Inside Britain's Secretive Bullingdon Club - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-bullingdon-club-and-the-excessive-british-elite-a-1057793.html <comment><USER2> You have to wonder why the Brits keep electing these elites to top positions in the government (it's a little tougher to keep alumnae from being given positions in the corporate world).

Of course, you have to ask the same question about US voters. And in a bit of irony, this topic and another discussion [1] of the government elites in the US vis-a-vis the Lawrence Lessig campaign are in the #2 and #1 spots on the HN front page.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10403507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10403507)

<comment><USER3> > You have to wonder why the Brits keep electing these elites to top positions > in the government (it's a little tougher to keep alumnae from being given > positions in the corporate world).

We don't. We elect a (one) Member of Parliament for the constituency we live in. Following the election, the leader of the largest party attempts to form a government (thereby making them Prime Minister), and they then appoint cabinet ministers.

Most elections end up with people voting in favour of a party, regardless of who the party has nominated to stand in the election, and those viewed as "senior" members of the party are typically asked to stand in safe seats (regardless of where the seat is and whether they have any ties there!).

<comment><USER4> But does not that mean that prime minister must also be a member of parliament, so at least people in one district voted for her or him? It is not the same as whole populace of UK votes directly for Pam, but still.

<comment><USER3> Yes, they must have won one constituency.

In _theory_ , the Prime Minister can be in the House of Lords, though since 1902 this hasn't occurred—in principle, the Prime Minister merely has to be capable of commanding confidence of the House of Commons (i.e., must be able to win any motion of confidence, and to be able to ensure supply). It seems highly unlikely for this to occur in future, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-i-l To see the photo including the current Prime Minister (David Cameron) and the current Mayor of London (Boris Johnson), and the photo including the current Chancellor of the Exchequer (George Osborne) and Nat Rothschild (of the Rothschild family), see for example [0].

But beware, some of the photos appear to have had people airbrushed out[1].

[0] [https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/the- bullingdon...](https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/the-bullingdon- club/)

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2008/oct/26/george- osbo...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2008/oct/26/george-osborne-nat- rothschild)

<comment><USER5> The Bullingdon Club members are a nasty bunch. As Right Honourable Tories they back harsh drug policies all the while denying their youthful indiscretions. Separately two British journalists told me that Osborne was deep into cocaine when they were at Oxford. I don't care about his poor health choices, but the baldfaced hypocrisy is laughable.

<comment> m-i-l That doesn't surprise me. I think there is an element of truth in the cocaine Conservative, champagne Socialist and latte Liberal stereotypes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Stairway to Paradise: Between drags on her cigarette, one student says that > she will be working for Goldman Sachs.

As someone who worked at Goldman and is college-aged, I think this says quite a lot about the piece in general. Working at Goldman is not some kind of prestigious, difficult to obtain position. If you're in investment banking, that's laughable. If you're in the SSG, then that's only more mildly impressive. I did two-weeks in London where a few of the interns were part of the Pitt club at Cambridge (albeit, not quite as storied a group, but Cambridge's version of the Bullingdon Club) and seemed to revel in this prestige despite having decidedly worse placements in every way than myself. Only one of the three members were hired back full-time.

If these kids went to work at interesting hedge funds in Mayfair then I'm inclined to suggest they have some powerful connections. But, by in large, these are 18-21 year olds with all the insecurities and lack of knowledge you'd expect. In the world of finance perhaps this club helps getting you an interview at an investment bank, that's about it. Once you see how these things work you become cognizant of the fact that stories like this are more based in what the members of the clubs want you to believe secretively, or rather a writer would like to suggest is some vast conspiracy to pontificate on his or her moral outrage, then having even the slightest basis in reality.

Now, I would grant that having this kind of network gives opportunities to become more involved in politics (similar to what Cameron himself did) at an early age. That's fair, I suppose, however this notion of these secretive groups, with members who have intellects and connections that the average chap can only dream of ever obtaining is laughable. I'd encourage folks not to be drawn into articles like this, similar to the film The Riot Club, that seek to create heroic tragedies and spark mock outrage. Things are always more dull then they appear and most things aren't intricate conspiracy theories, which unfortunately HN seems to have a predisposition towards chatting about.

<comment><USER7> SSG is only "mildly impressive"? By what metric? Those positions put you squarely in line for mega fund private equity jobs. If thats par for your course, you must be in some pretty rarified air I guess.

The merits of those candidates is debatable, but the prestige of those positions really isn't.

<comment><USER6> Mildly impressive in the spectrum of potential jobs, not just jobs at Goldman. Plenty of folks in the SSG leave to jobs one-off kids go to immediately after undergrad. This, of course, is all a function of your perception of the prestige of buy-side vs. sell-side (more aptly, how rarified does your position in the sell-side now have to be to get into decidedly less rarified fields in the buy-side).

You should also be cognizant of the makeup of the SSG and how it's needing to, unfortunately, evolve. It's far from a homogeneous group. The trading arm has needed to be completely restructured after Volcker came into full effect in July. Trading distressed debt is hard enough when you can take quasi-prop positions, now it's a fundamentally different business and many top traders have fled to the buy-side. I believe the only area that's truly insulated and routinely profitable is MSI, which, yes, I'd be inclined to suggest is a prestigious role. However, that's a small segment of the SSG.

I'd reverse your final sentiment. In my experience, the merits of those in the SSG are usually top notch (just pick the best of the S&T/IB pool), the prestige is debatably if your broaden the discussion. One of the best young members of the SSG just left to go back to school to learn how to code.

Also note that by context for impressiveness in the OP was, for example, to go work at a hedge fund in Mayfair right out of Oxford (perhaps, for example, at Chris Rokos' new fund as he's a maths Oxford alum).

<comment><USER7> Sure, I just wanted to clarify that "mildly impressive" in this context referred to "the relative prestige of that job within the spectrum of potential positions available to high performers and the sons and daughters of the ruling class at a small handful of the most elite universities worldwide." This is quite a bit different than what one would normally associate that phrase with.

<comment><USER6> That's fair. Would say that, in my experience, there wasn't much explicit nepotism at GS. If there was it'd be a case of someone's son getting good freshman/sophomore internships at small private equity shops, which made them a pretty sure merit-based bet getting into GS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Yes, we would sometimes break plates or furniture or whatever, but we tried > to be as polite as we could be to the people whose establishments we were in

Reading about this group is just surreal.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1478131/Oxford- hellra...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1478131/Oxford-hellraisers- politely-trash-a-pub.html)

On this page

[http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/08/10/zionist- brownshirts-...](http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/08/10/zionist-brownshirts- in-the-uk-riots/)

"adeUK" wrote:

adeUK August 11, 2011 at 3:01 am

The Bullingdon Club :- Such a Riot !

Call me Dave Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osbourne were all members of the infamous Bullingdon Club whilst at Oxford. The club is renowned for two things the wealth of its members and getting absolutely blotto and smashing up the property. Apparently this is just high jinks and acceptable if one pays for the damage. Any landlord or restaurateur who wont be bought off and reports this activity to the police is seen as a bad sport.

"Boris Johnson himself was seen fleeing down the highstreet & crawling on his hands and knees through the undergrowth after the window of an upmarket venue was shattered. ….of course back then there was no CCTV & boris Johnson face wasn't plastered all over the internet." [1]

Andrew Gimson, who wrote a biography of Boris Johnson, said about the Bullingdon Club in the 1980s: "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. […] A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging (An act of removal of the trousers) anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men".

In recent years, dinners have been more low key but in 2004 a 15th century pub in Oxfordshire suffered considerable damage during a dinner, and four members were arrested. – BBC.[3]

"A number of episodes over many decades have become anecdotal evidence of the Club's behaviour. Famously, on 12 May 1894[11][12] and again on 20 February 1927,[13] after dinner, Bullingdon members smashed almost all the glass of the lights and 468 windows in Peckwater Quad of Christ Church, along with the blinds and doors of the building. As a result, the Club was banned from meeting within 15 miles of Oxford.[2]

While still Prince of Wales, Edward VIII had a certain amount of difficulty in getting his parents' permission to join the Bullingdon on account of the Club's reputation. He eventually obtained it only on the understanding that he never join in what was then known as a "Bullingdon blind", a euphemistic phrase for an evening of drink and song. On hearing of his eventual attendance at one such evening, Queen Mary sent him a telegram requesting that he remove his name from the Club.[9][14]

Andrew Gimson, biographer of Boris Johnson, reported about the club in the 1980s: "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. […] A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."[15]

Dinners in recent years, being relatively low key, have not attracted press attention, though in 2005, following damage to a 15th century pub in Oxfordshire during a dinner, four members of the party were arrested; the incident was widely reported.[16] A further dinner was reported in 2010 after damage to a country house. [17] [18]

In the last few years the Bullingdon has been mentioned in the debates of the House of Commons in order to draw attention to excessive behaviour across the British class spectrum,[19] and to embarrass those increasingly prominent MPs who are former members of the Bullingdon. These most notably include David Cameron (UK Prime Minister), George Osborne (UK Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Boris Johnson (Mayor of London).[20][21] Hansard records eight references to the Bullingdon between 2001 and 2008.[22] [2]

Photos of the Bullingdon Club Members

[http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/the- bullingdon-...](http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/the-bullingdon- club/)

MUST SEE

An exploration of the shared past at Eton and Oxford of the two most powerful Conservative politicians in Britain: London Mayor Boris Johnson and party leader David Cameron

[http://www.channel4.com/programmes/when-boris-met- dave](http://www.channel4.com/programmes/when-boris-met-dave)

[1] [http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/the-bullingdon- club](http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/the-bullingdon-club) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club) [3] [http://singularinvestor.hubpages.com/hub/The-Bullingdon- Club](http://singularinvestor.hubpages.com/hub/The-Bullingdon-Club) Log in to Reply

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is so special about it?

