-firefox/raw- file/347c22717e8...](http://hg.toolness.com/ubiquity-firefox/raw- file/347c22717e86/ubiquity/docs/docs.js) \-- The script for anyone who wants it, the article itself doesn't link to it strangely enough.</comment>


The problem with C according to a C++ developer - <AUTHOR> https://cor3ntin.github.io/posts/c/ <comment><USER2> The two languages really should be used as different tools as although there is obviously significant use-case overlap, each excels at its own niche. C++ is quite beyond C with classes. Personally, I think C++ should continue to evolve far away from C (though as of C++20 we now have C99's designated initializers). C is "perfect" for what it is, dare I say it. C++ can incorporate things we've learned from other languages like Rust's memory safety and be better for it. Though to be fully honest I haven't totally worked through the revised memory model of C++20 and it would be great if someone could shed some light on that.

<comment><USER3> > though as of C++20 we now have C99's designated initializers

C++20 only supports a thin imitation of C99's designated initializers. In C99 you can a) mix definition forms (designated and non-designated), b) define members out of order, and c) override earlier definitions. C++20 doesn't support any of these. I've often relied on a and c in initializer macros that provide default, non-0 values that can be overridden (using vararg parameters) by the user, but many might see that as unclean. The lack of b, however, significantly diminishes the value of designated initializers: by reordering struct members you invalidate all uses of designated initializers for that type in C++20, which means they're useless to minimize the burden of refactoring.

Also, C++20 doesn't permit designated array initializers, which I've found very useful for arrays that map, e.g., enums to strings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why the problem with C++, it was designed by a committee.

<comment><USER5> Like WG14 has been doing for C since ages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> C is not a "low-level" language.

<comment><USER7> Definitions shift over time. Yes, C targets an abstract machine. Yes, C doesn't give you direct access to hardware. But in the range of widely used languages C is much "lower level" so it gets that name. Quibbling over the definition doesn't add to a conversation but just exists to make somebody look smarter than the room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >C++ has a stronger type system, and unfortunately using C idioms punch a giant hole in that type system, and so C compatibility has a cost in terms of safety.

This may sound like C++ has a strong type system, but it's only a little stronger than that of C, if at all.

<comment><USER9> The C++ type system is vastly stricter than C.

<comment><USER8> Dunno, even javascript knows, where an array ends, C++ doesn't.

<comment><USER10> Of course a C-style array in C++ doesn't have a defined end. It doesn't have an end in C either. But in C++ you don't need to be using those anyway.

Part of the issue is that, while you _can_ use the usual C idioms in C++ (e.g. a function takes an array and its length as arguments), you don't need to, especially if you're using C++ correctly. This is one of the points of the article.

Like hellofunk said, this has nothing to do with the type system. But the solution to what you're talking about is fundamental C++: use the standard library.

<comment><USER11> > But the solution to what you're talking about is fundamental C++: use the > standard library.

The safety-critical real-time embedded systems where strong static typing would be most useful often don't _have_ the standard library available. Even in C it's not unusual to need to justify every line of code in the final product, which precludes linking against an all-inclusive libc—at best you might get a vetted subset. The design constraints, too, are often incompatible: "no vararg functions" (printf), "no recursion" (qsort/bsearch), "no dynamic memory allocation" (malloc). Where C++ is allowed it is often with additional restrictions like "no RTTI" and "no exceptions" which would rule out large portions of the STL, including most collection types. By the time you take all these coding standard issues into account you generally find that you're writing in a novel language which is just enough like C++ to cause confusion. C++ programming for these environments is not like the C++ which is taught in schools or practiced in other fields. There is a lot to unlearn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I will continue to say C/C++. To me they are not distinct enough as languages to truly be considered fully separate and they use the same compilers. The fact that they use the same compiler is to me a devastating argument. No other distinct languages use the same compiler.

>A language is also its good practices, patterns, idioms

The usual argument, but I disagree. If programmers don't have freedom of expression then fuck programming. We should all be free to write our own programs the way we want and not have to worry about standard practices or cultures.

