Ancient Scrolls Blackened by Vesuvius Are Readable at Last - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-scrolls-blackened-vesuvius-are-readable-last-herculaneum-papyri-180953950/ <comment><USER2> Wow this is crazy, they're reading the _rolled_ scrolls, compensating for the layers, curvature, etc. (not to mention the.. you know.. volcano.. damage)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is the announcement from the research team (in French, 2015-01-20), with one more photo and a 3D video of the scroll. (fr) [http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/communique/3871.htm](http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/communique/3871.htm)

The French mainstream media had many articles on this, notably Le Monde, with added pictures, see (fr) [http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2015/01/20/des- papyru...](http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2015/01/20/des-papyrus- antiques-carbonises-dechiffres-a-la-lumiere-des-rayons-x_4559918_1650684.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Data recovery from nearly 2000-year-old damaged media.

I wonder if we'd be as successful with trashed storage devices today, 2000 years from now.

<comment><USER5> I doubt it.

Text on paper is much more redundant medium, and has much smaller information density.

<comment><USER6> I've had this weird theory that generally, the more sophisticated the record keeping technology, the less the shelf-life. If I was to do this writing in clay tablets for instance versus paper versus the fragile digital tech we have now.

If this is true, then the corollary is that given say, some ancient civilization of say 3,500 years ago - perhaps the more sophisticated ones used record keeping technology that would become total dust a mere 2,000 year ago - while the less sophisticated ones have records which have survived.

<comment><USER7> I love reading such old documents specially in what concerns the available technology and ways of society back then.

Regarding your statement, maybe Atlantis was such a case. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Roman scrolls as old as these being extremely rare, this could alter significantly our understanding of ancient texts and their transmission across centuries.

<comment><USER9> I hope they find some works that were mentioned in antiquity but are lost to us now. EG Some of this list: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world)

<comment><USER10> Some of those would be absolutely staggering. Epicureanism and Stoicism, for example, were among the most popular philosophies of the ancient world, but our written record of them is extremely fragmentary relative to what we know was written.

Same goes for drama. Discovering _any_ additional ancient play would be completely staggering. We possess only one complete trilogy (Aeschylus' _Oresteia_ ) and only one complete satyr play -- an important genre, since it may represent a holdover from earlier forms of the worship of Dionysius that led to what we think of as ancient drama.

It's an awfully good time to be a classicist!

<comment><USER9> Whilst googling this topic, I read that there is a missing first book from Homer called Margites. Imagine finding that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is wonderful to read. I really sincerely hope this technology can open up hundreds of more scrolls to be read. It grieves me to think of how much knowledge has been lost due to scribes not getting around to copying texts.

</comment><comment><USER12> If existence is deterministic in a Laplaceanly demonic way, we should be able to unravel etiology more and more effectively as our technology improves. Perhaps this is a harbinger of the possibilities of the forensics of ontology.

<comment><USER13> …and for laypeople?

<comment><USER14> _Laplaceanly demonic_ : see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon). Laplace's demon was a hypothetical being able to see the entire present state of the universe and extrapolate the future from it. (Laplace himself never called it a "demon".)

 _etiology_ : causation; how things got how they are.

 _harbinger_ : forerunner; advance warning. (The etymology is interesting. Originally a harbinger was someone who provides accommodation -- compare the French word "auberge". Then it came to mean someone sent ahead by, e.g., an army to prepare lodgings so that the troops would have somewhere to sleep when they arrived. And then, metaphorically, it came to mean any sort of forerunner.

 _forensics_ : = forensic science, meaning the application of science to answering the sorts of questions that come up in criminal trials. (Same origin as "forum"; in ancient Rome trials took place in the public square.) I think gloriousduke really just means something like "scientific investigation into past events" here.

 _ontology_ : actually means the study of what exists. (I.e., answering questions like "what kinds of things exist?".) I suspect _gloriousduke_ meant something else, perhaps something as mundane as "the study of actual things that exist". In any case, his second sentence doesn't really add anything much to the first.

So I would translate gloriousduke's comment as follows. "If the universe is deterministic, like a big mechanical machine, then with better and better technology we will be able to do better and better at deciphering the past from its present remains: this thing with the scrolls is just the beginning. Also, I know some long words."

(Note that actually determinism isn't quite the issue. What matters is what you might call "backward determinism", where you extrapolate the future from the past. But it looks as if the laws of nature are kinda reversible, so the two are closely related.)

<comment><USER15> Thank you for giving us this splendid translation and analysis! The original comment was not worthy of the attention you lavished on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Heh. And here I am trying to work out how I'll get the data off a stack of 5.4" floppies I just found in my own personal archives. Wish I had access to a particle accelerator and some scientists right now ..

<comment><USER17> I doubt a particle accelerator would be of much use but with some clever scanning using a GMR head from an old harddrive and some analog trickery to amplify the signal and a couple of geared down stepper motors you might be able to build up a picture of the magnetic fields on the floppy without contacting it at all. Those heads are designed to track patterns _much_ smaller than those on a floppy so you should be able to piece together the lines of the scan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is an extraordinary news. History surrounding those scrolls (after unearthed) is as interesting, if not more, than what probably lies in the scrolls themselves.

<comment><USER19> The history surrounding the scrolls is undoubtedly interesting, but I would argue it is much less interesting or valuable than the content of the scrolls themselves.

The reason is that the volume of text from the ancient Greco-Roman world was orders of magnitude larger than the surviving texts. To put it in perspective, the library of Alexandria likely had 500K scrolls [1]. In contrast, the Loeb Classical Library from Harvard (which is generally considered one of the most complete collections of surviving texts) "can all fit in a bookcase or two"[2]. Given that the Loeb texts contain both the original and translations, the volume of surviving texts would fit in even less space if it was only in the original Greek or Latin.

Thus, we can surmise that we have less than 1/2 of 1% of all the works from the Library of Alexandria. Therefore, there is a very good chance that some of the scrolls from the Herculaneum library will be new texts.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria) [2] [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1031](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1031)

<comment><USER18> Of course that possible new discovery would be more interesting, what are the chances though? Since I'm in film/animation backgorund I am rooting for a possible recovery of a lost Sophocles play :)

From what I remember (it's been awhile), wasn't the villa that scrolls were found in not completely unearthed - with a possibility of more scrolls inside? I think, from what I remember, that these 1800 or so were found in a crate (in a part of said villa) people were trying to rescue while Vesuvius was doing its thing, leaving the possibility of more crates or even a full library still buried. Getty, I think, build a replica of that villa in Malibu.

<comment><USER20> Would it help if I started back on my writing career? I mean, the tech world is just so interesting...