We are at the verge of a new area of aristocracy. The new aristocrats are building their relationships and are shielding themselves from the plebs -- just the same as in the Roman empire: The "best" people of the world, don't need morals or standards, that belong to the outsiders.

That is also the reason, we need more and more surveillance -- to protect the "best" people from the terrorists -- all people, that oppose this world-order.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting how these aspects are distributed in different cultures. For example in the US, musicians of certain genres (and probably other artists) are expected to act that way. In the 2004 presidential election, frontrunners Bush and Kerry were both from the same elite Yale secret society, where they were trained to be members of the ruling class.

</comment><comment><USER12> Putting his penis in a dead pig's mouth is one of the least objectionable things about Cameron, which says a lot.

(And it's probably not true, even though it was widely reported).

</comment><comment><USER13> At Harvard, there is the Porcelian club. The initiation ritual is equally secretive and elaborate. The club is said to be the third largest land owner in Cambridge (behind Harvard and MIT), and that if you are a member who is not a millionaire by the age of 40, the club will make you one (so that every alum is). Winlekvii were members</comment>


Exploring the new .NET "dotnet" CLI - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExploringTheNewNETDotnetCommandLineInterfaceCLI.aspx <comment><USER2> In case you missed: "dotnet compile --native" is basically like the Go compiler, it statically links all the DLLs and produces a single PXE/ELF executable.

This is the most exciting thing for me in the new dotnet CLI as a person writing Go full-time at Microsoft. Most developers will be able to take advantage of single-binary shipping, they'll just put that in a Docker container and happily run everywhere.

<comment><USER3> If I'm reading the article correctly, that's a 656KB "Hello World" binary. _671,644 bytes_ just to print a single string to standard output and exit? That is smaller than the whole .NET framework, but considering that a real native "Hello World" binary is <1KB, what's the other 655KB doing?

<comment><USER4> While your point is absolutely true, the rule of thumb in those case is that the growing curve in file size is not linear; while the very minimal executable already brings lots of things it doesn't need, adding functionalities make it grow slowly (since a lot is already there).

Not saying this is not an issue (although it isn't really in most fields, except for things like embedded), but that the 656 KB for "Hello World" is because of the "upfront cost" in binary size.

I have spent sometime developing in Delphi years back, and this was even more true with it (simple hello world GUI app was over a megabyte [create new project and compile], complex GUI app was barely above it).

<comment><USER5> Plus embedded environments which have problems with an executable weighing 656KB aren't really a good target for .NET, to start with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm so happy to see arguments specified with "-" and "\--" (UNIX-style) instead of "/" (DOS-style).

The DOS-style CLI arguments used by Microsoft's other command line tools seem like such a stubborn throwback to a long-lost war. "/" won the battle for folder path separators (see: URLs) and "-" won the battle for argument delimiters.

<comment> david-given Fun fact: most MS kernels, including DOS, supported "/" as a path separator. They were just filtered out of the command lines by the argument passing code.

There was a system call which would tell the argument parser that you wanted a different switch character, and if you changed it to, say, "-", then "/" would work. Of course, not everything used the standard argument parser, so if you _did_ change this you ended up in a world of pain because your tools would start behaving inconsistently, but it was theoretically possible.

I've seen references to this code existing as late as XP, but I don't do Windows any more, so can't comment on later versions.

<comment><USER4> In terms of file path, windows seems to always support \\\ or /, both in API or in software like Explorer. That's still true for Windows 10.

That leads to some interesting answers on stackoverflow sometimes about cross compatibility, where the correct answer of "use whatever constant your language has for directory separator" gets down-voted in favor of "use forward slash everywhere".

<comment><USER7> Because it isn't the correct answer.

Many applications assume \ and deal with paths directly, instead of using the Windows APIs for path manipulation.

This means the moment your application gives a / to another application, there is a high probability that it will break, regardless of what the Windows API supports.

Even cmd doesn't handle / properly.

<comment><USER4> I know, you will notice I said above "the correct answer [...] gets down- voted", I was not suggesting using forward slash was the way to go.

You can take it as a side criticism of how things are turning sour on stackoverflow with "popular" being more valuable that "right", I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think the most exciting thing about this is the AOT compilation into a single binary (Go-style), something I've wanted for a long time [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9590213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9590213)

<comment><USER8> Aren't the plans for AOT to work only with WinStore apps?

<comment><USER9> no - they first mentioned plans for cross platform go-style single binary compilation at connect (one of the videos here I believe: [https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Connect- event...](https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Connect-event-2015/)) and I'm pretty sure they've subsequently talked about it in more detail in one of the community standups.

<comment><USER10> What's the difference between a "go-style" binary and any other statically- linked binary?

<comment><USER9> I wrote go-like because I think of C#/.NET and go as somewhat comparable and I'm not aware of any other language in a similar class that produces statically-linked binaries. However I'm pretty ignorant, so would not be surprised if there are many ... examples?

<comment><USER7> Any programming language that has AOT compilation to native code among its implementation choices.

There are plenty to choose from, but if you want a list:

PL/I, Algol, PL/M, Quick Basic, Turbo Basic, Quick Pascal, Turbo Pascal, C, C++, Ada, Eiffel, Haskell, Objective-C, OCaml, Delphi, Oberon, Oberon-2, Component Pascal, Mesa, Modula-2, Modula-2+, Modula-3,...

<comment><USER11> Do all of those support static linking with the default tooling? (That is to say, not just hypothetical support, but actual support)

Jeez.

<comment><USER7> Of course, once upon a time static linking was the only way.

It is dynamic linking that is hard to implement, not the other way around.

<comment><USER11> I KNOW that. I just wanted to know if the native compilers for the languages you mentioned supported static compilation either through a switch or by default, or if it's something that somebody else would have to write.

<comment><USER7> Initially by default, many of them are older than OSes with dynamic linking support.

The ones with compilers that also support dynamic linking, either via a switch or via explicit dynamic modules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > I think folks using and learning .NET should have the same experience as > with Go or Ruby. > Easy Compile and Run > Just "dotnet run" and it compiles > AND executes

As someone who does not follow the .NET landscape that closely can anyone explain why this is a big deal ? Java has been able to do 'javac Hello.java; java Hello' for as long as I can remember. If this was so important why are they getting around to it only now ?

<comment><USER13> If java did the same it would be "java Hello" regardless of whether it was built or not. It would compile _and_ run, or just run if it was already compiled. Not sure why that is a big deal but I do think the separation between jre and sdk in java is mostly a headache. I understand the end user doesn't need all the docs etc., but shipping the compiler with the runtime, why not?

<comment><USER7> It is been done for years by third party JVM vendors, but apparently many are too focused on the OpenJDK.

Also, since Java 8 you can package everything together with the reference JDK, no need for third party tools any longer. This will be improved with the Java 9 modularity and possible AOT compilation in Java 10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dumb question, but if I install this on OS X does it support VB.Net or just C#?

I have a ton of old CLI apps I wrote in VB.Net 10 years or so ago and it would be interesting to port them. Mono's support for VB.Net last I tested was _not good_.

<comment><USER15> This looks like it includes C#, VB.NET, F#, and any other language that targets the CLR (Common Language Runtime, i.e., Microsoft's JVM). edit: Apparently not. Mea culpa!

Also, I don't know how long ago you tried Mono + VB, but especially since MS started collaborating with Mono and offering upstream first-party support (~2 years), support for the IL has been almost production quality. (Now it _is_ production quality - I'm running some of my customer ASP.NET applications which was built around the NHibernate rather than EF/MS SQL on full Linux infrastructure).

Satya is making a ton of bold moves that are basically antithetical compared to the Ballmer-era MS. Visual Studio Code (yet-another-electron-based-editor) and Community, along with the ridiculous amount of open stuff on Github has effectively eliminated the vendor-lock-in stronghold that Microsoft previously had. Residual Office renewals and upgrades on the MS SQL stack will only get them so far. They're going full Docker[1] support on the new Windows Server stack, as well as full .NET support _off_ the Windows stack, which is interesting to say the least. I wonder if we'll start seeing them buying out companies that are traditionally aligned with more-open-sourcey.

