Can NAT traversal be Tor's killer feature? (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/obvio171/73122ba490c864644792#file-can-nat-traversal-be-tor-s-killer-feature-md <comment><USER2> It's easier to setup a Tor hidden service than it is to set up a server with a domain. You don't have to know anything about DNS or firewalls. I'm surprised that they aren't more common.

<comment><USER3> Is it? I've never been able to find a 'how to' or tutorial on starting a hidden service, but even with limited skills I could set up a domain and server in my lunch hour.

<comment><USER4> It is.

[https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden- service.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en)

In how-to style: [http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-hidden-service-tor- site-...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-hidden-service-tor-site-set- anonymous-website-server/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> NAT traversal requires a server accessible to both parties, correct?

It would be interesting if somehow Tor could be used only to _initiate_ the NAT traversal, then the direct connection could be used with better performance. (This article feels like it's talking about routing everything through Tor.) If there was an open-source library that managed this well I have a feeling it would be used everywhere.

<comment><USER6> > This article feels like it's talking about routing everything through Tor.

That's correct. How would you use Tor to initiate the NAT traversal only, and then go direct? Perhaps using it as a way to advertise ports bound upstream from local NAT?

<comment><USER7> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the idea! Nevertheless, one thing that I'd like to point out when deploying this kind of scheme is that it might be putting too much stress on the network that isn't necessarily in line with project goals.

Because of that, I suggest that if you build a project like this, DONATE and/or encourage users to donate to Tor project. It's not like relay traffic is an unlimited resource and Tor already does a lot to support various use cases, but it takes money. Keep that in mind.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't more traffic strengthen the network? (More noise.)

<comment><USER10> It's both. More traffic is better for anonymization but it also consumes finite resources.

The solution of course being for more people to run relays.

<comment><USER8> The thing is that IIRC not everyone can run a relay. Don't you need some decent bandwidth to actually be useful?

<comment><USER11> Virtually everyone can run a relay.

BitTorrent is effectively a "relay" when you seed. The anonymity network I2P actually works in a way that you are both the relay and the client by default.

According to Tor, "decent" is 2Mb/sec symmetric, which most any broadband connection can do. I suspect everyone has 2MB/sec lying around. From Tor [1]:

The more people who run relays, the faster the Tor network will be. If you have at least 2 megabits/s for both upload and download, please help out Tor by configuring your Tor to be a relay too.

There are other ways to contribute to the project as well, such as running bridge relays [2]. These are often less-used but are necessary for the network to work well in places where it _needs_ to be used for censorship circumvention.

You can also configure a browser to be a short-lived FlashProxy [3] bridge relay.

Even still, throttling bandwidth in your `torrc` means you can easily run a relay on a droplet or EC2 instance and not cost yourself a lot of money. There is also torservers.net [4] for hosting; they accept donations as well.

[1] [https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc- relay.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en) [2] [https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en) [3] [https://crypto.stanford.edu/flashproxy/](https://crypto.stanford.edu/flashproxy/) [4] [https://www.torservers.net/](https://www.torservers.net/)

<comment><USER12> Perhaps in Europe and the US, but here in Australia (and many other places I suspect), 2MB/s is a luxury. We have the NBN (partially) rolling out at the moment, but anything better than 12/1mbit will be largely inaccessible to the majority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always hoped IPv6 would kill the NAT but it seems providers stick to it… I think the creation of Tor hidden services needs a nice UI. But also I am doubtful because only TCP is supported, UDP not.

<comment><USER14> Well, creating a hidden service is as simple as adding the following to your torrc:

        HiddenServiceDir /usr/local/etc/tor/hidden_service/
        HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:8080

Then you just see /usr/local/etc/tor/hidden_service/hostname for your .onion address.

The hardest part is setting up your web and application servers, which don't care that they're behind a hidden service.

How would you expect a UI for that to function? I'm asking sincerely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We built ZeroTier initially for this use case, and though it's now maturing into something more powerful (SDN type features) it's still very useful for this and the WAN use case is not going away.

[https://www.zerotier.com/](https://www.zerotier.com/)

[https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne](https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne)

[https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierSDK](https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierSDK)

The difference between something like ZeroTier and Tor is a trade-off between meta-data privacy and latency/speed. (Both encrypt the actual payload.)

Efficient connectivity and anonymity are antagonistic goals. You can't provide both since optimization for one of these two goals implies violation of the other.

Tor provides meta-data privacy, but it's impossible to do this without sacrificing a lot of performance. If you allow low latency on a privacy network, latency can be used to triangulate the endpoint. Rule of thumb: latency can never be lower than about 1/2 the time it takes a photon to travel the Earth's diameter. In practice it's higher since you must also account for median router latency. Same goes for high throughput though in that case you need much more detailed intel on the physical network. Rule of thumb here: if throughput is higher than global mean it can be used to rule out and thus narrow down paths in the graph.

ZeroTier provides fast efficient low-latency direct connectivity but to do this requires that it introduce people directly, thus revealing peoples' locations (IP-wise) to each other. This is a hard requirement since the most efficient path is by definition the most direct and therefore de-anonymized (again IP-wise) path. You can't go directly A<>B without A knowing where B is and vice versa.

Edit: I speak a bit theoretically above. In _practice_ a weaker anonymity system could be deployed closer to the last mile to hide people at e.g. city resolution. But AFIAK this is not what Tor does, would probably require either a huge critical mass or last-mile carrier participation or both, and would still have a performance impact.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's been done: [https://www.onioncat.org/](https://www.onioncat.org/)

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://cc.rtmfp.net/](http://cc.rtmfp.net/) A flash for NAT Traversal Testing, made by Adobe.

</comment><comment><USER18> What does Tor have to offer versus Hamachi, which is specifically designed for this?

I suppose it's open-source.</comment>


When to Eat: Fast and Break-Fast - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/personal-growth/when-to-eat-fast-and-break-fast-7c802645f792 <comment><USER2> Cherry-picking studies to fit a premise can steer you in the wrong direction. The _Adventist Health Studies_ are specific to a population of 7th-Day Adventists, who are not only vegetarian but have particularly healthful lifestyle habits overall (and have a strong social-support system). I'm not sure how strongly that population correlates with the average, overweight general public.

Generally speaking, though, scheduled fasting as a strategy (limited feeding hours, alternate day fasting is getting more and more supportive science every month.

Related reading:

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413117...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413117305041)

[http://www.cell.com/cell- metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131(15)0...](http://www.cell.com/cell- metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131\(15\)00224-7)

[http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30130-7](http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674\(17\)30130-7)

[http://news.usc.edu/116479/scientifically-designed- fasting-d...](http://news.usc.edu/116479/scientifically-designed-fasting-diet- lowers-risks-for-major-diseases/)

</comment><comment><USER3> "The study also noted that the longer you fast (18–24 hours) the more less you weigh."

Huh.</comment>


Show HN: Poplar Street, 20 percent of your rent back when you buy a home - <AUTHOR> https://www.poplarstreet.com/ <comment><USER2> Great news! Onerent just launched their newest rent-to-buy Poplar Street program. This allows renters to earn credits that will make buying their own future property faster and easier.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like a wave of companies going after real estate agents who are now marginalized to providing little to no value for home buyers. This is good news to us millenials!

<comment><USER4> Lot's of online real estate brokerages now offerring cash back to buy a home. Personally, I don't need to have to deal with a real estate agent taking me around to showings, helping me find a place to buy, etc.

<comment><USER5> My real estate agent flat out told us that we should look for properties ourselves. He was happy to search through and suggest listings and setup access to a property when necessary, but that really wasn't what he was there for. As you say, you can do that stuff yourself, often far better because budgets and preferences are very dynamic during the searching process and the agent's suggestions will always be two steps behind.

What he got paid to do was to help us decide on a bidding price, make the offer, negotiate terms, and make closing as seamless as possible. We did two bids. In both cases he tendered hard offers in less than 24 hours, working late into the night and going back-and-forth with the seller's agent to understand how best to structure the offer.

I should say that this was in the _highly_ competitive San Francisco market, and we weren't one of those buyers who could make all-cash offers. The house we did buy was a re-listing I stumbled upon on Zillow the very day it went back on the market. We spoke with our agent immediately after viewing and an offer (with a 24-hour expiration) was tendered and accepted the next day. Closing obviously took much longer, there was back-and-forth that had to happen (broken this, fixtures that) and the agent's assistance was very helpful, especially for first-time homeowners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome! I am going to share this w/ my friends.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, how do you earn the savings to buy a home?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you rent a home through our leasing platform, you can start earning the savings with each month's rent payment. When you make the move to home ownership, you'll receive the savings as cash back during the close of the sale of the home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow! Is this even real? If so then sign me up!

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting</comment>


The XEdDSA and VXEdDSA Signature Schemes - <AUTHOR> https://whispersystems.org/docs/specifications/xeddsa/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is formal documentation for the elliptic curve signing system used by Signal, which is based on Bernstein, Schwabe, and Lange's Ed25519.

If you've tried to read EdDSA and Elligator papers before, you will probably find that this demystifies a bunch of it, since it's written specifically for implementors.</comment>


Starting sometime today, Safari on Yosemite cannot play HTML5 YouTube videos - <AUTHOR> https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/youtube/safari/mlfwY4s-1Lg

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems youtube.com did some update that is making HTML5 video playback stop working with a loud squeak and no play, or dropping to Flash. I'm experiencing it myself.