(sorry, couldn't help it, it's Friday :) )

<comment><USER18> Sure! Just tone down the incest in further stories about Oedipus and the gang and you're set!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ente – Privacy friendly alternative to Google Photos - <AUTHOR> https://ente.io/ <comment><USER3> Nice product you have here. Is there a free version or any plans for free version? Why do you have to say "unfortunate event of a shutdown" when the project isn't even launched? You can maybe put that under a FAQ (like you've done in the comments) but not like this.

That said, I have signed up and I'm looking forward to your project launches ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Dinakar, thanks for the feedback!

> Is there a free version

Yes, the plan is to give away the first 1GB of storage for free so that users can try out the product before making a commitment.

> unfortunate event of a shut down

My "shut down strategy" was the one of the first questions every prospective user I spoke to asked about, so I felt the need to clarify. I'll figure out a less intrusive way to get this information across. Thanks again for the comment. :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, creator here.

I've been building ente to scratch my own itch, and I'm close to launching a beta program with mobile and web clients.

Posting this here hoping to get some feedback and perhaps even my first few users. :)

<comment><USER4> Are you planning to make money with it?

If so, how?

<comment><AUTHOR> The first 1GB of storage is free. After that I'll be charging users $5/100GB/month.

<comment><USER4> So $60/year. About the retail price of a 2TB external hard disk. Or a 256GB SD card. Or half a dozen 128GB thumb drives.

That's the base case you're up against. It's what all photo hosting sites are up against. But in particular, none of those has a privacy issue. And for anyone who has been around, each is likely to be more reliable than a web based photo solution if history is a guide because the first order economics don't work in the long term.

But history also indicates that anyplace that can store photos online is likely to be used for illegal images such as child pornography and copyright violations. To put it another way, technology is not the critical issue.

Don't misunderstand me, it's cool that you built a system. And there are problems with Google photos. The reason there appears to be an opportunity is because the hard problems are really hard and non-obvious.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> > anyplace that can store photos online is likely to be used for illegal > images

This is a valid point, and I'll have to figure out a way to craft my T&C such that I'm not held accountable for the decrypted data.

As for the rest, as someone who is okay with paying for convenience and bells and whistles, while I understand your view point, it's hard for me to relate to it. I can only hope for there to be more like me.

But I'm grateful to you for taking the time out to share your feedback. Thank you.

<comment><USER4> The hosting issue is a matter of criminal law. Terms and conditions don't matter in that space. They can't transfer responsibility for breaking the law.

So the unit economics have to cover the costs of dealing with the legal liability. And just for giggles, if you're making money from hosting illegal content, law enforcement is more likely to pay attention and act with greater force. There's no low hanging fruit at any kind of scale. If 0.01% of people are bad actors, it's even money there's one in the first 5000 accounts - <USER2> only if the account holders are randomly distributed among all people. But bad actors are motivated and the cost setting up a free account is asymmetric to the whackamole effort thwarting them.

Again good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any recommendations for how I could work around this?

One thing I could do is to not offer free storage at all, but that would be unfair to the rest.

Another option is to not enable encryption within the free storage tier and to depend on scripts to identify and block accounts uploading illegal content.

But with these approaches I'd be discouraging only those actors who are unwilling to submit their card details.

I took a look at Mega's terms[1] and their stance is similar to what I earlier proposed. Also, they seem to be thriving by simply being responsive to takedown requests.

Again, I'm curious to know if you think there are more elegant ways to handle this problem.

Thanks!

[1]: [https://mega.nz/terms](https://mega.nz/terms)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Takes up a serious privacy issue which isn't getting surfaced for google photos given its free. There has to be something shady happening behind the scene with google photos data given its offering such expensive cloud storage unlimited free.

1\. Any reason for the storage pricing to be significantly more expensive than other cloud storage providers like drive, onedrive? 2\. How do you plan to support sharing if the data is encrypted using the user password generated key ?

<comment><AUTHOR> > There has to be something shady happening behind the scene

Haha, I believe so too.

> more expensive

Not owning data centers definitely is one reason. But I believe that I'm cheaper when compared to other alternatives[1] that are attempting to solve the same problem.

> sharing

When you attempt to share a file, the file-password is encrypted with a freshly generated key, sent to the server, and this key is then shared via public key cryptography (or within a URL fragment in case of a public-share).

[1]: [https://crypt.ee](https://crypt.ee)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you plan to introduce family plans? Also, in the case of shared albums, who will bear the cost of storage?

<comment><AUTHOR> > family plans?

In the MVP, no. But eventually, yes.

> shared albums, who will bear the cost of storage?

Users who own the photos within the album will.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best hosting service for personal use? - <AUTHOR>

I'm tired of GoDaddy's politics, lack of respect towards their customers, their never ending up-selling, and their (non)designed user interfaces.
Could we build a list of alternatives that are Hacker News YC in spirit?
Edit: And from reading a recent PG comment, GoDaddy is not even owned by a tech company, they are owned by KKR. All the more reason for me to leave. <comment><USER2> Domains, dns:

<http://Namecheap.com> * <http://Nearlyfreespeech.net> (hosting too)

Hosting, DNS, PostgreSQL:

<http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/zerigo_dns>

VPS Hosting:

<http://linode.com> * <http://intoVPS.com> * <https://securedragon.net/>

</comment><comment><USER3> That's like asking "what is the best car for driving". There are so many answers. Here are mine...

Hostgator - $10 a month or less, 'unlimited' everything, SSH access. This is super-cheap hosting and for the most part you get what you pay for, but in general the tech support has been outstanding, for me at least.

Amazon AWS... you really can't beat the learning value of booting up an EC2 instance and configuring your own server from scratch. Same goes for linode.

Don't rule out a cheap laptop loaded with Linux, and a business internet connection. It's not exactly a cheap solution, but it's great for learning, plus you have a dedicated physical server that you can do _anything_ you want with.

Just, whatever you do, don't buy your domain names at the same place you get your hosting!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips!

>>Just, whatever you do, don't buy your domain names at the same place you get your hosting!!!

Why is this?

<comment><USER3> Because,if you have a dispute with them its easy to move your hosting, but they can make it as hard as they want to.move your domain name, which is essentially your identity. If you got the domain name for "free" with your hosting, you might not.even own it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have recently switched to uberspace.de (German based, and German speaking website). But, in my opinion, it really is the best service, if you have a slight technical understanding, when it comes to servers.

having my own full ssh capabilities, cronjobs, php, python, ruby, et al support, databases, being able to make my own spam-filter, et al, is just great.

the price? the price is, what you want to pay. it is a minimum of 1 euro/month for space and 0,50Euro per month and domain. moving a domain cost 5 euro once.

you can pay more, if you are happy with these guys (and a lot of people do), but that iss the minimum.