<comment><USER13> By that reasoning you'd have to add:

\- Ada, D, Delphi, Fortran, Haskell, Julia, Objective-C, Rust, and Swift (if you go by LLVM)

\- Objective-C, Objective-C++, Fortran, Ada, and Go (if you go by gcc)

It is true that you should have the freedom to write code in any way you want. Thankfully employers have the freedom to reject your code if you don't follow their practices. Just like with freedom of speech, you have a right to say what you want without fear that the government will punish you, that doesn't mean you're shielded from what other people think of you.</comment></comment>


Secure and Ad-Free Internet Anywhere with Streisand and Pi Hole - <AUTHOR> https://ifelse.io/2019/01/12/secure-ad-free-internet-anywhere-with-streisand-and-pi-hole/ <comment><USER3> >I recently took some time off of work to spend time with family. During that time I worked on a few side projects like getting our backups in order and getting a Raspberry Pi 3 running Pi Hole.

I know what the original intent is, but still- I found this quite humorous.

Still, this seems like a very nice noob-friendly guide, and that's a very good thing when VPNs are concerned.

<comment><AUTHOR> hah! I meant "in my free-time" lol but glad you enjoyed!

<comment><USER4> Thanks, nice post. Also enjoyed your write up about backups: [https://ifelse.io/2018/12/05/better-faster-more-secure- backu...](https://ifelse.io/2018/12/05/better-faster-more-secure-backups-with- restic/)

The funny thins is that I've been thinking something similar during Christmas. I now know that I'm not the only one thinking about taking days off work to sort out my backups and network :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome! glad you enjoyed it :) trying to write up the things I find super helpful (code-related or not) and share them. especially when I can't find any good docs on how to get something working lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I run a pi-hole equivalent on a Raspberry Pi at home (dnsmasq with pi-hole's block lists). One word of warning, its list tends toward over-zealous, blocking sites / links you might want (e.g. Google Shopping links). You can add manual domain exceptions but it's tedious and takes a long time to restart dnsmasq due to the enormous list size and the RPI's relatively slow performance.

Blocker extensions are nice becuase you can selectively disable them or open an incognito tab in cases when you need to bypass the list. Easier than temporarily changing your DNS server to 184.108.40.206, etc.

Still, nice to have automatic adblocking for all devices in the house.

<comment><USER6> I had the same problem with overzealous blocking. I had to disable temporarily about once per day, and my wife found it bothersome also (especially because she didn't know how to manually disable it). We turned it off last month and I've just been using Brave instead. Works great on my MBP (fan doesn't run nearly as much as with FF & Chrome), though of course our mobile devices aren't protected anymore.

If anyone has a good solution for the overprotectiveness of the Pi-Hole, I'd love to hear it!

<comment><USER7> Isn't the overprotectiveness of Pi-Hole in relation to the blocklists not Pi- Hole itself. I'd suggest findings different blocklists.

There is one particular website that is extremely popular, I can't remember what it is now but it has blocklists showing which are likely to cause false positives.

<comment> Method-X [https://firebog.net/](https://firebog.net/)

Only add the ones with a checkmark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pihole is great! Great revelation was that over 50% of the requests generated by devices in my network are "malicious", ad or tracking related.

The greatest offenders were phone apps and roku TV. Also roku tv scans your HDMI data stream (if you connect your laptop to the Roku TV) which is purely evil!

Also worth to note that to have pi-hole to recognize and block over 50% of the requests, constant gravity updates are required (i have over 3.5M unique domains in block-list)

Also get VPN for your phone. All traffic on my iPhone goes though pi-hole (check OpenVPN and DNS Override iPhone apps in store)

<comment><USER9> I have 2 roku tvs and my live pi-hole blocking log is just a relentless spam from their servers.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I'm in the same boat even with just one roku

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> how about a 3-pronged approach:

      1) pi-hole
      2) steve blacks hosts file
      3) ublock origin

      3 = most conservative filtering configuration that can easily be tweaked from the browser
      2 = use modules (-e gambling -e porn etc)
      1 = most basic blocking configuration

this way you don't have to do much fidgeting on the router. this comes at a tradeoff for putting some of the burden on the hosts #2 & #3 but with the advantage of better usability for non-tech users.

protip: if you can live with not accessing unicode domains at all (counter measure to avoid domain squatters and some phishermen) patch[1] your dnsmasq and add this in dnsmasq.conf:

       address=/:xn--*:/0.0.0.0

[1] [https://github.com/spacedingo/dnsmasq- regexp_2.76.git](https://github.com/spacedingo/dnsmasq-regexp_2.76.git)