Submitted link to YouTube Google Product Forums.

From initial post: About an hour ago, all HTML5 playback just stopped. I was running OS X 10.10.1 (now 10.10.2) and Safari 8.0.

Videos would either switch to the Flash Player, throw an error, make a loud "squeak" noise and throw an error, or just crash the Safari page outright and forcing a Force Reload.

I know this is unrelated to the recent Yosemite update, as this issue was happening before I installed the update. In the meanwhile, Chrome does work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it "sometime today" or "some time today"?</comment></comment>


Crowdsourcing 2.0: Why Putting the Slum on a Map Is Not Enough - <AUTHOR> http://ced.berkeley.edu/bpj/2014/03/crowdsourcing-2-0-why-putting-the-slum-on-a-map-is-not-enough/

<comment><USER2> Having lived in Brazilian slums, it really is just a matter of memorizing one's way through the mazes of sidestreets, alleys, etc. It's very hard for me to imagine maps taking hold with the residents themselves, though with the gentrification that's happening in "famous" favelas, maybe maps will be useful after all for the foreigners moving in.

What slightly worries me are recent efforts like those of Google and Microsoft [1] in some of Rio's favelas where these tech giants have the population do the work for them, via local NGOs and community associations, in order to later serve advertisements.

There's a quote that basically says that "only intellectuals are interested in poverty; the poor, however, just want to consume." One problem I saw firsthand just after the favela pacification process in Rio was how many services and businesses were entering these areas, hungry for new clientele while getting them all used to the idea of credit (and, later, debt). Not to mention, the government coming in with the offer of national IDs (read: "the better to start taxing you with!")

Slum politics and culture are never simple to explain as there are always many ways to effectively discuss them.

1 - [http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/09/google-and-microsoft- put...](http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/09/google-and-microsoft-putting-rios- favelas-on-the-map/380826/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The slum mapping projects are not really "crowdsourcing", although there are elements of it.

They are primarily participatory mapping exercises, the visible digital output at the end is the map. The participants are primarily those who live in the slums. Public participatory mapping projects have happened for decades now, often happening without computers and more tied into the planning side of things. The article is quite correct, for these types of mapping projects, the map is a visible end result, not the intended object. The planning part of the process is required and needed.

What the confusion with "crowdsourcing", humanitarian mapping and public participation mapping is with OpenStreetMap - anyone can contribute from anywhere to anyplace, therefore it's crowdsourcing. And with the recent Ebola humanitarian mapping, anyone can trace aerial imagery and add in whole towns that were never mapped before ever to a map for use by aid organisations primarily. So they both use the same stack, they both are in developing countries, but the people doing the mapping are different. local people mapping their own area and it being used not mainly by aid organisations for humanitarian purposes, and international (the true, faceless crowd) people mapping crises areas and it not being used by the local people for local planning.

All this doesn't contradict what the article states. It's even more important that these mapping projects are being used for local planning. But it's important to see that OpenStreetMap mapping in developing countries is not all crowdsourced mapping.

</comment><comment><USER4> What do you think will happento the favelas in the next 5-10 years? And is it desirable?

<comment><USER2> Well, they've been on a growth trajectory since the late 1800s (at least in Rio), and their official numbers within and around the city are not even known. The 2010 census says there's 763, but the unofficial number is likely to be over twice that.

I don't even see gentrification holding in the 5 (or so) favelas that are home to the largest groups of foreigners.

And if we're talking pacification, recent local news of shootouts shows peace is not a sure thing (just in the first few months of 2014, 7 of the 40+ pacified favelas broke out in shootouts/violence). Most favela residents in the several favelas I've lived in are also divided as to whether it's actually positive or not. For instance, there used to be something loosely known as "favela law" which meant that inside the favela one does not steal, cheat, harm or kill others who also live there. Because, if you did, there'd be severe consequences, enforced by the favela bosses. Now that the drug lords are hiding or gone (usually operating from other locations but maintaining the same flow of trade and distribution), bad actors can do what they please without reprimand from their own community.

Anyways, I don't see much happening with favelas, aside from more growth, in the next 5-10 years.

<comment><USER4> Do you think it's desirable to get rid of the favelas, or people who live there (some of which moved specifically there) prefer to have this "free society"?

That's what I want to know about. Is it something to be preserved, or is it something no one really wants but is forced to live in?

<comment><USER2> That's definitely a good question, and a hard one. No one there due to having a low socio-economic status wants to live there but they can't afford other places that would give them the same access to work (and even leisure). Location-wise, it's extremely practical to live in a favela (and it's interesting that in California, for example, the rich people generally live on the hills, whereas that's not the case in Rio).

There are several prime cases of favela removal in Rio (Pinto, Catacumba, Esqueleto) in and around the 1960s and 70s. The residents were removed to City of God, and some run-down areas near the international airport (Complexo do Maré, etc). Also, in the first few years of the 20th century, there was a large mandate to destroy and remove favelas in downtown Rio (called the "bota- abaixo") which did beautify these areas, allowed for sanitary services to be installed, etc. Most of these residents just moved to other places like Rocinha and Vidigal on the other side of the city. So, even if they're "removed", they end up equally poor in a less desirable (to them) location in the same city.

At this point, as it has been for a long time, favelas are just part of Brazilian life and they've grown to have their own culture, social norms, vocabulary, etc. So, if favelas are to be done away with, it will have to be done with sufficient resources, extreme care and to the liking (can't think of a better word) of the residents themselves.

While they live in favelas, they want dignity, respect, and access to basic services (ex, Rocinha has an open sewer at the bottom of the hill). So these things will have to exist where they end up living, and during the transfer process.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: The most disliked HN posts/comments - <AUTHOR> Youtube released 2018 Rewind and it ended up being the most disliked video in Youtube's history. I often think it's a shame there is no most downvoted section like there are various top lists, best of, etc. on HN. Part of it may be that the most downvoted comment/post eventually gets flagged and dropped, but still seems like it's viable that there should be posts that got so many downvotes before they were taken down thus outranking the rest in number of downvotes. The benefit of such list is to realize what HN community is most against and what topics cannot be discussed. Should there be such a list? <comment><USER2> In thinking about an answer, you made me realize one of the things I love about HN: trolling or negativity for the sake of being negative isn't allowed to accumulate attention (in general). It is dealt with swiftly and the discussion moves on.

Sure, there is negativity in the form of criticism, but that's part of a healthy discussion, IMHO.

It's not perfect, but does it a lot better than other discussion forums where people discover that negativity can give them a higher profile.

</comment><comment><USER3> I got minus 50 points for suggesting that not all violent homeless people are mentally ill, and that mental illness is a poor predictor of violent behaviour, and that you shouldn't assume a violent homeless person is mentally ill.

<comment><USER4> I thought they limited the downvote karma to -4?

<comment><USER3> They have now.

<comment><USER4> That's what I thought. I had this brutal exchange where I was willing to burn some karma to make a point:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9904732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9904732)

I see you in there DanBC. :-)

You actually saved me from a severe beating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I said many years ago that it would be interesting to rate posts not in some pseudo-objective good-bad way but in terms of agreement or not, and that you could then modulate the ordering of posts on a per-user basis by proximity to the preferences of people you had expressed preferences about.

This was dismissed as overly complex for arc, but I really would like to see the _unfiltered_ graph of HN's social network to study the various voting rings and social subgroups.

</comment><comment><USER6> My most downvoted comments basically say:

\- Copyleft is cancer

\- Privacy is overrated

<comment><USER7> I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about privacy vs security. When it comes to computers, there is no such thing as privacy if there is not security. So all things being equal, it's partially acceptable that Google has great security but not great privacy (currently). If they didn't have security, then Google + anyone who wanted to hack them would have your data.

The topic is so much more nuanced than this but food for thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There should no downvotes section, censoring terrible comments helps the rest of us to stay safe.

<comment><USER9> Safe from what exactly?</comment></comment>


Brain Hacks Top Founders Use to Get the Job Done  - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/article/The-Brain-Hacks-Top-Founders-Use-to-Get-Stuff-Done?utm_source=Firstround.com+Library&utm_campaign=6705173537-The_Right_Way_to_Grant_Equity_to_Your_Employees&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d9bb43e05b-6705173537-75290789 <comment><USER2> Hack 1 - Don't read articles about what top _X_ 's do.

Hack 2 - Get back to work.

</comment><comment><USER3> New proposal: Death to "hacks."

Unless you're Paul Graham, you don't get to say hacks.

We're talking here {"lifehacks", "brain hacks", "social hacks", "parenting hacks", "HR hacks","travel hacks", "Business Insider Tip XYZ hacks"}

All of this sounds an awful, awful, awful lot like SHORTCUT or TRICK.

There's nothing wrong with being efficient with your time, diligent, and sneaking around useless grunt work w/ a bit of clever automation, but this lame-article hack movement is the worst.

Dare I say I've heard enough from these hack writers?

Death to hacks.

</comment><comment><USER4> The title of this article seems to have been generated by an Upworthy-style bot targeted at Hacker News.

<comment><USER5> It took me awhile to parse out which parts of the headline were verbs. Hacks? Top? Use? Get?

My first reading stopped at "Brain Hacks Top Founders", and I grew concerned.

<comment><USER6> wow, now i'm running through all possible parses of that title to figure out the funniest interpretation. The longer I think, the less funnier its getting. :|

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read the whole article waiting for the thesis to become prescription drug abuse.

<comment><USER8> wow. I actually laughed so hard that everyone in the incubator heard me.