</comment><comment><USER5> VPS and Root server <http://www.hetzner.de>

also <http://www.intovps.com> \- but it very seldom is working slow

</comment><comment><USER6> Webfaction (<http://www.webfaction.com>) is a pretty good hosting company. They're developer-focused as you can pretty much use whatever stack you want (and if it's not on their list there's probably a way to get it to work anyways, they'll work with you). They have great service and, at least in my opinion, are one of the most hacker-friendly hosting companies out there (at least for personal use).

</comment><comment><USER7> Get a VPS (<http://www.linode.com>). It's worth it as a learning experience if you don't already know how to manage a server, and you suddenly realize that all the "features" of shared hosting plans (how many domains you can host, how many mailboxes you get, what languages are supported, etc) are entirely artificial limits.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you are looking for a cheap shared hosting service, I've used Bluehost for years and would recommend them. Alternatively, Amazon Web Services offer a free micro instance for 1 year for new accounts. It's a bit limiting but good enough for small stuff until you need to scale out.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have been using Dreamhost for years and I am very happy. And it is against SOPA [http://blog.dreamhost.com/2011/11/22/dont-drop-the-soap- drop...](http://blog.dreamhost.com/2011/11/22/dont-drop-the-soap-drop-sopa/)

<comment><USER10> I can second this. Especially if you get a coupon/referral code. I'm in the process of moving the last of my stuff to Linode but I never had any problems with Dreamhost and the one time I needed support, they were quick and _helpful_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://rackspace.com>

Using them now after switching from mediatemple. They seem pretty decent, their support is great, 24/7 live chat support.

<comment><USER3> If you use rackspace, make sure to call up a sales person and make a deal... you should never pay the list price for Rackspace servers.</comment></comment>


Custom business cards at LEGO - <AUTHOR> http://positivesharing.com/2009/02/coolest-business-card-ever/

<comment><USER2> Here's a picture of the CEO, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, and his business card <http://borsen.dk/light/nyhed/138424/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Jeffrey Gitomer talked about his "business coin" (literally a coin instead of a card) in one of his books. With the advent of products like Evernote, the fact that your card doesn't "file" nicely is no longer an issue.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> (ok, does not pass the "really interesting" test, but how cool is that)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use Bitcoins backed by the US Treasury? - <AUTHOR>

I am wondering, it is possible for the US Treasury to start a Bitcoin Network using an Alternative Chain [1]?<p>If they could and they backed each of their Bitcoins with the full faith and credit of one dollar, would you buy them?<p>[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_chain#Handling_your_new_block_chain <comment><USER2> Wouldn't the US Treasury backing them kind of take away from the decentralized nature? Obviously it wouldn't be printing more money, but I appreciate how it operates outside of a government.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be really nice to send a dollar to a friend quickly and without any fee. Like cash, but electronic.

The current banking system has a built-in interest in preventing the existence of this kind of currency, so this kind of change would have to be propelled by government. It isn't likely that the Bitcoin community would be excited, but the rest of us would be.

Of course, they can't get healthcare.gov to work, so...

</comment><comment><USER4> They wouldn't need to start their own chain. The treasury can simply declare that they will always buy Bitcoins at $1.

<comment><USER5> Another question to ask is if such a government backed system is deflationary like Bitcoin, of if they would engineer it so that can still perform quantitative easing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most attractive feature of bitcoins is that they are NOT associated with the US Govt. (Or any other.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Why would these bitcoins be better? What would they be protecting you from?

<comment><USER3> The would be protecting you from the volatility of the price of Bitcoin.

I propose that the value of the Fed's eDollar would be tied to the value of a paper dollar. This isn't a "mined coin", rather the Fed would issue eDollars the way it issues paper dollars.</comment></comment>


Google kept the US Government unaware of the Heartbleed bug - <AUTHOR> http://www.talkfolks.com/google-kept-the-us-government-unaware-of-the-heartbleed-bug/ <comment><USER2> It seems like the NSA revelations have created a situation where it doesn't make sense for a large private company to go to the government to solve a security problem since the state made it's intentions to use security flaws to its benefit.

The cops have announced they are also criminals "when necessary". This situation may be inevitable given "real politics" but these inevitable occurrences seem problematic still.

</comment><comment><USER3> > revealed publicly on April 9th

It was the 7th of April: [https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt](https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt)</comment>


Falsely accused student of Boston attacks confirmed dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22297568

<comment><USER2> This is pretty slanted. The man had been missing for over a month and had to be identified with dental records. Obviously he was dead long before getting accused. There's no need to make this more than it is.

That said, Reddit did overstep its bounds but lets not continue this trend of false accusations and blame reddit for this.

</comment><comment><USER3> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5608190>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5609264>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5609976>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5610260>

</comment><comment><USER4> Went missing two weeks before the attacks...

</comment><comment><USER5> Heartbreaking story. Law enforcement may very well be the worst form of justice, except for all of the rest...

</comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully next time a bunch of redditors decide to 'help' the authorities it'll get shut down before there is damage.

What a waste and what a pity. Makes you wonder what the liabilities are here, I sincerely doubt an apology will be enough to cover the damage.

<comment><USER3> I believe he went missing and was almost certainly dead before the bombings. I suspect the reddit witch-hunt had nothing to do with his death, although something to do with how his family feels now.

<comment><USER7> > I believe he went missing and was almost certainly dead before the bombings.

I haven't been following the story that closely, but I'm amazed that this is the first time I'd heard that reddit likely had nothing to do with his disappearance. From what I've skim-read, the story was "reddit wrongly accuses guy, guy goes missing, now he's dead. Nice job reddit".

PS: I will reply to your email one day really I will.

<comment><USER8> His public identity for the preceding month or so was "missing Brown University student". It was all over the alumni and university networks on Facebook and other places.

He got more famous once he was erroneously accused of being the second bomber due to a faint resemblance, but by that time he was probably already dead.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Crackas with Attitude': NC hackers arrested in international plot aimed at CIA - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsobserver.com/news/technology/article100594842.html <comment><USER2> This is, of course, totally OT, but D3F4ULT is a pretty sweet nickname. I wish I had thought of that... ;-)</comment>


How Google enlisted congressmen it bankrolled to fight $6bn EU antitrust case - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/17/google-lobbyists-congress-antitrust-brussels-eu <comment><USER2> Title should be "Google bribed US congressmen to fight EU antitrust case which could hurt their profits."

Google is one of the most powerful companies in the world. We need a system for holding them accountable when they intentionally corrupt our political apparatus for their own benefit.

Surely there must be some Google employees here-- how can you consent to complicity in this socially harmful activity by your employer?

