Wirecard hired actors to fool auditors - <AUTHOR> https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/wirecard-jan-marsalek-soll-wirtschaftspruefer-ey-mit-schauspielern-getaeuscht-haben-a-00000000-0002-0001-0000-000172590382 <comment><USER2> Here's my little Wirecard story: Back in the day when Camarades.com/ww.com was doing well we were through an intermediary approached by a German investor, one Paul Bauer-Schlichtegroll (I'll never forget that name), an - at that moment - successful German businessman, who was importing Vans sports shoes into Europe.

He became a 5% investor in our company through an entity called Max Madhouse GMBH with an option to buy a much larger share. The day after the deal was signed he turned around and tried to screw us - the founders - out of our own company through a minority shareholder lawsuit.

Eventually we got rid of him, but this cost us a lot of time, money and momentum. Two years later Bauer was one of the founding members of what eventually became Wirecard.

So I've always seen Wirecard as a bunch of crooks.

At the same time I have some sympathy for the BaFin people, there are way too few of them and the opposition was very well versed in showing one face whilst actually being something completely different, the length to which these characters would go to show a good face was beyond anything that I would have normally imagined. I'm still a touch paranoid because of it, and I'm sure the same goes for the rest of the former Camarades.com/ww.com team.

I don't know what happened to him, he seems to have disappeared as well, but I do know that anything that he's ever touched was rotten at some level.

<comment><USER3> I can also add some here. We worked for WD for a while. There was this weird thing going on. We requested MacBooks because we were working on Linux and cloud but the management had a policy that managers were entitled to have MacBooks while by default engineers had to use Windows laptops. As externals we were denied MacBooks.

So managers were running Powerpoints on Apple while engineers were running Python, aws-cli on Windows. Perfectly reasonable according to them. I could only estimate the amount of productivity lost on this. Of course WSL was not allowed because corporate security classified it insecure.

<comment><USER4> Management getting swaggy laptops and engineers having to work on the cheapest and shittiest windows laptops is a thing in every German company where the software isn't the core product(embedded, IoT, hardware, automotive, mechanical, chemical, finance etc.) because Macs are expensive and since beancounters are valued more than SW engineers they can make themselves look like heroes in front of management by showing them how much money they saved the company by leasing a fleet of cheap machines for everyone, regardless of their job, from the local HP/Dell/Lenovo dealer vs the productivity loss of their developers that they won't bother considering.

I only saw good machines in companies where only software was their business(mostly web shops) so management there knew the value of providing good laptops and monitors.

<comment><USER5> The irony is that as I move into management, I less and less see the value of me personally having a powerful laptop. My job is Jira, Github, and Zoom; why should I carry around a 16" MBP for all the power I don't need?

<comment><USER6> Wait until you need to run Microsoft Teams. You'll need to carry an entire supercomputer to run that pile of shit and even then it won't be smooth.

Even Jira is not too far off these days unfortunately despite being a relatively simple tool (but they needed to justify hiring tons of JavaScript developers).

<comment><USER7> At least we can be safe in the knowledge that Teams will be the only bloated Electron app Microsoft make a core part of the Office suite.

There is no way most company issue laptops can run two programs that resource heavy at once, without Windows 10 randomly closing other applications or flashing a black screen at you.

<comment><USER5> Nothing can possibly be slower than a heavily customized Jira instance.

I opened up the api recently to discover that every story I edited had close to 100 custom fields on them, most duplicative (presumably) and hidden.

<comment><USER6> What angers me about Jira isn't the slowness of the backend - that I can wait. It's the slowness of the frontend that's the problem, which is a combination of a JS-heavy front end as well as its hard dependency on the backend, where as basic HTML forms & page navigations typically leave the previous page interactive until the response from the backend arrives so you can still look at the existing page as well as allowing you to cancel a page load and still keep the currently loaded page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As the person responsible for IT I was audited in several companies by several of the large auditing firms. The people auditing IT had no clue what they were doing, no clue about IT and were just running a checklist. I could have told them whatever I liked.

<comment><USER9> My wife started her career as an internal auditor at a UK financial company - she was apparently repeatedly told to _stop finding problems_ , her manager acknowledged that the things she was finding were real problems but nobody wanted to have formal reports describing them.

She left after a colleague who apparently spent most of his time asleep in a cupboard got promoted over her....

<comment><USER10> I hope she wasn't surprised. People who listen to their managers get promoted.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps this is naïveté on my part, but I imagine that if I worked for an organisation whose explicit purpose is to look for things which need fixing or certify that no known issues are present, I would be surprised if "shoot the messenger" was — even metaphorically — a real policy.

I would also ask myself how far the rot went, because if (for example) this organisation was also supposed to audit the government and yet promoted those who "slept in a cupboard" over those who worked diligently, then I would expect the country to suffer a very large and very surprising economic disaster.

<comment><USER12> Hi, yes, this is largely how audit firms work. If they find a problem, they will not be hired next year.

That said - don't despair! The purpose is NOT to catch purposefully-fraudulent CFOs. That's the SEC's job. It's much more of a forcing mechanism for otherwise-honest CFOs: they know they have to justify what they're doing somehow, and the auditor knows that if something will inevitably blow up anyway, they can't sign off. So it just arrests the slippery slope when honest mistakes are made.

<comment><USER13> > arrests the slippery slope

What does that mean? Not a native speaker, dictionary not so helpful

<comment><USER11> "Slippery slope" is an (often misused) metaphor; the bottom of the slope is generic badness, the top is a good place to be, and the slope is slippery because if you start sliding down it can be very difficult to stop.

While "arrest" normally means a police officer putting someone in handcuffs, it is derived from derived from the French word "arrêt" meaning 'to stop or stay', and can still be used in that sense.

Thus, "arrest the slippery slope" means "prevent bad behaviour".

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Interesting to hear about the origins of the words

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's the headhunter bounty for former Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek? He's still at large: [https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/36396/marsalek-joins- in...](https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/36396/marsalek-joins-interpols- most-wanted-ranks)

<comment><USER2> [https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and- europe/2020/07/18/wor...](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and- europe/2020/07/18/worlds-most-wanted-man-jan-marsalek-located-in-belarus-data- points-to-russian-intel-links/)

Not sure how reliable that is but it would make some sense, close by and hard to impossible to be extradited from there.

<comment><USER15> It's ridiculous how any rich person accused of fraud in the West can take asylum in Russia/China and vice versa.

<comment><USER16> Because it is more than likely that Wirecard was not just running a front for illegal gambling and questionably legal (in terms of youth protection compliance) porn sites, but also a front for Russian GRU/FSB to distribute cash to agents and sources.

There is no other reasonable explanation as for why he is under the care of GRU.

<comment><USER15> ?? The United States and Europe routinely do the same thing - I think that other countries would do this as a "screw you" to US/EU just as much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Auditing - be it corporate accounting or election results - breeds false security the moment it doesn't work. I think transparency into critical vetting will be a big societal improvement.