<comment><USER9> I feel like that could have been a sarcastic comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good article. I am amazed by how much we can gain if we squeeze out even more output from our useless meaty bodies. Way to go!

</comment><comment><USER11> Snark all you want, but as someone slowly going crazy from work these seem like a very useful set of heuristics to build awareness of the way my body and mind react to things.

Lack of sleep or poor sleep really does affect my emotions and decision-making the next day. Thinking about exactly which people or situations make me feel anxious or energized helps me recognize those emotions as they arise and try to dial them back.

TLDR: get sleep, protect yourself from interruptions, and pay attention to how you react to your work and life activities and emotions (aka mindfulness).

</comment><comment><USER12> The math does seem really appealing, getting 4 extra hours of sleep (assume up to 8), and planning out 2 hours of whitespace during the day (both ideas I would love to try, don't get me wrong) leaves 14 hours to work.

Assume that realistically only 12 of those hours can be spent working, given you have to eat, shower, dress, socialize, general upkeep, a 60% increase in productivity gives you 19 hours of comparable effort, a potential +7 or an entire working day. Worth a shot, but there are deadline pressures which often force your hand and there are likely physical constraints which would limit the amount of increase you can legitimately experience. I.e. how fast can you type? How quickly can other people absorb the genius thought flows you are expounding? +4 seems like a fair upper bound, plus you get to feel better.

I think it depends to some degree though on the type of work you are doing, but the power degradation that occurs when pushing yourself is kind of akin to going insane, you probably won't realize it is happening until you are staring at some javascript error haplessly and suddenly remember that you used to be able to summon the solution at will, or remember that you used to know that it was considered impolite to scream at random people on the street.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're telling me about hacks, I want them to be short and to the point. This article seems to go on and on.

</comment><comment><USER13> tldr: "Sleep more"

</comment><comment><USER14> Mine are that much better.

1 - Don't sleep ! (what?!)

1.1 - Reap any opportunity to close your eyes while thinking and listening to people, if they start closing by themselves you've lost the game.

1.1.1 - Move your head not your eyes, the tiny eye muscle wont last 30 hours.

188.8.131.52 - Rotate the whole body in stead of the neck, if it isn't in front of you it doesn't exist.

1.1.2 - Never look in a direction you don't have to. HD streaming takes huge amounts of bandwidth and processor power, the more things move the harder you run out.

1.2 - Use half open eyes when the opportunity presents it self.

1.2 - Keep the body in the ut most relaxed position.

1.2.1 - put the heating up as far as possible AND wear lots of cloths. Heating 70 kg of water takes huge energy. You need a temperature as if you are in bed. (People also make 50% more mistakes at 20 degrees Celsius than at 25.)

1.3 - If the task doesn't require thinking (or very little) -> don't think! While seemingly impossible at first, after 20 hours or so it comes naturally.

1.3.1 - Get someone to drive you or use public transport but don't look out the window.

2 - no drugs

2.1 - no alcohol

2.2 - no tea

2.3 - no tobacco

2.4 - dont drink coffee, coffee is for people who sleep.

3 - Eat fruit and vegetables 3.1 - Don't eat meat, all predators sleep after eating.

4 - Be overly kind to people, the last thing you need is drama, drama consumes more energy than anything but also forces you to look, listen and think at the same time, all without getting any work done.

5 - No sex 6 - Don't shave 7 - No personal hygiene (optional)

8 - When you inevitably fail to stay awake sleep 14 hours.

9 - Don't hurry with anything, drive as economical as possible, nothing can beat that.

10 - Eventually, if you have no other data coming at you, the subconscious will learn what you are doing. Accidental naps feel like interruptions before you get here. If the subconscious understands the work the nap wont prevent you from thinking about the work.

11 - Stay productive

11.1 - If you start hallucinating go to sleep immediately regardless of the location.

11.2 - If you get migraine you haven't been doing 2 and 3 long enough.

12 - Remove all unnecessary sources of sound from the environment. The brain has no firewall, you don't want to be processing nonsense.

13 - Oxygen is like steroids, get as many plants as you can.

14 - Forget about all other goals, the only goal is the 168 hour work week at 62.4% productivity or~so.

14.1 - The rewards isn't the money. It is sleeping with the thought yer've accomplished all that. No amount of money can buy that feeling.

:-)

It sounds like a big deal but it isn't anything like running a full marathon in the Arctic, wearing nothing but shorts.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof#Feats](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof#Feats)

omg hax!

</comment><comment><USER15> Quite the article title.

<comment><USER16> You almost cannot help but laugh at that title. Talk about "hack".</comment></comment>


Daily Symptom Tracker for Covid 19 - <AUTHOR> https://covid.joinzoe.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm well. No symptoms

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm well no symptoms</comment>


FCC slaps Lyft with citation for calling and texting customers - <AUTHOR> http://www.morningticker.com/2015/09/fcc-slaps-lyft-with-citation-for-calling-and-texting-customers/ <comment><USER2> This startup culture of "begging forgiveness rather than asking permission" has really got to stop -- if only because it's impolite.

Edit: I also worry about where the line actually is when there is no line. What if a startup takes advantage of children? Is that crossing the line? I mean, when paying fines is part of your business model, everything short of whatever might send you to jail is fair game, isn't it? That makes me uncomfortable.

<comment><USER3> Why? If Uber and lyft did this from the beginning, they would have never lasted a week.

"Turns out we can't operate like a Taxi". "Turns out we are actually supposed to be treating the drivers as employees". "Turns out we are supposed to be vetting these drivers more extensively".

If uber and lyft asked permission they simply wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER4> Correct

Still, you want to limit your liability.

Not following FCC rules seems a stupid and pointless transgression

<comment><USER5> > Not following FCC rules seems a stupid and pointless transgression

Perhaps unless the FCC rules themselves are pointless?

The reason why Uber and Lyft are given a hard time is that they're a serious threat to state-maintained taxi-cartels all over the world.

<comment><USER6> > The reason why Uber and Lyft are given a hard time is that they're a serious > threat to state-maintained taxi-cartels all over the world.

No, they're given a hard time because they ignore regulation like driver background checks or insurance or calibrated tamper proof meters.

<comment><USER5> > _No, they 're given a hard time because they ignore regulation like driver > background checks or insurance or calibrated tamper proof meters._

"Ignoring regulations" in this context basically boils down to "competing with taxi cartels". That's obviously upsetting to the cartels, and unhappy noises are made about background checks and meters, as if those potential problems could only be solved with a cartel.

We both know that Uber & Lyft drivers give better service overall than taxi drivers overall. That's because Uber and Lyft are not part of a cartel, and have to therefore please their customers lest they lose them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the article: _" Even though the company's terms say that a user can opt out of robocalls and texts simply by using "provided unsubscribe options," the investigation by the FCC found that the company does not actually have these options available."_

Lame.

Getting ad robocalls and texts on mobile phones is really annoying, totally unacceptable, and illegal.

<comment><USER8> Getting robocalls anywhere is illegal, but that doesn't stop "Anne" or "Rachel" from "Cardholder Services". The FCC hasn't cracked down on that festering hive of illegality, so why is it bothering with Lyft? Which Important Person wants to count coup on Lyft?</comment></comment>


Hiring for Internet Start-up - <AUTHOR>

This is my 6th posting on hacker news! I'm looking to hire programmers (you must know PHP/MYSQL) ,website developers, and mobile app developers,  for my Internet start-up. If your interested message me here on linkedin or email me at email@example.com or give me a call at 352-344-9203 <comment><USER2> Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein, (attributed)</comment>


Google does what I want, not what I say - <AUTHOR> http://www.geirfreysson.com/2014/05/do-what-i-want-not-what-i-say-google-does/

<comment><USER2> This is a nice example of a user that does not quite understand what google does here. It uses the history of the user and displays a site recently visited as one of the results.

So, google does what you want because it remembers what you wanted before.

So much for the 'I don't'.

<comment><USER3> Open a new incognito window and try. Its the same!

<comment><USER2> Do you actually believe that an 'incognito window' makes you invisible/untrackable or something like that?</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's TransCoder AI converts code from one Programming language to other - <AUTHOR> https://androidrookies.com/facebooks-transcoder-ai-tool-can-convert-code-from-one-programming-language-to-another/ <comment><USER2> This is impressive, does anyone know what model it is using for the AI. It says "neural transcompiler", does that mean it is using a neural net?

Without some kind of efficiency benchmark, it's hard to say how useful this would be. You can make a universal transcompiler for anything that compiles into byte code by writing having a set function for every byte code, but obviously that would be horribly inefficient. I assume this wouldn't do something that awful, but without seeing what kind of code it outputs we don't know what it's like.</comment>


New model explains origins of empathy - <AUTHOR> https://santafe.edu/news-center/news/are-you-me-new-model-explains-origins-empathy <comment><USER2> > can engage in the act of simulating the minds of others. We cannot read > other minds — they are like black boxes to us. But, as Lachmann explains, > all agents share almost identical "black boxes" with members of their > species, and "they are constantly running simulations of what other minds > might be doing."