<comment><USER3> Google employees, from my experience, live in an incredible state of cognitive dissonance. The way Google markets itself to it's employees is even better than the way it markets itself to the public.

<comment><USER2> Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER3> One of the things expressed to me by a Googler was that when something cool or new came out, he would think "I hope Google does something like that so I can use it". Similarly, I've watched Googlers suddenly get excited about putting a new product in their home once Google has acquired it (like Dropcam). The device wasn't substantially better (or at all different) after the acquisition, but it's status as a Google product made it worthwhile.

A couple months ago, a Googler on Twitter stated that all serialization protocols that aren't Protobufs are 'considered harmful'. The Googler stated that Cap'n Proto was included in that, because it wasn't made by Google; the funny part, is that Protobufs v2 and Cap'n Proto are authored by the same person, but he since left Google. [https://twitter.com/evankroske/status/656303486175350784](https://twitter.com/evankroske/status/656303486175350784)

There seems to be an expressly distinct attitude at Google about things made by Google compared to things not made by Google which extends beyond pride or common sense. It's likely partially driving why Google often announces new 'standards' led by them, rather than contributing to existing standards not owned by them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How quaint the EU is compared to the US: "Lobbying" in EU means giving money to institutions that write position papers & free sandwiches for politicians; "lobbying" in the US means bribing sitting politicians outright with benjamins.

<comment><USER3> All of the Congresspeople mentioned in this article have received HEAVY contributions from Google. Anna Eshoo receives a huge amount of money from Google every single term. She basically receives above full-time minimum wage every year from them, she should probably be called a Google employee.

<comment><USER4> If she were an employee, she would have a salary. What she has is a bribe.

Those bribes are much higher than what you say, though, as they are structured in a way that is not even publicly available, what with PACs, board membership for household members, info for insider trading, future job offers, "speaker fees"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've actually been talking about these Congresspeople and the letters they've been writing for months. It's nice to see confirmation that I'm not the only one who finds it suspect.</comment>


How to Hide your Email Address on Web Pages - <AUTHOR> http://www.labnol.org/internet/hide-email-address-web-pages/28364/ <comment><USER2> I use my own function to character encode all the letters except the @ sign and split it into multiple writelns via JavaScript. It has a NOSCRIPT fallback as well (email AT address DOT com) which is also character encoded. The combination has worked well on client sites with clean email addresses. My own personal email address was in the clear for years and still is on other sites, so that one is a bit hopeless.

My Obfuscate Mailto function is available for direct use on my site as well as a PHP and ASP function for plugging in to other sites: [http://johnhaller.com/useful-stuff/obfuscate- mailto](http://johnhaller.com/useful-stuff/obfuscate-mailto)

You can view the result by plugging an email in to that form or by viewing the source on my contact page: [http://johnhaller.com/contact](http://johnhaller.com/contact)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is spam from address-scraping bots still a problem? I get why people did it before there was spam filtering, but these days, who cares?

<comment><USER4> No it isn't. It it still possible to quickly add an address to the spam pile by putting it on a web page. And I've done that to provide honeypot addresses which let me dump all email from senders to any address that also goes to the honeypot address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The reality is, spambots will get through it eventually no matter what, and you will only end up increasingly inconveniencing your visitors. (How pissed would you be if you copied an email address somewhere and it appeared in reverse?) With email being what it is today, it's up to the receiving end to have good anti-spam software running.

</comment><comment><USER6> Make sure to read "Nine ways to obfuscate e-mail addresses compared" as it tells which technique is most effective

[http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to- obfus...](http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to-obfuscate-e- mail-addresses-compared/)

Ultimately, obfuscating your email address might be futile

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/dec/21/keeping- em...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/dec/21/keeping-email- address-secret-spambots)

<comment><USER7> Considering this experiment was started in 2006 and the results published in 2008, I imagine most bots or newer bots have been configured to handle these.

Anyone interested in starting a new experiment? I guess I will. It might get me on the front page of HN in 1 to 2 yeras!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me, email address obfuscation seems like one of those things that everyone does because everyone else is doing it. However, I've had my email address public and unobfuscated for years and I get very minimal amounts of spam, largely thanks to Gmail's wonderful spam filter.

<comment><USER9> Well you probably get shit-tons of spam addressed to you, though it might not make it all the way to your inbox proper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unicode may help a bit too: ﹫@ != @

The one that spammers haven't figured out yet is: "My name is Bob and you can email me at this domain." (anywhere in a page under bob.com).

<comment><USER11> You can do that without needing it to be such an easy address - for example, you can contact me using my gmail.com address which is corin.c.cole

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have had my email address available on a web page, with only minor obfuscation (escaping characters, sometimes in different encoding schemes) for over a decade. I don't get a lot of spam on that address.

I doubt there's any economic incentive for an email-harvester to solve the problem of even trivial obfuscation. These days you can buy tens of thousands of email addresses for a small amount of money. These are harvested from e-commerce and social media, and are much more likely to be real and current, and the targets more unsophisticated about clicking on ads.

EDIT: Actually there is an incentive; when the algorithm is applied on behalf of many naive users. So maybe the built-in algorithm in WordPress is actually more targetable than something you make up yourself. This isn't crypto; it's just obfuscation, so being original may help.

</comment><comment><USER13> I typically have a form on the site do the emailing directly. Here is a plugin I wrote for Wordpress to do this, which is basically just a mailer with a CSRF token: [http://wordpress.org/plugins/plainmail/](http://wordpress.org/plugins/plainmail/)

The best solution to me is to simply never have an email address visible on your site anywhere.

... and yes, before someone points it out, having a _form_ on your site is just as much of an issue potentially.

<comment><USER14> It's the best if you never want to hear from me.

I have my mail software set up so that I can comfortably write emails, match and track responses, and all that. If you want me to use your mailer instead, I'll probably just forget about it.

<comment><USER13> Admittedly, that is another drawback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> All of these are interesting, but ultimately fall down on the same point: spam "bots" harvesting emails aren't always programs anymore. One could write a pretty straightforward program that grabs all the bits of webpages that look email-like (techniques like these would make them EASIER to ID) and then gets them read by people with a Mechanical Turk-style process.

</comment><comment><USER16> My technique was to use a "+spam" suffix on my email user with the idea that when the spambots got it, I'd just ban that address and change the web site to use "+spam1". That was over 10 years ago and I've never once gotten spam to that address. Turns out spambots aren't a problem any more after all.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always been a fan of codeigniter's 'safe_mailto' function.