<comment><USER2> I do this for a living and if there is one thing that I have found it is that due to COVID-19 on-site visits are no longer an option (especially not internationally) and this has caused us to be blind to certain classes of problems. It is a lot of work to get around that remotely and to not have a drop in quality because of that. We are at least aware of the problem but even then this is a tricky thing to solve. When looking through a keyhole you can get a completely different view of a company than the one you get when you spend a day on their premises.

<comment><USER17> Beyond your fair points, my statement is unfair because it's trivially true. "Transparency into critical vetting" hides the complexity of individual comprehension, single points of failure, etc. I just know I have very little trust into opaque processes that randomly blow up

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This happens all the time, I worked for a company that was audited by a security firm. The security firm compromised every part of the company by pretending to be employees, third party vendors or competitors looking to hire away current employees. Some of their existing employees gave away every single detail you'd need to compromise the infrastructure during interviews.

Fooling auditors isn't going to be all that difficult, most auditors get confused if there is too much going on in the room . I've literally seen a publicly traded company pass an audit just by making the audit frustrating and then providing every perk you can imagine outside of the audit room (including attractive men/women). As you can imagine, they didn't do a very thorough audit.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's behind a paywall, but according to a summary [0], Marsalek or someone from Wirecard built fake physical branches of banks on the Philippines. The auditors of EY were invited to come to these branches to talk to actors who convinced them that the 1.9 billion EUR of Wirecard exist on their bank accounts.

It reminds me somehow of the movie "The Sting"...

[0] [https://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/wirtschaftsticker/schau...](https://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/wirtschaftsticker/schauspieler- in-der-videokonferenz-ex-wirecard-vorstand-marsalek-das-drehbuch-seines-fast- perfekten-bluffs_id_12340700.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> I know someone who worked at a well-known Berlin Fintech and once there were people visiting from a partner bank. They expected people in various formal positions there so they filled them in ad-hoc with the available people.

I guess audit means most of the time just: checking some boxes without actually following through paper trails.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can't read German so I don't know the details the story is detailing if any but isn't this just the ultimate example of "fake it till you make it", combined with an Uber-esque disdain for laws and regulations?

Why are people always so surprised when "disruptive" organisations actually end up doing a bunch of weird shit?

<comment><USER2> I don't think they ever planned to 'make it'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can we get an English report, preferably not paywalled? From what I can read in the first few paragraphs, the title seems sensationalised.

<comment><USER23> The website is user-hostile; if you accept the Advertisements it attempts to set a cookie which the Firefox tracking protection layer won't allow to happen, resulting in an error and no article access.

<comment><USER24> Is that FF tracking protection turned on by default?

<comment><USER25> Yes, it's on by default.

There is a site-wide off switch if you know where to look, but I doubt most people would find it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is the most irritating paywall I've ever seen. Why did you submit this?</comment>


Boeing's 737 MAX software outsourced to $12.80-an-hour engineers - <AUTHOR> https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-12-80-an-hour-engineers-20190629-p522h4.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Rabin, the former software engineer, recalled one manager saying at an all- hands meeting that Boeing didn't need senior engineers because its products were mature. "I was shocked that in a room full of a couple hundred mostly senior engineers we were being told that we weren't needed," said Rabin, who was laid off in 2015."

WHAT-THE-FUCK-IS-THAT?

I would get up, go to the managers, if they don't listen to me I would go to the CTO/CEO then explain why that's a huge mistake that may cost peoples lives. If they don't listen to me I would go anonymously to the police and explain the situation. If nothing is solved I would start writing heaps of posts about this and fuck what the companies would think about hiring me.

The industry is fucked up and senior engineers don't have the FUCKING guts to speak their minds about unethical behaviour.

It's your responsibly fellas, you are killing people for doing nothing about this. Who's next?!?!

<comment><USER2> I find it amusing that engineers are supposed to be somehow responsible for the lack of morality in our corporations.

It's almost as if the lack of morality costs us less than the lack of revenue.

Maybe it's time to rethink the value system in the first place?

<comment><USER3> I think that anecdote was more about a failing of an Engineer to bring safety concerns to management (the necessity of senior employees to keep design safe). If true, definitely the fault of the Engineer.

<comment><USER2> But there's no political pressure to do so.

There's no code that allows the engineer to say "no" and disable his management from going to the next engineer to say "yes" to that.

Building codes don't allow for that. If your building is prone to collapsing, then nobody is going to sign off on that, because they will be liable.

<comment><USER4> Which is probably what happened in this exact case. The senior engineers were being replaced with junior ones; exactly the kind of people who don't know to say "no".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So sad. Boeing software, and its software engineers, used to be the shit. Now Boeing doesn't even want its own software engineers.

> A Boeing statement in May, explaining why the company didn't inform > regulators at the time, said engineers had determined it wasn't a safety > issue.

> "Senior company leadership," the statement added, "was not involved in the > review."

So Boeing is no longer special, just another rat-fucking consultancy?

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20309052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20309052)

More discussion here.</comment>


The math of brewing a better espresso: use less coffee - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/the-math-of-brewing-a-better-espresso/ <comment><USER2> Truly an art & a science!!! :)

<comment><USER3> The pursuits of a perfect cup!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some apps/tools/methods you use to memorise things? - <AUTHOR> I've been looking into tools like Anki[1] which uses the notions of "active recall testing" and "spaced repetition" in the form of flash cards to help one with memorisation as well as reading up on R&D stuff like MIT's NeverMind[2] which implements memory palace[3] in AR.
As much as I value the ability to forget greater than the ability to remember, in the recent years I have come to recognise the importance of memorising things, espeically in fields like biochemistry where there are just so many things to remember, or when you try to sharpen up your second/third language, etc.
What are some apps/tools/methods you use when you are forced to memorise things?
[1]: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
[2]: https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/nevermind/overview/
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci <comment><USER2> I draw comics/pictures where I combine things that I need to remember. And you don't need to be an artist to do it, because no one else need to see them.</comment>


Find all remaining two letter .io domains - <AUTHOR> http://framespersushi.com/lab/two-letter-io/

<comment><AUTHOR> This tool was inspired by this: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663793>

<comment><USER2> Instead of having the client brute-force everything, run this script server- side once a day/week, assume the list of taken domains stay taken, and just have the client double-check the available names.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some great examples of well-designed startup websites - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll start with my favourites:

1\. <http://heymosaic.com/> 2\. <https://www.airbnb.com/> 3\. <https://www.mint.com/> 4\. <http://beanstalkapp.com/> 5\. <http://www.newcompany.name/> 6\. <https://squareup.com/> 7\. <http://disqus.com/>

</comment><comment><USER2> I have a popular list of great landing pages on Kippt here - <https://kippt.com/jg/beautiful-landing-pages>

</comment><comment><USER3> What are your criteria for this? "Beautiful" and "drives conversions" are two different things.