Maybe it is why it is so much easier to spot mistakes in other people than in yourself. If you are constantly analysing others to empathize.</comment>


$1,233/month selling dress shirts – a programmer's side project - <AUTHOR> https://www.starterstory.com/dulo <comment><USER2> Hey there, I am Julian co-founder of DULO ([https://weardulo.com/](https://weardulo.com/)). Please, drop down any comments/questions/feedback, I'd love to answer any of them!</comment>


No, I have no side code projects to show you - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-have-side-code-projects-show-you-ezekiel-buchheit?trk=hp-feed-article-title-share <comment><USER2> Can't even view without having (and being signed into) a LinkedIn account :(

It seems to be listed on Google but it doesn't work from there either, LinkedIn should get de-listed for this kind of shit. Cached view works though</comment>


Ask HN: Is Node.js still good for writing APIs? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I wanted to know if NodeJS is still good option to write backend and for REST APIs. How does it stack up against GO? Are there any particular frameworks for high performance in Node.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Node is best-suited for when your API itself does very little CPU work. When it serves mainly as a task-delegator to a DB, other APIs, local disk I/O, etc. All of these are non-blocked by JS and automatically handled by underlying native code in parallel. The main advantage of Node compared to Go is that your front- and back-end can be in the same language, which helps with hiring and can even allow for code-sharing.

That said I don't think Node would ever match Go on raw performance, even in its wheelhouse. It's all about tradeoffs.

<comment><USER3> what if wasm become production ready... dont u think that cpu intensive will be native and difference will be somewhat closer?

<comment><USER4> No. Wasm is still executing on a virtual machine, and native compiled go code will still be native.

<comment><USER2> This question isn't so clear-cut. Go is still garbage-collected, which means that depending on what kind of program we're talking about, some well-memory- managed WASM code could conceivably still be faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the average CRUD app, even complex ones, I really like using NestJS (in combination with Angular in the frontend)

</comment><comment><USER6> Node is a great choice for fast iteration for a rest api if all you're doing is hitting DB, firing off other services, etc.

Express is a solid choice imo due to the tremendous community support.

If you ever need to do anything that involves CPU crunching, you can move those requirements to another language that's better suited for it like Go.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you don't do much CPU work, node.js is great. If your load is on the DB (or) you offload the work to a background queue, you're good.

If you already know JavaScript, just go with Node.js. If you end up with performance bottleneck (CPU bound operation), you can always write that in Go. Don't waste time upfront.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you don't need much in terms of computing power or you just use the API for delegation, Node makes for a good choice. It's a mature ecosystem, well documented, well supported, has excellent community.

</comment><comment><USER9> What are your performance requirements?

If you have none, this is probably a pre-optimization.

</comment><comment><USER10> I enjoy Node when I'm pulling from several external APIs and need to pipe the data somewhere with minor mutations.

Pretty much every API will have a JavaScript library/documentation, which is a huge time saver.

</comment><comment><USER11> Node.js does not beat Go Lang in terms of handling large numbers of request and performance (of course)

So the question is Node.js good? Depends on your use case. Test yourself and decide yourself for your use case.

</comment><comment><USER12> Apples and Oranges. Depending on your needs and goals, each has it's own pros/cons.

Why are you asking the HN community?

</comment><comment><USER13> Was it ever good?

<comment><USER14> Yes, and still is</comment></comment>


Modern universities are an exercise in insanity (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/01/modern-universities-are-exercise-in.html <comment><USER2> I paid zero for my university since EU, but I still kind of feel scammed out of five years of my life. I got a degree only because I was young and family/friends pushed me into it since "that's what everyone does".

The networking thing, meh. Maybe if you attend the top 1% of universities that have some barrier of entry for people who're actually talented/determined to achieve a goal and care about what they do. Or expensive private ones with industry connections. Which feels a bit like "easy mode" but whatever :)

But in the average public university most students you meet are just coasting through it as if it was high school, or as a way to delay real life. Professors just don't care and they never have time. Even the job placement events, it's all a bullshit perpetuating machine.

<comment><USER3> > But in the average public university most students you meet are just > coasting through it as if it was high school, or as a way to delay real > life.

Perhaps that's an unintended consequence of it being free, just like high school.

If you're paying the bill, it's a lot less likely you'll be coasting through.

<comment><USER4> European countries with free public universities also usually have private, paid colleges. In practice, those are where you _really_ coast through.

<comment><USER3> Why would you pay $$$ just to coast? Just go rent a resort on the Mediterranean if that's what you want to do.

<comment><USER4> To get a piece of paper saying "bachelor" on it. Some people think it's useful, and for some, it might even be.

<comment><USER5> Because you need that word for the next steps: words like "master" and "doctor" or even "engineer" that have real dollar values.

<comment><USER6> Do they though? In most parts of the world academics are not well paid relative to what they can get in the private sector. Even for most liberal arts subjects you can get paid more to produce good entertainment or good books than you'd get in the academy.

You can become a master programmer with no degree at all. Look at all the successful CEOs who dropped out.

<comment><USER7> "There are dozens of us, dozens!" Bill Gates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The reason college is a requirement is because everyone who is in charge went to one, and believes it is necessary.

That's a double-edged statement. On one hand, college is correlated with success (but that may be because college peddles networking). On the other hand, they are senselessly perpetuating a perceived important of college - which may not exist (at least for disciplines outside of medicine and so forth). There is no justification for the cost, it's a very expensive printing press.

While I can understand both points of view, after my complete and utter cash grab "degree" where I learned nothing beyond what I already knew, I perceive it as a scam.

<comment><USER9> I have studied computer science as master in Germany (Diplom) with the best possible final exam score (1,0) in databases, distributed systems, etc. That didn't help me very much with my career. I've worked on the side in startups. That experience helped me found my first VC funded startup and helped my career later on as CTO in several companies. I'm now working as a CTO coach and looking back, my university days didn't have much impact, if any at all.

Have I've learned anything useful? Yes. Was the outcome worth 6 years? No. I would have learned the same things watching excellent Youtube (Standford, MIT, ...) videos for one year.

EY [1] has shown several years ago that university had no impact on the career of their employees and dropped that requirement.

As someone who hired and managed many people I never looked at university degrees. And I never saw a difference.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/18/penguin- ditche...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/18/penguin-ditches-the- need-for-job-seekers-to-have-university-degrees)

<comment><USER10> How many people do you know who know things like statistics, analysis of algorithms, discrete math, calculus, to the same level as someone with a Master's degree in math or comp. sci. and just learnt that by watching YouTube videos from Stanford or MIT? I know some people (including myself) who got some exposure to some of this without getting a degree (I got one eventually) but finding someone as well rounded as a good curriculum is very rare.

Watching videos is more like thinking you're learning. In order to learn you need to practice and internalize.

Now you might argue all this stuff doesn't matter. And if you're just cranking out some mundane code maybe it doesn't. But sometimes it does. I'd imagine it'd be hard being a CTO of in a deeply technical business without having the in-depth theoretical knowledge but CTO can mean lots of different things in different companies.

All that said universities are far from perfect and their curriculum is a mixture of practical and theoretical trying to balance preparing future researchers and scientists and preparing the future workforce. Software development also tends to be very diverse. I do think software developers need some of this background and unfortunately it's much harder to get it without going to university...

The other thing is IMO universities can't make someone who has no aptitude to software a good software developer.

<comment><USER9> I've learned much more from watching statistics videos from top notch YouTube lectures (I like the Harvard ones) than from statistics at university, although there was a lot of it. That said I regularly need to look up statistics, probabilitiy distributions and hypothesis tests in books when I need them twice a year.

The main problem I see in startups I coach is they think they are "data driven" but marketing, sales and top management lacks the proper statistical understanding to make useful decisions. They forgot what they have learned at university and feel no need to relearn statistics for their job. They make all the rookie mistakes.

<comment><USER11> If you have to look them up then you haven't learned them. You learned about them and know what to look for. But you didn't really learn them.

<comment><USER9> With 50 I can't remember things I've learned with 20 and need to look up many things from my youth, so I guess I've never learned a thing. Thanks for that cherry blossom thought.

<comment><USER12> The point here is that it's easy to mistake understanding in the moment for durable learning. It's not ideal, and I won't say it's intentional, but I expect the repeated, spaced exposure process of reading, lecture, homework, exams and finals to yield a little more durable result than a focused video only curriculum with zero testing for retention. Students are notoriously bad at self-evaluation, conflating mastery in the moment with learning.

However, I think if someone tried to partner video lectures with a spaced repetition tool like Anki they _might_ be able to outperform the college treatment group. It's a tool I've been exploring, both personally and professionally. In my youth, I had learned the US state capitals (as many do) and Anki proved pretty quickly I had forgotten that; the same goes for say, bone names, constellations, reading music, foreign languages studied, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My bachelor's degree was basically a scam. It was from a well-known university in Australia, too. Teachers who barely knew anything about what they were teaching, outdated course material, the lowest bar imaginable to get a passing grade. At a guess, I'd say that 99% of the graduates would not have had the skills to be employed in their chosen field upon completing the degree. I only stuck it out through the whole thing because I was a dumb kid who didn't know any better. Now I'll be paying off the debt for the rest of my life.

<comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, what university did you go to?

<comment><USER15> Let me guess for him: James Cook University perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Universities are and always have been expensive.

This cost was hidden in the US and a lot of Western European countries by extremely generous government support. Now that this is going away, more so in some places than others, it sounds like people are suffering from sticker shock.

Is this a fair indictment of the modern university? There are definitely ways to lower the total cost of higher education, but how much I don't know.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not arguing that there's anything ok with 50k-70K annual tuition. However, there is a spending floor that has to be met to fund an "ok" no-thrills research university.

