Email, an idea so old that it's new - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bitofnews.com/email-an-idea-so-old-that-its-new/ <comment><USER2> I personally like email because I don't usually have to deal with the worst of it, but the argument that it's useful because we all use it seems... incomplete. We all have addresses, should we be sending more mail? We all have pens, should we switch to longhand? Email is good for some stuff but not other stuff, no need to oversell it as a platform it was never meant to be and never will be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thoughts and I agree! The overloading of email is a huge problem, and no one wants more junk. So it comes down to receiving things that you really want.

With Bit of News, it's easy to unsubscribe with one click. If people didn't want it, they would have unsubscribed. At least that's what I would do.

I've found that people tend to like emails that they expect, and dislike the ones that are out of the blue. If you expect it everyday, it's a pleasure instead of an annoyance.

<comment><USER3> "it's easy to unsubscribe with one click. If people didn't want it, they would have unsubscribed"

Be careful with this assumption. It might surprise you how many people won't bother to click unsubscribe (no matter how obvious you make the option) b/c they just click "spam". I have friends who have been caught by this one in the past.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't it be nice if mail programs followed any rel='unsubscribe' link found in a message, whenever the message was marked as spam?

<comment><USER5> No, because it would help spammers identify valid addresses.

<comment><USER4> This is the argument I see everyone using, but I don't understand it. Why does it matter if a spammer knows your address is valid, if they've already decided it's valid enough to spam it? Do you think spammers really bother to validate their address-lists before reselling them to other spammers? (Even if they do, though, I think it'd be irrelevant. If your spam filter is effective, it doesn't matter how much "true spam"\--things you have absolutely no chance of finding interesting--you get. It all gets filtered away before you see it.)

Think about it this way: if there was an auto-unsubscribe mechanism, which ethical bulk email senders honored and spammers didn't, then it would become much _easier_ to filter spam: any message that clusters into a message-cluster that the system has sent out an unsubscribe-request for already, is junk.

<comment><USER6> Maybe more importantly, they would know whether their message was classified as spam (or a pretty good heuristic thereof). A naive bayes classifier for spam relies on the spammer not knowing whether the message was marked as spam or not. Such a classifier isn't difficult to fool _if_ you can test how a given message is classified. (Presumably gmail's spam filter is more advanced these days, but the idea that it is easier to fool if you can tell the result still seems reasonable.)

<comment><USER4> Here's an alternative idea: what if clients would only honor rel='unsubscribe' links with an HTTPS URL scheme, and only finish the TLS handshake for those requests if the host sends the client a valid Extended-Validation certificate?

Every spammer who wanted to "trick" the auto-unsub mechanism would basically have to first dox themselves for all the world to see. And any certificate that turned out to not be a valid means of contacting the spammer would be quickly revoked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My main business is sending news in a variety of programming niches on a weekly basis via e-mail to over 170k subscribers.. and it's a successful and growing business (at least by historical standards, though not VC/SV ones - six figure net profits). I would agree with most of what it said in this post.

<comment><USER8> Niches. I'd pay a small monthly fee to have news relevant to my niche clipped, summarised and sent to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> What niche, if you don't mind sharing?

<comment><USER8> UK education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article reminds me of why I find the buzzword usage of "social" so irritating. The web has always been social! My most memorable and rewarding experiences on the internet will always be in the e-mail conversations I've shared with others around the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree! There are some experiences I'd personally experience alone. That's why I chose against making Bit of News social.

Reading is, and has always been, an individual activity. Just you and the words. The rise of social media just cluttered our attention span, sharing this and sharing that. Reading is enjoyable when you're completely focused!

<comment><USER10> >Reading is, and has always been, an individual activity.

That's not true. Novels written in the 19th and 18th century, which featured long and complex passages, were often read aloud. Poems with meter are usually read aloud as well. Religious prayers are still sung and chanted.

>The rise of social media just cluttered our attention span

A generation ago, people said the same thing about a kind of social media: television. The generation before that worried about movies, as well as the decline of letter writing because of spread of telephones. The generation before that was worried about the telegraph destroying the art of letter writing as well.

Movies, telephones, television, and texting do not have permanent deleterious effects on your attention span. All you need to do is make a commitment and set aside time for reading.

<comment><USER11> yes. actually,its older than 18/19th century. check out chaucer, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Email sucked for a decade because spam got out of control. I ran a hand-built email server in my home for years, and know this problem decently well. However, with the ability to train their filters based on SO MANY people, Google fixed it. (Other systems vastly improved as well.) With the signal-to- noise ratio being largely a solved problem these days, it makes email a viable "platform" again.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been using email as an application platform for years, and I agree with everything this author is saying.

I wish, however, that he hadn't written this article for two reasons. 1) Email suffers from the tragedy of the commons. The more email that is sent the less valuable each email app is. 2) Current email tools are woefully inadequate to deal with the existing volume of email users receive. Worst is the fact that email forces users into a LIFO queue and doesn't allow for import-based ordering. We need innovation in email processing more than we need more email based applications. (Even SMS has a better model for organizing data than modern email: one thread per counter party group.)

<comment><USER14> > 1) Email suffers from the tragedy of the commons. The more email that is > sent the less valuable each email app is.

I'm not sure it's so much the tragedy of the commons, as it is "any fool can mash some text and whatever random markup he _thinks_ works down the pipe and call it email". With proper use of headers (and x-headers) most setups can handle mail just fine (filter on delivery with sieve or similar).

> 2) Current email tools are woefully inadequate to deal with the existing > volume of email users receive.

I've yet to see anyone roll out proper server based filtering that truly enables the "regular" user to do what "power users" already can do easily. I think sieve coupled with imap and server-side search holds great promise, but I don't know of any clients that actually make good use of this.

The alternative approach of indexing for fast search/filter on the client only really works for a single client (eg: "hosted" mail, either webmail, only reading email on a single computer (eg: laptop) or reading email over ssh).

I suppose we need a standard way of a) syncing email (like imap), b) syncing filters (like sieve) and c) syncing indexes and search/view/tag preferences. I'm not aware of anything that fills c).

> Worst is the fact that email forces users into a LIFO queue and doesn't > allow for import-based ordering.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are there clients that don't allow reverse sorting by message date? That sounds like a broken client. That people don't _use_ the feature is another matter...

> We need innovation in email processing more than we need more email based > applications.

Looking at the design of MH [ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System) ], and sup/notmuch -- it would seem we should've come much further than we have. As a vim-user I quietly resent the cult of Emacs for probably having a "good enough" email system, and therefore no longer contributing improvement for "the rest of us" ;-)

> (Even SMS has a better model for organizing data than modern email: one > thread per counter party group.)

Most clients allow sorting by thread ( [http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html) ) or grouping by participants?