A bold move they could make would be buying out Cognitect. Datomic could be a _perfect_ fit for them. Integrate Visual Studio support (e.g. as good as IntelliJ/Cursive) and give CLJS first-party support (let Nolen take a lead spot on the TypeScript team) in VS and it could be a steal at even a few hundred million dollars. The talent (Hickey+Nolen) the developers who they bring over + the perception shift within the dev community + the Datomic itself is likely worth a half a billion to MS.

[1] [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BrainstormingDevelopmentWorkfl...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BrainstormingDevelopmentWorkflowsWithDockerKitematicVirtualBoxAzureASPNETAndVisualStudio.aspx)

<comment><USER16> TypeScript(and even C#) is a huge step backwards compared to Clojure and ClojureScript. Immutability is a clumsy thing in TypeScript whereas it's concise and natural in Clojure and ClojureScript.

I doubt a bright person such as David Nolen would like to work with TypeScript as it is right now.

IMHO of course.

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure a few tens of millions (lets say Nolen has 5% equity? I think give or take a few points, that's about right) for 4 years (generally the buy- out terms for a pair of golden-handcuffs) and the freedom to choose the direction in which TS goes (notice I did say "Lead" \-- his role would have to be essentially Anders or Meijer's level for it to go through I'm sure) would be equally amenable for all parties involved. (I don't think you understand the freedom engineers at that level in MS get, especially post-Ballmer). Immutability sucks in TS? Oh well, here David, take 5-10 SDEs and do whatever you want.

MS gets the Clojure (and maybe more importantly the CLJS userbase), Cognitect gets massive reach (CLJS is subsidized solely by the licensing of Datomic by strict revenue), MS' corporate customers get Datomic. Just going by the direction MS has been in lately ("embrace & extend") under the new anti- Ballmer role, floating an offer of 300-500 million would be beneficial to everyone involved. Let's say there are conservatively 100k Clj(s) users out there right now using Clojure + Sun's JVM. At 300 million that's 3k per active developer acquired right off the bat. You'll lose maybe 10% of the users who live-by-their-Macbook-and-die-by-their-iPhone. Even at 600 million, that's still a cheap price to pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh my god. That is more than promising. That is really really awesome.

Finally Microsoft will put something of that is useful for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER18> I learn a lot from Hanselman, and as someone bridging multiple languages, platforms, and sdks while at MSFT, this is a new one for me.

I'm adding this to my list for potential 20% time project exploration.

Cross platform and cross language have their interesting aspects...

</comment><comment><USER19> C# has had a command line compiler since... forever. Is the big news just --native mode?

<comment><USER20> the --native already exists, it's not a dotnet cli thing

dotnet is a wrapper ( like git command ) for multiple executable, to replace msbuild as project file + build tool and add some new functionalities ( restore nuget packages, etc )

i think the real news is having a dumb project.json (nuget deps,source files,etc) and a xplat tool ( dotnet ) who read this project.json, and can restore packages, compile ( --native too ), publish, packages as another nuget package, etc.

All that xplat and multiple language. c# works, F# got merged last week, other coming next.

Some example commands:

\- `dotnet new` scaffold a new project ( really simple atm )

\- `dotnet restore` read dependencies from the project.json and download nuget packages

\- `dotnet compile` call the csc compiler ( with a wrapper `dotnet-compile- csc` ) with source files, defines, references from project.json, etc

There is a good split of responsabilities, you can call dotnet-compile-csc if you want. dotnet cli bundle the roslyn compiler ( c#, vb ) and f# compiler, so ready to go

for example `dotnet compile`.

dotnet compile read project.json and call ( for c# ) the `dotnet-compile-csc` passing source list, defines, references, etc. dotnet-compile-csc doenst know about project.json, and call csc ( the c# compiler ). if --native, the `dotnet compile` then call a compiler from .net bytecode to native code

It's more like a replacement for msbuild, with a really good command line story, and a common project file ( project.json ) who can be used from visual studio or vs code, or others ide ( it's a json file, dumb )

<comment><USER15> Completely off topic but I think I saw some of your work in the F# repo being merged upstream. Congratulations if I'm not confusing you with someone else!

<comment><USER20> thx

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For those interested in projects like this, would recommend following the development of Xebec, it's a very new project (no code releases yet), but aims to offer a much simpler build system for F# projects:

[http://7sharpnine.com/Xebec/](http://7sharpnine.com/Xebec/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Can anyone clarify - does this support any .NET language (C#, F#, mixed language)? In the 'fabulous' example, I can't see where the source code for "Hello World" actually is.

<comment><USER23> Looks like they have compiler support for only C# (csc), and F# (fsc) right now.

[https://github.com/dotnet/cli/tree/master/src/Microsoft.DotN...](https://github.com/dotnet/cli/tree/master/src/Microsoft.DotNet.Tools.Compiler.Csc)

[https://github.com/dotnet/cli/tree/master/src/Microsoft.DotN...](https://github.com/dotnet/cli/tree/master/src/Microsoft.DotNet.Tools.Compiler.Fsc)

<comment><USER20> dotnet cli is a new project. It use some good ideas from aspnet/dnx like project.json, but it's more easy to work with, less magic, more language agnostic.

c# is used to bootstrap all tools, so it's the first supported language and the default. Nightly, dev build have f# support, but it's a beta ( merged last week, but it's ok ).

f# dotnet cli (the wrapper for f# compiler) is a beta, but moving fast, not much todo. For example the f# support in dotnet new is in a pull request.

The F# compiler built for coreclr ( bundled with dotnet cli, so ready to go ) is working pretty much, some stuff missing ( portable pdb for example ),

f# coreclr is open source [https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp](https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Preach it, brother. That would get this former Microsoftie back to the fold.

</comment><comment><USER25> .Net CLI, so ... powershell?

This looks pretty cool. I wish powershell were slightly easier to set up and use, and that there was a repo for extensions other than "google it and then download".

<comment><USER26> Have you seen the capabilities enabled by the PowerShell Gallery[1] (script and module repository) and the PowerShellGet cmdlets[2] (for interacting with repositories like PowerShell Gallery)? It looks like a useful approach to solving this particular issue.

[1] [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dn807169.aspx](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dn807169.aspx) [2] [https://www.powershellgallery.com/](https://www.powershellgallery.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's a nice idea, and anything that gives .NET developers more power at the command line is going to get a thumbs up from me. But "one command to rule them all" does feels a little broad. To take a ruby/rails/linux equivalent, this is apt-get, ruby, irb, rails and gem all rolled up together.

Perhaps I'm just overly familiar with the unix small tools philosophy.

<comment><USER20> there are multiple executables

the dotnet is like git, so `dotnet compiler` just call `dotnet-compiler`

the first level tools ( dotnet-compile, dotnet-restore ) read the project json ( the only supported project file atm ) and pass argument to second level tools.

for example:

\- dotnet compiler call dotnet-compile

\- dotnet-compile read source files, references, defines from project.json and call dotnet-compile-csc with the source files as arguments.

\- dotnet-compile-csc call csc

\- if --native, another .net bytecode to native tools is called

and csc (csharp compiler) is bundled with the dotnet cli package.</comment></comment>


Use of Comic Sans on Website - <AUTHOR> http://comfortmanagement.com/

<comment><USER2> Correct link? Comic Sans font? The sparse near empty landing page?

<comment><USER3> The landing page is NOT empty! Watch the source, it document.write()s a OBJECT tag with an ActiveX control.

LOLOLOLOLOL. Oh, and LOL.

Edit: Here are the links... looks like Borland stuff to me.

Files BackOffice: 1) <http://comfortmanagement.com/imaginebackoffice.cab> 2) <http://comfortmanagement.com/SRSBck3Inf.cab> 3) <http://comfortmanagement.com/SRSBck3.cab>

Files Cash Register: 1) <http://comfortmanagement.com/SRSCsh3Inf.cab> 2) <http://comfortmanagement.com/imaginecashregister.cab> 3) <http://comfortmanagement.com/SRSCsh3.cab>

2nd edit: here are the nmap-details:

      PORT     STATE  SERVICE       VERSION
      21/tcp   closed ftp
      80/tcp   open   http          Microsoft IIS httpd 6.0
      443/tcp  closed https
      3389/tcp open   microsoft-rdp Microsoft Terminal Service
      Service Info: OS: Windows

3rd edit: Someone actually should email the host. I bet my behind that this server is vulnerable to _multiple_ exploits.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Losing a parent and desire to work - <AUTHOR>

About 3 weeks ago I lost my father suddenly. I've been attempting to deal with his loss day by day. He was truly my best friend and since depression took a hold of me, my only friend. Losing him just about destroyed me but I kept up appearances for the sake of my mother. Of course I realize that the world moves on and so I had to get back to work.
But I just can't. I build websites and webapps and I must also be enthusiastic and creative with technology. But it seems all so trivial to me now. I go to work each day worried that I'll fail to live up to my employer's expectations simply because I've lost all zest for technology.
I suppose I'd like to know if there are other HN'ers that have been through something similar. How long did it take you to get back into the game and be enthusiastic about technology and your job? <comment><USER2> That seriously sucks to hear. I wont say im sorry because i can relate and youve probably heard that enough. Wjat i will say is this. It takes time and everyone is different. I'm only just now getting back into it. Honestly it will take time and your never really be over it what will change is your ability to move through it and have it affect you less. Just keep at it try to do a small thing every day even if you dont want to. It will get easier. If it doesn't you need to see someone I'm not saying jump on the anti depressants I'm saying talking will help and if you've lost your best friend you might not have anyone so get help talk to your doc whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I think I may need to talk to someone.