Also lots of threads on Quora by special interest (e.g. [https://www.quora.com/Onboarding/What-products-have-the- very...](https://www.quora.com/Onboarding/What-products-have-the-very-best- onboarding-user-experiences))

<comment><AUTHOR> My criteria are:

\- user experience and information architecture done right

\- visual beauty, pixel perfect and modern aesthetics of web user interfaces

Can we think the web page with a visual beauty and lack of call to action?! Would it be a good designed website? I think no. So, well-designed website has all of important aspects, to call users to action.

<comment><USER4> Thats not what he meant. Ugly sites can convert and do extremely well. Visual beauty (aesthetics) and conversion/UX are not mutually exclusive. Not that it lacks a call to action or any sort.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Likes|Digest – Weekly email digest+searchable list of tweets you liked - <AUTHOR> https://www.likesdigest.com <comment><USER2> As a random user that sees the website for the first time promoting the "12 Startups in 6 Months" is actually off-putting. It's clear the service costs money but unclear if you maintain it long-term or have jumped to the next project within a month. Nothing against your challenge, it's great, HN folks will admire that, just end-users can see that negative.

Link to your twitter account is broken.

The reason I haven't clicked 'sign up' is I'd like to see a preview, any preview, before giving access to my account. Can the website ask for my twitter handle and crawl my recent likes as a start? Or a screenshot of somebody else's weekly email?

Ok, now I signed up. It presents me with an internal server error.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey - thanks for your feedback - I'll take a look and fix the problems. About the preview - that could be a good idea - I think I'll add an email example so the users can make an idea of what they'll get.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey there - my name is Alin and today I wanted to share with you Likes|Digest - a weekly email digest & a searchable list of your Twitter likes - the second project for my personal challenge - "12 Startups in 6 Months".

I wanted to build Likes|Digest because I often times I like different tweets as a way of bookmarking - but never get back to them.

So I thought that a weekly email reminder with all of these likes could at lest help me take another look over it. And since Twitter doesn't provide a search feature for all this likes I've also added a search feature (which is still a work in progress).

Would love to get your opinnion on it.</comment>


Is YC bold enough? (warning: possible linkbait) - <AUTHOR> http://www.honorico.com/wordpress/?p=104

<comment><USER2> I don't think that YC is claiming to be a VC. Unless I am missing something? everybody knows that 10-20k is not worth much. People apply for something else.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but the question is whether any YC companies have the capacity to be the next google. I think it is a good question because it really is saying "if you can't find the gems why expect VCs to be able to". Its a people in glass houses throwing stones argument. There may be good counter arguments but it is a very legit question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definite linkbait.</comment>


The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard [2006] - <AUTHOR> http://informationarchitects.net/blog/100e2r/

<comment><USER2> I love this classic advice. And now that I have to wear bi-focals, I _need_ this advice.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is old advice but it's still really good. Just the other day I read this and made some changes to my blog. I think it looks much better for it.</comment>


Denmark's Idea Could Help the World Avoid a Great Depression - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/denmark-freezing-its-economy-should-us/608533/ <comment><USER2> The idea is to "freeze the economy" by massive government spending, covering various costs of private companies and the people.

> the Danish government told private companies hit by the effects of the > pandemic that it would pay 75 percent of their employees' salaries to avoid > mass layoffs

> The plan could require the government to spend as much as 13 percent of the > national economy in three months.

The state has agreed to take on 75 percent of workers' salaries, up to $3,288 per month, for them to _stay home and not work_ , while still being employed.

In addition:

\- the state will guarantee 70 percent of new bank loans to companies

\- people on unemployment benefits will continue to receive it, without the usual requirements, and even past the 2-year limit

\- the state agreed to compensate companies for their fixed expenses, like rent and contract obligations, depending on their level of income loss

\- the spring payment of taxes for companies have been postponed until autumn

\- all public employees will keep their salaries when sent home

<comment><USER3> To be clear. The public employees are working from home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an extraordinarily bold step and I agree in theory. But the risk is extremely high and I am curious what the downsides will look like for an approach like this

<comment><USER5> From your point of view what are the risks here?

Denmark's current debt level is at around 35% of GDP, so we should be able to debt finance this for a while and still have money for further stimulus packages to start things up once corona has passed</comment></comment>


CSS3 Please The Cross-Browser CSS3 Rule Generator - <AUTHOR> http://css3please.com

<comment><USER2> An interactive cheat sheet. Awesome. I hope this starts a new genre of cheat sheets. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's missing text-shadow.. great little tool though. Very nice!</comment>


How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people
 - <AUTHOR> http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-listen-to-customers-and-not-just.html

<comment><USER2> One of the things I realized when working for a social startup is that many of those web 2.0, happy user generated content things make it super easy to listen to feedback. (As in, trolling your OWN site and using it to keep people in the loop is surprisingly easy.)

Pay attention to your heavy users, or the people with lots of friends, or various other metrics of activity. Many times, they can become your friends with minimal effort, and soon they'll IM you whenever they hit a bug, and tell all their friends. The more you know about their lives, and the "problems" that your site is solving, the more focused and direct the work can be.

Yay internet.</comment>


America's Monopoly Problem Goes Way Beyond the Tech Giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/pandemic-making-monopolies-worse/614644/ <comment><USER2> Well maybe we can start with the monopolies that are taking our data, eroding privacy, encouraging social unrest, literally killing teens with depression and isolation, unrepentant in dissolving the bonds in their home nation, etc.

Then we can move to the ISP's and co. I'm all for anti-trust on them as well.

<comment><USER3> ISP anti-trust should break vertical integration. Have one set of companies laying cable, and then selling commodity bandwidth to another set of customer facing providers.

Similar to South Korea's very efficient internet system.</comment></comment>


The Parker "51" (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://www.richardspens.com/ref/profiles/51.htm <comment><USER2> Slightly off topic, but I want to share this.

I've recently started using fountain pens again, after a... long break (secondary school, I think).

The way they glide on the paper and the pleasure of holding such a beautiful (well, arguably, but I love both how nibs look and how they work) device made me improve my handwriting, and I started to take more notes just to use the pens.

I highly recommend the experience, if you're not familiar with them. Some good modern ones are also pretty cheap.

Like with vinyl records, there is a certain satisfaction in taking care of the pen, cleaning it when switching to ink or a different color, and so on; and it's a mechanical object that helps me detach from the digital world. Unlike vinyl, it is actually a practical thing to use everyday :)

<comment><USER3> They glide on the paper?

I have a Lamy 2000, Pilot Vanishing Point and some other highly recommended pen (can't remember the name, it was a few years ago) and they are all scratchy as hell. Absolutely not as nice as even a cheap ball point...