EDIT: for mobile I used to have a VPS running openvpn. Make Android connect to the vpn by default routing all traffic through it. Run something like opensnitch[1] to MiTM and whitelist the mobile traffic and sinkhole shit you want to get rid off. This isn't for the fainthearted since new versions of apps might make different API calls and break your rules. Apps will just stop working. If you only have 2 or 3 apps and want to kill traffic from built-in carrier spyware it works nicely and is well worth the effort. Nice way to study what your device does. [https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch](https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch)

<comment><USER12> I agree this is the best setup. Locally using uBlock Origin and Steve Blacks host file is all you really need for a computer but doesn't protect devices which aren't as configurable (eg Roku, gaming systems, phones). By using all three you maximize your protection on your local network and also on your computer when outside that network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those that prefer algo, there is an open issue to add Pi-Hole ([https://github.com/trailofbits/algo/issues/1258](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo/issues/1258)) and in my fork I've added Pi-Hole support: [https://github.com/dan-v/algo](https://github.com/dan-v/algo). It's a really nice setup especially on mobile devices where you typically have to choose between using a VPN or using adblock as they typically require a local VPN hack to function.

<comment><USER14> Algo user here -- it's really great for ISP-oriented privacy protection. I have a $5/month droplet running Algo in DigitalOcean, and an auto-on mobile config on my iPhone that uses it when I'm not on WiFi.

I also set up my home pfSense router to route all traffic through it (via an IPSec/IKEv2 tunnel). This works great, except when we're using Netflix or Amazon video -- I have to turn it off since those services block DigitalOcean IPs. Still haven't figured out how to configure the pfSense tunnel to route requests to those services through my ISP instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a great initiative!

I'm using a similar setup. I have my ISP's router in bridge modus, an ERLite‑3 router by Ubiquiti, and a NAS server by Synology. It could've been a router by PC Engines, a Router7, an unRAID, or a Pi too. Ever since I got the Synology NAS (which can run Docker) my Pi is gathering dust.

The NAS runs Docker and uses PiHole(dnsmasq)/Unbound to take the main traffic. The ERLite‑3 router is second choice and uses PiHole/Unbound as well. The setup provides redundancy. All DNS traffic not generated by the router and not coming from the NAS is redirected to the NAS. Both PiHoles have each other as redundant server as well. Both utilize Quad9's DNSSEC servers with DNS over TLS [1]. Though I suppose ideally you want DNSCrypt [2] this should also be possible with Quad9. The advantage this is going to work on any client. Since the ERLite‑3 allows WireGuard (and only that; no OpenVPN or OpenSSH or anything) clients such as my smartphone or laptop have secure and ad-free internet. Since I'm also using Quad9's blocklist, things such as porn are also blocked. The only caveat is that these clients have access to my LAN. While that's intentional, it increases the attack surface of my devices. I shouldn't trust my wife's devices on the LAN remotely. Then again, all internal LAN services are behind strong passwords.

[1] [https://www.quad9.net/faq/](https://www.quad9.net/faq/)

[2] [https://dnscrypt.info/faq](https://dnscrypt.info/faq)

<comment><USER16> Do you lose any bandwidth in bridge mode? I'm about buy a new Ubiquiti Edge router and a few APs.

With AT&T I can't do a true bridge mode or use my own modem. Their gateway has to do the authentication to the network and I'm stuck with it if I want gigabit fiber. People on dslreports lost a good bit of bandwidth on a gigbit connection writing rules on the edge router to authenticate back through the gateway.

<comment><USER17> Reportedly you can max out gigabit AT&T even if you proxy the authentication bits through the router: [https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/aaz2rf/openbsd_rou...](https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/aaz2rf/openbsd_router_directly_connected_to_isp/ecwd2a1/)

<comment><USER16> Fantastic. It's only 15 days old too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Pihole and Pivpn on Google Cloud Platform free tier is working great for me: [https://github.com/rajannpatel/Pi-Hole-PiVPN-on-Google- Compu...](https://github.com/rajannpatel/Pi-Hole-PiVPN-on-Google-Compute- Engine-Free-Tier-with-Full-Tunnel-and-Split-Tunnel-OpenVPN-Configs)

<comment><USER19> Do you have any privacy concerns about using Google for this kind of service? Serious question.