<comment><USER2> That's ok. I've been there I didn't think it did much at the time but looking back it helped me put everything in perspective and helped me remember the world isn't over.</comment></comment></comment>


South Australia Currently Running on 100% Renewable Energy - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JSchulte01/status/958149310746476544 <comment><AUTHOR> Take a look at: [https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity- Mar...](https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market- NEM/Data-dashboard#nem-dispatch-overview)</comment>


Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing - <AUTHOR> https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solution-for-almost-nothing/84495599980-95473476 <comment><USER3> Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship.

If you want to buy a 4chan pass, you'll find there is no option to pay in EUR or USD. Cryptocurrency only. Is this because 4chan is operating an illegal business? No. It's because they cannot process payments using the traditional means.

Controversial websites get financially censored all the time. Here are a few that come to mind: Kiwi Farms, Wikileaks, Backpage, 8chan, Bitchute, American Renaissance. I'm sure other commentators can chime in with more. Calling blockchains a solution to nothing is pretty offensive to the those who rely on it to pay their expenses without another realistic option.

Not to mention, anonymous cryptocurrencies such as Monero protect both the recipient -and- the sender from financial censorship. I wouldn't want to end up on a public list or have my bank account closed for donating to a controversial person or organization.

And Monero could not provide the excellent privacy that it does without a distributed ledger authenticated by proof of work. When a Monero user spends money, he randomly samples the blockchain until ten dummy transactions can be found and combined with his real transaction in a construct called a ring signature used to obscure the true sender. This only works because the user can secure his own copy of the blockchain. If he had to ask someone else for those dummy transactions, that someone else could use process of elimination to identify the authentic transaction in the user's ring signature.

<comment><USER4> > Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship.

Cash is still better

This argument comes up everytime blockchain are discussed, but I don't believe it is true

I could theoretically pay 4chan using crypto money,but I argue this is not a solution

First of all, it's not the straightforward, very few people on average can do that on their own

It requires a computer with a connection, they are ubiquitous I understand it, but it's still a very hard requirement

But most of all, what do I do with the crypto if the baker doesn't accept them?

I have to change them into a fiat currency valid in my country and I have to do it in my name (or the company name) because it's illegal to do it in some other people name it's also illegal in many countries if you are a company use a third party to shelter the origin of the money (you pay X who then donates to WikiLeaks)

at that point we are back at square one

<comment><USER3> Don't get me wrong. Cash is great. But how do I quickly and securely do a long distance transaction in cash? Do you except people to wait for the postal service to deliver an envelope before they receive whatever they've payed for?

>It requires a computer with a connection, they are ubiquitous I understand it, but it's still a very hard requirement

In your example you are paying 4chan. You already have a computer with an internet connection.

>But most of all, what do I do with the crypto if the baker doesn't accept them?

You could sell the cryptocurrency for cash using localbitcoins. Or you could sell it for a gift card. Or you could anonymize the funds and give them to a trusted party to sell at a KYC exchange. Then the cash is withdrawn from the bank and delivered to your organization. As far as I'm aware, there isn't anything illegal about this.

And of course, you could just spend the cryptocurrency as is if the merchant accepts it.

<comment><USER5> > Do you except people to wait for the postal service to deliver an envelope > before they receive whatever they've payed for?

To be fair, it might be quicker to verify cash payment by mail than a crypto payment.

<comment><USER3> Definitely false. If you're using bitcoin and want to be uber-safe, then you should wait for six 10-minute confirmations. That's an extreme example though. In practice you can spend right after the first confirmation, which can be seconds to minutes for other cryptocurrencies.

<comment><USER5> I think you missed the _joke_ about long verification times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking at all the comments here I have a single response to most of them: I'll call it a solution when it is implemented. You can talk all you want about solutions to some of the (minor) problems addressed here (ignoring the rest of the problems) but unless it is in use then the article's commentary still stands. Unless it has a ton of users, the article's commentary still stands. If you really do believe in block chain, prove us all wrong and implement the changes.

<comment><USER6> Number mobility between Indian telecoms runs on private blockchain. AFAIK it is live and actively used. BC solves a problem there because operating a database for that scale would be very complicated. So every telco has their own copy that get synced via a consensus mechanism and signed transactions

<comment><USER7> > private blockchain

So a database?

> AFAIK it is live and actively used.

Most things people seem to think are running on blockchain tech turn out not to be, so I'd be interested in any evidence here. Nonetheless.

> operating a database for that scale would be very complicated

They're already operating a database, so at most this is an argument that a traditional database tech wouldn't work, except...

...this is only a few billion rows, at most, right? With minimal data? It would totally, totally work. We're at a scale where a copy of "MySQL for dummies" is going to explain everything you need to know here. A moderately large number of people in this thread probably work for companies that have traditional databases that work at a larger scale or with higher demands than this.

<comment><USER8> > Most things people seem to think are running on blockchain tech turn out not > to be, so I'd be interested in any evidence here. Nonetheless.

There's a few such systems in production - in practice, they tend to use a private Ethereum or Hyperledger as a back-end data store, and 100% of the use case for using a blockchain for your private back-end data store is being able to say "blockchain!" in the press release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bitcoin has lots of uses:

\- Getting money out of China. Buy into a mining consortium with yuan, get a fraction of the bitcoins, sell outside China for dollars or euros. You're manufacturing and exporting, which the government of China likes.

\- Extortion. The ransomware extortion business depends on Bitcoin.

\- Drugs. Delivered to your door in a plain wrapper.

<comment><USER10> >\- Drugs. Delivered to your door in a plain wrapper.

What are the transaction costs like on BTC these days? I'm surprised many people still bother with BTC given the enormous costs I've seen.

<comment><USER11> You don't pay in BTC for drugs though. Montero is usually preferred and transactions are much cheaper and private.

<comment><USER12> It's not, the dominant currency on darknet is still Bitcoin. Even Litecoin is more used than Monero. Criminals are stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Blockchain is easy to criticize. Hell, I've done it plenty and I worked in the space full time for a good year and a half. But the problems that they're trying to solve, decentralization, censorship resistance, sound money, true democratic governance, etc. are hard ones to solve. Maybe it turns out that they are inherently unsolvable for the foreseeable future. I think the promise that a solution to some of these problems may exist is what drives curious developers to keep pushing the envelope, because, much like fusion power, if we eventually "get it", it'll change the world. Blockchain innovation is a lot like that. Keep pushing.

<comment><USER14> > But the problems that they're trying to solve, decentralization, censorship > resistance, sound money, true democratic governance, etc.

Noble goals. Still, blockchains are inherently limited to the digital world. No amount of digital freedom or security stops you from being oppressed by an unjust government, or robbed at gunpoint.

Taking Bitcoin as an example, there have been many cases of bitcoins being seized or stolen. The reasons behind these losses were much the same as the reasons people lose fiat currency. Someone with authority came and took it.

Frankly, I don't really understand what there is to "get". You can create a perfect system, but people have to operate within it. That means laws, and it means ceding authority to regulation.

None of this is to say that I am not interested in blockchain tech, and am not open to it as a solution. I just haven't seen a problem solved by it yet. I would be happy to be proven wrong.

<comment><USER15> I'm somewhat of a cautiously optimistic skeptic that finds the blockchain stuff really interesting and potentially important (I've been playing with it since 2010), but not super useful at the moment.

I think these are some of things people think about it:

\- Your country's financial system is unreliable or run by tyrants and the currency is bad. It might be hard to get a stable currency. Moving income into bitcoin could help you (people were doing this in Venezuela).

\- Your country was invaded and crossing the border requires you to interact with corrupt guards that steal anything of value you try and get out. Putting your wealth into a bitcoin wallet can allow you to escape with it intact if you memorize your seed words (there was a story about someone in Ukraine that did this crossing the border patrolled by Russian guards).

\- Bitcoin is deflationary, the coins are limited and scarce, but the currency is divisible. This means they should hold value over time. Fiat currencies are vulnerable to monetary policy of governments, bitcoin is less so. Bitcoin may increase in value in part because other currencies are decreasing in value.

\- Ability to move money more easily than other deflationary assets like gold (which have other problems). Universal currency across different governments that can be converted into local currency.

All of this is primarily just BTC. I think there are other potential interesting things with ability to have an audit log of immutable transactions of a block chain generally. I think some of the other things are cool (urbit is using ethereum for IDs), but a lot of the other things don't seem to have much purpose beyond being cool. Faster transaction times? The strategy Dai uses to stay pegged to 1 USD is neat.

<comment><USER16> > \- Your country's financial system is unreliable or run by tyrants and the > currency is bad. It might be hard to get a stable currency. Moving income > into bitcoin could help you (people were doing this in Venezuela).

