Madness of Geo-Blocking (Hidden Camera Prank) - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WbiacSD13qk <comment><USER2> I'm surprised at the amount of hair-splitting, pedantry, and rationalization posted in the comments so far. The overall point of the video, which people must be intentionally missing, is that it's ridiculous to bring up a customer's nationality (or place of residence) in order to complete a purchase. This is illustrated by presenting obviously ridiculous, but comparable, situations in an offline context. Whether this ridiculous behavior is the result of a law or a company's deliberate decision, it's still ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> But doesn't that have to do with different countries having different regulations and laws? I mean, I don't really know anything about the thought train behind geo blocking, but that would be my first guess?!

This is probably only marginally related, but just the other day I had a conversation with a coworker from Morocco. We were talking about the fact that in his country, _every_ purchase you make involves bargaining. That makes me think now that what we in the Western world have come to think of as the norm -- fixed prices on products, being the same for every customer -- is probably a fairly recent phenomenon if we consider the history of mankind. And if I think about products like airline tickets, that principle is not even true in our culture: you may have to pay vastly different prices for the same product, i.e., for a seat on the same flight.

Now, my next sentence was going to be "... but at least the different in price is not because your nationality is being discriminated against", but now I'm actually not so sure any more that that is true?! I mean, I guess no-one who's in the air fare business made a business decision along the lines of "let's charge Germans 20% more" or so, but if factors like your locations (and hence with a high probability also your nationality) are factors in the data mining which is the basis for what determines the price of a ticket, isn't that de facto an implementation of discrimination in a sense?

And how about the pharma industry? The same medication can sometimes cost orders of magnitude more depending on what country it is sold in (think Africa).

So coming to think of it, I think at least in the globalized world, different selling conditions depending on the geographical location are actually not that rare, even for non-digital product. Minimally, wouldn't all produces that target large markets at least adjust for things like average income / purchasing power in the respective regions?

<comment><USER4> When a purchase happens in a physical store, there are possibly three different countries involved. The location of the store (1), the citizenships of the seller (2), and the citizenships of the buyer (3).

Normally, we only care about the first country, and the seller and buyer can be anyone from anywhere. With stores on the Internet, we have a different deal. Prices are set based on the buyer's citizenship, regulation and taxes is based on the country of the server, and prosecution of crimes is based on the country of the seller.

For those stores that enforce geo blocking, I only have one question: Which customer protection laws should govern the purchase?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm confused about the point being made. If you purchase something online across national boundaries, isn't the company you're buying from subject to different taxes and tariffs than when customers from their own country buy? And in the case of Netflix, don't they have to negotiate different contracts with content owners to sell in different countries? It's not like they're just doing it to be dicks.

Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER6> _> It's not like they're just doing it to be dicks._

Whether they intended it or not, what they are doing is xenophobic.

<comment><USER7> Would you say otherwise if "they" where actually separate companies? ie, Netflix US, Netflix CN, Netflix FR

<comment><USER6> What difference would it make? I.e. imagine there is Netflix FR, and someone from US tries to access it through VPN, and they get a message _" US citizens won't be served"_. Or the other way around. Same xenophobic garbage IMHO.

<comment> ryan-c Netflix is contractually required to discriminate against customers based on where they are by the companies who they licence content from, for many reasons, a common one being the content already having been exclusively licensed for distribution in country X to some other company.

Calling this xenophobia is absurd.

<comment><USER6> If Netflix is contractually obligated to be xenophobic, it's both their fault for accepting such contracts and fault of those who made such contracts with them (i.e. publishers / content owners). The fact that it's a contract doesn't make it any more moral and it's absurd to think it's an excuse.

You can blame the system all you want, but if they participate - they are part of the system. I.e. they aren't forced to make such moral choice, they voluntarily make it.

<comment><USER7> The term "xenophobic" just isn't applicable here. Almost all media deals are location-based. I expect that Netflix tries harder than anyone else to try to break down those license barriers.

<comment><USER6> _> Almost all media deals are location-based._

So? How does it justify xenophobic behavior?

<comment><USER7> Perhaps you should try looking up the definition of "xenophobic"

<comment><USER6> Perhaps you shouldn't try excusing such behavior with definition arguments? If you don't like the term xenophobic (which is perfectly appropriate here), call it discrimination of foreigners. It doesn't make it any better and less disgusting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is bad example. Shop refused to sell based on nationality, not based on location. You can still watch Netflix if you are Chinese living in US.

But on second though that shop was geoblocking the entire world except tiny room. One has to buy at their place and there is no free world wide delivery service.

<comment><USER6> See below: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514827)

It's close enough. Netflix refuses to sell you anything when you access it through VPN.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To be xenophobic means someone has a fear/hatred of strangers/foreigners.

Racism is prejudice or hostility towards a person's race, colour, language, nationality, or national/ethnic origin.

Access to the Internet is a basic human right - and to block access to the Internet based on nationality is xenophobic and racist.

Blocking Internet access based on nationality is toxic - and should not be tolerated in any form.

</comment><comment><USER9> In the physical shop, the purchase happens in country the shop is in. The taxes paid should be those taxes paid by shops in that country.

But what country does an online purchase happen in, and which country gets the tax money?

The company can register in a tax haven, or host servers abroad etc.

The customer can connect via a proxy etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> This would have been better if it was a CD/vinyl+DVD selling shop, not a coffee shop.

With real world online retail there are many reasons for not delivering goods to certain regions of the world, inability to work with a good courier for the final miles being one of them.