<comment><USER4> That depends a lot on the nib, plus how it has been finished. And perhaps more importantly, and easier to change, paper and ink.

My vintage 146 M nib is incredibly smooth on some heavy papers with Iroshizuku Konpeki ink. So smooth I was tempted to look into details. It turns out Konpeki ink has tons of lubricants. Even different ink colors from the same manufacturer make a difference. And some alternatives make the setup not smooth at all, quite scratchy indeed.

Try changing inks and paper. Worst case, you might need to send your nibs for adjustment if you want different behavior. If they are small, particularly the VP, you may not be able to get a really smooth experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Crazy to see Richard Binder here. He's one of the big fish in the fountain pen community (though now mostly retired as a restoration expert.)

For anyone who is interested in seeing what these are like, I can heartily recommend the Wing Sung 601 - it's a very respectable $15 Chinese homage to the P51. You'll need some bottled ink as well. I use Parker Quink plain black (<$10 on Amazon).

eBay link: [https://www.ebay.com/itm/Wing-Sung-601-Steel-Cap- Vacumatic-F...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Wing-Sung-601-Steel-Cap-Vacumatic- Fountain-Pen-F-Nib/233044559925?hash=item364289c835:m:mEVrGUupBligdHdQ1JMJlvA)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the recommendation. I don't have that Wing Sung model yet, but as a beginner in the hobby I have had a blast buying Chinese fountain pens over the last year. To the degree that I'm annoyed that my local big box office supply store has such a sub-par (for the price) selection. About all I buy there is Quink, which has been really great writing and drawing ink.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried the Moonman M2 yet?

<comment><USER6> I haven't. That looks like a really nice pen, do you like it?

<comment><USER7> Quite a bit. It scratches and stumbles on nice paper, but for everyday printer paper, it gives a reasonably smooth glide and looks much more impressive than its price merits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to enjoy using fountain pens, but now use almost exclusively "Uniball Eye" pens, they look like this: [http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/251258168346-0-1/s-l1000.jpg](http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/251258168346-0-1/s-l1000.jpg)

They write just as smoothly as any fountain pen I've used, and are much more robust.

They're not refillable, but a pack of 12 costs less than £10 and lasts (me) for years.

<comment><USER9> I'm something of a pen fetishist, and swear by the Mitsubishi Uni-ball. I've tried Pilot and other brands, but nothing beats the Mitsu. Other pen obsessives might want to check this site: [https://www.penaddict.com/top-5-pens](https://www.penaddict.com/top-5-pens)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The 'Hero' fountain pen was extremely popular in India during the 90's, it is a copy of Parker51 by Shanghai Hero Pen Company[1].

I was using those for few grades, I have some hand deformities so writing was hard & I didn't like the pen much.

Then by 10th grade my sister gifted me a Parker. It was a new experience, smooth & helped me write much better. 10th grade has board (public) exams in India, I spent a year before the exams in bed rest due to surgeries. So, writing the crucial board exams with the Parker pen was a remarkable experience; I scored good.

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

<comment><USER11> I remember how coveted these were. They were all called "Chinese pens".

This was before ball pens, and eventually, gel pens became the norm.

<comment><USER10> Common middle class birthday gift for children for grades 6 & above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In case you are, or want to become, a fountain pen addict... I mean, afficionado! — the fountain pens subreddit is a great community & time sink: [https://reddit.com/r/fountainpens](https://reddit.com/r/fountainpens)

<comment><USER13> And, if you're feeling acquisitive, there's also the Pen Swap subreddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Pen_Swap/new/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pen_Swap/new/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Completely tangent question: Does anyone know how a website such as this is created? It has that "old" vibe to it. Perhaps, I am guessing it was created using one of those software in a box that you buy a physical copy of it, and it allows a non-techy person to create a website. I am curious because I see this similar type of web-design in old websites.

<comment><USER15> After 23,000 Bootstrap single page sites, it has a refreshing vibe to it. Reminds me when the web was useful rather than marketing. (Only partly tongue in cheek). :)

<comment><USER16> Oh, don't worry, there's a Bootstrap theme for that:

[http://code.divshot.com/geo-bootstrap/](http://code.divshot.com/geo- bootstrap/)

<comment><USER15> lol. That is equal parts awful, and marvellous. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's another link, if you're interested in how the "51" works: [http://www.richardspens.com/ref/anatomy/51.htm](http://www.richardspens.com/ref/anatomy/51.htm)

Richard for a while sold printed copies of his "Anatomy of a fountain pen" pages; I've got them framed. :-) He also has (what I believe to be) the best current book on pen repair and restoration.

The "51" is a loose successor to the most beautiful and pleasant to use pen ever made, the Parker Vacumatic. Unlike the Vacumatic (and the vacumatic- filler "51"s), the aerometric filler 51s (screw it) have latex (?) sacs, which last much longer than rubber sacs common in other pens; quite often an unrestored vintage 51 will work fine once cleaned. When Parker closed down their Chinese factory, which made 51s, they left the machinery in place--- leading to the initial pens from Chinese pen companies to be 51 clones.

This concludes today's random pen facts.

</comment><comment><USER18> I had a 51 many years ago. Much as I liked mine, it never occurred to me that people would write articles about them.

I've always preferred writing with a fountain pen, but can't see myself having one again (or at least a good one). I have the same problem with them as I do with sunglasses: they always get lost or broken.

<comment><USER19> Disposable fountain pens are a thing now, and shockingly good writers. You can have all of the writing with none of the guilt.

<comment><USER18> Yeah I see that reading through posts here. I've ordered myself a couple to try out. I hate disposable things but seem to have no choice with pens or sunglasses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Quick guide - Really affordable stuff to start with - Jinhao 992, Jinhao X450, Jinhao X750, Platinum Preppy (all of them range between $5 - $8)

I've progressed to the slightly pricier Lamy Safari now. Excellent experience and good to see my handwriting improve, while being a soothing, gratifying experience.

<comment><USER7> My favorite cheap garbage pen is the moonman m2. It's joined the lamy safari as my daily driver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder how much this post will drive up the price of Parker 51s on eBay (or spur the market for modern knock-offs, if one exists), and for how long.

<comment><USER22> Likely not. There are so many modern Parker 51 inspired pens already.

The vintage P51s are priced all over the place from $60-7500 depending on the features of that pen....$7500 was a pen that Cartier commisioned to sell in their stores.

Their past popularity makes supplies of low to mid ranged models pretty plentiful.

P51 is "out of print." I find reliable P51-inspired writers for $2-4 a pen so I have no desire to try and buy a vintage one that might not work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was really hoping Matt Parker made another amusing-yet-educational mistake somewhere, like his famous square.

</comment><comment><USER24> I love my Parker 51s. All of them older than I am (of course) but the ones that still work (aren't cracked, etc) work wonderfully (filled with Noodler's inks).