Examples: KIT, a very good research university in Germany, spends about 35K EUR per student. I wasn't able to find a source, but I remember reading that the University of Maryland in the states spends about 20-25K USD per student. Fu et al., 2019 quotes about 390K NTD (~13K USD) as the average per student spending in Taiwan.

<comment><USER17> The tough question is where is that 20-25k going? Large research expenditures are typically funded by external grant rather than tuition and fees. The university owns all of it's land, and surely should or could have the majority of the buildings already paid for given a 100+ year history.

Given that the professors/assistants are certainly not getting paid within 2 orders of magnitude of 25k per student . There must either be irrationally high Capex expenditure, irrationally high administrative overhead, or universities are spending _large_ fractions of tuition on other activities.

<comment><USER16> You can find a number of university budgets online. Grants will generally be counted as income. Research universities are still universities with a sizable teaching requirement. If you go off of the paper I cited above, at least half of the per student cost can be attributed to this (lecturer salaries, overhead, and administration).

Once you get to the research part, you have to keep in mind that tenured salaries and related overhead are generally covered by the university, along with one to two researchers (normally a PhD and a Post Doc).There are also a bunch of items that simply can't be funded through research grants, such as social security contributions and general equipment (e.g., work stations).

The 20K number is also extremely conservative. Like I mentioned, Karlsruhe, which is a reasonably good (excellent) technical university, has an average student cost of ~35K EUR. I can't speak for them personally, but I doubt that KIT is dropping a lot of money on subsidized student housing and gourmet meal halls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure I buy the idea that a no-name setup can get away with paying adjuncts to tutor the same as universities can pay them to teach. Even though the prospect of jumping to tenure-track is increasingly remote, I think there is an element of wishful thinking with a lot of adjuncts hanging around the university semester after semester. I'm not sure the magic applies to No Name Brand Tutoring School.

That being said, universities are preposterously top-heavy and loaded with insane numbers of overheads - academic superstars who don't teach, layer upon layer of admin (Australian universities are stuffed to the gills with managers and marketers and social media consultants and Deputy Vice Chancellors In Charge of Being Someone's Mate, etc), and lifestyle stuff for the students.

</comment><comment><USER19> I agree... the tuition cost of modern colleges is insane.

I went to Cal St. back in the 90's... total cost was under 10k USD including books. I paid for a lot of it working construction and summer internships.

I had some work friends who went to Caltch and MIT for undergrad for same degree as I have...we compared books for courses, etc. 80% of our courses used the same exact book. I'm sure they "learned it better" than I did... but not "10x the tuition cost" better.

I went to Carnegie Mellon for grad school... no tuition plus a livable stipend. Pittsburgh was an inexpensive and fun city to live in as a student. It was a great experience. Nobody cared where I got my BS after I finished grad school.

Thing is... now even Cal State in-state tuition is so much more expensive than it used to be. The situation really sucks.

<comment><USER3> > I had some work friends who went to Caltch and MIT for undergrad for same > degree as I have...we compared books for courses, etc. 80% of our courses > used the same exact book. I'm sure they "learned it better" than I did... > but not "10x the tuition cost" better.

I went to Caltech in the 70's. I compared course catalogs with Arizona State U. Required undergrad class at CIT were grad level classes at ASU. When I worked at Boeing I found my BS math abilities were at the same level as those with a Masters.

As for books, at CIT many of the textbooks required for a class were not actually used. The prof would present his own curriculum, with the class textbook there just for background.

To be fair, I didn't take the actual courses at ASU, I just compared the course catalog for topics covered.

<comment><USER19> Yeah... no dig intended against Caltech or MIT. They definitely push their student a lot harder and more consistently than I was pushed in many of my classes in undergrad. I wanted to go to Caltech or Harvey Mudd College out of HS but didn't have the means.

I had the privilege to work at JPL for about 3 years and worked with a lot of folks from Caltech and MIT in that time... all brilliant and wonderful people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Modern Universities do not teach how to spot equal-but-opposite thoughts, concepts, arguments, and ideas.

In other words, they teach students _what_ to think, not _how_ to think...

Upon graduation, the new graduate (in addition to their college loans and degree!) has, by virtue of their education, been given a virtual "grab bag" of many small, relative, _convenient_ truths which only relate to special circumstances and corner cases, which all have intelligent and impressive sounding lingo/jargon/buzzwords/"$2 names" attached to them, such that the graduate may then, later on in life, pick and choose from this "grab bag" and _selectively apply_ those small relative truths to any problem (and sound very intelligent in the process!) that they or someone else may be having...

...All _while missing the big picture_ , and/or _conveniently ignoring one or more other larger, more important truths that may be present as well_. (Error of Omission).

When I hear minor truths, by a so-called "Academic", selectively applied to a problem or problems, I think to myself, with respect to what the speaker/writer said:

 _" Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it."_ (With my apologies to the Principal in Billy Madison!)

Yes, it is actually possible to _dumb things down while appearing smart_ , and the way this is done is through selective (minor) truth observation, AKA "Error Of Omission".

Otherwise known as missing the big picture, putting too much attention on minutiae, making mountains out of molehills, presenting the weaker argument as the stronger, etc., etc.

It happens in academic papers, it happens in the news media...

"Grab Bags" of small, relative truths, but small relative truths with _impressive sounding languaging_ around them...

And yet, there are a lot of good academic papers, and education (the right education!) is valuable from many other perspectives...

</comment><comment><USER21> People often forget that one of the biggest value of having degree is the optics that comes with it.

Basically if a person has spent time getting a degree this shows a important value - risk averseness.

Another value it shows is - being subservient. You are allowing some professor or institution to have significant control over you well past age 18 as an adult.

Risk averseness shows that you'll not be duping the company or stealing their secrets and starting a new company as a competitor and you prefer having a stable salary than mega payoff by selling the tech of the company where you work.

And being subservient means, you'll listen to all the BS magement wants and also you'll not question the authority or go against them.

<comment><USER22> When I'm hiring, these are no the qualities I'm looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The coronavirus crisis and the enforced shift to online teaching might very well lead to major changes in higher education.

At the university where I work in Japan, we began teaching all of our classes online a month and a half ago using Zoom. I don't know anyone, teacher or student, who thought that they would prefer online classes, but now that we have been doing it for a while it's clear there are advantages.

Perhaps most significant is the fact that teachers and students do not need to live near campus. The students in my undergraduate classes are scattered throughout Japan, and my graduate seminar includes students in Thailand and Indonesia who were unable to enter Japan when travel was shut down in early April. Some of our teachers are also stuck outside the country and are conducting their classes from overseas. Overall, classes seem to be going surprisingly smoothly, and students are able to participate equally in class discussions regardless of their location.

What the author of this post presented as a cost-comparison exercise—get a group of people who want to study the same thing and hire a teacher—is much more feasible when the students and teacher do not have to be in the same geographic area. It will be interesting to see how such possibilities change higher education in the years ahead.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think the root of the problem is the student loan system. You can get a student loan without any consideration for your creditworthiness, with the general compromise that the debt is rather hard to discharge. This system makes sense because the loan is supposed to provide for an investment in your future. But for any course of study that does not measurably improve your future earning potential, this premise completely falls over.

Young students know this, but it seems not to deter them, and nobody ends up winning except the universities that collect their tuition. As far as I've ever known, the primary objective of the student loan system was to facilitate social mobility, not subsidize the existence of humanities departments. Because it's really hard to argue that it's achieving the former in its current state.

I also question how seriously a lot of young students take the obligations of having a student loan. I think it would be condescending to write it off entirely to a lack of maturity, but I really don't get the impression that most of them are fully considering what the costs actually are. If you cut of the never ending supply of free money, I'm sure the universities would have to put more consideration into delivering value.

<comment><USER25> When I was in school I would frequently run into people who would say things like "I'm studying English... So that means I'll be working in a coffee shop after I graduate, Ha ha". I always wanted to tell people to stop joking about that, because it was true. I wanted to say something like "Don't you get it? That is really going to happen, but you could change that now by studying something more employable." Though I never did because it seemed rude.

I tend to think that most people will do what they feel they are supposed to do without really thinking things through for themselves. They feel they are supposed to go to college, so they do. People tell them to pick a major they are interested in, so they do. Lots of people don't seem to actually stop, think, and plan out major life courses.

<comment><USER26> STEM people really struggle with the idea that the humanities are not vocational training - because they _are_ vocational training for the political class, who don't need to understand STEM because they use rhetoric, persuasion, and political manipulation to get what they want.

For these people, scientists and technologists are the hired help. While you're telling yourself that knowing how to compile Linux from source gives you god-like superpowers, they're running astroturfing and media campaigns that win elections and define national policy.

Some of those people have English degrees. Because - why not? (In the UK they're more likely to have a PPE from Oxford, but if they have the connections English or some other non-technical subject is fine too.)

In the same way that you won't understand what high school math is really for unless you put it in context with a STEM degree, you can't understand what the humanities are really for unless you put them in a political context.

<comment><USER24> You've just described why the most common qualifications held in the Senate and in the House are law degrees first, and MBAs second. The humanities is not the educational background of our political class, it's mostly Law, Business and Medicine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Labor has changed and is still changing. It's getting more and more difficult to get a job that pays. Meritocracy? Meh. It's bullshit being peddled to shut us up. It's just connections and luck. Even the able ones have to be in the right place at the right time and need to jump through a million hoops. It feels like a never-ending captcha session.

Bullshit at universities is backpressure from the labor market. Backed up bullshit spills over to education at all levels. Perhaps it is one of the symptoms of the end of the labor era.