See here: [https://github.com/EllisLab/CodeIgniter/blob/develop/system/...](https://github.com/EllisLab/CodeIgniter/blob/develop/system/helpers/url_helper.php#L260)

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember reading an article that tried several methods on publicly email addresses and tallied how each one got spam. Turns out ROT13 was the best. I use this tool: [http://rot13.florianbersier.com/](http://rot13.florianbersier.com/) So far so great.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord You can also simply display the address as an image. I don't know how many spambots actively crawl and apply OCR to general images, rather than just specifically programmed CAPTCHA procedures.

<comment><USER14> That's a good idea especially if you want to prevent visually impaired people from being able to communicate with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Clever trick. However, the bots will eventually catch on.

</comment><comment><USER20> You can also use [http://boun.cr](http://boun.cr) it's like bit.ly for email addresses.

</comment><comment><USER21> or just use scr.im [¹], originally developed by Ozh [²].

[1] [http://scr.im](http://scr.im)

[2] [http://ozh.org](http://ozh.org)</comment>


When PC Still Means 'Punch Card' (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/technology/circuits/07CARD.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> The prominent free command line antenna simulator software still follows a punch card data input. It is in a text file, and there are some GUI apps too, though.</comment>


Microsoft Surface Team Dances Around Resolution vs. iPad - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/10/16/microsoft-surface-team-dances-around-questions-about-screen-resolution-vs-ipad-in-reddit-ama/ <comment><AUTHOR> Did "Stevie" actually type in his response during the AMA or just cut-and- paste it in from prepared material?</comment>


I keep typing "www.hackernews.com" - <AUTHOR>

Since I visit this site like 5 times a day, that's a lot of wasteful typing.  I know I am not alone. What solution did you find for this problem? <comment><USER2> You appear to be asking:

"I am unable to remember the address of a website I visit five times per day. How can I fix this problem?"

You have three options:

) Remember the address of the site. Or just remember that it begins with 'n' and, as Stratoscope says, Chrome will do the rest

) Set up a local DNS server so that www.hackernews.com -> news.ycombinator.com

) Ask pg to buy hackernews.com

I would strongly recommend the first option.

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't happen to me, but assuming you will never want to go to "www.hackernews.com" and that you will be able to update this record when/if the hn IP changes:

sudo bash -c 'echo "126.96.36.199 www.hackernews.com" >> /etc/hosts'

</comment><comment><USER4> I type "n" and Enter. Chrome does the rest.

<comment><USER5> Did you mean "hn"?

<comment><USER6> No. "n" would trigger autocomplete (for "news.yco...") from Chrome's history and since everyone spends hours per day "being busy" here, it would pop up first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Assuming you want to visit the site, why not:

(a) Have a bookmark?

(b) Have a clickable icon?

(c) Just leave the browser window open?

Another solution is to stop visiting. Then you save both the typing time, and the reading time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Make news.ycombinator.com your homepage on your favourite browser. When you start it up, it magically appears :-)

OR

Firefox 14 and Chrome (ever since I remember) have a feature that when open a new tab, it shows a screen snippet or capture of your most frequent visited sites. You just have to click on that snippet.

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://hekkernieuws.nl/> for the Dutchies :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I like to get in here through the URL 'hackerne.ws'. It's shorter and easier to remember than 'news.ycombinator.com'.</comment>


The Growth Surprise in Apple Retail - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2011/10/21/the-surprising-growth-in-apple-retail/

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure I really agreed with the last statement in the article--

"If this cause for this growth in retail is to be believed, then how hard can it be to forecast retail growth in the future?"

\-- since there are a number of confounding effects that could otherwise dampen apple's growth prospects this year, but I do agree that the 4S will have significant revenue effects this quarter and AAPL will continue to shine.</comment>


Why are there no animals with three legs? - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-10-animals-legs.html <comment><USER2> "Almost all animals are bilateral," he said. The code for having two sides to everything seems to have got embedded in our DNA very early in the evolution of life—perhaps before appendages like legs, fins or flippers even evolved. Once that trait for bilateral symmetry was baked in, it was hard to change."

What about starfish and other echinoderms? They may not have exactly three limbs, but they aren't bilaterally symmetrical, and they are animals.

<comment><USER3> You've misunderstood what bilateral means, it doesn't mean "two of each", it roughly means that there exists a point at which you could bisect the animal with a mirror and "see" the hidden side.

So e.g. humans are bilateral even though we only have one nose, mouth, anus, penis etc, because if you mirror half of a human bisected down the middle you "see" the other side.

The same can apply for animals that have an odd number of appendages such as starfish and other echinoderms.

<comment><USER4> If that's the definition of bilateral, the article title makes no sense as this property wouldn't preclude animals having three legs. So the definition intended in the article must be narrower.

<comment><USER3> Neither the article nor the paper makes that claim about bilateral symmetry. From the abstract of the paper:

"As is reviewed here, the strongest constraint on the evolution of a triped is phylogenetic: namely, the early genetic adoption of a bilaterally symmetrical body plan occurring before the advent of limbs. Presumably, this would greatly constrain any three‐legged animal from ever evolving."

In other words, an animal can have an odd number of legs and be bilateral, but due to how animals grow and develop it's less likely to evolve than an even number of legs.

<comment><USER4> From the article:

> why are there no animals with three legs? That might go back a long, long > way, Thomson said.

> "Almost all animals are bilateral," he said. _The code for having two sides_ > to everything seems to have got embedded in our DNA very early in the > evolution of life—perhaps before appendages like legs, fins or flippers even > evolved. Once _that trait for bilateral symmetry_ was baked in, it was hard > to change.

(emphases mine)

Thomson suggests bilateral symmetry as the reason for not having three legs. It's strongly implied that they're mutually exclusive. Not sure how else you could read this excerpt.

<comment><USER3> By "that trait" I believe he's referring to that particular way of getting to bilateral symmetry, not that an organism that doesn't do it like that can't be bilaterally symmetric.

As an example, think of what it would take to add a third leg to a human being. Now we have two and one leg is a mirror image of the other. Those would presumably be the outer legs, how's the central leg going to look like? Is it going to be a copy of either the right or left leg, or some combination with 9 toes (4 outer, big toe in the middle) etc.?

Carrying that sort of information in the DNA is going to be harder than following the default template of "make this here and mirror it", which is how most structures are encoded in DNA.

Furthermore I think the reason the paper's abstract mentions phylogenetics (but I don't know, I can't access the full thing) is to say something to the effect that if an organism doesn't have any hands or legs, adding them in pairs of two is inherently simpler than adding three, since the rest of the body structure is already mostly following that template.

Once you start going down that road it's hard to "go back", which is why modern animals carry a lot of structures that are only the way they are today because they evolved from some initial past state.