<comment><USER6> _> This would have been better if it was a CD/vinyl+DVD selling shop, not a coffee shop._

Yep, or a bookstore. Since the source of the underlying mess is related to copyright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Exactly. Geoblocking is xenophobic. And the issue is not limited to EU.

Better analogy would be a book store. Imagine, you want to buy a book that's not available in your country. You can travel to the country where it's available and buy the book there.

In the digital space, the analogy of travel would be using a VPN to bypass geoblocking. That's why using the VPN for that purpose should be perfectly legal, and those who try to forbid it (Netflix and Co.) are xenophobes (it would be like refusing to sell a book to a foreigner which comes to a store in another country).

The problem of course is that as usual, some try to translate realities of the physical space (with regional market segmentation) to the digital ones, where they don't make any sense. But they are eager to do it when is suites their interests (geoblocking). But when people use the same invalid translation, and virtually travel to bypass geoblocking (VPN), geoblocking proponents whine and want to declare it illegal. Hypocrites.

<comment><USER11> You know words have specific meanings. Like xenophobia:

"fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign"

I'm pretty sure these companies don't hate the foreigners or fear them.

Please find more suitable words to express your opinions.

<comment><USER6> _> I'm pretty sure these companies don't hate the foreigners or fear them._

Forbidding selling merchandise to foreigners who come to your store based on the fact that they are foreigners is xenophobic. But if you have a better term for it, please describe it another way.

<comment><USER12> A phobia is an irrational fear of a particular thing. Xenophobia is fear of outsiders. Refusing to sell to them is not fear of them, it's fear of the consequences of not following the law. Which is a rational fear rather than an irrational one.

So the charge of xenophobia is wrong on both aspects of the definition that matter.

But by all means, reiterate your loaded terminology.

<comment><USER6> _> Refusing to sell to them is not fear of them, it's fear of the consequences of not following the law. _

Except there is no such law (unless we are talking about some xenophobic country, Third Reich style). Rather than any laws, they fear that their crazy partners will pull a plug on them. And they are being xenophobic to oblige their insane content overlords. Their exact intentions don't matter however for the end user who is being discriminated. What matters are their actions.

<comment><USER12> > Rather than any laws, they fear that their crazy partners will pull a plug > on them. And they are being xenophobic to oblige their insane content > overlords.

Neither of which is an irrational fear of outsiders.

I agree it's a shitty situation, but you're not going to get anywhere by demonizing merchants. We need to change the system they exist in.

<comment><USER6> _> Neither of which is an irrational fear of outsiders._

That's what it ends up being in their actions towards the user.

 _> but you're not going to get anywhere by demonizing merchants. We need to change the system they exist in._

I agree that system is wrong. But merchants can't use it as an excuse. They are part of the system and they contribute to the problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The proof is in the code. That is all. - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeanthem.com/blog/2010/08/the-proof-is-in-the-code-that-is-all/ <comment><USER2> Missing the obvious point that an asshole programmer can and will have a negative effect on the productivity of everybody else in the company and quite possibly make many of your other good programmers quit.

Missing the second obvious point that if you hire an asshole you end up having to (try to) manage an asshole. Assholes, almost per definition, don't take orders well and at the end of the day it doesn't matter how awesome a programmer he is if he isn't programming on what you need him to program on.

<comment><AUTHOR> And everyone who's ever said that skill isn't everything, you need people skills is missing the much more important point that without good coders, you have 0% of building good software. The friendly, super-competent coder is the golden ticket, but barring that, the asshole programmer is your second best shot.

<comment><USER2> I disagree. A team of good but not great coders who work well together will probably produce better code in the long run than a team with a great asshole programmers who poisons the team.

<comment><AUTHOR> We might just be quibbling over good vs great, but the number of professional programmers producing code out in the real world that can't write a simple fizzbuzz method is astounding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, I kinda feel like this is one of those sweeping generalizations that gets cranked out by a content mill in order to attract attention & hits to their adsense.

Notice the Author (Amber) is the same as the submitter (Amber)?

This article is a total over-simplification and the reality is much more complex... unfortunately it takes a lot longer to write an actual, well thought out & balanced article on hiring.

What's worse: it will get fewer hits (and by that extension, a lower ad revenue).

Something perhaps about finding the sweet spot on the bell curve between a number of factors? TLDR.

No, a far better solution is to word-vomit tripe onto your keyboard and post without thinking.

Which seems to be exactly what Amber has done.

 _THAT_ my dear friends, is all.

<comment><USER4> _Notice the Author (Amber) is the same as the submitter (Amber)?_

That's kind of a cheap point to make. There's absolutely nothing wrong with an author submitting their own blog post to the site to get feedback.

<comment><USER5> Or even to get attention, if it's a relevant blog post. It's not like submitting your blog post is gaming the system or something. If anybody can understand the need for a basic level of self-promotion, it must be the HN crowd.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. You're both right. That's a really crappy point to make. On reflection, I'd self submit too. While I still dislike the article, it is not only fine, it's probably required that one self-submit their work around.

Or set up a series of shill accounts to... oh nevermind. Self submitting is probably better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good code is not really a hiring criteria. It's just the price of entry.

Hiring criteria for startup programmers:

1) can you work with others

...or are you the comic book expert from the Simpsons

2) can you ship

...can you be happy with a duct-tape solution, even if it's not perfect

3) do you care about customers

...everyone in a startup needs to be hyper-aware of customers and obsessed with getting more. the last thing a startup needs is a "tell me what needs to be built" programmer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't disagree, but if that's truly all of your hiring critera, then you need to be willing to wait a long time and pay a lot of money. And that's personally the way I'd go.