Now, if you want to argue that the state of email readers on Android is atrocious, I'll agree without further comment.

<comment><USER13> >> Worst is the fact that email forces users into a LIFO queue and doesn't allow for import-based ordering.

> I'm not sure what you mean here. Are there clients that don't allow reverse > sorting by message date? That sounds like a broken client. That people don't > use the feature is another matter...

LIFO and FIFO are the only real sorting options. I want drag and drop of "this is top priority, this is second, this is third" that doesn't get pushed down when new mail comes in. Email is used as a processing queue, but at the volume most of us receive advanced ordering is desirable but impossible -- I want to look at my email and see the top five things I have to do then the new messages not vice versa.

Email as a consumer is currently "OK" but I'd like to see it upgraded to "good."

<comment><USER14> You can at least get some of that with flags/stars, but I agree, most clients won't allow persistent sorting, and for some use-cases that could be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think 8:30am is a bit late to send the news. I think a lot of people who work "traditional" hours are already up, out the door, and have made a dent in their day. I like to read the news before I get started.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually did tons of A/B testing and 8:30am works way better than 6am (in terms of open rates). Honestly I've no idea why, but I have a few theories.

<comment><USER16> 6AM? Barely anyone is awake.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used that to compare because a lot of others email out at that time: Digg, WSJ, Quartz, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of my side project is trying to make email as a web portal, that is, letting people do as many things as possible in email -- [http://snipek.com](http://snipek.com). Well, I dogfood this project a lot in my daily life :)

1) Readability inside email ([http://snipek.com/read](http://snipek.com/read)). Send a url to firstname.lastname@example.com and you'll get a reply with readable content of the web page. And it becomes a way to navigate through links in email. You send a link to firstname.lastname@example.com, then you'll get the content of the web page in email, without leaving mail client to browser.

2) Read news ([http://snipek.com/news/](http://snipek.com/news/))

3) Create web page for your email messages, so you can share the web page on social network ([http://snipek.com/web](http://snipek.com/web)) -- forward any message to email@example.com

<comment><USER17> From metrics, seems users use email@example.com more than other functions of this project, so I just made snipek.com/web the front page (snipek.com) last night ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like getting news in my email; when Google Reader died I switched my RSS over to mail and haven't missed a beat.

One thing I would like, though, is a link batcher - whether I'm on the train or just busy I often see something I want to read later, and I use Pinboard to save it like that (and I've used Pocket and Instapaper before), but the backlog just builds up into a bottomless hole. It'd be great to get an email the next day saying "here's your queue" so I can do a second round of pruning.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been using Circa for the past few months (maybe even up to a year?), and I much prefer it to email.

I've come to associate email with either personal correspondence, technical support, or spam.

The thing about a website or an app is that it's segmented. I have to actively decide, "Now's the time for this activity" instead of an email deciding for me.

Also, I didn't know theSkimm was a young-women's thing. My girlfriend (a young woman) gets it, but I didn't think it was specifically "for" her.

<comment><USER5> _The thing about a website or an app is that it 's segmented. I have to actively decide, "Now's the time for this activity" instead of an email deciding for me._

That's what filters and labels are for. I follow a few medium-traffic mailing lists, but I don't let them flood my Inbox, they go straight to the label which I can peruse later.

Nowadays even "noobs" are using them, thanks to Gmail recent tabbed interface. We just need a new for News and this service would fit right in.

<comment><USER19> Filters and labels do nothing for this problem at all, because the email still either says, "I'm here, look at me" in some way, or it doesn't, and is entirely forgotten.

The solution would be to incorporate checking the folder every time I want to read some news, which involves _way_ more gestures/taps and intent than if I want to read news in Circa (one tap).

<comment><USER5> Yes, I was thinking about checking the label when you want to read the news. I'm not criticizing your approach if it works for you, I'm just saying that email doesn't have to be pre-emptive and force an activity upon you; you can shape it.

 _The solution would be to incorporate checking the folder every time I want to read some news, which involves way more gestures /taps and intent than if I want to read news in Circa (one tap)._

Well, I guess it depends on your OS/email client. Gmail on Android has a widget for opening a specific label directly from the home screen, so it would be just one tap as well.

I use K-9, which I don't think has the same feature, but two taps (open client, click on folder) is good enough for me :)

<comment><USER19> Don't you see the kinds of gyrations and hoops you're having to jump through just to get email to work even remotely similarly as an actual app?

Not to mention all the one-click-for-more, filter-by-category, etc. features that come with a native app.

It just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER5> I'm usually more frustrated by the restrictions imposed by apps. Can't copy- paste, can't adjust text size, can't export the list of stories read or archive them, can't apply my own filters, can't use it on my desktop, etc.

For example, I can't use Circa, due to [1]. With email, this kind of stupid restrictions just don't exist. Though I agree that email is not the best platform for this activity: I prefer RSS/Atom.

[1] [http://circa.helpshift.com/a/circa-news/?s=general&f=why- isn...](http://circa.helpshift.com/a/circa-news/?s=general&f=why-isn-t-circa- news-for-android-available-in-the-play-store-in-my-country)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _1.) Email is the world's largest platform._

> _2.) Engagement in email far outshines apps._

> _3.) Everyone else is too jaded to take advantage of it._

This is no doubt the same rationale for Square Cash[1] i.e. send cash to your friends via email. I wonder how their adoption has been though, compared to an analog product like Venmo[2] which uses a mobile app approach.

[1] [https://square.com/cash](https://square.com/cash)

[2] [https://venmo.com/](https://venmo.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah sounds like a perfect way for Square to latch onto an already-popular platform and ride the wave.

It just makes sense. You're already emailing the other person, why not also send money too? You're already reading your email, why not checkout today's news?

I'm interested to see where email goes. Maybe it'll become a hub for all your internet activities.

<comment><USER21> Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

\--Jamie Zawinski

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> IMO, I don't think the platform is the key in this kind of business. As you can see in this thread some people like emails and other people like apps or whatever.

I think the key is the quality of content. When I read this: The Ivy experience We select from a variety of topics and sources to help you become well informed. Join thousands of Ivy League students in reading bit•of•news.

I think , "who are "we"?", "who are choosing instead of me the news?", "you" select a variety of topics that maybe I (as a user) don't even care… which makes users get bored or jaded… and opt-out of it.

I have just subscribed and I haven't been asked if I am interested in sport, tech, politics, science, biology,fashion,travel,business… and if I start receiving that kind of topics that I don't like or think are not interesting but the person in charge thinks they are cool… there is a problem…

The quality content is different for almost each user. For example, Flipboard asks you before you open an account to know what you want to be informed. They have quality content for each user.