<comment><USER2> "As an example, think of what it would take to add a third leg to a human being"

Apparently the way radial symmetry actually develops is that one side of the body grows and the other withers away, and the remaining side produces the radial parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> java-man There were attempts to evolve, during Ediacaran period.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribrachidium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribrachidium)

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

<comment><USER5> fascinating .. so there we go. there was an attempt!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if anyone has tried an evolutionary locomotion algorithm that has bi- pedal and tri-pedal animals compete. See if it can even come up with a reasonable try-pedal model.

<comment><USER7> Most quadroped mammals can run by moving their legs in pairs, in this mode one of the pairs could be replaced by a single leg. Would make normal walking awkward though.

<comment><USER8> And indeed some almost exclusively move like that, namely leporids (rabbits and hares). They do not have a regular walking gait because the back legs are so long and specialized for jumping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I actually dislike this style of article writing, or title writing.

The title leads me to believe that I will find an answer to that question in the article, but it just talks about the subject for a while until they decide to end it.

The article was good though, so perhaps just a different title?

<comment><USER10> I think that this is a trick to make people stay with the website. This works similar to a cliffhanger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some do consider the Kangaroe to be a 3 legged species

[https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/how- ma...](https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/how-many-legs- does-a-kangaroo-have/)

<comment><USER12> Well I'd say they walk 5-legged [https://youtu.be/HWiLyIqcK24?t=12](https://youtu.be/HWiLyIqcK24?t=12)

and "run" 2 legged [https://youtu.be/ftgY63SlmKY?t=67](https://youtu.be/ftgY63SlmKY?t=67)

[https://youtu.be/S-V2MqNLgdg?t=14](https://youtu.be/S-V2MqNLgdg?t=14)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My cat has three legs.

<comment><USER14> But cats, in general, don't.

<comment><USER15> Oh, but they do. Indeed, it is a prerequisite for having four legs!

<comment><USER16> Three legs shalt thou not count, excepting that thou then proceed to four. Five is right out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If "aquatic locomotion" counts... seals, walruses, dugongs, manatees. Look at their skeletons if you have time, it's pretty interesting.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Kangaroo moves with two legs and a tail. How close is that to three legs? Kangaroos hop with two feet but use their tail for slower movement.

</comment><comment><USER19> Whales and dolphins have fused legs and if you count their two flippers they have 3 legs.

</comment><comment><USER20> Tarantulas have 3 legs, with 5 spares, i thought, having just seen one this morning out with our dog, though i realize that's a technicality wrt the posed question.

</comment><comment><USER21> I thought the octopus has 3 brains, but it might not. looking it up, it might have 9 brains and 3 hearts.

In any case the octopus is a pretty different kind of creature.

</comment><comment><USER22> "The code for having two sides to everything seems to have got embedded in our DNA "... Heart, liver, gallbladder

</comment><comment><USER22> I've always wondered how birds evolved to fly. It seems like wings are useless until they can fly.

<comment><USER23> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Plenty of fictional tripeds. Watch this Idiran go...

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iC6sJ- Ysb2Y](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iC6sJ-Ysb2Y)

</comment><comment><USER25> Technically a centipede does have 3 legs.

</comment><comment><USER26> Because you can't walk on three legs

<comment><USER27> Jake the Peg, did just that [0].

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJleJbn9G6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJleJbn9G6Y)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Trendy programming language for creating 2D game - <AUTHOR> I would like to keep improving my webdevelopment skills (I'm a Java/JS developer), but at the same time I would like to create a pet project - 2D game (let's say it would be a simplified Factorio, desktop/web).<p>What trendy technologies do you recommend for creating such game? I don't want to use a C/C++ for this, I'm not a fan of these.
Or maybe Java/JavaScript would be suitable for it? <comment><USER2> You could try [https://godotengine.org](https://godotengine.org) See [https://godotengine.org/article/godot-2019-showreel](https://godotengine.org/article/godot-2019-showreel) for games created with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Simple 2D games and not so simple games can be done in js using Phaser.

But if you wanting to learn something new godot, love2d, gamemaker or unity are all fine choices.</comment>


Is There an Opening for an Alternative to Twitter? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sysomos.com/2012/07/09/is-there-an-opening-for-an-alternative-to-twitter/ <comment><USER2> We've had open-source alternatives like <http://identi.ca/> for years; and in my memory, these have always been faster to implement new features that Twitter itself has been. Yet Twitter, not identi.ca, caught on in the public.

So the question is really not whether there is an opening for a Twitter alternative and what features we would want it to have, but rather why the existing alternatives _with strictly more features_ failed to catch on.

My take is that Twitter had already passed a threshold by the time these alternatives hit the scene, and their first-mover advantage carried them a long way in defending themselves against other similar-but-incompatible platforms.

Put another way, the reason Twitter is singular and email providers are not is that email providers communicate with each other over a common open protocol, whereas Twitter communicates only using its (closed) API.

The difficulty would not be in defining an open protocol to doing what Twitter does, naturally; existing ones could be tweaked slightly to achieve the same result. (Look at what Shortmail is doing while maintaining 100% backwards- compatibility with traditional email).

The problem is that Twitter has no incentive to turn its "open" (read: closed) API into an completely open means of communication like email, because doing so would squander the one huge asset it already has: a captive userbase.

(For the record, the same arguments could apply just as well to Facebook; people just don't think about Facebook that way, because we're all so used to them being a walled garden).

<comment><USER3> Commercial efforts tends to beat committee efforts in the marketplace.

<comment><USER4> Identi.ca isn't exactly a committee effort though. The vast majority of development comes from Status.net, which makes money (apparently) by selling/setting up private instances for enterprise usage.

<comment><USER5> Status.net should fund the development of OSS mobile/desktop clients that work with multiple Twitter-like services, including Twitter itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A twitter replacement could gain traction if they practically duplicated twitter's api so they could try and convince 3rd party devs(the people who made twitter) to support this new service in their apps. But really, twitter has to make money. This is no different from any other service. Even if all the 'nerds' leave twitter they will still have millions of users and will continue to be a huge service for 'normal' people. Just like Facebook.

<comment><USER4> Probably not. Identi.ca has had a twitter compatible api since as far as I remember (and I was an early user there), and while a fair number of twitter clients made the small tweak to enable support for identi.ca, a larger number of twitter clients did not.

<comment><USER6> Right but up to this point the "power users" who use Twitter on a daily basis haven't thought twice about possibly being forced off the platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What you want exists in OStatus, the successor to OpenMicroBlogging (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus>)

The problem with treating a centralized service provider as a public utility is you end up ceding control of your namespace to an organization that has a different motivation than you may.

The solution would be, as an organization, to host your own status update service on your own domain.