What I find is that a lot of people say they want all that, and then when they can't find it, or can't find it for the amount of money they want to pay, coding requirements is one of the first thing that gets lowered, instead of the other areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've known fantastic coders who were absolute assholes. The software probably benefit from them being on the team, but the rest of us were ready to resign.

I'd rather have someone who fits the culture _really_ well and who is a good enough coder that we can use them now and build on their strengths.

</comment><comment><USER8> The whole article seems based on a false dichotomy, namely that coders are either good and anti-social or sucky and nice to work with. In reality, both dimensions are orthogonal, and vary in a continuum. Hence, you'll find super- coder assholes, nice incompetent people, and everything in between. Furthermore, both dimensions have an impact on the working of a team, and that impact is also related to the complexity of the project in question.

tl;dr: the author oversimplified reality to come to her conclusion.

<comment><USER9>
      >> In reality, both dimensions are orthogonal, and vary in a continuum. Hence, you'll find super-coder assholes, nice incompetent people, and everything in between.

That is definitely true, but you don't get a uniform statistical sample responding to job postings.

The super-coders who work well with people don't come on the market as often.

      >> the author oversimplified reality to come to her conclusion.

The author's conclusion is that you should ignore one axis (I don't agree).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nothing like a fresh blog article making sweeping generalizations with no facts, evidence, _or even anecdotes_ in the morning.

That said it is interesting because I gather the people who voted up this article may very well be the folks mentioned therein who'd benefit from people taking his advice :)

</comment><comment><USER11> The purpose of anybody on your team is to raise the productivity of your team as a whole. That's really the beginning and end of it: does your team do more with this hire than without it? Individual contributions are part of answering that question, but they're not the whole picture. In one limit case, some recluse locks themself in a broom closet and programs a well-defined isolated chunk of code by themselves, and delivers it as a library. In this case there's nothing except their individual contribution. In the other case, you have managers which don't touch the code at all but greatly affect everyone else's productivity (for better or worse--and it is possible to have good managers!).

Outside of management, mentoring, morale, and architecting (which are important), someone's individual contribution is usually an upper-bound on their effect on team productivity. For some individuals, this is very far from a tight upper bound. Drama llamas, prima donas, and assholes create dysfunctional teams, and poor communication will in general increase the amount of work that needs to be done due to people working with incomplete information and needing to re-write things more often. Argumentative perfectionists will get caught up in arguing the design goals, and changing requirements will result in a lot of lost work for the whole team. Egotistical programmers are more prone to large re-writes of other people's code rather than small additions, which dumps a large portion of their contribution into changing style with little or no functional gain.

There are plenty of ways where someone with a large individual contribution may have a small, or negative, increase to your team's productivity. This doesn't mean you should hire the nice guy who can't code, though. Hiring decisions are possibly the most important decision you can make. Take your time to find the right person.

</comment><comment><USER12> The author forgets a point that if you hire a mediocre programmer who works hard he will probably get better but if you hire a programmer with a bad attitude that's going to harm the whole team's productivity

<comment><USER13> After having worked at the company I'm at for several years, I've seen quite a few mediocre programmers flounder at the same level for quite a while, none of them particularly improving.

I think the same things that keep someone from improving their skills are the same thing that make them a mediocre programmer in the first place. There is a difference between working hard at your job, and working hard to hone your craft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Have fun spending eight hours a day with abrasive people. Life is about more than productivity.

</comment><comment><USER15> You can't succeed with crappy software or programmers? Funny, I can think of a certain OS that wasn't at all very stellar compared to alternatives at the time yet nevertheless went on to dominate...

The whole article reads like a troll. Though perhaps we're using different definitions of 'mediocre programmer'. Is a mediocre programmer one who is mostly self taught, hasn't coded a lot of personal things, and only knows one or two languages at a reasonable depth to get things done? Or is it one who struggles with FizzBuzz? Bah, I'm taking too much time with this. If the proof is in the code, show us some examples of code from sizable open source projects that succeeded and code that didn't! I'd bet the quality is roughly the same.

<comment><USER5> _You can't succeed with crappy software or programmers? Funny, I can think of a certain OS that wasn't at all very stellar compared to alternatives at the time yet nevertheless went on to dominate..._

Which OS are you talking about? Windows? MS-DOS and Windows had some of the best programmers of the time working on them. Bill Gates himself is renowned for his programming skills. Microsoft interviews practically set the standard for uber-difficult interviews that filter out all but the best programmers.

Linux? What, because Linus Torvalds (who wrote the kernel) and Richard M Stallman (who wrote emacs) aren't good enough for you?

Mac OS X? Ok, that one, I don't know the names of any stellar programmers on there, but somehow I doubt that's the one you were referring to (and the fact that they keep quiet doesn't mean there aren't some awesome hackers working on OS X).

<comment><USER16> To put a finer point on it, pre OS X the Mac OS was an engineering disaster. It's fundamentals were more on par with Win 3.1, let alone Windows 9x or NT or Unix. Without OS X it's questionable whether Apple would have had the capability to keep up with the industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I look for code over personality but I have learned that there are intolerable people who you just can't hire. Some people are literally crazy. They come in flavors of "don't touch my code", screaming rage fits, and crying emotional breakdowns.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, there are definitely crazies. Was not advocating hiring them whatsoever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really appreciate where code anthem is coming from, but the past few posts I've seen from them have been little more than meaningless platitudes much like this one.

</comment><comment><USER19> That's the merit of working in good companies such as Google or Facebook. You don't struggle for the drain of talent. Great programmers just fade in the scene and work on proud project. It is also the merit of starting a company with your tech friends because you don't have to worry about good hiring for a relatively long time.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not enough bold type and all caps.