And now that we can see this laid bare clearer and clearer: What can parents do today for their children?

Education doesn't have the primary goal to procure a job. This was never really the thing. And even at this education is failing more and more. So what needs to be done for children and young adults? What is the goal of education?

As a father I have been thinking about this for years. I don't have an answer for the material needs of the generation of my descendants. However I know that people need a meaning of life especially if they are poor. I am trying to teach my children to look out for their own meaning of life and to work hard to attain it by themselves.

I hope that the world finds an answer how to satisfy the material needs of the people when there's not enough labor for everybody. And then? What can they do if they don't have a job? That's what I am trying to find out with my children growing up. Humanities are important to create meaning.

However one thing is sure: If I detect bullshit permeating an university I am not going to suggest an expensive course to my children!

<comment><USER28> > I hope that the world finds an answer how to satisfy the material needs of > the people when there's not enough labor for everybody.

There is a very clear answer to this, it's just that people who are not labour are trying very hard to avoid giving it. We should all be working far less for the same money we are getting today. As the productivity of work increases, hours worked should be going down, without affecting wages. Right now, the benefits of increased productivity are all going into profits, that is, into the hands of the very few.

We have been here before, and our great-grandfathers and great-grand- grandmothers have fought for reducing the wrok week many times before, successfully. We will probably soon have to fight this fight again.

<comment><USER29> This solution will not work for many jobs. There are some jobs where it doesn't make sense to work less time during a day. And where you more than less need to work often so you don't go dull.

Medicine in hospitals are one. Drs in threads like this will acknowledge the long hours are bad but required to minimize handoffs.

In IT project work is naturally optimized to minimize the number of people required to put in new systems. And I'm going to offer to work more for more money most of the time.

I think some form of UBI would be better but I can't yet imagine the required changes to society required to keep it from a dystopia. Maybe the two ideas work better together. Since to me only a poverty level UBI makes sense. But lowering the base hours to 30-35 before overtime kicks in with a low UBI might have an interesting outcome where people still need to work but don't have to work, and more employees are required.

<comment><USER28> I see no reason to imagine 40 hours a week is some special number. If we could go from 60h weeks to 40h weeks, why stop there even as productivity increases?

Note that overtime is still possible, but needs to be paid. But as a general rule, the increased benefits from automation should be felt by workers too, not just owners.

Of course, once you get to 100% automation this simple reduction in hours worked for the same pay breaks down, but few industries are even remotely close to that.

Edit: doctors in hospitals are a very special case, I think. It is one of the only jobs where the increased strain on the worker can be accepted, as it doesn't simply produce profit, it produces much more important human good. Even more, the problem in Healthcare is definitely not lack of jobs, on the contrary - there are generally either not enough doctors or not enough resources to pay for more doctors (and nurses, and other medical personnel).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Universities waste way too much money on fancy food, extravagant halls, amazing experiences.

It's like an amusement park for adults.

Go walk into one and look at all the things that have nothing to do with learning. Go count how many fancy restaurants they have.

People go there for the experience, and it costs.

They should instead be about learning. Have your experiences later in life, or just independently instead of expecting the university to do it for you.

<comment><USER26> But for a certain kind of person the fancy food etc _is_ the learning. It's a social environment for making social and professional connections and (often) a life partner.

Sometimes there's some academic work too.

In reality there's no such thing as "university." There are different experiences and different goals for different demographics.

They all happen in the same environment, but there will always be [double figured number] of social, economic, and political games going on at the same time - sometimes in the same classes - and the demographics involved in each will often be barely aware of each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I went bankrupt around 2016 and am homeless (vehicle dwelling), yet have ~$9000 USD in student loan debt that wasn't dischargeable or forgivable. I spent over $40k on a degree I cannot use as I am now considered disabled (SSDI). Navient is still after me and checks my credit every few months looking to pounce. I bet they'll reach into my online-only bank account and take the little money that I need to eat, buy gas, medications, and pay copays. It took me over 7 years and a lawyer to get SSDI ($1300), and it can be taken away every 2 years. If you're poor or disabled in America, you're automatically a criminal trying to steal and so austerity crumbs are justified.. and delay, hoping you'll just give up or die. For 9 years, I lived on $199/month for food and $149 in cash.

There is no out for me because 99.99999% of Americans are either too comfortable, learned helpless cowards, and/or too ignorant to understand how bad we have it and how much we're being screwed. There will be no rebellion even though a calm but determined march of 5 million people to the seats of power could overwhelm any resistance and remove the corruption. The key problem is endurance by separating church and wealth and mass-media and state for the future. Without fixing corruption driven by the elites above the system, nothing can change.. and not preventing them from stealing power some other way again is only a temporary, pyrrhic victory.

Work stoppages are reactionary temper-tantrums seeking a few more crumbs from the master. Protests, petitions, awareness campaigns are all pointless virtue- signaling onanisms. Why pick rapist 1 or rapist 2.. presently, voting is accenting sheepishly to an inverted totalitarian, pluto-kleptocratic empire, not republican psephocracy. Be like George Carlin and not so.. maybe let's (assuming you're American) dent the universe and fix this bitch.

<comment><USER32> Firstly, i'm sorry to hear about your situation. I have met so many people with similar stories about struggles when I lived in the city. I am curious though -- why aren't more people more angry given how desperately so many people have their backs against a en economic wall?

Do you think the Protests, petitions, awareness campaigns are just appeasement campaigns to make people think they have a choice? How is it people do not see through it eventually? (side note: i've been voting in the US for 21yrs and have only once found a candidate i truly felt inspired to vote for (Bernie))

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > This conversation would improve greatly if less folks wrote long lists of > their complaints about universities and more folks wrote long lists of ideas > on how to improve them.

It's not a questions of "where we want to be" \- there are examples of good education systems which can be used. It's rather a question of "how to get there" \- and here America has to figure out the path from here to there, which isn't obvious to some, before it can improve things.

<comment><USER32> >> America has to figure out the path from here to there, which isn't obvious to some, before it can improve things.

Much like healthcare, there are incumbents who are winning big along the way. I think a lot of the solutions are quite obvious -- it is just there are people who would come out on the losing end and they fight it. And from what I can see, the American people are not sufficiently angry about it to really make it happen (e.g., as they do for more charged wedge issues.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I transferred from a mid-west university to an east coast university in the US. When I got there and was scheduling I couldn't take any of the advanced classes I was supposed to for my major, why? I'd never taken College Algebra, despite taking three semesters of Calculus, Computer Science. At this new school, College Algebra was a requirement that could not be skipped. I wasted an entire semester taking electives and Algebra. I was pretty pissed.

</comment><comment><USER35> There's a fairly well-known 2018 book on why education (higher and lower) is the way it is now:

Bryan Caplan, "The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money"

</comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone have an actual cost breakdown of every expense that goes into running a university? It would be great to see this for any major private college, and/or a public university.

In most of these comment sections I see speculation about why universities are so expensive. But have never seen the hard data to back it up. Is it really the luxury dorms? The bloated administration? etc... Anyone have the real numbers? And how has the budget breakdown changed over time?

</comment><comment><USER37> In the EU I paid 250 Euro per year, so 1.000 Euro total for my graduate degree. The US system is insane. Why do you tolerate such obvious racketeering?

<comment><USER38> Just curious, do you think what you paid is the actual cost to provide you that education?

<comment><USER37> No. Tuition fees is just one of 5 money streams that the university relies on. Te others being Research grants, Service provisioning (contract research mostly), subsidies and Assets & Investments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jerome-jh With the low interest rates, everything that requires a loan sees over- inflation. I think this is what is happening with university tuition.</comment>


Amazon could be working on in-home package deliveries - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/27/amazon-could-be-working-on-in-home-package-deliveries/ <comment><USER2> The garage door opener isn't a bad idea.

 _" There are clear limits to the potential reach of this tech, of course – smart locks and garage doors are far from ubiquitous."_

But a lot of garage door openers support wireless keypads that can be bought and connected post-market. No need to change the drive unit. Switching the keypad out for a net-connected keypad? That's incredibly simple to do for most homeowners.</comment>


How The Post covered the 'grand social experiment' of the Internet in 1988 - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/heres-how-the-post-covered-the-grand-social-experiment-of-the-internet-in-1988/

<comment><USER2> This makes me wonder what the 'next big thing' will be after the internet.

I watched this TedX Talk from Tomi Ahonen and I think he may be right in his 'mass media' perspective.

1st mass media: Print (500 years old) including books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, billboards etc

2nd mass media: Recordings (from 1890s) such as music records, videogames, videotapes and DVDs etc

3rd mass media: Cinema (from 1910s)

4th mass media: Radio (from 1920s)

5th mass media: Television (from 1950s)

6th mass media: Internet (from 1991)

7th mass media: Mobile (from 1998)

8th mass media: ?

He makes the argument that augmented reality will be the next mass media and I think he is right.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvyfHuKZGXU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvyfHuKZGXU)

<comment><USER3> Why is mobile a separate entry?

<comment><USER4> For the same reason that cars are separate from trains. They enable completely different usages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can I say that quality of discourse has been degrading and general utility of the net has been suffering? the article brings back memories of archie, usenet and local irc chat rooms. There isn't anymore a general sinkhole for various activities on the net. Technologies suffered, like usenet from spam wars... yet it is good to have a set of open protocols that would provide foundation for how people use the net, so that it is not fragmented across different levels of technologies. Web had done most of the damage, not sure how to fix that.