<comment><USER8> The same concept, applied to photos. [http://blog.theopenphotoproject.org/post/10537443380/namespa...](http://blog.theopenphotoproject.org/post/10537443380/namespacing- the-web-for-your-photos)

In reality if you own the domain you can host it yourself or have someone else host it for you. Your domain makes it portable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think we really need an alternative to Twitter and it could be a service which simply runs alongside Twitter. There are many features which would make Twitter a better service. One area which is a little neglected is simply having a online identity for the purpose of logging into multiple resources on the web and from applications. This is done now with Twitter as well as Facebook but many are concerned about privacy due to the fact that social networks sustain themselves with advertising. Providing at least an identity service which carefully handles privacy would be a good start that would get more people on board.

Then there has to be a way to segment the noise. Discussions about some TV show or a ballgame can suddenly fill up your Twitter stream. It would help if these conversations could happen in a category or topic that would allow you to choose to participate or ignore. Twitter is not really set up to do this right now.

Twitter also does not aggregate trends very well. Being able to ping a service with your status such as your location and/or activity could be aggregated and done so anonymously if you choose. I'd use this sort of service to share what I am watching or listening to so that the trends can be captured. I would like to know what music is popular in my area or what movie everyone seems to being seeing. And I would also open it up to locations with the goal of making people aware of more of what is going on around them. I'd like to have people select a persona or demographic they identify with so they can better discover things which would be more of interest to them. And these interests can go well beyond music, movies and restaurants. Ideally it would include events in your community to foster a greater sense of community which Twitter is not capable of doing.

I hope this does emerge. It seems it is a matter of time but the success of Twitter, as it is now, is preventing something else from catching on.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines> strikes again!

<comment><USER11> Betteridge's Law sprung from the cautious coverage of uncertain news and unconfirmed current events, not genuine speculative questions.

<comment><USER12> Seriously, it's tiring!

I want a link titled "Is Betteridge's Law Ever Correct?" to wind up on HN some day.

<comment><USER13> hahahahahahaha +10 internets

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's no room for an alternative to Twitter. Social media on the scale of Twitter and Facebook is a winner take all market due to network effects.

Is there an opportunity for Twitter to become the next MySpace?

Certainly. However, a Twitter alternative will probably never fly. Instagram is a great example of how to make Twitter the next MySpace. Find something that users do all the time on twitter and make it suck less. API revocation is not something most users know they have a problem with.

</comment><comment><USER15> What's in it for the user? I saw talk about APIs and anger over promoted tweets. Users don't know what an API is. They know when their favorite app doesn't integrate with their favorite service, but this hypothetical Twitter rival has to already be a favorite service.

How do you accomplish that? "Service You Don't Use is now deeply integrated with all your favorite apps". So what?

And I don't think many users are that outraged about promoted tweets.

You can ship a Twitter alternative after a weekend of coding. Then you can sit back and listen to the crickets.

I don't see a huge problem with the Twitter idea or its feature set. The big problem I see is that it's yet another data silo. One of the hottest communication technologies to come around in years is owned by a single entity.

Maybe a decentralized competitive technology is a more interesting place to go. Something that works more how email or the web does. It so far hasn't worked for Diaspora*, but how about the same concept vs. Twitter?

</comment><comment><USER16> What about Jaiku? <http://code.google.com/p/jaikuengine/>

</comment><comment><USER17> I've kicked around ideas for something similar to, but not exactly like Twitter. I think there is _possibly_ a market for more controlled, but still fairly frictionless information sharing similar to Twitter.

For example: A group of us from the same company are going to JavaOne - how do we do stuff like share snippets about sessions we thought were useful or broadcast where and when we are going for dinner? Twitter itself isn't great for that, email lists are cumbersome and tricky to use from mobile - but if you could quickly create a group of some sort and have everyone join it, it would be fairly easy.

It could also help avoid spam issues that plague Twitter - a while back, my previous employer held a small conference and gave out hashtag to use when tweeting about it. Spammers quickly co-opted the hashtag, which rendered it useless (this was doubly embarrassing since a lot of the spam was adult- oriented and my previous employer was a religious organization).

Giving out a group + simple password would have dealt with that situation.

I see a lot of potential uses for something like this, but whether you could convince enough people to use (and even more, pay for) it, I'm not sure.

<comment><USER18> You hit the nail on the head. That is a real use case for a private Twitter. I was working on a simple browser-based encryption webapp. Not sure if it helps. <https://boxuptext.com/tweet>

It let you encrypt a tweet on the browser before sending it to Twitter. Only followers with the right password can decrypt the tweet.

Instead of recreating the Twitter infrastructure and the social network, it just adds encryption to create private following.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Two problems:

(i) things like this have a very low ARPU; this makes it hard to write a business plan that people will take seriously.

(ii) two-sided market. if you want to read tweets, go to twitter. if you want people to read your tweets, go to twitter.

two-sided markets can be attacked by removing one of the sides; for instance, a site that lets you read or write tweets while also letting you read or write into their systems.

Twitter controls the API precisely to prevent that attack.

\---

In general though I think there could be a market for something where people pay some $ to have a better social media experience or to look "cooler" than other people. I think anything people spend above $20k for a car, for instance, is because people want to be seen driving a Lexus or BMW. If people could turn their cash into visible social media status, you could kick Facebook to the curb in terms of ARPU.

Premium accounts on LinkedIn are a model, except for the fact that premium accounts on LinkedIn have practical value -- if a $50 a month subscription helps a recruiter get one commission for filling a position, that's a great investment.

</comment><comment><USER20> The power of twitter is how frictionless it is to share. You don't have to sweat over every time who will see it, what your friends will think about it, and how it will look because by design there is no visual and privacy decisions. I believe if anything new that comes along it needs to maintain this aspect and not clutter it with settings and features.

But isn't the real question from consumer's perspective: What is it that Twitter (or others including Facebook) fail to solve? How can a solution be defined so it is just as frictionless?

And since Twitter is a platform, richer sharing solutions or parallel communities (Instagram, Pinterest, Picdish) are being built that just take advantage of the post to Twitter. In this case the power of Twitter is the existing community.

In my view, the future are sharing tools and platforms that are 1) simply more aware of what we are doing and 2) also allow us to be more aware of what others are doing to enable more meaningful 1-to-1 connections.

</comment><comment><USER21> "It raises the question about whether there is an opportunity for an alternative to Twitter to emerge, and what it would take for it to establish a foothold."

I'd say there certainly is an opportunity for an alternative to Twitter or any established site, just as there was room for Facebook to dethrone MySpace and Google to dethrone Yahoo! and all the rest.

The much harder part is establishing a foothold. Twitter was founded by an established player and gained initial users from the core tech people long before it gained wide acceptance. Facebook had Harvard and college campuses long before the parents of those students joined Facebook.