</comment><comment><USER21> I referred a client, and his project, to one of the best coders I've personally met.

His social skills are fine, but his patients are not. That's what I learned.

The proof is not in the code. The proof lies in the question:

 _"How happy is the client (post-project)?"_

<comment><USER5> That works in a contractor/freelancer setting. I think the article is talking about hiring for your company that develops its own products.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, that question is a bit hard to answer, especially down to the granularity of an individual coder, when you're on a 3 year ship cycle and there are 2,000 other devs contributing to the project as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Something not mentioned here is that you also get an idea of someone's "cultural fit" by looking at their code. I think code can provide an insight into personality, especially into work related character traits.

</comment><comment><USER23> tl;dr: When hiring a programmer, choose substance over style</comment>


Show HN: Insight – A Simple, Completely Free Phishing Assessment - <AUTHOR> https://insight.duo.com/ <comment><USER2> Hey jwcrux!

Do you work for duo? If so, I have a suggestion. Making a github repo for the phishing email templates would allow third-party researches to make some more templates for you.

Personally, I would love to see Slack.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do work for Duo, and thanks for the suggestion! Much appreciated! I'll bring it up to the team.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Printing Hardcover Notes - <AUTHOR> I just thought it would be useful to print some of my notes in hardcover format.
I did a quick search and found articles on printing hardcover books for mass distribution. There are all sorts of costs involved with this.
I really just want to print my notes for personal reference.
Can you suggest a low cost service to print hardcover versions of notes that you have used or know about? <comment><USER2> Here in Germany, "copy shops" are widespread. These are small stores with dozens of copying and printing stations where you pay your printouts per page. They don't only can print on exotic page formats or sheets but also offer service for binding. Coil and comb binding are very cheap binding methods, but there is much more to get, for instance with adhesive glue bindings. Of course they also have printable paperboard sheets for the final hardcover feeling.

Maybe there is something similar in the part of the world where you live.</comment>


The next Google - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/the-next-google.html

<comment><USER2> >> If Microsoft adds a few features and they prove popular, how long precisely will it take Google to mirror or even leapfrog those features?

Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. Competition is the key to progression and innovation, which results in good things for us, the end users.

<comment><USER3> While competition drives companies to innovate, in my own opinion, I do not think that is the case for Google...

Google has had the marketplace on lock down for years now and they continue without competition to create and improve their products. Google tends to copy ideas and improve them, or create all new ideas all together and nearly every time they do it they add some innovations that nobody even thought about.

<comment><USER4> As a public company, they want to not compete, but improve and expand into new markets (growth). So in effect, they're in competition with themselves!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quote from Seth

 _In fact, I can't think of one successful online brand that was built with cash._

Well it depends on your definition of success (either market position or financial), but Paypal would definitely fit that bill.

</comment><comment><USER6> Judging from this ad - <http://www.decisionengine.com/> \- Bing is nothing more than just Wolfram Alpha for shopping addicts. Looking for "digital camera"? Microsoft is convinced if you enter this phrase you want to buy one, but not that you are interested how digital cameras work or maybe their history. "Spain"? Of course you may enter "Spain" only if you are planning a trip.

Excuse me, Microsoft, but this is not the _next thing_ that I expect from the Internet. Internet is not just for spending money.

P.S. The name is probably "Bing Is Not Google" rather than "But it's not Google".

</comment><comment><USER7> Does MS make any money on search?

I ask because I wonder if they are trying to kill/replace/be the next Google at all. Obviously Steve Ballmer would love for MS to knock off Google at the head of search, but it would be nice for their search offering to be profitable first, wouldn't it? Or maybe I just don't understand business.

</comment><comment><USER8> i think the right strategy for microsoft would be buy 10-20 start ups with new ideas that may or may not fail. if they fail, microsoft gets brilliant start up founders as employees, not so bad, if they succeed, you get better innovation than in house. because this article is right, people are not switching from google

</comment><comment><USER9> I think part of the message is "Lead don't always follow".</comment>


Corefino.com - accounting for startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.ventureitch.com/?p=236 <comment><USER2> Looks interesting, but at what stage in the game do you need this sort of thing?</comment>


Convert a Commodore 64 from NTSC to PAL Format - <AUTHOR> http://biosrhythm.com/?p=1420 <comment><USER2> > With it's different VIC-II chip generating a different master clock signal, > the PAL C64 has a few more cycles available per frame than the it's NTSC > counterpart.

Just for additional clarification: If I remember correctly the C64 had only a single quartz. All clock signals were derived from that single quartz. That meant that also the clocks driving the raster beam were derived from that single quartz.

As a consequence the main processor in NTSC and PAL versions ran at different frequencies. The PAL version was 0.98 MHz and if memory serves me correctly the NTSC version was slightly above 1 MHZ.

Even back then some people overclocked their machines, but it was different than today. You had a hardware switch for the frequency and when you were in fast mode no IO was possible. No video, but also no serial communication. To see the results of your calculation you had to switch back to slow mode.

<comment><USER3> > All clock signals were derived from that single quartz. That meant that also > the clocks driving the raster beam were derived from that single quartz.

Yes, and that VIC clock also drives the SID sound chip. So while the same code will play a song back "in tune" (relative pitch) on both a PAL and NTSC C64, it will be tuned lower (absolute pitch) on a PAL C64. Think of it like the concert pitch difference between A = 443 Hz (Germany -- common) and A = 430 Hz (Verdi tuning a.k.a. Schiller Institute -- uncommon).