<comment><USER20> Author of that guide chiming in! None; Google Cloud Services is not a consumer offering. The monetization approach is different from the model wherein you give up privacy in exchange for a service. More info at: [https://cloud.google.com/security/](https://cloud.google.com/security/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For those running pfSense: pfBlockerNG is a great package. It allows for IP and DNS based block lists. Between that and the built in OpenVPN server, I have ad (and other malicious traffic) blocking even while remote. Pretty crazy how much it catches on both levels.

</comment><comment><USER22> The one thing to keep in mind about running a VPN on AWS is that some services just block whole AWS net blocks to stop scrapers.

For instance I used to run a VPN on a free tier micro instance, and I remember not being able to hit Yelp or StackOverflow from a VPN.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, this is a big problem. I set up a Streisand instance last year just to play around with, and while the set-up was pleasantly simple and the results were great as far as the VPN functionality, it shut down Netflix entirely for me. Definitely a deal-breaker.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting! Haven't had any issues w/ netflix yet; wondering if it's an eventually-consistent thing or a static config on their part (i.e. will I eventually get blocked? not sure lol)

<comment><USER23> From the stuff I was reading/folks I was chatting with when I ran into the problem, it sounds like restarting your instance could sometimes fix it - <USER2> assume Netflix is basically playing whack-a-mole with AWS-based scrapers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just setup the Pi Hole yesterday on the raspberry pi I had sitting on my shelf and I must say it is a god send.

The bonus is my girlfriend noticed the coloring app on iOS she uses doesn't have banner ads and after she's done with a picture, there is no longer popup advertisements.

I only had to make one whitelist so far and it was graph.instagram.com otherwise the app completely doesn't work.

<comment><USER25> I've noticed tons of blocked requests to graph.instagram.com but no side- effects, why did you need to whitelist it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Streisand is good for having options to get out of restrictive networks. I would argue AlgoVPN might be a better mix for day to day use.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have basically the same implementation except it's running on my dedicated openbsd router using openvpn/unbound/pf and scripts. It doesn't support wireguard though but openvpn should be equivalent? I know the wireguard developers claim it's more secure, however I think a properly secured openvpn with certificate based authentication both ways should be fine for a home setup.

For the lazy, someone other than me made scripts to both pi-hole (dns) setup[1] and pf (firewall) setup[2] to block on network level too.

The scripts themselves are very easy to read and vet for bad stuff.

[1] [https://geoghegan.ca/unbound-adblock.html](https://geoghegan.ca/unbound- adblock.html)

[2] [https://geoghegan.ca/pfbadhost.html](https://geoghegan.ca/pfbadhost.html)

<comment><USER11> The main selling point of wireguard is elimination of insecure ciphers and less chance of shooting yourself in the foot with configuration. the protocol is more lightweight too. openbsd has a port btw:

[https://marc.info/?l=openbsd- ports&m=152712417729497](https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=152712417729497)

<comment><USER27> Yeah I know it's supposed to be more efficient too.

But thanks for the link to the openbsd port, I'll definitively look into that! For some reason I thought it was only implemented as a linux kernel module.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've heard nothing but praise for PiHole setups, though I personally have an AdBlock service on my router.

If you're running OpenWRT, you can install adblock via opkg and there's even a LuCI extension for the web interface.

This blocks the majority of ads on my Roku TV, though YouTube is almost impossible.

</comment><comment><USER29> What do the failure cases look like with Pi Hole? E.g. broken websites, missing (legitimate) content, apps that crash when they can reach their ad server?

And what kind of workarounds/remediations are available to deal with this, ideally in a user-friendly way for non-technical users?

<comment><USER30> It really comes down to how many sites you block. It comes with some default blocklists, but wally3k hosts a site tells you the status of different blocklists: [https://firebog.net/](https://firebog.net/)

As for what is seen when a site fails - well, it could vary. If a JS file fails to load, the site will either look bad or not at all. ANd yeah, some apps may have issues, but pihole comes wiht a built in query log so you can see which devices just made which DNS queries, along with an easy-to-click whitelist button.

There are different blocking modes you can choose from that return different response codes, so you can choose what works best for your environment: [https://docs.pi-hole.net/ftldns/blockingmode/](https://docs.pi- hole.net/ftldns/blockingmode/)

I would recommend checking out the pihole discourse([https://discourse.pi- hole.net/](https://discourse.pi-hole.net/)) or subreddit. The community is very active

<comment><USER29> Thanks for the links, I'll check those out! Sounds like it's pretty well thought-out.