Any comment? I would rather have usenet like hierarchical database access to articles rather than weighty web driven portal that will not very parseable and has a tendency to change over time and often disappear. If there is an underlying protocol to save and distribute semantic data across the web and we could agree on that, that I think would be awesome. I heard of open data, but I doubt that can replace RFC based protocols of yester yore. IMO.

my 2d.

<comment><USER6> > I would rather have usenet like hierarchical database access to articles > rather than weighty web driven portal that will not very parseable and has a > tendency to change over time and often disappear.

Aye, so would I. USENET was clunky and difficult to use compared to, say, reddit, but overall I think it was far more open, in a technological sense.

Barring karma & co. (which grown-ups probably don't care about too much), I'd say the rate of innovation in online communication between 1993 and 2013 is a joke compared to the one between 1973 and 1993. And I honestly a combination of blame lazy programmers and greedy wannabe-businessmen for for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The best part was definitely the last couple paragraphs. No commercial advertisement. We've strayed a little since then :-).

</comment><comment><USER8> Look at the comments. The same Paul heckbert from 1988 showed up.

<comment><USER9> "And yeah, I remember that fill code. I always felt guilty because it contained a goto statement. I don't think I've written a "goto" since."

Loved this!

Glad I'm not the only one :-) My last goto statement was in 1984, rejected by Code Review.

I haven't written a goto since. And I haven't cared much for Code Review since, either.

<comment><USER10> Gotos aren't that infrequent in C and C++ written without exceptions or longjmps, and stack-based cleanup needs to occur.

Last time I wrote a goto in a language that did have exceptions was the alignment portion of an unrolled loop implementation of a hash algorithm. Delphi doesn't support C-style switch statements where one case flows into the next; so the alignment switch did jumps into the unrolled loop body.

<comment><USER3> Yep. Gotos can be the cleanest way of handling certain errors in C.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This abstract is perfect:

 _True net-heads sometimes resort to punctuation cartoons to get around the absence of inflection. They may append a :-) if they are making a joke (turn your head to the left) or use :-( for an ersatz frown._

<comment><USER12> I've enjoyed witnessing the use of terms like "lol" and the intentional elimination of full-stops, etc to communicate tone through mobile communications. I don't think many people throughout history have had the opportunity to witness such wide-scale shifts in language use within the course of 10, 20 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article is really amazing and amusing to me, and not just because of the excitement back then over something like how "news groups produce about 4 million characters of new material a day, the equivalent of about five average books." The author, Barton Gellman, is also the reporter who is covering and breaking stories on the Snowden/NSA beat for the WaPo, including what I think is one of the most remarkable technical stories about it so far ("Fuck these guys" \-- [http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa- in...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates- links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents- say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html)). It's funny to me because I've heard Gellman and his partner describe him as not being very tech savvy at all...So even if his current NSA pieces don't go into the finer technical detail, it's still impressive that in 1988, he was able to grok enough of the Internet back then to capture some of its best and most profoundly gamechanging aspects of the Internet...in ways that journalists even today still don't quite appreciate:

> _Jerry Nelson, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, > needed engineering data on the massive Keck Telescope under construction in > Hawaii that specified precisely the shape of its reflecting mirror. Stoll, > the Harvard astronomer, transmitted the file within two minutes to Nelson 's > computer._...

 _There is more to life than science, and the network publishes hundreds of special-interest forums known as news groups. They have no exact counterpart in traditional media, but seem to combine most of the functions of hobby magazines, radio talk shows, classified advertisements and singles bars._

 _" It's like being able to subscribe to any magazine instantly, read back issues, contribute to it as an author and unsubscribe whenever you want -- all at no cost," said Kenneth R. van Wyk, a senior consultant in user services at Lehigh University's computer center._

</comment><comment><USER14> "heaven help the user who tries to broadcast an advertisement"

</comment><comment><USER15> The title should read "How one newspaper wrote about the Internet in 1988" because clearly, is article is an exception to the goofiness that routinely played in newspapers and TV from the 80 through the mid-90s.

<comment><USER15> And some mod finally updated the title.</comment></comment>


U.S. Spy Plane Impersonates Malaysian Aircraft, Apparently to Fool China - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a33970936/us-spy-plane-impersonates-malaysian-aircraft/ <comment><USER2> This kind of thing is why civilian airliners end up accidentally getting shot down by militaries.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it truly is the common practice to have unmasked reconnaissance flights around russian airspace then it does seem strange that that someone decided to mask this flight.

Perhaps an automatic switching system was installed and it tripped mid flight?</comment>


How Elon Musk Learned Rocket Science for SpaceX - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/how-elon-musk-learned-rocket-science-for-spacex-2014-10 <comment><USER2> This is amazing and absolutely inspiring for entrepreneurs. It's just great to read what he have done in order to learn more about what he wanted to build.

"Musk "knows everything about what he's building," Cantrell says"</comment>


Intellectual Ventures cuts 140 employees from its patent-buying workforce - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2014/nathan-myhrvolds-intellectual-ventures-cuts-fifth-patent-buying-workforce/ <comment><USER2> IV is a garbage company trying to portray itself as a bastion of innovation.

There are certain severe "bugs" in the way our intellectual property laws work in the US. IV exploits these bugs to make Billions of dollars.

IV is not concerned with whether something is good or not. They exist to make hay while the intellectual property laws remain broken.

I had no idea they had 500 people working for them. That means that there are at least 500 people that are severely deluded, or morally repugnant.

If you are an engineer or a lawyer familiar with the patent laws in this country, you can't read the claims asserted by IV and say that they are boosting "innovation" with a straight face. What they do is a dead weight loss on our economy.

I feel sorry for the people that work at IV. They have whored themselves out for a little bit more money, instead of just working productively in this economy.

I don't know how you can show your face in front of your kids and family knowing you go to work every day in an extortion racket.

I would rather make a modest living and look at myself in the mirror with no shame.

<comment><USER3> I think dogpiling Intellectual Ventures is striking at the branches, and not at the root. The problem isn't "patent trolls." The problem is patents:

> Even if patents actually accomplished their advertised purpose — "securing > for limited Times to … Inventors the exclusive Right to their … > Discoveries," as the US Constitution puts it — they'd be a very bad idea. > The claim that one can own an idea is silly on its face, and not a claim > that anyone would pay the slightest mind to were it not enforced at gunpoint > by the state.

> But the advertised purpose of patents is not their actual purpose.

> Their actual purpose is to restrain competition and limit innovation so as > to provide economic advantage — monopoly pricing power, in fact — to > established firms who, by virtue of their ability to pay off (pardon my > indelicate language; I believe the word I'm looking for is "lobby") > politicians, bureaucrats and judges, can thereby indulge their desire avoid > market competition on price or quality. [1]

[1] [http://c4ss.org/content/24371](http://c4ss.org/content/24371)

<comment><USER4> > The problem is patents:

No, patents are fine. The problem is that current patent laws enable patent trolls. If we could find a way to eradicate patent trolls while preserving patents, their intent would be served much better.

For example, you should only be able to acquire patents if you can prove you have a business pertinent to those patents. This kind of measure would instantly kill all patent trolls.

<comment><USER5> _This kind of measure would instantly kill all patent trolls._

And anyone else who files for a patent but is unable to bring their idea to market in the form of a product or service. This includes (but is not limited to) private inventors, universities, research institutions and even large companies such as ARM Holdings plc.

<comment><USER6> Couldn't agree more. The focus on non-practicing entities is misplaced. There's no reason we shouldn't incentivize inventors who come up with great ideas so they can sell them to others who have the skills to bring them to market.

I think the more appropriate distinctions between good patents and bad are in the subject matter of the claims themselves (e.g. the novelty and non- obviousness requirements). Thankfully, the Supreme Court is tightening this up lately.

<comment><USER5> _Thankfully, the Supreme Court is tightening this up lately._

I'm not so sure about this. The Supreme Court is attempting to define and apply standards that some experts consider arbitrary and highly subjective. One example is the attempt to make a distinction between a mathematical function and a novel software algorithm. It almost seems like the distinction is made based upon whether or not the particular justice writing the opinion is able to understand it. Some might even go so far as to say that only _magic_ is patentable (recalling the oft-repeated Arthur C. Clarke quote).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was part of a "partnership" with IV and MagicJack.

[http://www.intellectualventures.com/news/press- releases/magi...](http://www.intellectualventures.com/news/press- releases/magicjack-vocaltec-completes-patent-deal-with-intellectual-ventures/)

Even though the PR seems to say that MJ is joining the force - you can clearly see that none of the original Vocaltec/Magicjack VoIP patents have been asserted against anyone else/used as defense in any patent lawsuit. By playing ball, we were able to use their patent portfolio to defend against the MANY patent lawsuits brought against MJ. It did help in a few cases when we were sued over a number of different VoIP and USB-related patents. From what I remember, though, it was expensive to be in their alliance and you had to contribute your own patents as well. The idea itself is interesting. I think a non-profit could better fill the need for everyone sharing a big patent blanket.

<comment><USER8> The lawsuits that IV helped you defend against, were those from trolls or from practicing entities that had patents?

I'm asking because I would think that having a bunch of patents would only protect you against practicing entities that are in violation of random other patents just by being alive, it wouldn't really stop trolls from trolling. Do I have that right?

(Possibly an ignorant question, sorry.)

<comment><USER7> Not an ignorant question at all!

All were from trolls/non-practicing entities except for one (which we settled). As soon as we went public, we became a target.