To play the same absolute pitch on both a PAL and NTSC, code _could_ use an alternate lookup table to map a note to different SID frequency register values for PAL or NTSC. In practice, I don't think this was done, but someone can correct me. What was, sometimes, done was skipping every 6th frame of a raster vblank music playback routine on an NTSC C64 (@ 60 Hz) to match the _tempo_ (not pitch) of the same song played on a PAL C64 (@ 50 Hz).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site RetroRGB has a bunch of mods for games consoles to convert them to (or improve their) RGB output.

[http://retrorgb.com/](http://retrorgb.com/)

It's pretty interesting.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm amazed they made different chips for PAL vs. NTSC instead of having a jumper or pin to select the mode. Same thing on Atari 800.

</comment><comment><USER6> I want to keep my C=128D NTSC for testing that my code works on both PAL and NTSC correctly, but I'm running on 50Hz, 220-240V. What in the power supply do I have to replace?

<comment><USER7> As the C128D power supply is based on mains transformer, first thing you need to replace is said mains transformer. It's probably easier to just remove the whole original power supply and replace it with some small industrial 5VDC SMPS and 9V transformer (assuming that nothing depends on the frequency of the 9VAC input, which from looking at service manual seems to be the case).

<comment><USER8> The 6526's time-of-day clock uses it, on the C64, aftermarket or hobbyist power supplies that leave it out make the variables TI and TI$ stop updating.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon destroys millions of unsold products - <AUTHOR> https://www.retaildetail.eu/en/news/general/amazon-destroys-millions-unsold-products <comment><USER2> I worked in marketing early in my career, and this is actually a very common practice (not saying it makes it right, but it's definitely not just Amazon). Usually it's not done out of a desire to waste things or a hatred of the poor, but rather to protect against brand dilution and also to protect sales. If you could just wait until a product "expires" and then go get it for free somewhere, that would harm sales. Also, if a premium brand (say Apple) couldn't sell a certain product and so donated a bunch, then the Apple logo (which many people view as a status symbol) would be diluted. You also can't just store stuff in perpetuity as it takes time and money to do that. The only logical choice (as Mr. Spock would say) is to destroy the items.

Consider a real scenario that recurs annually. Big game, let's say the Super Bowl. One side will win. At the end of the game on the way out of the stadium, there will be a lot of t-shirts for sale that declare "Team X Super Bowl LIII Champions!" Those shirts weren't printed on the spot, which means there are also a number of shirts with the losing team proclaimed as winner. Those obviously can't be sold. Back in the day they would be donated to third world areas, but then some of those shirts started finding their way onto eBay and sports collector sites, causing massive problems between the various entities involved in the manufacturing, sale, and licensing. As a result they now just trash the unsalable shirts.

I'm not saying it's right, in fact I find it disgusting. I grew up in a family that reused cereal boxes and almost any other container, particular glass. Although I'm not that diligent anymore I still have that instinctive desire.

However, there is a lot more to this practice than this (one-sided) article presents.

<comment><USER3> [https://fossbytes.com/why-2700-apple-lisa-computers-are- buri...](https://fossbytes.com/why-2700-apple-lisa-computers-are-buried-in-a- landfill/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > A new petition calls for Amazon to donate reusable items to families in > need.

So Families in need are going to get 1000 copies of each of 2017 worst books? Or random electrical equipment that only has a specialized use?

<comment><USER5> Or expired vitamin supplements from China

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is why all voluntary environmental actions will fail. You can virtue signal and scold all you want, but when it comes to amoral corporations, economic incentives are required.

<comment><USER7> Corporations do what customers pay for

<comment><USER8> Customers buy what corporations produce. If corporations didn't produce a billion different widgets people wouldn't buy them because they wouldn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They even charge venders for the service of destroying the items. But if you want you can pay amazon to ship it back for you. This was true when I dabbled in book sales.

</comment><comment><USER10> The only problem I have with this is that the products are going to landfill, and not being recycled for their raw materials or burnt for power.

</comment><comment><USER11> A new petition calls for Amazon to donate reusable items to families in need.- A perfect one.!</comment>


A better backup system based on Git - <AUTHOR> http://eigenclass.org/hiki/gibak-backup-system-introduction

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I've been looking for a backup tool.

Linus Torvalds uses git for Linux. Linus is cool as well as Linux is cool. So is finding unintended uses for things. Therefore, if I use this gibak program, I'll be cool^3.

It's simple math.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool.

Would it be possible to push it to S3 too? I'm not familiar with the internal structure of a git repo, would it involve reuploading the majority of the data on a commit?

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a nice case study for OCaml.

<comment><USER5> The code has grown and become more complex in the last versions because I optimized it until directory traversal + glob matching got sensibly faster than Git's own (git-ls-files --exclude-standard doesn't do exactly the same thing as find-git-files, but meaningful performance comparisons can be done with the -d -o and -m -o options). It's still much smaller than metastore (1/3rd or so) even though it does much more now, however.

You can take a look at the initial version of ometastore here: [http://eigenclass.org/repos/gitweb?p=gibak.git;a=blob;f=omet...](http://eigenclass.org/repos/gitweb?p=gibak.git;a=blob;f=ometastore.ml;h=cfcdc3fd31c1c80133dde17667288174f16da76d;hb=eae04a9f68c259ef76332c5d6f2b5a914ba4a886) The functionality from metastore takes ~270 lines vs. ~1500 lines of C, the support for .gitignore takes another 70locs.