</comment><comment><USER23> I run a similar service over at The Daily Water Cooler [http://www.the- dwc.co/](http://www.the-dwc.co/) so I definitely agree with your line of thinking regarding email as one of the most easily accessible platforms.

My service might be closer to Dave Pell's NextDraft or a more general Term Sheet by Dan Primack though because it's really just me curating the content so I generally add more personal flavor and don't really have an algorithm to help source the content.

Kind of curious where TheSkimm goes though. They got some nice funding recently from Homebrew but clearly are aiming to be more than just a newsletter. They also used to be more young professional woman-centric, but have started to slowly downplay that.

I gotta wonder though, why the Ivy League focus?

Anyway, good luck with the venture! Happy to see more people informed about the news.

</comment><comment><USER24> A lot of psudeo arguments against this in this thread. I don't think there is any problem with using the "platform" in this way its pretty much a newsletter or a mailing list which is very standard.

I'm interested in seeing what you can really do with email looking at it as a platform with 2.0 eyes in mind.

One other thing. I think call intent will be what sets you apart and if that's the case why does the platform matter, why can't you have email, RSS, and a web app?

I get you want to focus on doing something new with something old. That's cool. Just dont cut potential power readers off because you use the wrong platform. Be email first RSS second if it helps you think about it. (No reason you can't pivot other platforms later)

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of [http://evening-edition.com/](http://evening-edition.com/)

They had news for a few different time-zones and it was amazing, but I don't think they got enough funding to keep it going, they stopped at the end of 2013.

<comment><USER26> [http://nextdraft.com/](http://nextdraft.com/) is a pretty awesome source of news delivered by email. A good smattering of non tech articles to augment my hn binging.

<comment><USER25> This looks neat, I'll check it out. I was really sad when Evening Edition stopped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you seen [http://nuzzel.com/](http://nuzzel.com/) ? It's another one that sends links out with daily updates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! This sounds like [http://www.news.me/](http://www.news.me/) before the team bought Digg and pivoted. It seems social news via email didn't work for them, so I'm looking forward to how nuzzel will handle this.

<comment><USER27> I'm a News.me subscriber and it seems to still work the same.

They did sign up me up (I think?) for the Digg Newsletter, which is annoying. But I still get the News.me newsletter too.

I know part of the original value add for News.me is that it was informed by bit.ly data on who actually clicked which links. I assume there's very little of that data left as bit.ly usage is not what it once was. But just by counting links (and replies? faves?) of people in my twitter stream it is still very useful for me personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it really that strange an idea to build a startup focused on email? Sendgrid, mailchimp etc seem to do fine. Not to mention the various tools and services for email migration, backup, hosting etc.

If anything email seems like a much safer bet than building something for twitter, considering the number of businesses that rely on it and the fact that you're less likely to be screwed over by some policy decision.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sendgrid, Mailchimp are email services. They them-self don't provide the content.

Where as Bit of News is a news services that relies on email. And yes emails are unstable, especially with the way Gmail handles them / attempt to segregate different types of emails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Jason Calacanis has his Launch Ticker ([http://launch.co/](http://launch.co/)) that sends a couple emails per day with summaries of the day's top tech news. It's now a subscription only service, but it definitely cuts the time I spend looking for Tech News.

Not 100% sure, but I think he's launching Inside.com that may have a similar take...

</comment><comment><USER30> I could say the same about snail mail to a degree.

Plenty of start-ups have talked about how their thank you cards were "revolutionary." NextDoor is using postcards to validate addresses and for some good old fashioned marketing. Where else can we go back in time??? =)

</comment><comment><USER31> I like the idea. I received the first mail today. News about negative happenings over the world. What I personally would like is _positive_ news delivered to my inbox. For negative news I can watch CNN, Fox and whatnot.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've subscribed to designboom for email [http://www.designboom.com/](http://www.designboom.com/)

Kinda wish hackaday had one. Btw what's with the countdown?

<comment><USER26> I suppose you haven't tried IFTTT yet? I use it (among many other things) to subscribe to posts from blogs like that all the time. For example: [https://ifttt.com/recipes/158209-hackaday-posts-to- email](https://ifttt.com/recipes/158209-hackaday-posts-to-email)

<comment><USER32> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hi Xiao, how you doin'? Still using PyTeaser?

Got a question though. How do you determine the news to send? Do you check read it all or you have an automated system in place for it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Jolo!

It's part manual, part automated now. I queue up popular stories and pick them by hand - so there's a diverse range of news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> subscribed! I think its a good idea. Its like in the old days when my dad looks at the newspaper everyday. Instead i don't look at the newspapers, i read emails.

</comment><comment><USER35> SMS must be a bigger platform than email, no?

<comment><USER36> In terms of people covered worldwide, yes. That was my initial reaction too.

It does suffer from proprietary standards and massive costs, tough; message length is also far too small for news summary, and the addition billion from e-mail are less interested in global news and more in news that isn't always digitalised yet. So: technically right, but for all intents and purposes, it's the largest possible for the service considered.

<comment><USER35> Good points all, bertil. I appreciate the thoughtful response!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This reminds me of a service that I used in the past, called Evening Edition ([http://evening-edition.com/](http://evening-edition.com/)). Thank you for bringing back a service where I can receive a daily digest of today's news. Combined with SaneBox or Unroll.me, your daily email helps to raise the value of the few e-mails that make it to my inbox.

</comment><comment><USER38> That's what elite marketers have been telling us for years. The problem is many people are attracted to bells and whistles that is without substance. In the end it's all about the content of the message; the messenger would soon be forgotten (or be a lot less relevant, at least).

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm afraid I stopped reading when he called email a platform.</comment>


Namecoin - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin <comment><USER2> At the risk of hijacking yet another cryptocurrency thread, this is an opportunity to note how valuable I believe HN to be when it highlights primary sources.

Secondary sources - whether it's lazy journalism, blog-jacking, or Wikipedia, engages us here in a discussion already framed through another person's or group of people's editorial eyes. Is there no better overview of Namecoin than its Wikipedia page?

<comment><USER3> [http://namecoin.info](http://namecoin.info)

This is where it started: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.0)

satoshi's comment on the matter, posted 4 days before he left the forum.

"I think it would be possible for BitDNS to be a completely separate network and separate block chain, yet share CPU power with Bitcoin. The only overlap is to make it so miners can search for proof-of-work for both networks simultaneously.

The networks wouldn't need any coordination. Miners would subscribe to both networks in parallel. They would scan SHA such that if they get a hit, they potentially solve both at once. A solution may be for just one of the networks if one network has a lower difficulty.

I think an external miner could call getwork on both programs and combine the work. Maybe call Bitcoin, get work from it, hand it to BitDNS getwork to combine into a combined work.