<comment><USER30> I suppose I should make it known that I am a patreon supporter. I may be a superfan but I love what that team is doing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm running pihole in a Docker container on an Intel NUC, performance is great. Client (browser) performance has also improved remarkably. One problem is getting ipv6 working between host, container and the outside world is non- trivial and non-obvious compared to ipv4 - I still haven't figured it out.

Typically you go into your your router's DHCP settings and populate DNS with the pihole DNS, or disable DHCP on your router and let pihole do DHCP. The gotcha is if you have an ISP supplied router which has no DHCP interface at all: no way to disable it, no way to customize DNS. All of Xfinity's hardware now does this for residential, you have to pay for business service to set DNS servers.

<comment><USER32> > The gotcha is if you have an ISP supplied router which has no DHCP interface > at all: no way to disable it, no way to customize DNS.

The way I get around this is by putting all of my devices behind another router, and treating the ISP router as if it is part of an external network. It introduces a second layer of NAT (ISP router gives my router a 192.168.0.x address, which it treats as its WAN IP; devices get a 192.168.1.x address), but in practice it's caused me no problems. I've been running a similar setup for close to a decade now.

<comment><USER31> And IPv6 then becomes an even more confusing clusterfk than it already is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looks like we're running Streisand as a VPN in AWS, and pihole at home on a Raspberry Pi. Why not just run PiHole on the AWS instance alongside streisand and save on the added complexity?

<comment><USER34> I think he actually had pi-hole running on his AWS instance as well. He mentioned using the "connect" button in the AWS console during the pi-hole setup portion.

<comment><AUTHOR> ah sorry if that's not clear; I started by running Pi Hole on my RBP, then added it to a VPN setup. Nice to have it running at home to block our other devices though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Has anyone got it working with YouTube on Apple TV yet?

<comment><USER36> Wouldn't you need some sort of intercepting MITM HTTPS proxy to be able to inspect the traffic for ad content? Thought Google was using https and legit domains to drive ads instead of just doing lookups to youtube-ads.google.com etc.

Presumably you'd need a way to inject a cert into the Apple TVs trust store as well, and I'm unclear if that is possible. Perhaps with a developer license?

<comment><USER37> This is network level, and it's taking the name lookups, which are done before picking the connecting endpoints, so SSL doesn't matter. It's not rewriting the stream, it's just saying, someone is trying to get an endpoint at this particular name and I am going to give it a different IP than the "world" would. Nothing of that is happening inside the https link. Eg, you get [https://whatever.com/whateverelse..](https://whatever.com/whateverelse..). it will see the DNS lookup for whatever.com regardless of procotol.

<comment><USER32> I believe rhexs's point is that it's using the same domains for video data and ad data - i.e. you're seeing hxxps://youtube.com/video_data, hxxps://youtube.com/ad_data, hxxps://youtube.com/video_data..., so filtering at the DNS level doesn't work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would be willing to pay a decent premium to be able to buy a replacement cable modem with this built in. Cool project.

</comment><comment><USER39> > I even started noticing some network calls our ISP appears to be making

I'm curious what this means. AFAIK the only way your ISP could make network requests that appear in Pi Hole is if they're running some kind of software within your network.

<comment><USER40> ISP control your router, if you set your DNS on the router to your PiHole, the router might do requests for all kind of reasons.

<comment><USER39> True for most people, I suppose, but my ISP certainly doesn't control _my_ router.

<comment><USER41> I think the OP means modem plus router combo that most ISPs offer. The modem is most definitely patched OTA, has been true for most modems since DOCSIS 3.0 was introduced.

<comment><USER39> Yeah I get it. I always run my own router behind the modem provided by the ISP, if any, so there's no way my ISP would be able to make requests that Pi Hole would see.

<comment><USER41> Because the ISP is upstream, it could potentially reject all DNS queries from your router or supplant the IP within the DNS query with its own IP.

<comment><USER39> Sure, but that wouldn't show up in Pi Hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> With all the people running piholes at home, could a subscription pihole service work? A small vps could run with authentication of some sort (mac- whitelisting seems simple and easy to implement). Allow customization of blocklists per MAC.