It's got one or two bugs in the Gitignore support which I fixed later (and a silly bug in do_finally), but this code is simpler if you want to see what OCaml looks like in actual use (for a system tool, in this case). It's almost (if not actually, I don't remember) the "first version that typed", by the way.</comment></comment>


E.P.A. Chief, Rejecting Agency's Science, Chooses Not to Ban Insecticide - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/us/politics/epa-insecticide-chlorpyrifos.html <comment><USER3> It's interesting that not one sentence in the article is from scientists or epidemiologists who published or reviewed the study itself. The scientific evidence that the ban was based on is shockingly weak - a 20 patient, retrospective, observational study of MRI scans that weren't even substantiated by clinical findings in those very same patients in the same study.

The quoted study design has well understood flaws from selection, observation, and publication biases. And until the findings are independently replicated, this can't really be called "science" but rather a "single scientific publication" [http://www.pnas.org/content/109/20/7871.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/20/7871.abstract).

The economic effects of banning organophosphates based on a single observational study would be undoubtedly horrendous to the third world. The NYT article adds little careful review and seems to simply draw on the "chemicals are ruining the earth" narrative. Taken to its logical conclusion, although popular and on its surface appealing, basing policy simply on a "fear of chemicals" has potential catastrophic implications that would disproportionately harm those in poverty: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2984095/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2984095/)

<comment><USER4> I'm confused, this pesticide has been around since 1965. There has been a lot more research on it than just a single study with 20 patients. The key phrase is "based in part"

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Chlorpyrifos](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Chlorpyrifos)

<comment><USER4> Oh, and "replicated"? It can't be in the US because household use has been banned since 2000. Are you suggesting that we must intentionally expose pregnant women?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it curious that the moderators grayed out the references provided in comments by "randomgthoughts". I would be curious to know the rationale. It seems to me that citations into the literature are a plus and not a minus.

The elided references are:

[https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=EPA-HQ- OPP-2015-0653-...](https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=EPA-HQ- OPP-2015-0653-..).

"D. Drew et al., Chlorpyrifos: Revised Human Health Risk Assessment for Registration Review, December 29, 2014, D424485; 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Literature Review on Neurodevelopment Effects & FQPA Safety Factor Determination for the Organophosphate Pesticides, September 15, 2015, D331251; 

R. Bohaty and J. Hetrick. Chlorpyrifos Registration Review Drinking Water Assessment, April 14, 2016, D432921 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Chlorpyrifos Issue Paper: Evaluation of Biomonitoring Data from Epidemiology Studies, March 11, 2016 and supporting analyses presented to the FIFRA Scientific Advisory Panel's (SAP) meeting on April 1921, 2016, (EPA-HQ-OPP-2016-0062). "

[https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used- pesticide-](https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-) products/revised- human-health-risk-assessment-chlorpyrifos

<comment><USER6> The moderators almost certainly didn't do anything. If you have a question about something that happened with moderation, mail it to email@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rejected a _policy recommendation_. A scientist making a policy recommendation does not mean that the policy recommendation is science.

<comment><USER8> Really? A conclusion based on science can be dismissed? It isn't just some opinion that you can disagree with like that, right? Its a fair cop - <USER2> action was ignorant and anti-science.

<comment><USER3> It was actually not science that the original ban was based on. Who knows whether the new EPA chief is basing the reversal on science or politics, but the end effect is probably a better policy than throwing bans around on chemicals that have major benefits reducing crop failures, starvation, pain, and suffering.

<comment><USER8> There are other pesticides.

<comment><USER9> The bar to ban things has dropped so low because of that handwavey line of reasoning, despite real economic effects to people whose livelihoods are at stake (i.e. farmers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's one thing to make a policy decision, it's another to claim it's based on science when the science says no.

<comment><USER11> The science behind a ban wasn't all that great. See: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13996137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13996137)

<comment><USER10> The science is actually quite good, the campaign by DOW is also quite good which apparently counts for more. Given the EPA head has no interest or knowledge of science but a long history of attacking his agency for everything it ever stood for, this is not surprising to me at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Chooses Not to Ban Insecticide Despite Autism Risk

That is not the title of the article, and the article itself makes no mention of Autism. Please do not editorialize in the submissions, _especially_ about flamebait topics like Autism and Trump's new EPA head. It's like this was specifically crafted to mess with people.

<comment><USER13> There is an autism link here:

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/autism-risk- highe...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/autism-risk-higher-near- pesticide-treated-fields/)

Just because the article doesn't mention it, doesn't mean its not true.

<comment><USER12> Whether it's true or not, it is inappropriate to put it in the title like that when the article does not.

A _comment_ here pointing out the link with a reference _is_ the appropriate place for that.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Find out your market worth and compare - <AUTHOR> https://6figr.com <comment><USER2> This is interesting..

That said, only social logins are supported so I am out.

I refuse to login with the likes of Google, Facebook et al.

email/pwd for me and if that doesn't exist I can't enter...

If you manage to implement a regular signup flow let me know.

Tweet me on @conor_hackett

Cheers and good luck with the project.</comment>


The Truth Is Catching Up with Tesla - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-truth-is-catching-up-with-tesla-1507399374 <comment><USER2> Weren't there order cancellations that brought the number to 455,000 in early August? I may be remembering incorrectly.

I do remember that Musk put it this way: "It's like if you're a restaurant and you're serving hamburgers, and there's like an hour-and-a-half wait for hamburgers — do you really want to encourage more people to order more hamburgers?"

There's a pretty low likelihood that the market will turn on Musk at this point. And they shouldn't. Poor execution on production issues, for a product that maintains high demand, doesn't change the fundamental value of the company, nor its potential for growth and greater market share. All it changes is the timeframe of the company's trajectory.

<comment><USER3> It would be interesting to know if any of the cancellations were from the same people shorting the stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On one hand, missing stated production timelines is not great.