<comment><USER25> I'm fond of my 61s as well, with their capillary reservoir, and being one of the first commercial uses of Teflon.

They're a pain to clean thoroughly, though, so they're best used as a pen for someone who doesn't change inks very often. That person is _not_ me :)

<comment><USER24> Protip: cheap ultrasonic jewelry cleaner.

You wouldn't believe some of the gunk i've gotten out of pens that sat in a drawer for 20 years....

<comment><USER25> Of course! I've got a couple actually, they're useful in my other hobbies.

The capillary filler is still a beast to clean, though. It's not so much a matter of it getting crusty with dried ink as it is that it's designed to hold the ink inside.

I've built two things to address this: the first is a rubber bulb with a length of clear medical tubing that just fits over the back of the reservoir. This lets me force water and cleaning solution through the reservoir with a modest amount of pressure, flushing it out. The second is a felt-lined holder with a spot for a rag or paper towel in the end. I can chuck that in my lathe, put the pen in it with the nib facing away from the chuck, and turn it on low for a few minutes. Centripetal force forces the ink (or water) out of the reservoir, through the feed, and into the paper towel - aided by capillary action, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I recently reviewed some of my old notebooks (Moleskin, graph) for information for a blog post. Noticed how bad my handwriting had become. Have since rediscovered fountain pens. Writing is now much improved, I put this down to the necessity to write more slowly or at least more smoothly with a proper pen.

</comment><comment><USER27> I can see the appeal of these. Just holding one makes you feel you can soak in attention to detail and beautiful handwriting through your fingertips. But the reality is different. I don't have the patience to wait for the ink to dry when I want to turn the page, nor to muck about with blotting paper. Everything just ends up smudged.

But it seems I'm not alone here in being a pen geek, so maybe it's a good place to share a discovery that has been revolutionary for me: Erasable gel and ballpoint pens!

Bright colours, no sharpening, easy and effective erasing of my mistakes. Yayyy. I've tried quite a few, my favourite at the moment are Pilot Kleer.

Now I'm no longer afraid to write in a new moleskin!

</comment><comment><USER13> At the higher end there is also Ariel Kullock's "Fantasy" 51's [1]. I believe that he's no longer making them, but it's not uncommon to see his pen parts for sale (e.g. [2]).

[1]: [http://www.penhero.com/PenGallery/Parker/Parker51FantasyPart...](http://www.penhero.com/PenGallery/Parker/Parker51FantasyPart1.htm)

[2]: [https://www.ebay.com/str/arielkullockpens/Parker-51/_i.html?...](https://www.ebay.com/str/arielkullockpens/Parker-51/_i.html?_storecat=2011743017)</comment>


Show HN: A simple SSH VPN client - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ivanilves/xiringuito <comment><USER2> How is it different from sshuttle, which does not need remote root?

[https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle](https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle)

Edit: xiringuito uses the SSH tun/tap feature, which does TCP-over-TCP tunneling (which performs badly[1]). sshuttle instead multiplexes the TCP streams over a single connection by capturing them and opening a new TCP session at the remote end. This means it does not need root permissions on the remote side, since it does not need any raw sockets or even create tap devices.

The SOCKS proxy and the port forwards (-L, -R etc) work similarly, it's just the tunnel feature which should be avoided since it forwards whole packets.

[1]: [http://sites.inka.de/bigred/devel/tcp- tcp.html](http://sites.inka.de/bigred/devel/tcp-tcp.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, there are some differences between sshuttle and xiringuito:

1) xiringuito is great for UDP. I had issues with RTP streams (UDP, random ports) running over sshuttle , though they run perfectly over SSH tun/tap.

2) I can run low-level non-TCP, non-UDP, IP protocols like OSPF over tunnels I create with tun/tap.

3) xiringuito does not require python. Not everybody loves python.

Overally I am a fan of sshuttle, but the way it's made prevented me from using it in a few cases, so I created xiringuito ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This creates an Auto closing SSH Tunnel (Tunnel will close if Chrome exits) to a remote ssh server and redirect to localhost on port 7070 and launch Chrome Portable using local port 7070 as socks 5 proxy

The following command is for cygwin on Windows.Can be customised for Mac OS or Linux

ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -C -f -q -D 7070 username@servername sleep 10 ; "/cygdrive/c/PortableApps/GoogleChromePortable/GoogleChromePortable.exe" \--proxy-server="socks5://localhost:7070" &

<comment><USER4> Probably shouldn't turn off StrictHostKeyChecking. SSH will prompt to confirm the fingerprint if needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ssh has a SOCKS4/5 client/server built in, so why not use it?

       ssh -D [bind_address:]port <server>

<comment><USER6> Not every application supports SOCKS natively. The other options are transparent, with the option of declaring subsets to route over the tunnel.

<comment><USER7> You can configure most systems to use SOCKS everywhere

<comment><USER8> While most systems have a system-level dialog to enter in SOCKS proxy information, it's still typically up to the application to _obey_ that setting, and most outside of web browsers don't.

There are some applications out there (e.g., tsocks) that hook the relevant system calls, but I find them quite annoying to use. (You need still something to trigger them, to say "this connection should be proxied") I've also had issues with proxy applications whose system call hooks fail to implement the system call. (E.g., one would return from connect immediately with success, every time, prior to the connection actually being established. When the connection failed to establish, the send/recv call would fail. The application would immediately loop back to re-establishing the connection. This caused an infinite loop, since the first DNS entry it was encountering was _never_ going to work; it would have skipped it when the connect() call failed, but then, the connect call wasn't failing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another approach is to run a localhost-interface only web proxy on the remote system and ssh -L 127.0.0.1:3128:127.0.0.1:3128 remotehost ... which replicates the remote proxy port on your local system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes... But not all apps are web ;) We should also think about ones using non- HTTP TCP and UDP.

<comment><USER9> Well you can use SOCKS or OpenVPN over SSH quite easy too. However, in my experience these are are less reliable, at least in China for GFW.

<comment><USER10> Why on Earth would you run OpenVPN through ssh? That makes zero sense. It's like running ssh through ssh.

OpenVPN is pretty much the ultimate VPN that can do anything and handle any situation. It is indistinguishable from regular web SSL traffic and can run on _any_ port via TCP or UDP. It can even run in routed (TUN) or promiscuous (TAP) mode!

Once you've got OpenVPN setup there's no need to tunnel with ssh since OpenVPN _is_ your tunnel.

I used to run an OpenVPN ISP named VPNOut many years ago. I had CTOs from large organizations begging me to tell them all the IPs I used so they could block it because apparently employees were using my service to access things that were normally blocked inside their corporate networks. Even to this day that problem exists: If you configure iptables to forward _all_ ports to an OpenVPN daemon on both TCP and UDP you can get around basically any form of blocking that isn't IP-based. You can even do some tricks to make it look like regular web traffic for the initial SSL preamble to get around "intelligent" firewalls!