Instead of fragmentation, networks share and augment each other's total CPU power. This would solve the problem that if there are multiple networks, they are a danger to each other if the available CPU power gangs up on one. Instead, all networks in the world would share combined CPU power, increasing the total strength. It would make it easier for small networks to get started by tapping into a ready base of miners."

"@dtvan: all 3 excellent points. 1) IP records don't need to be in the chain, just do registrar function not DNS. And CA problem solved, neat. 2) Pick one TLD, .web +1. 3) Expiration and significant renewal costs, very important."

<comment><USER4> JacobAldridge asked whether there is a better overview of Namecoin than it's Wikipedia page. Having read the Wikipedia page and the Namecoin homepage you linked, I can confidently say that the former is a much more detailed and informative overview.

<comment><USER3> strangely enough there are a million people who know about this project and 1-2 actually participate. it's a wiki and opensource project, so everyone in the world is free to contribute. same with bitcoin. roughly 5 active developers at the moment, working mostly in their spare time.

<comment><USER5> Look at the list of contributors at the end of the release notes of the upcoming 0.9.0 release of the bitcoin reference client[1]. Or look at the activity of other projects, e.g. the bitcoinj google group[2]. There's a lot more than 5 people working on bitcoin.

[1] [https://bitcoin.org/bin/0.9.0/test/README.txt](https://bitcoin.org/bin/0.9.0/test/README.txt)

[2] [https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/bitcoinj](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/bitcoinj)

<comment><USER3> the number of people contributing is extremely small compared to the people who know about it/make money of it/are enthusiastic about it/could contribute. There is not a deep bench of developers. Many open issues which don't get solved because the 3-4 main devs (laanjw, sipa, gavin) are to busy. look at coinbase: they get rich of it, take 1% fees and add nothing back whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea of namecoin -- uncensorability is pretty cool from a technological standpoint -- however the other flaws of bitcoin make me wary of basing any sort of serious DNS replacement on it. Given that there's no plans to increase the number of namecoins in circulation, and that creating a domain by its very definition destroys namecoins, that 50nmc cost to buy a domain becomes increasingly expensive over time as people buy namecoins, peoples' wallets get lost, fraud occurs, etc. I'd be more interested if they did something like dogecoin and reated some sort of inflationary method to counteract this, so that we don't end up with the same mess DNS is in, only with slightly different bad actors.

<comment><USER7> Namecoin is not controlled by anyone in particular. If it grows in demand and people want the inflationary feature (or anything else), it will be implemented by the network.

<comment><USER3> no, money supply is fixed. changing money supply like doge did is possible, but risks destroying the network.

<comment><USER8> Money supply is fixed but prices for database record insertion/update could be changed painlessly.

<comment><USER9> If the money supply is fixed, then people will have a harder time acquiring namecoin after all the namecoin is generated. People will have to buy it, and since it's a scarce resource, it may become extremely expensive. Especially if namecoin exploded in popularity.

I suppose if it becomes expensive then the namecoin admins could lower the cost of database inserts/updates. But it seems like that would prompt the price per namecoin to rise accordingly, because the value of namecoin is a single database insert or update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm confused as to why this is suddenly at the top of HN? Were people not aware of one of the original "alt" cryptocurrencies?

<comment><USER3> silicon valley found out about it. several tweets of major figures last week.

<comment><USER11> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7401999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7401999)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "On October 15, 2013, a major flaw in the namecoin protocol was revealed by the Kraken exchange COO, Michael Grønager. The exploit allowed any user to freely steal any domain from any other user.[34] A temporary fix was deployed which prevents fraudulent name transactions from affecting the name database without requiring miner intervention, and a long-term fix which rejects blocks containing such transactions is scheduled for block 150,000 if a majority of miners upgrade.[35]"

Well, I'm sure stoked that we're building the future infrastructure of the Net on something that we're pretty sure doesn't have a ginormous security hole _anymore_...

</comment><comment><USER13> If you don't know about Namecoin here are too additional ressources you might want to check out: "OkTurtles + DNSChain" (working Namecoin + DNS implementation): [http://okturtles.com/](http://okturtles.com/) and "Providing better confidentiality and authentication on the Internet using Namecoin and MinimaLT" : [https://github.com/FredericJacobs/safeweb/blob/master/paper....](https://github.com/FredericJacobs/safeweb/blob/master/paper.pdf?raw=true)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are currently 1-2 developers working on Namecoin (mostly Khan, another core developer died recently). Namecoin itself has quite a few issues. The design is only the beginning.

<comment><USER14> Can you elaborate on the issues you allude to? The "criticism" section on wikipedia is pretty thin.

<comment><USER3> well, at the moment there is not much reason to use the system. if you register a ".bit" then you have to get your users to install complicated software and in the end what you are getting is very similar to ".com". There are major benefits, which are not explored yet. rolling out a world wide nameservice is not trivial. at the moment it's not even used by the underground. onename.io is the first application I have seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article has more citations per sentence than anything I have ever seen on Wikipedia.

<comment><USER16> Citation spam is usually an attempt to prevent article deletion, especially pertinent as it's been deleted [0] and merged into bitcoin [1] in the past.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Namecoin)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Namecoin_\(2nd_nomination\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm working on an alternative to namecoin with the following features:

* Profitable (what? profitable cryptocurrency? what?) * Powerful disincentives for squatting * Lots of funding for the project, which means we can actually push towards critical-mass adoption

More will be available at domains.bitshares.org within ~2 weeks.

<comment><USER18> Count me as interested. I've been trying to think of a distributed solution to squatting and fraud but I've had very little luck coming up with anything workable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't get why it doesn't use bitcoin's block chain. That would give it a strong existing infrastructure of users, miners etc. This way it is on its own.

<comment> aaron-lebo The Bitcoin devs don't really want the blockchain used for non-financial transactions.

If makes sense if you think about it. The current BTC blockchain is gigabytes of data. Add text information to every transaction and you are adding even more bloat.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a source for that claim? The official Bitcoin wiki certainly talks about non-financial uses of Bitcoin, and Script obviously makes such uses possible.

<comment> aaron-lebo Well, I remember reading something like that once, so it must be true. ;)

In all seriousness, I did some Googling and the closest I can find is this:

"One final reason is that Satoshi was opposed to putting non-Bitcoin related data into the main chain. As creator of the system, his opinion should carry a lot of weight with anyone serious about extending it."

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_chain](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_chain)

I realize that is close to being useless, but I can't find the direct post in question by Satoshi that it is referencing. I seem to recall it not being Satoshi, however, but one of the current devs that I read a similar sentiment from.