You know what unstable governments in the middle of a revolution don't have? Reliable power and internet.

> Your country was invaded and crossing the border requires you to interact > with corrupt guards that steal anything of value you try and get out. > Putting your wealth into a bitcoin wallet can allow you to escape with it > intact if you memorize your seed words (there was a story about someone in > Ukraine that did this crossing the border patrolled by Russian guards).

Sounds like a great way to get rubber hosed to death.

> Bitcoin is deflationary, the coins are limited and scarce, but the currency > is divisible. This means they should hold value over time. Fiat currencies > are vulnerable to monetary policy of governments, bitcoin is less so. > Bitcoin may increase in value in part because other currencies are > decreasing in value.

Deflationary, for consumers, is bad. I am also not convinced bitcoin in nearly divisible enough to actually be world currency. (And that's ignoring the fact that it would need something like 7 orders of magnitude improvement in throughput)

<comment><USER15> > You know what unstable governments in the middle of a revolution don't have? > Reliable power and internet.

It's reliable enough actually (people are currently doing this). You also don't need it up all the time to move value into BTC.

> Sounds like a great way to get rubber hosed to death.

There isn't a way for them to tell that you've done this, and in the case in the Ukraine it allowed him to get out with his wealth intact: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why-b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why- bitcoin-is-a-silent-protest-against-corrupt-governments- everywhere/#188214803542)

> Deflationary, for consumers, is bad. I am also not convinced bitcoin in > nearly divisible enough to actually be world currency. (And that's ignoring > the fact that it would need something like 7 orders of magnitude improvement > in throughput)

I don't think it'll be used for frequent transactions unless they actually can fix the time/throughput issues, but that doesn't mean it's useless. There could potentially be a future where you move BTC to some other currency with faster transaction times in smaller amounts for immediate or frequent use.

Just because a lot of blockchain tech is filled with people running ICO pump and dump scams, speculators, and an enormous amount of bullshit in general doesn't mean there isn't also some cool stuff going on too. There's a lot of nonsense, but there are also some real current applications, and I think, some real future potential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm really surprised by how uneducated most of HN are about blockchain. This means we're still early. Few big things that are coming out of blockchain;

1) ICO - a way to raise money in a distributed manner outside the traditional financial system (think Banks and VCs).

2) Defi - a way to borrow and lend (and much more) outside the traditional financial system. One example, Banks get as much as 16-20% return on your depoiste -- you might see 1% of that. Defi solves that by removing the Bank and you can capture all of that yield. You can lend literally with a click of a button and see returns with every mined block. Take the money back any time you want.

3) Governance - there is a big social benefit if we figure out all the edge cases and the correct implementation. Many benefits in voting, real-world governance, and open source (what to work on next, what gets funding).

4) Many many Comp. Sci. and Cryptology advances; see byzantine general problem, zero-knowledge proof, and many more. Just one example of a company doing lots of research: [https://iohk.io/en/research/library/](https://iohk.io/en/research/library/)

<comment><USER18> What is an ICO really - just a company minting tokens for people that they can exchange for something. They're not using any of the properties of blockchain, and no one is running nodes except for the company itself. They should just sell digital tokens via traditional ecommerce methods - nothing about ICOs depends on or takes advantage of being on a blockchain.

<comment><USER19> They're literally using the blockchain to distribute the tokens.

<comment><USER20> Wrong. They are using blockchain to generate hype. Internally it might as well be an Excel spreadsheet instead of blockchain and it wouldn't make a difference to the end user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Honest question. When someone says the blockchain can be used for anything OTHER than financial transactions, for example - supply chain, health records, etc. what is the actual underlying data that will be stored on the blockchain?

When it comes to a quasi-banking or quasi-wallet system, I find it easy to visualize that the blockchain holds accounts with balances, and there are transactions which move money between accounts. Blockchain's decentralization and write-only properties help because no single entity can make your money disappear, and no entity can rollback a transaction.

What is going on with other use-cases of blockchain? What does a supply-chain system actually store on the blockchain? The SKU list? The price of SKUs? The stock level of each SKU in each warehouse? What?

</comment><comment><USER22> > But isn't it strange that you won all those awards, even though you aren't > actually using the blockchain?

Kinda like all those AI startups that aren't actually using AI.

<comment><USER23> Artificial Artificial Intelligence?

<comment><USER24> We're working on the air for our start up. In the mean time the interns are matching stuff in spread sheets.

<comment><USER25> So your analysis has been created by neural nets?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> An article about blockchain where the thesis is that it doesn't solve any problems and it doesn't even mention Ethereum? This article is extremely poorly researched (maybe on purpose) and reads like clickbait.

<comment><USER27> Could you elaborate on what problems Ethereum has solve? Genuinely curious, as I shared this article's preconceptions.

<comment><USER26> I wrote this below but copying here as it's hard to write a huge comment twice.

That's a long article itself but this might be a good starting point: [https://consensys.net/blockchain-use- cases/](https://consensys.net/blockchain-use-cases/) Consensys is run by an Ethereum co-founder and one of the most prestigious organizations in this space, so that page might seem intimidating but it's good, factual information.

Ethereum allows for the usage of unique and real items in the digital world. Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies. A bit of money is unique and can't be copied and thus is real and useful in ways previously digital information wasn't.

You can own a digital object or digital representation of a real object and use it on the internet. God's Unchained is a collectible card game like Magic the Gathering where the cards are digital, the rare cards are provably rare, and the players can trade the cards on any market out there or even take out loans on their valuable extra rare cards. This concept applies to many things including cars, houses, collectible fashion apparel, and anything else that there needs to be only one of.

DeFi is already re-creating all of the capabilities of the existing financial system but built on neutral and fair rules where no one person or company can arbitrarily change them and you always keep fully control of your assets.

There's too much to write but there is something here and it's worth reading about it with an open mind as it's very likely going to be important in a decade or so.

<comment><USER28> > Money was obvious as it's impossible to have internet money if you can just > ctrl+c and ctrl+v it to make copies.

Ah, yes, that was Amazon's mistake. Accepting Internet money has meant that I've been able to just email them photocopies of the same money over and over. Hahaha, it has been the perfect crime. I hope Amazon never embrances Ethereum and I can keep getting free merchandise forever.

<comment><USER29> I get the joke but you don't send Amazon money, you just tell someone else (after multiple third-parties and fees) to let them take some of the money you store with them.

It's not at all like handing someone some cash, I never "signed up" to my local grocery store and I don't need to login to make a purchase, I can just hand them some cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can we add Graph Databases to the list of things that are kinda cool but with very limited applications too?

<comment><USER31> Facebook's entire backend is built on a graph database.

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/tao- the-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/tao-the-power-of- the-graph/10151525983993920/)

<comment><USER30> Yes. Social networks and categorising artistic output both seems like great uses and then ... very little else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Correspondent is such a huge disappointment.

I contributed to the start because they pitched themselves as 'unbreaking news', instead they're just another weak publication writing bad articles with catchy headlines (of which this is a good example).

Persuasion is everything The Correspondent was supposed to be and isn't: [https://www.persuasion.community/](https://www.persuasion.community/)

If you want to actually learn more about bitcoin, I'm part way through this and it's really good: [https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Cryptocurrency- Technologies-C...](https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Cryptocurrency-Technologies- Comprehensive-Introduction/dp/0691171696/)

</comment><comment><USER32> The 402 response code in HTTP might be a useful thing to "hook up" to Lightning, which itself is useful because of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Having fast micropayments payments running on data requests is useful for a wide variety of cloud applications, including but not limited to data transfer costs and queries to machine learning models, all without the need for "users" on the systems being accessed.

The way I'd put it is that the killer use case for Bitcoin is yet to come, which doesn't make it a solution for nothing, but more like a solution before its time.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402)

<comment><USER12> For a regular user to use Lightning, they would have to run an always-online instance of lnd--a very memory-intensive Go program that also requires a Bitcoin fullnode (300GB) or the experimental Neutrino light node either of which also has to be always-online. The average internet user has never typed a bash command so this is a pipe dream. Or you could have the alternative which is to push people onto centralized Lightning-like (but better, more polished) services run by the likes of JP Morgan. (It's my suspicion that focusing hype on Lightning instead of scaling Bitcoin Core was a way to sabotage it in favor of paid services of a certain company that most Bitcoin developers are employed by but I digress.) Micropayments in general is a bad idea which the market has rejected time and time again. If you really want to do something like that, just do it the same way all billing works, add it up and notify the user with an invoice at the end of the month or year. That could be integrated into browsers without being tied to a specific payment method or forcing payment. I don't even want to imagine how rich hackers would get if every web browser had a code path that transferred real money.

<comment><USER29> I use Lightning with an app on my phone (Eclair) and I don't need an always online node, that's just not how LN is designed. As long as the app can sync once every 2-weeks I'm completely safe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> >And it would be a lot less complicated if you trusted someone to manage your data (a bank, for instance).

It must be nice living somewhere where you can trust banks

</comment><comment><USER34> I would rather believe a word on this by an investor/entrepreneur or a tinkerer like that kid instead of Journalist. Tech journalism is more crappy than blockchain/bitcoin hype market.