OpenVPN is the best!

<comment><USER9> I like OpenVPN too. However, there are times when one size doesn't fit all. For example, opening another service to the public is not always a good idea. GFW is programmed to profile and periodically kill OpenVPN traffic flows. OpenVPN under many configurations is MITMable, SSH much less so. The list goes on.

<comment><USER11> OpenSSH and OpenVPN have nearly identical attack vectors with regard to MITM. In a default configuration, both require an upfront exchange of public keys (SSH at time of first-connection; OpenVPN at time of first-configuration).

In fact, because OpenVPN requires the client to obtain the server's certificate ahead of time out of band, and SSH instead relies on the end user typing "yes" after manually comparing a fingerprint, it could be argued OpenVPN is _less_ susceptible to a MITM attack.

edit: Additionally, from past experiences linking up cn-north-1 with us- east-1, individual SSH tunnels fail constantly. individual VPN sessions fail constantly. The only way we were able to make life livable between the two was by way of BGP across a combination of ipsec and openvpn tunnels. (different tunnels, mind you; not layered)

<comment><USER12> They are not identical in attack vectors, and OpenVPN has many more capabilities to resist MITM and other attacks, and it resists network failure much more.

OpenSSH uses the SSH protocol and username/password and public keys for auth.

OpenVPN auth uses TLS key exchange, pre-shared keys, and username/password, and uses IPSec's ESP protocol for transport, with custom work to handle multiplexing connections. It can verify HMAC on all packets. It tunnels layer 2 or 3. It won't swap sensitive memory and can utilize SELinux. Since OpenVPN can use static keys and a UDP transport, it can resist network partition much better than OpenSSH.

Of course IPSec is much better than either of them. If you have to do all your tunneling in userland, OpenVPN is a more secure method, but if you don't have tun/tap device access, OpenSSH will get you by with port forwarding (which is what its SOCKS tunnel is, if you don't use its tun/tap device or pppd).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/ivanilves/xiringuito/issues/42](https://github.com/ivanilves/xiringuito/issues/42)

`sshuttle` & `xiringuito` differences well explained (I hope).</comment>


Could Quantum Computing Be the End of Free Will? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/06/quantum-computing-free-will/564215/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> That thought is literally older than computers. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon)</comment>


Microsoft Has Shelved Its Internet 'Persona' Service (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/technology/11NET.html?pagewanted=print

<comment><USER2> Ahead of its time, and Microsoft was always too stodgy to nail the fun factor in user experience.

Nobody trusted Microsoft then. I was one of many people who refused to create a Hailstorm/Passport account.

(And now I refuse to use Facebook.)</comment>


Tools for building building your game/website/interactive project - <AUTHOR> http://everest-pipkin.com/teaching/tools.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for this list, I only checked a few links but there is a lot of obscure interesting projects !

I was surprised to not see these two game frameworks to the list :

\- Amulet : [http://www.amulet.xyz/](http://www.amulet.xyz/)

\- Script-8 : [https://script-8.github.io/](https://script-8.github.io/)

I particularly like Amulet game demo "Quasar" available with the online editor. I believe both tools deserve more love.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lists like this are the reason Google superseded Yahoo.

It was never hard to find these entries. What's hard is getting an informed opinion on why to choose one option and not another.

<comment><USER2> These entries are hard to find. Each of them has an informative, short description.

This is very useful for people who like to discover and explore new options. Obviously this won't be so useful for those who prefer to be told what they should use and like rather than doing their own research ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> cool list.</comment>


A Love Letter to Concrete - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/love-letter-concrete/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you're interested in tracking down copies of _A Russian Course_ , it appears to still be in print via Slavica Publishers at Indiana University: [https://slavica.indiana.edu/bookListings/textbooks/A_Russian...](https://slavica.indiana.edu/bookListings/textbooks/A_Russian_Course_Part_1)

And the recorded audio material that used to be distributed on tapes with the books can be purchased in MP3 format from Boston University's Geddes Language Center: [http://www.bu.edu/geddes/services/](http://www.bu.edu/geddes/services/)

<comment><USER2> I'd already bought myself a copy. :) Having been learning Russian for a few years, it sounds like an interesting read.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know absolutely no Russian, but reading about this book makes me want to learn it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" has a lot of concrete in it. Love of the tool, acceptance of doing the best job you can, the pains of using concrete in a cold climate. Solzhenitsyn probably knew what he was talking about.

If you are trying to build a new society, the word "build" isn't co- incidental.

</comment><comment><USER4> They talk about Concrete City as if it's satire, but when I read the title, I assumed it would have something to do with Concrete, Washington. A real place, named after the substance, and immortalized in This Boy's Life, by Tobias Wolff.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is a Russian novel, I guess a monument of socialist realism, called _Concrete_. I bought an English translation, but somehow never got up the energy to read it.</comment>


Ask HN: How do early stage startups define their culture or core values? - <AUTHOR> What process to co-founders of early stage startups follow to define their culture? When do you even define core values? How do you avoid fluffy core-values or mission statements? <comment><USER2> The startup I co-founded is about six months old, and our first hire starts on Monday. Core values and our mission have been something my co founder and I have discussed very regularly, and probably comes up in one way or another every week.

We have yet to formally write it down, but if you asked me to talk about our core values I could. Part of the reason why I haven't pushed for us to write it down is that I want it to be an open dialog with our early hires, and make sure it's not just reflective of my cofounder and myself. I'm confident our early team members will contribute diverse thought that will result in a much better expression of what we seek to be and achieve.

As for fluffy core values and mission statements- I think what you're describing is the symptom of when a company defines what they "want" their core value and mission to be, as opposed to what they actually are. I think what makes it fluffy is when employees look at it and sorta have to squint to believe the content. At the end of the day, it's the actions of the people that are the true defining fact of the mission and values. That's not to say that mission statements can't be aspirational, but they need to be grounded in reality.

If I may, what prompted you to ask the question?

<comment><AUTHOR> Firstly, thanks for your detailed insight.

We are trying to hire our first full time employee and it's been challenging for me personally to fully go by our gut feeling when it comes to the culture fit aspect. We don't want to be limited by the biases of the founders. It led me to think about what truly defines us at this stage of the company. Any thoughts on getting clarity about this?

I agree to your point that the true core values will be defined as the company grows.