But again, I don't have any direct links. I apologize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm interesting in developing services on top of Namecoin / other p2p more- than-currencies (MasterCoin/Ethereum?). Please mail me (kushtech [at] yahoo (dot) com) if you want to discuss related things or join me. I'm Scala/Java/etc developer myself / entrepreneur also in past and future.

<comment><USER20> You might be interested in learning about Twister, decentralized microblogging (twitter) [http://twister.net.co/](http://twister.net.co/)

<comment><USER21> I can't believe how potentially disruptive Twister is! Haha and I love its system of mining for promoted tweets.

As I have always said, bitcoin (the invention) means the end of FB, Twitter, and all similar centralized corporate entities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> keep pumping it op

</comment><comment><USER23> "Namecoin is a cryptocurrency which also acts as an alternative, decentralized DNS"

So, finally, a cryptocurrency which serves a purpose aside from filling up HN's article listing. Cool.

<comment><USER24> The bitcoin protocol is an extremely important advancement as it solved the double spending[1] problem and can be used for all sorts of interesting community and business applications. Especially for systems used by organizations (e.g. DNS) that need to be public, uncensored and accessible from everyone (institutions, countries and individuals).

Here are just a few ideas: [http://www.convalesco.org/#31](http://www.convalesco.org/#31)

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double- spending](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Double-spending)</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Admins: The HN Captchas are unsolvable by humans - <AUTHOR> I tried to create a throwaway account. 6 minutes of trying captchas later I gave up.<p>They are insanely difficult. I actually wondered if I was being trolled (and my attempt at creating an account had itself been hell-banned and was supposed to be unsolvable). The audio captcha was not accepted either. <comment><USER2> This is assuredly by design. IP addresses are mostly likely being hard- throttled according to time.

Whether the CAPTCHA tests are actually solvable, the goal, and the effort invested therein, is clearly to slow down the rate of throwaways per IP, per unit of time. Not test for humans.

It's not completely unreasonable to throttle an IP, and cap throwaways (read: _ALL_ new accounts), to a maximum of 2 per 24 hours. It's also trivial to bypass with a different IP.

But yeah, those fucking image CAPTCHAS. Holy shit, they are definitely unsolvable at the current setting.

And the audio test, I'm six-sigma certain I got at least one in ten correct, and I was _still_ refused.

Pretty sure, given HN's predilection for subtle counter-troll tactics, like hellbanning, that they're configured as a total lock-out, and not a turing test.

</comment><comment><USER3> As per HN guidelines[1], if you want to contact the moderators, don't submit a post; rather send an e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.com.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> unsolvable captchas, hey? thats just what a robot would say...

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm confused. I just created this throwaway (I don't even know what I put as the password) without even seeing a captcha.

How do you get to it?

</comment><comment><USER6> Had the same experience. Solved the CAPTCHA after about dozen tries

</comment><comment><USER7> Using Tor? Then it might be Cloudflare ...

Generally, if you want to reach the mods/admins, send them an e-mail (email@example.com). Way more reliable and quicker to get an answer.

</comment><comment><USER8> I noticed that if I ever tried to use Tor to create a throwaway account. HN didn't like that and had an unsolvable captcha.

</comment><comment><USER9> <I tried to create a throwaway account. ... I actually wondered if I was being trolled...>

No irony there.

</comment><comment><USER10> get a new ip.</comment>


Functional, stateless JavaScript finite state machines and statecharts - <AUTHOR> https://xstate.js.org/docs/ <comment><USER2> Hey! I made XState and just discovered it hit Hacker News (...great)

To clarify, the new tag-line is "State machines and statecharts for the modern web." Some of you are nitpicking the word "stateless" which describes the actual machine `.transition()` implementation (not the interpreter implementation), which returns the next state (+ actions, etc.) given the current state and event, but does not mutate or remember any state (hence, stateless).

Please don't focus on the word "stateless." I'd appreciate any other valuable feedback, though!

<comment><USER3> Rather than say stateless, you can say no hidden imperative state or something a bit more accurate. It immediately popped out at me when I read the title just now, it's like talking about dry water :)

<comment><USER4> I remember the first time I encountered "Fat-free Half-and-half" in the grocery store. I must have stood there for a full minute, resisting the urge to stop passers-by and ask them, "But isn't that just milk?"

;-D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice.

Reminds me of a post describing implementation of a React login page FSM using some simple ClojureScript to describe and run the state transitions:

[https://github.com/jebberjeb/reframe- fsm/blob/master/doc/HOW...](https://github.com/jebberjeb/reframe- fsm/blob/master/doc/HOWTO-blog.md)

I found it unusually clear, useful, and easy to follow.

For anyone going down the ClojureScript path that wants more sophisticated FSMs, there a few nice libraries dedicated to that:

[https://github.com/ztellman/automat](https://github.com/ztellman/automat) , [https://github.com/cdorrat/reduce-fsm](https://github.com/cdorrat/reduce-fsm) , [https://github.com/jedahu/spaghetti](https://github.com/jedahu/spaghetti)

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's a recent Shop Talk Show podcast with XState author that explores how state machines relate to user interfaces, [https://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/327-working-state- machines...](https://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/327-working-state-machines/).

</comment><comment><USER7> This is really cool and just up my alley since I'm always drawing state machines. However, I'd love to find a tool for drawing these state machine diagrams either with a UI or just a yaml file that's processed with a command- line tool.

Does anyone have suggestions for these things?

<comment><USER8> Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, you can use Graphviz ([http://www.graphviz.org/](http://www.graphviz.org/)) which accepts DOT input to produce graphs.

You may also be interested in a GUI-based DFA/NFA/PDA simulator I built, available here: [http://automatonsimulator.com/](http://automatonsimulator.com/). The target audience is CS students and was built based on notation found in Michael Sipser's "Introduction to the Theory of Computation." It allows you to: graphically define state machines, test against input strings, step-by-step debug, and export/import using a text format.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the suggestions. I've used Graphviz before and found it super useful for automated graph generation for sure.

The tool you built also looks like it's close to what I'm looking for. I guess what I'm really looking for is a super slick and simple graph generator app, sort of like what [https://mindnode.com/](https://mindnode.com/) is for mind maps/outlines. If I had more time, it's something I would like to build.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi, it looks sweet and easy to read, but what are actual use cases? For example, how would this pair with a React app? Is this supposed to be used as a a stand alone lib?

I have not really grasped why state machines are a big deal. (If it is)

Thanks and congrats for hitting the first page!

<comment><USER2> IMO, state machines are becoming a "big deal" because front-end developers are finally realizing that there is a name (and strict formalism) for the patterns that they've been using to manage complex UI behavior. Not only is this standardized (SCXML), it's been heavily researched for the last 30+ years and has numerous applications in many different areas of tech.