</comment><comment><USER35> This article really hits the nail on the head: All these problems blockchain are supposed to solve are problems of coordination. And you don't need blockchain for that, you need buy-in.

<comment><USER36> Very true. We need to show the world how to do that! Got any ideas!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's been a good solution for authentic digital arts! Check out [https://knownorigin.io/](https://knownorigin.io/) [https://superrare.co/](https://superrare.co/) There are also virtual worlds to see the art in [https://www.cryptovoxels.com/](https://www.cryptovoxels.com/)

<comment><USER38> Yay, we can reproduce the worst part of physical art on the internet now... art is interesting because it's art, not because rich people can speculate on it. In an ideal world everyone could have a Monet on their wall. With digital art, that's possible. Why the heck do we want to change that?

<comment><USER39> My experience with Monets is drastically different IRL than digitally. Did not care for Monet until I saw the water lilies museum in France.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> My personal theory is that most of the hype around "Blockchain technology" is simply an aftereffect of the valuation spike Bitcoin went though in 2017/2018\. That was the point were Bitcoin reached the public consciousness and people realized you could make money with it.

To do so you have to convince _others_ to sink their money into the sector, hence all the grandiose proposals, opaque jargon and solutions is search of problems...

</comment><comment><USER41> > I have never heard of a bank simply taking money from someone's account. If > a bank did something like that, they would be hauled into court in no time > and lose their license. Technically it's possible; legally, it's a death > sentence.

 _cough_ Cyprus.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%932013_Cypriot_fina...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%932013_Cypriot_financial_crisis)

</comment><comment><USER42> Millions of citizens from countries that have abusive governments would disagree with this. Its digital gold. In Yugoslavia where I am from originally, gold was banned, and that was the case too in Romania during dictatorship times. People were smuggling gold to preserve their means of survival, and being seen carrying gold would result in one being killed by a firing squad or jailed. BTC doesn't have that problem

<comment><USER43> Can't they just ban you from making connections to known Bitcoin nodes at the network level, or use a Honeypot to detect when you access Bitcoin specific services?

<comment><USER44> No they cannot because it is a decentralized system. Whenever they try people would quickly post tin of material how to access bitcoin over TOR/VPN. And since it is money people do care to learn these things to be able to transact freely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is very straight forward in that the blockchain was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto to solve the Byzantine General's Problem, double-spending, and a decentralized ledger. We can go much deeper into what Bitcoin can do, but all other chains wishing to do other things this guy mentions always were a cheap piggy back on Bitcoin.

I'm here to tell you Bitcoin works, and does not need anything else. Bitcoin is not slow like many folks will tell you all day long, either. Bitcoin does not have high fees, either. Bitcoin is very sound "money," and not a great currency. If someone wishes to transfer money to someone else anywhere in the world, they simply tailor their fee to be low, and they send it for 40-60 cents and understand that it will confirm over the next day. (Yes, the mempool surges during times of heavy use, and yes it may take a little while longer, but just the same, millions of dollars can be sent with no third party for under $1 fee) The time itself for this does not really matter, as this could never be done prior to Bitcoin. Ask those sending money home to the Philippines or folks who are unbanked how many days a wire transfer takes, and how many third parties take a massive chunk in fees. Nobody controls your money in Bitcoin, and nobody takes a fee. (Nobody is taking your money from a BTC fee, the paltry amount is paying into the system to keep the miners mining)

It's nothing else beyond this, and nothing else is needed. Anyone can argue about this endlessly but Bitcoin solved it's problem it was designed for, and all else is just garbage tacked on by other people trying to strike it rich.

I have used Bitcoin regularly since 2011. I have purchased real, legal goods from folks in other countries over forums in escrow that could not be done otherwise without incurring very large fees. I've paid 30 people simultaneously with one multisend transaction, and one fee.

Everything else is irrelevant. Bitcoin is revolutionary. Just Bitcoin. It works and it works very well. You can continue to beat around the bush and apply fetishism all day, and Bitcoin still works the way it was intended.

</comment><comment><USER46> A year ago I might have upvoted the post but after reading like 60% of it it felt very biased and I couldn't finish it. Disclaimer I'm also biased. A few things that I was missing: no mention of smart contracts(?), no mention of inflation and countries/banks that you can't trust your money and transactions doesn't have to take 7minutes-7days. For example in my experience a transaction on the Tron network goes quicker than a debit card transaction. But a valid reason was the massive energy consumption and I hope we will solve that with e.g. fusion energy.

</comment><comment><USER47> Who here is actually using blockchain as a developer?

I'd like to hear from people who have actually created solutions, not speculation about potential use cases or price action.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's the evolution of buzzwords. Back in the day people used buzzwords that were nonspecific enough you could apply them to almost any solution. Synergy, paradigm, leverage, etc. Today's buzzwords have very specific meanings but are flexible enough you can convince people they're the solution to any problem. Blockchain, AI, machine learning, etc.

</comment><comment><USER49> Blockchain is based on Merkle trees and well, merkle trees definitely made their impact via git and other immutable log structures.

Blockchain is cool datastructure as an immutable log with proof work where integrity can be verified in a distributed manner by multiple parties.

It's like quantum computers. Heavily hyped but only useful for a specialized set of problems.

</comment><comment><USER50> Bitcoin has a large (100M+) user base (or at least it seems like it) but I can't think of another blockchain app that has reached that level. Ethereum is more like a framework or platform as I understand it so I don't think it counts in the same way.

Besides bitcoin are there any other blockchain apps that have large user bases?

<comment><USER51> Ethereum has more transactions per week that bitcoin by a large margin. Most new projects are built on Ethereum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Saifedean Ammous writes pretty convincingly how a fixed money supply would be a good thing. I don't know of any other unique benefit. It will be interesting to see how it plays out with nation states and diminishing block rewards. I'm holding a little bit just in case.

<comment><USER39> We had a solution to that problem for thousands of years: gold.

<comment><USER29> Sort of, new gold mines keep showing up and if asteroid mining takes off it's really going to push gold value down by a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Responding to title only: of course, but the things it _is_ a solution for will be world changing.

<comment><USER30> When will they be world changing? I have a client who insists on paying me in crypto and the whole thing is dramatically more expensive and complicated than using TransferWise with a 10,000x increased risk that someone fat fingers something and the money disappears into the ether forever

<comment><USER53> My opinion is that it's like tcp/ip, new plumbing (ethereum). So expect protocols and apps to be built on top of it, similar to HTTP and browsers. You just need one killer app to make all the hype worth it.

That killer app might be elections or possibly decentralized trading of electronic assets like stock ownership.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Blockchain is good for LARPing.

And if you think LARPing is pathetic then that's on you. While you go to your billion dollar church or watch your billion dollar sport or analyse your String theory or do your medieval sword fights in dress-up at castles.

</comment><comment><USER55> Cryptographic stamps on hash chains to understand who made specific entries to a layered & immutable database is super useful. I don't know who needs to hear that as it isn't blockchain, but it borrows the best ideas!

</comment><comment><USER56> I just want to say I'm shocked a community who's supposed to be as technologically adept as HN still "doesn't get it". I have no intention or interest in changing anyone's mind...if you know, you know.

</comment><comment><USER57> Quadratic voting might be useful

[https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html](https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/12/07/quadratic.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Funny how this post went from #1 on the homepage to #22 in a couple of minutes...

</comment><comment><USER58> Blockchain, the solution for getting funding from ignorant investors.

</comment><comment><USER59> Recent and related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24181586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24181586)

</comment><comment><USER60> The block chain is what? An array of objects? The real tech is deciding who gets to push to the array. So, it's just about permissions. How do you know who to trust in a crowd? Assuming the crowd is more trustworthy than a centralized authority. "Power corrupts", yadda yadda, centralized power is certainly corrupting, but so is dark money that can be used for drugs, human trafficking, etc.

I guess it depends which is the larger evil where you come from, the government or the criminals, whether to trust the central or the decentric authority.

</comment><comment><USER44> Surprised to see so much misunderstanding here. "Byzantine fault tolerant consensus" problems have been solved with a trusted party since many many centuries. Entire modern monetary system is based on a trusted party - <USER2> central bank. Blockchain provides a way to remove trusted party out of equation. One can argue that existing system just works, why would you want to change something that works? Answer is simple - it does not work in many countries and trusted parties/authorities abuse their powers, sometimes in a ways that is not so easy to see.

First application of a blockchain is digital money which is free from a central authority. Here is real world scenario that happened in so many places. Your domestic currency is crushing, has lost 30% of it value already and is about to loose another 80%. You want to by US dollars and save what is left but you cannot because government temporary prohibited purchase of a foreign currency. I'm thinking about Russia, Belorussia, Venezuela and many many others.

Political activists get blocked by a banking system all the time. For example in Russia there is a "list of terrorists", people on this list excluded form the banking system. This list probably has some terrorists in it but it also has quite a few activists in it as well. You can go to a protest, grabbed by a police and next day find yourself out of the banking system.