On the other hand, people ought to be used to Elon Time by now. That'd be a problem if the other car manufacturers were closer to catching up with Tesla, but it doesn't seem like that's the case.

<comment><USER5> You're joking right? Every major car manufacture has, or is about to have a car that is competitive with the model 3. Multiple larger car makers believe whole hog that electric is the future.

If you are talking about the self-driving car features, I would first state that Tesla doesn't have those either, and their marketing is a huge liability for them. Second, the major car manufacturer's are at least at the same place as Tesla, are further along, but due aren't as aggressive with bringing the tech to market until they have substantial confidence in it.

<comment><USER6> _Every major car manufacture has, or is about to have a car that is competitive with the model 3_

[Citation needed], as they say on Wikipedia.

Lots of press releases have been issued, but only Chevy has released the Bolt.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a long-term optimist. But the long term may be distressingly long in getting here.

<comment><USER7> Just today I read about Nissan Leaf 2018 with its range of 150 miles while staying below 30K USD and newer eGolf from Volkswagen is also interesting. Given how much Volkswagen managed to improve the battery pack it seems the German manufacturer is taking the business of developing powerful car batteries very seriously.

<comment><USER8> The new Leaf costs 85% as much as a model 3. It has 68% the range, 10" less length and 6" less width, no actual trunk or frunk, and 57% as much horsepower (less than a Honda Civic). It's a way worse value and when you're trying to sell a cheap car, value is the whole point. Doubly so for an electric car since if someone can't scrape up another 5 grand they could just buy a combustion car.

The eGolf is the same deal at the same price, but 52% as much power and 57% as much range. That's terrible! Compare the differences between the model 3 and model S: 85% the range, 68% of the horsepower, _56%_ of the cost. The model 3's performance is farther removed from the Leaf and eGolf than it is from the model S, but the pricing is totally reversed.

<comment><USER7> Judging by Norway where electrical cars are bought nowdays as a primary car people are sensitive to the extra 5000 USD that model 3 asks compared with Leaf. Surely model 3 is nicer, but better price/performance is meaningless if the price cannot be afforded. As for the range, even on eGolf from 2016 with its range of 200km I drove 500km through mountains and it took me about 15% longer due to the need for charging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Charley Grant has been writing largely negative stories about Tesla since at least mid 2015 [0] saying that investors won't make the gains they hope for. And yet the stock price has improved since then. So, he might in time be right, but so far he hasn't been. Take with a grain of salt.

[0] [https://www.wsj.com/video/tesla-delivery-numbers-dont- tell-f...](https://www.wsj.com/video/tesla-delivery-numbers-dont-tell-full- story/31D34EE8-DD7D-4485-8DC9-672B9C92DD9A.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> All companies have delays. Especially those inventing things nobody did before them.

And some companies have production capacity issues. Especially those experiencing superhigh demand on their products.

Tesla got 0.5mln preorders. With approx 2-3 years of waiting time, people had to pay 1000 USD upfront, out of their pockets. And they did.

Tesla is seeing an extreme demand for their high-priced product. Every entrepreneur and enterprise would love to be in Musk's shoes. Given all that, delayed deliveries and shaking liquidity should be considered only "logistics" issues, not "will he fail?" discussions.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Tesla stock is valued as though the company can execute on its vision > flawlessly.

Boo-hoo. This is a basically a 10 paragraph horoscope. The market's blend of greed, hope and fear meets reality.

</comment><comment><USER12> Tesla / Musk has bothered me for a while, on one hand I think everything he is doing is the future and the right thing, the right goals, on the other they seem to be trying to get there by selling BS.

I was really waiting for the semi since the math didn't seem to work out.

Maybe thats what it take to motivate people, know how to sell the BS and make them believe. I have wondered if the math will catch up with them though.

Maybe doing anything big is not profitable or efficient, dump money into until it works.

<comment><USER8> > I was really waiting for the semi since the math didn't seem to work out.

It actually does- they're going for long range which in the context of trucking is anywhere from 500-800 miles- surprisingly short compared to the 2500+ mile range of a fully gassed semi. Keep in mind that 500 miles is 8 full hours of 65 mph driving though! That covers 80%+ of all commercial driving.

With an aerodynamic cab the drag coefficient of a semi can get to ~.4 with a 115 sqft frontal area. That works out to 132 kW at 70 mph. Including rolling resistance and 90% drivetrain efficiency that comes to 1,200-2,000 kWh for 500-800 miles. That's 5-10 tonnes of batteries at the module level (doesn't include cooling or armor).

The engine, exhaust, transmission and fuel in a semi truck weighs several tonnes- at the lower end of range, converting to batteries could even _reduce_ weight. Even 800 miles of range is a pretty insignificant increase to the weight of the tractor, especially if they can improve on aerodynamics or count range at a lower speed. The cost of all those batteries is 200-300k, which is expensive but not unusual for a semi truck.

In short the numbers actually work out quite well for electric semis. Charging locations and power are an issue that will limit them to set routes for the near future, and even in the long term it will be hard to replace sleeper cabs doing 1200+ mile nonstop trips. However routes like that are very rare indeed.

<comment><USER12> >Keep in mind that 500 miles is 8 full hours of 65 mph driving though!

Truckers do 700 miles days legally. Your talking 10 hours to recharge on super charger for 500 miles of battery vs a few minutes at truck stop for diesel. Might be ok if they can sleep at super charger, going to be a while before that infrastructure is built out. simply not viable for long haul.

>The engine, exhaust, transmission and fuel in a semi truck weighs several tonnes- at the lower end of range, converting to batteries could even reduce weight.