I'm working on articles for using XState in various frameworks, such as React, Vue, Angular, etc. It's already being used in production in places like vaultproject.io, tipe.io, serviceworkies.com, and more.

You can use the interpreter or create your own. An XState machine instance has a pure .transition() method that takes the current state and event, and returns the next state (+ actions, etc.). This can be used anywhere you would determine the next state of your application (or any of your app's constituent parts).

<comment><USER10> Would xstate potentially eliminate the need for redux for state management in react?

If so, how would the implementation differ from store and reducers?

<comment><USER11> I'm a Redux maintainer. You could probably use xstate instead of Redux in some cases. You could also probably use xstate as the actual implementation of your Redux reducers, too :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm missing what value the word "stateless" adds to this description, and the article didn't help

<comment><USER13> It means state is passed in as a parameter to the state machine interpreter - as opposed to being contained in the interpreter object. This is helpful when building pure functional systems, where state is passed in from some external data store, like in Redux reducers.

<comment><USER2> Thank you - this is correct (the interpreter is impure). It also makes it possible to create your own custom interpreters.

Also, your work has been a huge influence on XState, and I can't thank you enough for SCION!

<comment><USER13> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey pplz. For those asking about pairing Xstate with React, I made a library using renderProps approach. [https://github.com/bradwoods/react-xstate- js](https://github.com/bradwoods/react-xstate-js)

</comment><comment><USER15> Parts look interesting, but hard to take it seriously/invest the time investigating further when the slug says "stateless ... state machines".

Or at least might want to include an explanation somewhere prominent that explains how you define these terms in order for this not to be nonsense (and yes, I did search the rest of the pages).

There is a comment in the GitHub Readme, but that's not really illuminating.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great to see more statecharts in JS! State machines add a lot more safety if the usage of them is safe! I wrote a similar library that tries to leverage TypeScript for type-safety.

[https://github.com/gregwebs/StateTree#safety](https://github.com/gregwebs/StateTree#safety)

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting! As another point in the design space - I wrote a JS UI library (based on React) that uses async generators for state transitions. [https://github.com/ajnsit/concur-js](https://github.com/ajnsit/concur-js)

</comment><comment><USER18> What a dysfunctional '\--position: relative' no-scroll bar content wrong place cut off anyway horror of a page, in FireFox.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks awesome, a really clean and clear approach.

<comment><USER2> Thank you, I appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm unclear - is it intended primarily as a modelling tool, or as a library for implementing state-machine in JS app, or both?

<comment><USER2> Both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This site destroys keyboard navigation. Space, arrow keys, page up/down all do nothing.

<comment><USER2> Make a PR ;-) I have limited time to work on the docs but will be working to improve accessibility this week.

Also, how's this for a nicer tone?

"It would be great if this site supported better keyboard navigation, like using the space bars, arrow keys, page up/down, etc. Here are my suggestions: ..."

<comment><USER22> He is not suggesting features, he is reporting an issue. It would be great if this site did not break keyboard navigation :)</comment></comment></comment>


A Virus That Could Cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and More - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/phage-alzheimers-cure/ <comment><USER2> Warning, another early stage trail drug!

Phase I <\-- They are here

Phase II 18% proceed to phase III [1]

Phase III 50% succeed. 25% for first-in-class agents, which it sounds like this one is. [2]

So _if_ this phage passes its current phase I trials, it would then have a 5% chance of eventually getting to market. The current probability of success would be even lower because it hasn't yet completed phase I.

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

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidgrainger/2015/01/29/why- too...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidgrainger/2015/01/29/why-too-many- clinical-trials-fail-and-a-simple-solution-that-could-increase-returns-on- pharma-rd/#29af4ddc5f67)

<comment><USER3> Also the mechanism by which it works (eliminating certain protein aggregates in the brain) might not actually be related to the cause of Alzheimer's. Many other drugs targeting these aggregates have failed.

It could be that it's like trying to cure the flu by taking tylenol - sure you get a fever when you get the flu, but it's not the root cause.

But I hope it works!

<comment><USER4> But would it ultimately not matter if you aren't cured? To use your analogy, tylenol takes away some of the symptoms, if this takes away the symptoms of Alzheimer/Parkinson's from an outside observer's perspective you're "cured." Even if in reality you aren't and have to take this for the rest of your life.

<comment><USER5> The drug companies would love that outcome wouldn't they:

Sick for the rest of your life === $$$

<comment><USER3> People with Alzheimer's would love it too, because the status quo is that your memory deteriorates and then you die, and there's basically nothing you can do about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting that just putting M13 in the nasal passages of the control group of mice "showed very nice recovery of their cognitive function" \- if I read the article correctly.

I wonder if someone could try that in humans in some less FDA obsessed country given that "M13, the phage was originally isolated from sewage in Germany 50 years ago" and so is presumably not that hard to come by.

My dad has Parkinsons like deterioration at the moment and it would be nice to have some recovery of cognitive function now rather than waiting for the treatment to be officially approved after he's been dead for a decade or two.</comment>


Create your own programming language in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://nathansuniversity.appspot.com/ <comment><USER2> I ran through something like this a couple of years ago and found it to be one of the most entertaining side projects I had worked on in a long while.

Scheme from Scratch - [http://peter.michaux.ca/articles/scheme-from-scratch- introdu...](http://peter.michaux.ca/articles/scheme-from-scratch-introduction)

<comment><AUTHOR> I admired (and still do) your posts very much. Thank you for them.

<comment><USER2> As a note, I just followed along with Peter, using his posts to get a handle on scheme. Mine was <https://github.com/arlaneenalra/Bootstrap-Scheme>

</comment></comment></comment><comment> DanI-S I love the idea of offering your own mini-course. Teaching is by far the fastest way of cementing your knowledge of a subject. It would be great if someone could create a platform /'app store' for providing stuff like this, free or otherwise.

<comment><USER3> I believe Udemy.com does very similar to this and has a wide variety of courses.

<comment> DanI-S That's very cool, thanks. I'd heard the name before, but never checked it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is also starting in 3 weeks: <http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs262>

<comment><USER5> Thats learning about different programming languages... Not creating your own.

<comment><USER6> Check the syllabus; you create a Javascript/HTML parser and learn about syntax trees, grammars, etc. So the content will be similar to creating your own programming language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are there any other good tutorials on creating a toy programming language? Something that teaches about lexers, parsers, etc.

<comment><USER8> These are my favorite resources:

Compiler Construction: <http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf>

The Elements of Computing Systems: <http://amzn.to/GQycqj>

MetaCompilers: <http://www.bayfronttechnologies.com/mc_tutorial.html>

How to Create Your Own Freaking Awesome Programming Language: <http://createyourproglang.com/>

Bootstrapping a simple compiler from nothing: <http://www.rano.org/bcompiler.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't "How to Create Your Own Freaking Awesome Programming Language" the motivation for CoffeeScript. That alone should be enough motivation for sending your money that way.