Decentralized money is at least partially a solution to issues arising form an authority abusing it powers as cryptocurrency cannot be blocked so easily. It does not have to be used much, it just has to be around.

Second blockchain application is smart contracts to simplify value transfer. For example shares offerings - when a company sells it shares to a bunch of investors. It often happens outside of an exchange, without IPO (search for Reg-A, Reg-D offerings). In this process a bank holds investor money until offering completes and a "transfer agent" hold stock in the name of an investor after. Bank and transfer agent are there only because of trust issues, someone has to guarantee that investor pays and receives shares. Investor cannot directly hand over cash to a company because it can fail to pay or company can fail to deliver it shares and then they will have to spend time and money in court. Both bank and transfer agent take their commission just because they trusted and licensed to hold value during and after transaction. These commissions are not small, a bank may take few percents for organizing an offering.

Shares can be issued on a blockchain and a smart contract can govern entire value transfer starting from escrow, to enforcing offering conditions and then to transfer of shares and money to counter parties. You can imagine banks might not be happy about loosing their profits but competition in democratic countries slowly but surely drives process in a right direction.

Similar examples arise all the time in international trade, trade clearing, interbank relationships, etc, etc. blockchain is a solution to all of this but maybe we need another financial crisis (when "trusted parties" became not so trusted) to speed up it adoption.

</comment><comment><USER61> There are precisely two legitimately useful applications of the blockchain data structure that have been invented:

1\. Money 2\. Zooko's Triangle

Your prior should be that anything else is some kind of delusion or scam.

<comment><USER62> And the cost of bitcoin has naturally been inflating to the cost of the power needed to do the mining ... so the whole thing looks a lot like a bubble, great if you got in and out early, bad news for everyone else.

<comment><USER63> Are you arguing that price chases hash rate instead of hash rate chasing price?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Been a while since a denialist article appeared here. It is in stark contrasts with governments, nasdaq,banks, people using etc and many others. But hey the right to say computers are worthless is always there

<comment><USER39> And yet you didn't provide a single example contradicting the articles thesis.

<comment><USER64> Again, China usa and eu governments are using it to deploy digital currencies. Nasdaq plans to build the new financial infra on blockchain. What do you need Jesus to come down and tell you it has value as technology?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> According to this article:

Blockchain, big data, cloud computing, AI, and magic are roughly equivalent.

Don't waste your time reading it even if blockchain is weak.

</comment><comment><USER66> As a distributed ledger, that does not require a consolidated authority, it has the potential to have many uses.

Many think blockchain as a synonym for BitCoin and the like, while the central technology seems to be the distributed ledger.

However, with anything distributed, the network is only as good as it's participants. Which means, when thinking long term, it fails to give confidence in the system, because who knows, 20 years from now, will there by any participants in the distributed ledger?

</comment><comment><USER67> Ctrl+F proof of stake. Author didn't do much homework. Just retreading the same criticisms about energy consumption and this-could-just-be-a-postgres-db- hosted-on-cloud-megacorp.

Crypto is a bubble but it's also a space solving difficult problems that will shape how the world transacts. It's volatile because it's difficult and hard to understand, but that doesn't mean there's no value.

</comment><comment><USER68> This article is misinformed. The past two years have seen a Cambrian explosion of apps on ethereum.

financial apps on ethereum \- [https://defipulse.com/](https://defipulse.com/) \- [https://uniswap.info/home](https://uniswap.info/home) \- [https://compound.finance/](https://compound.finance/) \- [https://nexusmutual.io/](https://nexusmutual.io/) \- [https://bloom.co/](https://bloom.co/) \- [https://baseline- protocol.org](https://baseline-protocol.org) \- [https://augur2.eth.link/](https://augur2.eth.link/)

non-financial apps on ethereum \- [https://audius.org/](https://audius.org/) \- [https://ens.domains/](https://ens.domains/) \- [https://decentraland.org/](https://decentraland.org/)

popular newsletter - [https://weekinethereumnews.com/](https://weekinethereumnews.com/)

<comment><USER14> I looked through a few of those, and I struggle to see how those are superior to traditional solutions to the same problems. Care to enlighten me?

<comment><USER69> open source, permissionless, programmable, trustless, unstoppable.

<comment><USER70> open source: not exclusive to blockchain

permissionless: seems to be code for "lets you do things that are illegal"

programmable: not exclusive to blockchain

trustless: also attracts those that are untrustworthy (scammers, etc)

unstoppable: seems to also be code for "lets you do things that are illegal", and im sure the various people who are in prison and/or under investigation for their various blockchain related crimes would disagree with how "unstoppable" it really is

<comment><USER71> So just to be clear illegal does not mean immoral. Lets assume that tomorrow a percentage of nations decided to revoke wealth and confiscate wealth. They could pass laws and make what they are doing legal and evasion of it illegal. While it would be legal for them to do so, it would be immoral as it is basically theft, and one would not be immoral to try to protect the wealth that they have worked for and amassed by illegal activities such as trying to get that wealth out of the country via digital currency before fleeing.

Let's take the Nazi's for example, because they are always the generic personification of an evil government. Had digital currencies existed in that time, it would not have been immoral for the Jews to transitional all of their wealth into digital currencies ahead of trying to flee Germany, though it would have certainly been illegal by German laws against the jews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> This author is way behind the times. Bitcoin is obsolete. Nano (nano.org) is what the author should be looking at as the future of p2p digital currency. Nano transactions are feeless and take under 1 second, fully confirmed. If you send 1 Nano the recipient receives 1 Nano. There is no mining involved so it is green and it is decentralized. These features make microtransactions possible. You could use it to pay a fraction of a sent to stream a song or read an article. Or us it to log in to websites. Npass is doing both. [https://npass.dev/npass](https://npass.dev/npass) Robocash is using Nano to prevent robocalls. [https://www.myrobocash.com/](https://www.myrobocash.com/)

Smart contract coins like Ethereum will have tons of uses, especially for digital goods. You could easily cut escrow.com (and all escrow fees) out of the process of transferring domain names (and other digital goods) with smart contracts if a domain registrar got with the times.

<comment><USER70> I'm not sure a cryptocurrency that has lost ~95% of its value in the past couple years is a good counterexample to this article.

<comment><USER47> Valuation isn't necessarily a measure of utility. Usually it is correlated with hype and marketing.

Most people interested in cryptocurrencies have little to no interest in actual use cases. Investors simply want the price to go up. This is usually criticized as a "greater fool" investment strategy.

The article speaks to this. If there is any value in an cryptocurrency, it is up to the developers to divine it. Investors will eventually find a price equilibrium, but for now the ecosystem seems driven by hype, buzzwords, pozi- dapps and bubbles. NANO doesn't have any of that.</comment></comment></comment>


'Codea'-Created 'Cargo-Bot' Made on the iPad, Hits the App Store - <AUTHOR> http://toucharcade.com/2012/04/23/codea-created-cargo-bot-hits-the-app-store/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Cargo-Bot was developed by Rui Viana using Codea. After creating an initial prototype he spent several months polishing and perfecting his design. The completed Codea project was then imported into the Codea Xcode Template (to be released soon) and published as a native iPad application." -- <http://twolivesleft.com/CargoBot/></comment>


Membase a new NoSQL - <AUTHOR> http://membase.org/

<comment><USER2> "For those familiar with memcached, membase provides on-the-wire protocol compatibility, but adds disk persistence; hierarchical storage management; data replication; live cluster reconfiguration and rebalancing; and secure multi-tenancy with data partitioning. Like memcached, membase is simple, fast and elastic."

I bet a lot of large sites using multiple memcached servers would find this interesting.

<comment><USER3> ... as in, those people who use memcachedb but would like to have something bigger?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The timing for me is interesting as I was just about to start up a cassandra setup here. This might be a better fit for my particular needs if I could get it running. Unfortunately, I'm having a difficult time figuring out where to start. A general getting started guide would be very helpful.

\- The FAQ on membase.org is empty and the wiki does not appear to be populated with much content (i.e. 'Directions for working with the membase source and descriptions of the components in the source will be available soon').

\- The google group does not appear to have significant content besides a 'Where's the ruby driver?' post.

\- My work blocks IRC, so jumping on freenode isn't an option.

\- I tried downloading from the northscale.com site, but for whatever reason I cannot enter the required fields on the download form (in Firefox 3.6.4).

\- I downloaded the source, which is broken out into a number of directories - figuring out what the various subsystems are and what needs to be done is going to take some digging.

<comment><USER5> I offer no counter or dissent to your post. However, apparently, the binaries have not yet been posted. Perhaps once they get that crucial detail finished, things will be clear. It appears they haven't even reached an actual beta stage. It might have been better for them to wait until everything was ready to go before launching the site publicly.

Considering the 'front-end' of membase is memcached code, you should be able to use any library that interfaces with memcached to interface with membase.

Out of curiosity, what drew you towards Cassandra over, say, Riak or MongoDB?

<comment><USER4> MongoDB was ruled out because auto-sharding is still alpha (though it should be out of alpha soon, I'd prefer to wait and see what the community experience is with it first.)