It would come in the form of:

"Hello, we are XYZ company are you are infringing on 1,324 of our patents related to computing and to communicating over USB - we would be happy to not move forward with our lawsuit for the sum of $500,000"

We called it the reverse nigerian prince.

It protected us from the vast majority of trolls - and it really came down to the "thump" test. The thump test is when company A asserts patents against company B. Company A comes storming in the court room (or via plain ole email) and drops it's stack of patents on top of the table. We now have to invalidate each and every claim which puts the vast majority of the burden on us. We would then turn around and drop our borrowed patent portfolio on the desk and it would thump pretty loud as well. That stopped 95% of the major patent lawsuits from moving forward, as stupid as it was. We took an aggressive stance to counter-sue for patent infringement and ALSO to invalidate via prior-art. Instead of sharks smelling blood in the water, we stopped getting the lawsuits because we aggressive sought to not only stop a lawsuit, but to invalidate the patent from ever being asserted again due to prior art which could be applied in any future patent lawsuit case (and in some instances, would invalidate the patent or have it "re-examined")

Unfortunately, I feel there is still a very vulnerable phase of small business between profitable and not profitable enough to employ these strategies. As the MJs of the world (~$200M market cap) start to adapt - the trolls simply get change their nigerian email to $100,000 instead of $500,000 and start working their way down to smaller companies.

<comment><USER9> Were any of the trolls that brought lawsuits (before MJ joined the fold) actually one of IV's 2000 shell companies?

[1] [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121220/02365821447/intel...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121220/02365821447/intellectual- ventures-dont-mind-our-2000-shell-companies-thats-totally-normal.shtml)

<comment><USER10> that's an interesting perspective, even if it turns out to be un-true. That's probably a good strategy.

<comment><USER7> I think that is the issue - it's a mafia-style "join us or be sued". The relationship was semi-forced

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I dont get Myhrvold. He was wealthy beyond all get-out and, judging by his educational background, was probably intellectually curious at one point in his existence. Why would he direct the fall/winter of his life energy into this bullshit?

<comment><USER12> It's entirely plausible - perhaps very likely - Myhrvold believes in what he's doing, believes in patents, believes patents help innovation, and so on.

The world is filled with billions of people that believe truly crazy things, plenty of those people are smart and successful.

<comment><USER13> _> Myhrvold believes in what he's doing, believes in patents, believes patents help innovation, and so on._

I strongly doubt that. It's more likely that believes in filling his pockets using crooked means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _" Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that IV kept asking the same companies to reinvest, and if they didn't, the threat was that the company could always find something to sue one of the entities over."_

Say, nice corporation you got there. Shame if anything were to happen to it.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is that patent troll organization right?

"the company has fallen on hard times as some of its bigger investors become less interested in buying into its funds."

Good.

<comment><USER16> I imagine giving patents from your portfolio to patent trolling companies (Lodsys), who then sue your client's (Apple) partners, doesn't help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The main issue debated is whether or not companies like IV hurt or help > innovation with its business practices.

This is an interesting point. Has anyone (without a direct financial interest to do so) made a credible argument that IV is anything other than harmful to innovation?

<comment><USER18> Good question, unclear answer.

IV is not a typical patent troll, so the standard patent troll argument is hard to apply. They do not file large numbers of small lawsuits, but rather a small number of very large lawsuits (e.g. against the Intel/Ford/AIG types). They generally do loser pays, and a few other things that make them hard to bucket as a normal patent troll.

IV spends a large amount of money (billions [1]) on purchasing patents. One might reasonably expect that to encourage innovation. As I understand it, most of those patents are not software patents, though (again I am not 100% sure) a large fraction of their lawsuits are based on software patents [citation needed]. One might reasonable expect that to discourage innovation.

An interesting anecdote: Nest bought IV licenses to defend itself from Honeywell [2]. I would argue that Nest is a relatively decent innovation, so in this (very specific) case, one could argue that IV encouraged innovation.

As I said, hard to balance.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/11/us-microsoft- apple...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/11/us-microsoft-apple- patents-idUSBREA3A0R020140411) [2] [http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/nest- buys-protection-licens...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/nest-buys- protection-licenses-patents-from-intellectual-ventures-to-fight-honeywell- others/)

<comment><USER13> _> IV spends a large amount of money (billions [1]) on purchasing patents. One might reasonably expect that to encourage innovation._

I don't see how purchasing any kind of patents can encourage innovation. Innovation is encouraged by returns from the innovation, not by returns from sold patents. Recycling patents for profit is a completely parasitic business which has nothing to do with innovation.

<comment><USER19> If you give money to people in exchange for innovation that encourages innovation. That said, purchasing patents only encourages innovation if those patents are the product of innovation.

<comment><USER20> Very true. You have to be careful to distinguish between

1) buying patents harms innovation, vs

2) That patent should not have been granted at all.

In my experience, most people arguing 1) either have a very confused argument, or turn out to actually be concerned with 2).

<comment><USER13> #1 can be a concern if #2 is too common. I.e. if it's too easy to make junk patents, trading them can become a lucrative parasite business. So some will file tons of junk patents just to sell them to trolls. In such scenario the fact that some are ready to pay for such junk encourages more patent pollution which only harms innovation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Kind of eerie when you realize you're looking into the portrait of someone without any conscious or ethics.

I have little sympathy for the employees that got laid off, and am reassured that IV is finding it harder to operate. However, it's a bit disconcerting that they've claimed to "automate" their process.

</comment><comment><USER13> I hope this whole racketeering workshop will be cut for good sooner than later.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Companies could buy into the fund, and in exchange, it potentially received > legal protection from the patent portfolio.

This is like a gun company asking you to invest in them and in exchange, they guarantee their guns won't be used to attack you.

There's a word for this kind of practice: extortion.

If anything, I'm sad that the 140 people being laid off only represent 20% of that scum company.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd be curious to know what returns have IV realized for it's investors to date?

Also, "Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that IV kept asking the same companies to reinvest, and if they didn't, the threat was that the company could always find something to sue one of the entities over."? Sounds like an extortion racket.

</comment><comment><USER23> Here's a list of their shell companies:

[http://www.plainsite.org/tags/intellectual-ventures-shell- co...](http://www.plainsite.org/tags/intellectual-ventures-shell-companies/)

<comment><USER24> How did you miss LodSys?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _> Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that IV kept asking the same companies to reinvest, and if they didn't, the threat was that the company could always find something to sue one of the entities over._

This is such a brazen shakedown, it's not even funny. Are there any laws which can be applied to prevent this?

</comment><comment><USER25> One of the IV execs lived in my building. He was a self-obsessed douche.

<comment><USER26> One the IV lawyers gave my kid a stuffed toy. I felt dirty accepting it, once I learned the provenance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow - I don't think I've ever seen a company discussed on HN that didn't have a single defender. IV may be the most hated company ever!

</comment><comment><USER28> Intellectual Vultures would be a more apt name.

</comment><comment><USER29> 540 left to go.

</comment><comment><USER30> 20% for 140 people. That's 700 people. Do they really need that many people to buy patents?

</comment><comment><USER31> Alice effect?</comment>


Ask HN: Should I get lawyer? - <AUTHOR>

I know there are a lot of steps involved in creating a startup and getting a lawyer is just one. But if I am planning on boot strapping a side project, I'm wondering what is the minimum legal protection I should get. For instance, one of my apps allows the embedding of youtube videos, which may be illegally put there. I'm wondering if I should incorporate to prevent being sued personally in the unfortunate event it comes to that. <comment><USER2> On one hand, you can do nothing and potentially get sued and go broke. On the other, you can spend thousands on a lawyer and (maybe) reduce the impact of a lawsuit.

So it depends on your budget, risk appetite and appreciation of the legal system in your country.

A few points to keep in mind:

      * You'll rarely get sued (in this context) if you don't have money
      * Your friends can act as a proxy to their lawyers on retainer
      * You don't need a lawyer to understand the legal landscape
      * A lawyer's interests aren't always aligned with yours
      * A lawyer can make your problems worse
      * A lawyer can also save your arse
      * A lawyer can help you sleep

Personally, from what you've said, spending money on a lawyer at this stage is a gross waste. Why not conduct your own research and talk with friends (at larger companies) who may be able to get your questions answered by their lawyers on retainer.

Even if you hire a lawyer, unless they have direct experience in this area, they'll just do their research on your dime. You can do it yourself. Maybe it will take longer and be less thorough, but you don't even have a business yet. Chances are (in general terms, not specific to you), you'll never actually launch.

I worked in private equity for numerous years and our businesses (min. profit ~$3m/year) rarely spent defensively on lawyers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it makes sense to get a lawyer at some point, but right now this would divert your attention away from your product, especially as you're bootstrapping it. As long as you have clear terms/policy statement outlining the usual (plenty of templates online) I think you'll be fine for now. Focus on the product, then worry about legals when you're ready.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes you should, if you cannot afford it then at least learn to file for a cooperation online, spend the $60-$100 and file via one of the online services. It is best to get a lawyer or an accountant to do it but with a little research you can do it yourself. After that do everything under the corporation and you should be fine.

<comment><USER5> Another alternative is to set up a Limited Liability Company (an LLC). An LLC is simpler and usually less expensive to set up than a corporation, and provides most of the same kinds of liability protection. However, if you expect that your side project may grow into a really large business, or if you ever plan to seek outside investment, a corporation would probably be a better choice.</comment></comment>