<comment><USER9> You're correct. That's why the first version was written in Ruby :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like his teaching style. To get a sense for yourself check out <http://nathansjslessons.appspot.com> where he covers functions as values, closures, and CSP in javascript.

I dunno about you guys but I seem to spend almost all my professional time programming in javascript these days. This is perfect!

</comment><comment><USER11> i created a programming language of sorts in javascript, it was awful to code in (stored code as strings and used eval to run everything), but it did work - it is used for creating macros on an in-house billing system and only worked under ie6 trusted (which was the mandated browser) - more modern browsers balked at the cross site scripting exploit it took advantage of, but it was pretty useful way to deploy batch scripts as a bookmark. will share if anyone dares!

</comment><comment><USER12> You can also just fork one of the many that are out there. Makes it easier than starting from scratch (although I realize for some people that eliminates the fun part). I'm liking Sibilant a lot: <http://sibilantjs.info>

</comment><comment><USER13> Why redirect from nathansuniversity.com to nathansuniversity.appspot.com? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

<comment><USER5> He might think he'll get a lot of traffic, so google's servers would help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why build a programming language in a language other then Lisp?

</comment><comment><USER15> I bet he will be building some RPN language ... which is a rather boring task.</comment>


Adventures of developing an MP3 decoder in Python - <AUTHOR> http://portalfire.wordpress.com/

<comment><USER2> A long, long time ago I coded an MP3 implementation for a TI Fixed Point 16bit DSP@100MHz (family 5XXX IIRC).

I initially wrote it in floating point C (compiler translated float to fixed point) and it was damn slow. I then rewrote everything to use fixed point arithmetic only and dropped down to about half a second of decoding for a second of data. That wasn't still good enough because the DSP had to take care some other stuff like ide drives, dma, fat, dac, usb , display drivers etc, so I rewrote all critical parts in assembly taking advantage of the chip's build in dsp functionality and dropped to 100ms of decoding for 1s of data.

So it might be helpful to start from a pure python implementation then move your way down, you'll still learn a lot.

<comment><USER3> Since you've done it, can you tell me a bit about the caveats of converting from floating point to fixed point arithmetic? It would seem that the only thing you'd need to do is multiply by whatever doesn't make you run out of space, so, as someone who hasn't actually tried it, I'm wondering what the hard part is (apart from the obvious loss of accuracy when transitioning from floats to ints).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The bit that cracked me up:

> I finished the decoder and it can produce wav file output from an mp3. The > good news is that is works, the bad news is that its 34 times to slow to > play the audio runtime.

I think it's great to try learning something in a language that makes experimentation easy. Looking forward to see how he goes with the optimisation.

<comment><USER5> My first attempt to write a decoder was done on a "Cyrix" 586 processor at 90 Mhz. (The kind that fit in a 486 motherboard and let you pretend you had a pentium.) I wrote it in pascal. It did just a little better than 1.5 _weeks_ per minute of audio. I was thrilled to no end that I'd made it work at all.

My hats off to him.

<comment><USER3> Wait, if it took a day per second, how did you even know it worked? :P

<comment><USER6> Left it running for days on short samples? (also 1.5 weeks for 60 seconds would be ~6 seconds per day, not one).

<comment><USER3> Huh, this is true. I wonder where my math went, there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know why trying to reach real-time speeds with Python. At the moment it's really a slow language. According to my measurements is JavaScript at the moment the fastest "typeless" scripting language: the engine in Firefox can be up to 200 times faster than Python. There's also a command-line version.

<comment><USER8> But javascript does not have something like numpy. You can easily get one to two orders of magnitude faster using numpy when applicable, and a MP3 decode certainly falls in that category.

<comment><USER7> It's true that Numpy is much faster. I believe there's a lot of native code in Numpy and once we consider the libraries encoded in C, any language can be as fast as any other, as soon as we can offload enough to the libraries (for example, Perl has also some official C extension mechanisms: <http://perldoc.perl.org/h2xs.html> and even old Visual Basic was able to call DLL's written in C).

However, I'd really like if at least something that's now a part of Numpy (which I believe is now even more a language extension than a library) would become the part of the Python language.

<comment><USER8> Numpy does have a lot of C code compared to most python packages, but I don't think that's the right way to look at it. If numpy was only about something being in C instead of python, it would not be that interesting.

But numpy brings you abstractions on top of python which are useful and even more high level than python, and that's what is interesting: abstractions which do make your code faster (when applicable, of course).

From the blog's profiling posts, a lot of time seems to be spent into MDCT and polyphase decoding: both could be coded quite efficiently in numpy (I hope to add MDCT itself in scipy, actually).

About being part of python: I don't think it would be a right move (and has been given up from both python and numpy), because numpy is quite big, and depends on quite hairy dependencies if you care about speed. I don't think it is fair to say that numpy is a language extension - numpy feels more natural than say twisted from a python integration POV. But I am a numpy developer, so maybe not the best judge.

<comment><USER7> > I don't think it would be a right move because numpy is quite big, and > depends on quite hairy dependencies if you care about speed.

Maybe having some default build to have the main functionality and have some way to use the hairiy dependencies otherwise? As you say:

> Numpy brings you abstractions (...) which are useful and even more high > level than python,

That's what's a loss for Python as the language. I don't expect to have the access to every FORTRAN-coded scientific library routine in Python by default, but being able to use the right abstractions in the langauge and not through something like the patch... maybe that can happen once?

I understand, of course, that the current state is easier for you and for Python developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's probably a stupid question, but: what's the advantage to coding everything in Python? If you're targeting the N900, Psyco likely won't help you, and there's probably some existing MP3 library that one can wrap (libmpg123)?

Also: you might want to try Cython, it compiles a Python-like language to (reasonably platform-independent) C or C++ code, with very good Python interoperability.

<comment><USER6> You'd have known if you had but simply scrolled to the introductory post:

> I'm going to write a python based MP3 decoder. Yeah, its a bad idea from a > performance standpoint, but from a learning/documenting perspective, it is > quick and easy.

<comment><USER9> Ok. But then I don't understand the squirmyness about using numpy (and possibly scipy). Not using numpy in such cases will always give you less-than- decent performance.