Between Cassandra and Riak, I chose Cassandra because it can run on windows while Riak cannot. I needed it for a data store for some cluster computing work I'm doing, but for various reasons needed my test environment to be windows only. I think I can get rid of that restriction; perhaps benchmarking Riak vs. Cassandra for my particular use case is in order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds a lot like what Redis is doing with Redis Cluster, except this one is already in production.

</comment><comment><USER7> The key/value model embraced by NoSQL databases (Scalaris, Voldemort, Tokyo Cabinet, etc) is the simplest and easiest to implement but inefficient when you are only interested in querying or updating part of a value.

This article ([http://seattleweb.intel- research.net/people/lamarca/pubs/pap...](http://seattleweb.intel- research.net/people/lamarca/pubs/paper-ChaRam.pdf)) coming out of Intel argues that it is also difficult to implement more sophisticated structures on top of a distributed key/value. The author's main point is that a few specialized applications can and have been built on a plain distributed key/value store, but most applications have ended up having to customize the key/value store's internals to achieve their functional or performance goals.

From the little bit I have read about Membase it looks well positioned to bring simple distributed key/values stores to the next level and back into the lime light.

<comment><USER3> I for one like the concept of storing JSON-like data structures and using javascript-based indices on top of that, like you can do with CouchDB or MongoDB. For the greater part, having something where you can store big amorphous blobs is much less useful than something where you can (a) work on a standard format (usable at least from Java and Python) and (b) use some indices to speed up access via selected attributes.

For a project of mine, I've setup something where the frontend (i.e. javascript) munches on some data structures, which are then passed on to the backend (some Python code for business logic and authentification) which sticks them into the database more or less directly. Works really well, although MongoDB still has this "embrace of the exotic stranger" feeling (i.e., you wonder when exactly your database will stop to like you and just crash), whereas CouchDB is just too slow for my purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> if Zynga is already using it behind say Farmville that will give it some cred out of the gate

<comment><USER9> The About page lists "Major Deployments" and seems to indicate that both Farmville and Cafe World are using it, which is impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Had not the time to search through the codebase, but the source include 10 folders, a sysadmin's hell, some with software in C, some with software in C++ and some with python code, one of them is a folder named 'mencached'.

<comment><USER11> I worked on a project that had a directory named "manuel" and contained 8 C files and a file named "make.sh". I always thought it was some guy's private playground and shouldn't be touched. But once I dug into it I discovered a NIH implementation of Docbook + Doxygen + Markdown + grep + strings, and make.sh did what Makefile would have done, use make. And 'manuel' never existed, the French comments alerted me to guess what it really meant: Manual.

<comment><USER12> And of course, "manual" means, "by hand". :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks similar to <http://www.gear6.com/memcached-product/memcached>.

<comment><USER13> Wonder why I got down voted for an informative link to a similar project that I have no involvement with?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> * there are alternatives but the backers give this project one up. * web site needs a significant overhaul. * this was a commercial product, if i am not mistaken, and just recently opened up. * is this forked off memcached or just another NoSQL with memcached compatibility is still a mystery.

<comment><USER14> It's not a fork. We've done a lot of work on memcached to allow it to support multiple backends on the same network interface. Part of membase is a new memcached backend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know what kind of durability Membase offers? One of my ongoing concerns with MongoDB is the lack of single-server durability.

</comment><comment><USER16> That is one ugly mascot.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's unfortunate there are no Windows binaries (well apparently there are no binaries yet period, but I mean they don't plan on binaries until some time out). We could host Linux VMs, but ideally we just run Windows binaries and get rid of the abstraction.

That is the case for a large number of these products. At best offering a terrible Cygwin port. In the Windows world the premiere product right now is the beta of AppFabric, but almost no one uses that and it has an absurd list of dependencies that preclude many uses.

<comment><USER18> Porting software to a completely different culture isn't cheap and there's little incentive for volunteer open source projects to do it. If enough software that you want isn't available on Windows, it's probably cheaper for you to learn Unix.

<comment><USER19> There's plenty of people that want to volunteer porting projects to Windows, there are other hurdles such as Microsoft refusing to ship a C99 compiler, and getting the Windows port accepted into the main repo for the project.

<comment><USER11> Huh? Everyone builds with mingw. We shipped pure win32 desktop and service apps that were compiled with mingw.

The difficulties in porting to Windows are slightly more technical than just the availability of a free C compiler with C99 support, and project management politics.

<comment><USER19> The problem is that MingW is a completely alien environment for the vast majority of C developers on Windows, and Visual Studio is a completely alien environment for POSIX projects.

That way you can't use the majority of Windows C developers, many of whom would love to contribute to open source projects, and who has the knowledge of the technical difficulties of porting to Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The site membase.org seems to be really slow now. Not a good showcase of the technology it's trying to preach.

<comment><USER21> Why would a static, informational web site be using a database?

<comment><USER22> There is an argument in favor of marketing to the perception, though. I am sure he/she is not the only viewer that might assume they are eating their own dog food and using it behind their website. We have countless tales on HN about increasing customer interest by speeding up your site. If you want to talk about how cool your tech is, make sure your website reflects a similar attention to the important details. I think the comment is legitimate for the perspective even if the technological reality is that the slowness is completely unrelated to the database.

Also, given the popularity of CRMs and so forth, it might not be good to assume that the pages are really "static". For all we know, their site is using their database to provide content -- edited by documentation/marketing folks -- to page templates.

<comment><USER23> I agree completely. Rational users would realise that the database has little to no connection to the website's hosting, but are any of us entirely rational? The details always matter.

<comment><USER24> True, but then the rational user might conclude that if you can't manage to have a performant _static_ website you might not be able to handle the complicated stuff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A site to look up DNS records - <AUTHOR> https://dns.google.com/ <comment><USER2> I just discovered [https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/dns- over...](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/dns-over-https) is marked as Last Modified 2016. So it should probably be marked (2016).

For reference, previous HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12609752](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12609752)

</comment><comment><USER2> Bookmarking this.

I do have one request, though, if you don't mind: For the `type` field, would you mind somehow including human-readable form, as well as the numeric value? Either as another key in the same hash (like `type_text`), or by changing `type` into a dictionary with `int` and `text` keys.

Other than that, I have no complaints, and if this becomes a stable service, then I bet people will really love how you can pull this as raw JSON!</comment>


If It's Not on Prod, It Doesn't Count: The Value of Frequent Releases - <AUTHOR> http://bits.shutterstock.com/?p=165

<comment><USER2> While I agree with this in general, "6) You reduce complexity" seems a little bit optomistic. Frequent deployments don't force developers to refactor their code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, that's fair. I meant more that it encourages you not to get carried away with things that don't matter. But you're right, there's still a lot to be said for regular refactoring.</comment></comment>


FBI worried doorbell cameras could tip owners off to police searches - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/31/21408861/fbi-doorbell-camera-police-search-surveillance-warning-document <comment><USER2> FBI should be worried about how the police is infiltrated by white supremacists [1] and their tendency to shoot people for no reason, I'd say that's a much higher security risk.

[1] [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white- supremacists-i...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists- in-law-enforcement)

</comment><comment><USER3> I suspect Ring and other doorbell cameras are making the job of the police far easier on the whole than the little "inconvenience" mentioned in this article.

<comment><USER4> With the access police departments have to ring door bells I'm sure they can remotely turn them off or prevent them from alarming the owners. /s

These things are a privacy nightmare. I'm glad I live in a country where private surveillance of the public is illegal.

<comment><USER5> So only the state has that power? No thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People at the FBI are paid to sit around and write reports on the obvious: cameras on property observe people who encroach upon that property.

Next they will commission a report concluding that door locks hinder no-knock searches.

[http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7047196-Video- Doorbel...](http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7047196-Video- Doorbell.html)

[http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7047194-LES-FBI- Techn...](http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7047194-LES-FBI-Technical- Analysis-Bulletin-Internet-of.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Wait...they wanted warrentless access to these devices to watch us, for our protection and all...but they found out it could work both ways it's a problem?

Shocked, am I...

</comment><comment><USER8> I would think a significant section of people who worry about the FBI knocking, that have normal security cameras.

<comment><USER9> I always wondered why Tony Soprano didn't have surveillance cameras everywhere. His most clever opsec was "stand by this loud machine when talking".

<comment><AUTHOR> So you have cameras on your house. Are you watching them 24/7? No, otherwise you wouldn't be able to do anything else. Systems like Ring and even the software for full camera systems can notify you when they detect something. Great, too late as the coppers are already beating on the door. I'm not sure how effect that is.

<comment><USER10> I mean if you have large sums of money it would be worth it to hire someone to watch cameras, right? Isn't that what security guards do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Better money would be spent on a police informant that could tell you a raid was being planned. Even if you have 24/7 monitored by humans video feeds, by the time the raid was visible in the video feed, they are already there. That's my point</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A node.js tool for adding NPM packages to package.json instantly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jawerty/npm-add

<comment><USER2> just asking. What's th difference between this and npm install --save?

<comment><USER3> Same question. What's the benefit of this vs. --save?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> npm install -S <package></comment>