<comment><USER43> That just sounds like AdGuard. Plenty of consumer routers offer VPN server capability for free. That combined with DuckDNS or a similar free service would be a better option I think

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I recently set up a RPi with Pi-hole, only to find out that my ISP gave me a router that prevents you from using another DNS server.

I can still use the Pi-hole, but I have to set up the DNS manually for every device. Quite a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER45> Pi-hole can be used as your dhcp server too, if you can disable the ISP routers DHCP service.

[https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/how-do-i-use-pi-holes- built-...](https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/how-do-i-use-pi-holes-built-in- dhcp-server-and-why-would-i-want-to/3026)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> For a Managed Service of this try [https://ba.net/adblockvpn](https://ba.net/adblockvpn)

Disclosure: I work at ba.net

<comment><USER47> The problem is simple, trust. How can we trust that you're not going to be skimming data going through the VPN, MITM attacks, etc?

There's not even a privacy policy on that page, no indication where your servers are hosted or what laws they are subject to.

<comment><USER46> For the business solution we setup the servers, and give you the root password (for you to change). We use DO or AWS.

TOS is here [https://ba.net/adblockvpn/privacy1.html](https://ba.net/adblockvpn/privacy1.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Personally I like to use OpenBSD for IPSec VPN, but I like to see guides like this that present a solution for a wider set of problems.

</comment><comment><USER49> Why not AdGuard DNS?

It has worked well for my home network for months and requires a single one- time configuration (change DNS settings on router).

<comment><USER50> Then you have to trust them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I would just like something that blocked Facebook and all its many services. (sign-in, ads, etc)

</comment><comment><USER51> How user friendly is this for noob, who have no experience in networking?

<comment><USER52> We can surmise no grandmas are using "Pi Hole" on the daily.

<comment><USER51> what about grandsons?

<comment><USER52> Haha, I don't really know but the name cracks me up. You should take a shot at it and the report back any problems you hit so they can improve it for n00bs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Creative Marketing Ideas - <AUTHOR>

As a startup, we are brainstorming creative marketing ideas that will cost us as little as possible. What are some of the MOST creative ideas other startups/marketers have done for little or no cost that generated the most results? Please share :) <comment><USER2> Well if you are a travel company targeting students, I have a few pieces of advice for you. Students travel for two reasons, either going to sports or going home. So if you can reach them in one of those situations, you're filling a need.

As you may be aware, the college football season is winding down and it is almost time for the bowl season (college football playoffs). What that means is that you will have a lot of schools travelling all over the country to play their bowl game and a lot of students trying to figure out how to get there. If you put together some sort of special for students who are travelling to those games, you could reach a pretty sizable market. I would recommend picking some of the larger bowl games (Sugar bowl, fiesta bowl, rose bowl, orange bowl) and as soon as they announce who will be going to which bowls, doing promotions at the schools that will be travelling to those bowls.

</comment><comment><USER3> Context is everything in these situations. A little info on what your start-up does, who you intend to target, etc would help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response. We are a online travel company targeting students/young professionals. General ideas we already have are online/social media marketing as well as partnerships (whether on campus or that already reach this group). We would like to think of some creative ideas to reach this market. Something outside of the box that could potentially go viral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please post at least your target market and what you hope to achieve or what your objective is. Do you want mindshare or do you want to convert to sales? What is your product or service?

<comment><AUTHOR> Initially mindshare is most important. Share of mind = share of market :) Sales will come once we have a big enough audience/knowledge of our brand.</comment></comment>


Apple's A12Z Under Rosetta Outperforms Native Arm-Based Surface Pro X - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpJRBdaf9J8 <comment><USER2> Serious title/link mismatch. Submitter likely made a typo pasting address. How this got voted up at all and why sibling comment got voted down are mysteries.

EDIT: Was this MacRumors post the intended link? [https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/29/apple- rosetta-2-a12z-be...](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/29/apple- rosetta-2-a12z-beats-surface-pro-x/)</comment>


Bill Gates Is Funding a Chemical Cloud That Could Put an End to Global Warming - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/bill-gates-is-funding-a-chemical-cloud-that-could-put-an-end-to-global-warming <comment><USER2> [https://gfycat.com/shadyreallemming](https://gfycat.com/shadyreallemming)</comment>