<comment><USER6> That it will very likely make code less clear and readable, though it would probably be a necessary step to reaching realtime performance on his decoder.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Get that job at Google (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://steve-yegge.blogspot.mx/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html

<comment><USER2> Yay, my all-time favorite employability-related article. Here's some more useful stuff for who's interested:

* Steve Yegge - Five essential phone screen questions [1]

* The Google Resume (might look iffy but has really strong advice) [2]

* Four Steps to Google, Without a Degree [3]

[1] [https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential- pho...](https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-phone-screen- questions)

[2] [http://www.thegoogleresume.com](http://www.thegoogleresume.com)

[3] [https://medium.com/this-happened-to- me/8f381aa6bd5e](https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/8f381aa6bd5e)</comment>


Show HN: BatName, Redis and Bloom Filter = fun domain search - <AUTHOR> https://batname.com <comment><AUTHOR> I built this with a friend. This is based on a script that I've used for several years to find great domains for my projects. It mashes words together to build huge numbers of potential domains, then quickly excludes registered domains using a bloom filter.The bloom filter runs on Redis and the thing is amazingly fast, even when checking tens of thousands of domains.

Plus it's just fun and (unlike many tools) rapidly produces tons of viable domain names.

<comment><USER2> > then quickly excludes registered domains using a bloom filter

Can you share more details on this part? Are you using Zone files to check availability? DNS checks? Whois?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You're not generating all the combos:

[https://namegrep.com/#%28urban%7Cspoon%7Cfork%7Cdine%7Ceat%7...](https://namegrep.com/#%28urban%7Cspoon%7Cfork%7Cdine%7Ceat%7Cyum%7Ccity%7Cwhere%7Cchow%7Cspork%29%28urban%7Cspoon%7Cfork%7Cdine%7Ceat%7Cyum%7Ccity%7Cwhere%7Cchow%7Cspork%29)

</comment><comment><USER4> Did you use [http://rebloom.io](http://rebloom.io), or have you implemented your own Bloom filter?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use rebloom. Works great.

<comment><USER4> Kewl :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nicely done! Can I ask one question, how do you check if the domains are available?

</comment><comment><USER6> Fun! Nice job...</comment>


Antlia2's role in driving the ripples in the outer gas disk of the Galaxy - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.04203 <comment><USER2> This is a fun paper. It uses the dynamics of orbiting galaxies to show that Antlia 2 (a dwarf galaxy orbiting our own) must have crossed through the galactic plane. It uses the ripples in the hydrogen cloud around the galaxy as the marker for the previous transit.

The authors suggest this happened within the last 100 Myears or so (you just have to run the various proposed orbits backward in time.) These sorts of things would presumably result in increased levels of debris flying through solar systems such as our own and possibly lead to increased impact activity.</comment>


Why bitcoins are so popular nowadays - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologeek.net/bitcoins-popular-nowadays/

<comment><USER2> _> In this global world color, place, race, currency, language, culture, etc. is not a fact._

Utter tosh. Racism is still a thing, people still move to Silicon Valley to start their internet start-ups, racism is _still_ a thing, try not to contradict your own article title, if your article did not read like it had been through babel fish twice I might take it more seriously, O RLY, etc ad nauseum.

If I didn't know better - and I don't - I'd guess that someone copied an eleven month old starry-eyed bitcoin propaganda post, fed it through babel fish a couple of times, and stuck it on the web for the AdSense. Sorely tempted to flag it as spam.</comment>


The privacy paradox: The privacy benefits of privacy threats [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/05/21-privacy-paradox-wittes-liu/wittes-and-liu_privacy-paradox_v10.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll provide a quick TL;DR as the paper is somewhat lengthy but I think the message is worth discussing:

Much of what privacy advocates focus on in terms of privacy violations on the internet neglect to take into account privacy gains from those same technologies. A key factor to this is focusing on what information is being shared but neglecting to account who it is being shared with and the privacy benefits associated with interacting with that service instead of traditional alternatives. For example, Google can see every search a person conducts regarding their sexual preferences. However, a closeted homosexual might turn to Google to find social and support groups because they're afraid of judgement from their family and peers. Groups like the EFF would say that buying a book through a Kindle is awful for the privacy of the reader because Amazon tracks the fact that you specifically bought the book and can see when you're reading it and even what page you're on - but most readers don't care that Amazon knows they're reading 50 Shades of Grey; they'd rather that everyone else on the subway just sees them reading their Kindle instead of an erotic novel paperback.

In general, people are more afraid of having their sensitive personal details disclosed to the people they interact with in person - their families, friends, coworkers or even the checkout lady at the pharmacy. The loss of privacy to a remote party like Google is worth the net gain in privacy to avoid disclosing embarrassing information to people they are more concerned with. This is also dependent on the type information being disclosed - the set of information that you'd want to keep from your friends is not the same set that you'd want to keep from your spouse, which is not the same as what you'd keep from your coworkers, which is not the same as what you'd hide from the police.

For those that would prefer an audio version, Ben Wittes gives a good discussion of it on the Lawfare Podcast at [http://traffic.libsyn.com/lawfare/Episode_129.mp3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/lawfare/Episode_129.mp3)

<comment><USER2> > but most readers don't care

Most readers don't _know_ the extend Amazon is tracking what they read, and often believe the relationship ended after the exchange of money and ebook. The tech industry's presumption that people don't care or are ok with stuff like Amazon knowing what page you're on is a projection of what they want popular opinion to be. In fact, a common reaction to learning how these surveillance-as-a-business-model ;goods and services actually work is that people tend to care very strongly about this kind of violation of their privacy, but feel powerless and trapped with non alternative. Very few people I have met see trading privacy for something as a _good_ thing. Instead, what I often hear are regular complaints about companies asking for more and more information.

I do agree there the distance of personal association affect this, where it is often easier to allow a distant 3rd party to know important private information, probably due to not having to interact with the them afterwords. (i.e. someone may not care if some random stranger they are unlikely to interact with in the future knows their sexual orientation, but friends or family you are going to interact with regularly finding out could have consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >> But nearly every male, and more than a few women, who went through puberty in the pre-Internet age will smile in memory of some variation of Allen's humiliation. If you didn't go to the magazine store yourself to purchase girly magazines, you asked an older brother, cousin, or friend.

I am of the right gender and generation, but not a consumer. I am fed up with the trope that _pretty much everyone_ uses or has used pornography. Not trying to demonstrate something worthy about myself (good luck to porn users). Rather, I dislike being defaulted into groups where I don't actually belong. And suspect that I am in less of a minority than some would have us believe. Perhaps non-consumers of porn really are such a big outlier, I've never checked the stats. However, I am aware that people who use this trope may incorrectly and infuriatingly discount such protestations with a wink and a nudge.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm concerned what could happen in the future, if large corporations have stored a lot of data. I was surprised how much civil liberties got eroded in the US after 9/11\. What if there are more big terrorist attacks, for example, and say the military takes over the government? Do you really want some central database of all the books you've ever read then?</comment>