<comment><USER2> Tush- let's move this to email. My email address is in my profile. Would love to hear from you.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Payment providers for UK startups? - <AUTHOR>

There are a couple of posts on the frontpage right now about people using Stripe, and how great it is etc... Unfortunately, all the hip new providers (such as Stripe, WePay, Dwolla, Samurai) are only available to US customers.
What alternatives are there for a UK startup? Particularly interested in providers which don't appear to be from the late 90s.
In my personal situation, PayPal, Google Checkout, and Amazon Payments are all off the cards due to our business falling outside of their terms and conditions; so those aren't an option even if I wanted to go with them.
Right now I'm investigating MoneyBookers, OKPay, and CharityClear.org, and of course just doing it ourself with a merchant account. <comment><USER2> If you're going outside their terms and conditions I'm guessing that means you're operating in a high-risk sector so your best bet is either to go with a payment provider that specialize in your sector (they'll have risk models that can handle your situation better) or get a merchant account directly (they'll probably ask that you put down a significant deposit to mitigate the risk)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. I've done some asking around and it sounds like a lot of the UK payment provider restrictions are actually due to the merchant provider they use; there's a possibility that I could use any UK provider as long as I negotiate my own merchant account directly with a bank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> SagePay (sagepay.com) is one option, it also integrates with CheddarGetter (cheddargetter.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Without more information this is going to be impossible to answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Impossible? I'm not asking for a personalised quote here, just what options are available to UK startups. I probably clouded the water by mentioning my personal situation, but really I'm just interested in what's out there.

<comment><USER4> Ukash allow gambling and adult. Awkward but legal.

Also if your starting a gambling business then payment providers are the least of your concern. You need to be licensed by the UK gaming body - <http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk>.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm hoping to avoid e-wallet style providers, but thanks for the tip, I'll make a note of them.

And yes, licensing is a problem for another day. The UK's gambling laws are complicated and vague, especially when online businesses come into play (it all seems like an after thought, as always). I think we've got that one covered though.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't say the UK gaming law is vague but it is complicated.

Basically unless you're a charity you'll need to be licensed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not necessarily; and this is what I meant by vague (though yes, complicated is probably a better term).

[http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/gambling_sectors/remote...](http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/gambling_sectors/remote/getting_a_licence- _what_you_ne/do_i_need_a_licence.aspx)

      Do I need a licence if I am based abroad?

      You do not need a licence from us to run a remote gambling service if all of your
      remote gambling equipment is located outside Great Britain.

      If you are based abroad and want to advertise your gambling services in Great
      Britain, you must be based in a whitelisted country or a country mentioned
      in the Gambling Act 2005.

What qualifies as our "gambling equipment"? Our webservers?

That being said, it's still probably a good idea to get a license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FastSpring (fastspring.com) seems pretty decent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes they do. I investigated them too, but sadly we also violate their terms and conditions.

<comment><USER6> Could I ask what it is that you are doing that violates the terms? Just out of curiosity...

<comment><AUTHOR> My app falls into the rather broad category of "gambling, gaming, and adult". This means all US providers (I've seen) aren't interested due to their gambling regulations, and UK providers consider it high risk.

<comment><USER6> So what do your competitors do? I know it's an obvious question... but it's probably also the answer to your problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pay more money than I'm probably willing right now... :)

Seriously though, our competitors seem to do it themselves. Which probably means PCI compliance and a merchant account, then doing all the integration themselves.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommendation engine - <AUTHOR>

is apache solr search the best recommendation engine? <comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to figure out the best recommendation engine available? I am looking at Drupal's Content Recommendation Engine Module and Solr Search for <http://drupal.org/project/cre> <http://drupal.org/project/solr> it depends on the choices that are being made on the interface...and i thought would ask Hacker News their thoughts?

<comment><USER2> oh ok you meant content recommendation engine to provide links to other relevant articles. The ideal use for solr would be as a faceted search engine, though you can use it as a recommendation engine with some hackery. But if you are looking for a plug and play recommendation engine that is built to recommend other relevant articles I guess the first one should be more relevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check out <http://directededge.com> \- an YC startup that provides recommendations as a web service.

</comment><comment><USER2> hi clay, Could you be more specific. Solr is intended to be used as a search engine(faceted) and I think it has the ability to recommend similar documents(not exactly sure if you could do this through the API). Is this what you are looking for???</comment>


The Gift of Fear: Chapter One (1997) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/becker-fear.html <comment><USER2> My mind wasn't particularly open to the idea that I could be a victim (in spite of living amidst Columbine/school shootings, 9/11, and multiple tramautic experiences after coming out of the closet) until something _truly bad_ happened to _me_ \-- I was robbed at gunpoint outside a BART station in San Francisco. I was with my girlfriend at the time, and whether it was or not, it read like a true hate crime. I didn't call the police until the next morning, after we both had time to collect ourselves. In retrospect, I see that it would've been better for everyone to call the police right away, but I was so traumatized I wasn't thinking about that. And, once we filed the report nothing meaningful happened to the perpetrators that I was aware of.

Since then, I have been on high alert to the bad stuff happening around me every single day. I'm getting help, and I'm lucky to be able to afford it, but I probably won't ever be the same. One thing I can't afford is doubting my instincts -- I have learned that doing so will get me burned.

This part of the excerpt struck me: "We don't need to learn about violence, many feel, because the police will handle it, the criminal-justice system will handle it, experts will handle it. Though it touches us all and belongs to us all, and though we each have something profound to contribute to the solution, we have left this critical inquiry to people who tell us that violence cannot be predicted, that risk is a game of odds, and that anxiety is an unavoidable part of life."

<comment><USER3> I certainly don't want to take anything away from what you have shared.

I've been reading Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now, and there are some sections on violence and using crime as an indicator of progress.

Which leads me to wonder, what the phycology of average people were like through history. Presumably everyone in the middle ages had some experience of violence, and would have witnessed awful acts (in the name of good too).

Was everyone suffering inside?

<comment><USER2> Humans are remarkably good at rationalizing away irrational things. There's no doubt we live in a better, safer time now than we ever have. But progress leads to new dangers and threats we didn't think possible.

In my above post, I talk about being a victim of a gender-fueled hate crime. Because that is not normal to me. And it's not very normal for others, either. The violence in the middle ages _could_ have been normalized to the point where it didn't cause as much suffering. That I'm not sure of, but it probably depends on the prevailing religious doctrine of the time.

<comment><USER4> Not attempting to discount your experience, just wondering why you refer to being mugged as a "gender-fueled hate crime"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You don't have to be polite if you are uncomfortable. If the person meant no harm and just wanted to help they'll forget about it by tomorrow. If they did mean harm your assertiveness will most likely cause them to rethink. Like most predators they want an easy victim.

Our instincts have been honed over thousands of years, there's not much to lose in trusting them.

<comment><USER6> I was sexually assaulted a long time ago, and my therapist at the time recommended this book to me. I've re-read it many times.