A 15 liter diesel and transmission weighs 2 tons, 300 gallons diesel 1 ton. it will be heavier, meaning less capacity even with only 200-300 miles of range.

>The cost of all those batteries is 200-300k, which is expensive but not unusual for a semi truck.

The whole truck cost 200-300k, now you just doubled it.

<comment><USER8> I did mention that the trucks will be nonviable for any non-corporate use. I'll also point out that charge time is independent of battery size: as long as the charger is large enough (as in MW+), Tesla Semis will charge in the same time as Tesla sedans. So 200 miles in about 20 minutes.

> A 15 liter diesel and transmission weighs 2 tons, 300 gallons diesel 1 ton. > it will be heavier, meaning less capacity even with only 200-300 miles of > range.

Even with those numbers, that would only be a 5% increase in weight. It affects the capacity of fully loaded trucks (very minorly) but it doesn't affect the range whatsoever.

> The whole truck cost 200-300k, now you just doubled it.

Minus the cost of engine etc. Most nice trucks cost less than $200k so it is still easily double the average truck, but that's expected given maintenance and fuel savings. Upfront cost is comparable to some of the really nice European models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there a way to see how many cars per month Tesla is currenlty producing?

<comment><USER14> No, because they don't report monthly numbers.

Other manufacturers do, you can see them here: [https://insideevs.com/monthly- plug-in-sales-scorecard/](https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales- scorecard/)

The numbers for Tesla on that page are monthly estimates which are trued-up every quarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> WSJ really has it out for Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is starting to look like the bitcoin obituaries situation.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can we not post paywalled garbage? Why give backlinks to something we can't see?

</comment><comment><USER18> Without wsj paywall:

[https://outline.com/LHX3V9](https://outline.com/LHX3V9)

<comment><USER5> And then there is this: [http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/06/technology/tesla- semi-delay/...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/06/technology/tesla-semi- delay/index.html)

When will investors punish Tesla for this constant non-sense. Anyone else would have been ejected by the board by now and shareholders would be gnashing their teeth for some accountability, but not the holy Musk.

<comment><USER19> Anyone else that delivered on what Musk actually has delivered, would not have been ejected by the board or shareholders by now.

Specifically because of Tesla's $59 billion market cap and the extraordinary return Musk has produced for shareholders. That sweet thousand percent return over the last five years. Yeah, shareholders are just chomping at the bit to get rid of Musk.

<comment><USER20> A subsidized car, a government contract limited run space shuttle and some house tiles and batteries that didn't quite take off.

Objectively, the stock is overhyped, and somebody will retire nicely from shorting it fairly soon.

<comment><USER21> Objectively, you haven't understood the efficient market hypothesis.

Subjectively, the house tiles and batteries were never meant to take off, SpaceX had rockets to orbit before they ever got a NASA contract, the subsidies on the car were negligible in the scheme of things, and also available to anybody else.

<comment><USER20> "the subsidies on the car were _negligible_ "

$14000 in Ontario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Paywall workaround: [http://archive.is/ghsOu](http://archive.is/ghsOu)</comment>


Kicksend Practices Part I – Backend & Web - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kicksend.com/kicksend-practices-part-i-backend-and-web/

<comment><USER2> Please tell us about your business model. It is far more intriguing :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Please change the link of the logo to the homepage of the site and not of the blog (or put there a link somewhere to the homepage, "Send Files" is not obvious enough).

</comment><comment><USER4> > The Kicksend web app [...] consumes our API the same way as our other apps > do.

A result of this is that your app does not work if javascript is disabled. And as a NoScript user, I'll have to carefully consider if I want to whitelist you. (Hint: Quite often, I don't bother. Especially if the site doesn't at least degrade politely ["We're sorry, but our service requires JS..."], which Kicksend does not.)

Don't get me wrong -- I think this is a very clean solution. There are just trade-offs to consider. And, to be fair, enabling both client-side and server- side consumption of an external API -- all within the same app -- is probably more of a headache than it is worth.

<comment><USER5> I used to concern myself with such potential issues but people like you are usually less than a fraction of a % of the users. Anyone who has javascript disabled in 2012 should be pretty used to websites being broken and I would expect they know how to turn it on if they want to.

In my experience the only reasonable argument to support non-javascript users was web crawlers but even that is becoming less of a problem.

However, if your web application seems to have a significant percentage of non-javascript users then obviously you probably would have never used backbone or considered this API approach to begin with.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and I didn't intend to sound like I disagree with Kicksend's approach. Being broken for a fraction of your users is just the nature of the web. It's the reason I don't usually bother to support IE7 and below.

That said, there's a case to be made for least checking to see how the site looks in, say, IE6, or with JS disabled. There are a few easy solutions to mitigate the fact that it might be totally broken. (For instance, a noscript tag, or a polite message reminding you to update your browser if you are able.)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Domain (reseller) registration API? - <AUTHOR>

I have a number of my own domains and I want to register some domains on behalf of other people. I'd like to control them using an API.
Seems like I want a place that charges me under $9/yr/domain with private registration. At least <= $10.
Is there a Stripe of domain registration yet? (Simple, cheap, no tricks?) <comment><USER2> I used [http://www.resellerclub.com](http://www.resellerclub.com). $9.99 for .com, $3-$5 for .biz, .org, .net. Their API is pretty straightforward t to use, and supports availability checking, registration, and DNS settings. I used it for an experiment in automating domain registrations, article writing, and site creation based on Google keyword prices.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. Check out EPAG.net, they offer a dead cheap, fully automated service. Can't complain in over four years of being with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.</comment></comment>