What you say is a point that the book drives home many times. De Becker says it is better to stay away from a decent person than to allow a malicious person to get close to you. And if the person really is decent, they'll understand your reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Training is your friend. Learn to be on both sides of the fist and stick and gun - what is and is not possible. For some illustration of outcomes, see youtube for "28 foot rule" or "21 foot rule". Learn to see the setup and the ambush, though there are fewer who teach this. One of the best introductory defense programs I've seen, for when push came to shove, was Bay Area Model Mugging (although for women only). There can be a time to step-up/speak-up and defend yourself and friends, a time to hand over the goods, and a time to run like hell. Training goes a long way to replace panic with healtier options. And call the police right away; it might save the next local victim half an hour later.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, most of the training that's available is worse than useless. It's fantastical, unrealistic and informed by neither research nor practical experience. It teaches physical techniques that are demonstrably ineffective, it fails to teach the core mental skills of self defence and it gives a completely false sense of confidence. Bay Area Model Mugging seems to be far more serious than most, but their website copy does seem a little concerning in places.

de Becker's _The Gift of Fear_ is such an important work because it emphasises everything that happens _before_ a violent confrontation. By the time most people realise that they might get hurt, they've already missed a dozen opportunities to recognise the situation and act to protect themselves. It applies not merely to the random acts of violence by strangers that many people fear, but the far more prevalent and insidious forms of violence that develop within relationships of all kinds.

Any meaningful self-defence training _must_ include real fear, real violence and real pain. It must start with the essential skills of situational awareness, threat perception and decision-making under acute stress. It must be rooted in the understanding that skill and technique are nearly always trumped by size and strength, and that most violent confrontations have the possibility of suddenly and unpredictably becoming catastrophic.

<comment><USER9> My old karate club used to and I'm sure still does run self defense courses twice a year, partially as a way to get new members. One of the instructors used to repeat the same mantra at every course, echoing the old master Gichin Funakoshi, that the best defense is always to be somewhere else.

<comment> ryan-allen Our Sifu at Kung Fu when demonstrating the 'best defence' would run as fast as he could out of the kwoon. It got some laughs but he was deadly serious!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ryan-allen The book is available on Kindle Unlimited, which is nice if you have it!

</comment><comment><USER10> Once I was with a friend and a homeless person pointed gun at us and asked us for all our belongings.

Now my friend who has rage issue and is also a football player, kicked so fast and hard at his wrist the gun was nowhere to be seen.

Now, i am neither martial artist nor a football player, i could barely see him kicking but he was ready to punch his face now since the gun was out of the equation.

If it was just me, I would have gave up everything and went home.

<comment><USER11> When somebody points a gun at you and asks for your stuff, giving them anything they want is usually the best decision, no matter how much martial arts you know.</comment></comment>


Payoff Over a Web Singing Sensation Is Elusive - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/business/media/25youtube.html <comment><USER2> It's interesting that the media companies are struggling to monetize her videos while Boyle, herself, should be able to do very very well with worldwide concert tours, personal appearances and, yes, the inevitable book deal and movie-of-the-week.</comment>


Complexity Theory, Game Theory, and Economics - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00734 <comment><USER2> For those interested in the intersection of computer science and economics, I highly recommend the freely available Multiagent Systems: Algorithmic, Game- Theoretic, and Logical Foundations by Yoav Shoham and Kevin Leyton-Brown [1].

[1] [http://www.masfoundations.org/mas.pdf](http://www.masfoundations.org/mas.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Their game theory courses are pretty useful too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice resource. (Applied mathematician that ended up in macroeconomics by way of differential and algorithmic game theory).

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, have you had the opportunity to look into cryptoeconomics?

[https://github.com/jpantunes/awesome- cryptoeconomics](https://github.com/jpantunes/awesome-cryptoeconomics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Using Rock-Paper-Scissors and an AI engine I stumbled across a bit of a flaw in the textbook answer around this game.

The solution is not necessarily that both players will play all three options randomly. It is only necessary for ONE player to play randomly in order to reach an equilibrium. The other player at that point is free to pick any strategy they choose, including playing a single option 100% of the time.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure that's incorrect. I haven't had time to look through the text yet but it sounds like you're confusing the one-shot equilibrium (1/3 probability of playing any one of the three available strategies), each deploying _simultaneously_ , and the iterated game scenario (in which one player could be random, and you argue the other could continually play the same strategy repeatedly, but then the other player would latch on and play the matching countermove, pushing them both back towards randomness).

EDIT: It's not nice to vote people down just because they politely point out you're demonstrably wrong.

<comment><USER6> I haven't down voted anyone.

Setup your own experiment and let me know what you find.

<comment><USER7> Lets do then. Player 1 randomizes (1/3, 1/3, 1/3). Player 2 randomizes (1, 0, 0). Does player 1 want to deviate? Yes! Randomizing is not the best strategy if player 2 is going to be playing the same pure strategy all the time, player 1 would be better off if she were to play the best response to whatever (1, 0, 0) is. -> Not an equilibrium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article says that no background in game theory is assumed. What kind of background is required though?

<comment><USER9> The abstract makes it sound not highly technical. You may be fine with just linear algebra and calculus 1.

Edit- quote from the introduction: "The technical material includes logic, probability theory, game theory, and optimization.[...]the goal has been to gather the most important elements from each discipline and weave them together into a balanced and accurate introduction to this broad field. The intended reader is a graduate student or an advanced undergraduate, prototypically, but not necessarily, in computer science"

<comment><USER8> Thank you. One more reason to learn linear algebra and calculus then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any idea how I can get an ePub or MoBi version of this?

<comment><USER11> If HTML is good enough:

[https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/](https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/)

Arxiv Vanity renders academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages so you don't have to squint at a PDF.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the link, this will prove useful given the amount of Arxiv links on HN.

Doesn't appear to work with this paper, though.</comment></comment></comment>


CodeBox - Fully featured snippet manager for OS X - <AUTHOR> http://www.shpakovski.com/codebox/

<comment><AUTHOR> This app is amazing... You should really watch the introduction video here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSZ_Q97LXH8> \- _So_ many features, and such a killer interface.

It's now on a discount - $5 instead of $12.

(I'm not the author, nor do I know who s/he is)</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone done anything interesting with Email Analytics?  - <AUTHOR>

It feels like there's a great start-up that could simply analyse my email and offer me certain data that would be insightful. For example: Who do I email most without receiving a reply? Who am I worst at responding to? When do I send the majority of my mails etc.
Even if restricted to work with GMail.com this would still be killer.
Anyone know anything in the area? <comment><USER2> Yes, We're interested in this area. We're creating Saasly.com that mines your inbox for invoices/bills from SaaS vendors and presents you with information about how much you're paying for different services.

Here's the link to the original thread: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3901164>

If you're interested in what we're building, sign up at Saasly.com: <http://saasly.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Technically they are not startups, but for for gmail you may want to have a look at Graph Your Inbox ( <http://www.graphyourinbox.com/> ) or Gmail Meter ([http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/know-your-gmail- stats-...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/know-your-gmail-stats-using- gmail-meter.html)).

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm working on something like this. Keep posted for the MVP announcement coming soon.

</comment><comment><USER5> you might wanna try this one - <http://www.graphyourinbox.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys</comment></comment>