What group will adopt the Twitter alternative first?

</comment><comment><USER22> So is the best solution for this a federated, open-standards approach ala XMPP? It seems to me you could even use XMPP as the backbone for an open, federated short message service.

</comment><comment><USER23> Before anyone mentions G+ and how difficult it is to replace an existing social network, it's important to consider how lower the barrier of entry is for Twitter. Leaving FB means leaving your pictures and friendships. That said, leaving Twitter means leaving your posts and followers. The question is - is the price of switching platforms low enough?

</comment><comment><USER24> Do you guys feel that if Pownce was never shut down - it would have been a pretty big competitor/threat to Twitter?</comment>


Simplicity is Complicated - <AUTHOR> http://avdi.org/devblog/2009/10/29/simplicity-is-complicated/

<comment><USER2> Instead of "simple" it's likely they really mean something more like "elegant". Elegance can resemble simplicity because they are both small or appear easy to understand at first glance. To my mind, elegance also leverages deep principles and idiosyncrasies in its environment.

Iterating "by hand" in Ruby is simple in the way a homemade chair is simple. The second example is elegant because it actually takes advantage of the things that differentiate Ruby from Generic Imperative Language X.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. I've often wished programming blogs were more polite, but God how it makes them boring.

"Some people like to wake up really early and use ternary operators. But some people much prefer to sleep in..." versus

"Get up at 5:00, drink your damned coffee and ask people interview questions about pointers or else you're stupid and lazy and you just don't care about your craft."

And then somebody comes along and says "wtf!?! you're the stupid lazy guy who doesn't even program anymore and obviously coffee brewed before 9:00 isn't fresh because the water in the pipes has been sitting there all night."

Now someone has to smash me down saying "Fool! Politeness and boringness are utterly orthogonal" ....

Edit: the code examples were great! by themselves, on a black background, they would have shocked and awed me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Simplicity needs to looked at from a customer point of view. "Will this code make it simpler for the customer?" should be THE primary consideration. If we consider two equally valid choices (back-end code for example that is not exposed to customers) then the code that is easiest to maintain (or the code that is very easy to follow) is simplest. Think of the person maintaining your code as your customer. Too many people get suckered into writing "fancy" code, "elegant" code, "design pattern" code, what not. In my experience this practice almost always led to more issues than helped in any measurable way.

</comment><comment><USER5> But see also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289020>

and <http://www.infoq.com/interviews/katz-merb>

In particular, "It's just a bunch of things in Merb that we don't do. For instance, is like the classic one of Symbol#to_proc, which Rails does. Actually, Rails recently took out a bunch of use of it, because is 10 times slower on Ruby 1.86, so it's just the things that we don't do in Merb that give us a lot of performance right out the box."

</comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of one of Dave Thomas' Code Katas (<http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/kata_eight_conf.html>), where one objective is to write some code as readable as possible. It turned out to be much less well defined than I thought when I started out.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me, or is his average_time_of_day missing a "/ times.length" at the end?

Also, why is he calling :to_time there but not in the iterative example?

</comment><comment><USER8> don't need the & before :+

<comment><USER9> Heh. I love that you can publish dozens of technical language-tips articles in relative obscurity, then have one purely philosophical post shoot up reddit and HN - and all the language lawyers come out and quibble about the code samples!

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, I actually learned something from this comment. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> edward de bono has already hit this nail on the head <http://www.amazon.com/Simplicity-Edward-Bono/dp/0140258396></comment>


Foursquare.com & Scala/Lift [slides] - <AUTHOR> http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0ATHAG0M-0vxXZGNicHozY2tfMjVjemNuczJjMg

<comment><USER3> This is a good example of what I call 'Guitar Center development' - <USER2> disproportionate fascination with tools at the expense of the actual thing you're building.

<comment><USER4> Agreed! In fact, it seems an obsession with obfuscation and esoteric syntax. When he gets to any real principles of software engineering (scale, reliability, etc.) he admittedly falls short. Cool, though, eh?

<comment><USER5> I saw the talk in NYC. From the questions asked, I'm under the impression the system scales quite well. According to Crunchbase, they now have about 400k users.

<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/foursquare>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> @idelwords - It's worth noting that this talk was given at the Bay Area Sala Enthusiasts Meetup hence the focus on the tool (scala) and not the product.

@wavesplash - It's true that there are potential scaling issues when you have stateful servers, but the vast majority of our requests are API requests which do not have this issue significantly mitigating the risk.

-harryh

<comment><USER3> It's not the focus of the talk that I take issue with, but that the choice of tools (fun, new, poorly tested) seems to have been made without regard to the needs of the product.

Personally, I think it's better to innovate at the product layer and use the most boring technologies you can get away with below that.

Sometimes there are sound reasons to go with a new technical approach, but by your own admission this was not the case here.

And so the classic symptoms appear - full rewrite, unexpected delays, interoperability problems in the new layer requiring a change in an unrelated part of the app (mysql to postgres migration in this case), hacking on an ORM, the joys of being the first people to discover a new class of bugs at scale.

All of this effort could have been more productively channeled into making the product unique and awesome, however boring the backend.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately the rewrite was necessary no matter what tools were used (even if we had stuck with PHP). The existing codebase was bad. Very very bad. And, all things considered 3-4 months for a full rewrite was pretty good.

Whatever downsides there are to the scala/lift decision we have not experienced them yet. Though certainly we may run into them in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to save some clicking:

\- Author picks Lift/Scala not on the best future interests of the company (ease of hiring, scalability, agility, maturity) but on fit for his world view about type safety and it would be fun for him.

\- Author commits startup to stateful servers / scaling issues from day 1 of the rewrite.

<comment><USER8> If you only pick tools that everyone else knows so your hiring pool is large, then new tools never stand a chance of being used. You would stagnate all progress in the industry!

It's funny because when Paul Graham writes articles about how the web lets us use whatever language we want (see <http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html>), everyone celebrates the possibilities of writing their web site in their favorite lisp dialect. Yet here we have this evil engineer who picks a technology he likes, successfully improves a product and meets business requirements with it, and is ridiculed for picking a relatively obscure technology!

Check out tiobe. I wouldn't be surprised if in a year Scala passes the combination of all lisp/scheme dialects in the rankings.

<comment><USER7> Startups aren't about language diversity for the sake of diversity, they're about unfair leverage. In this case the author made a choice that didn't add any leverage to Foursquare. If anything, the author admits he boxed the company into a corner because of a rookie scaling decision.

In contrast, the Asana guys are writing their own language+framework and if it delivers on it's early promise they'll be outgunning the competition with a 10x improvement on development time and code size.

<http://asana.com/luna>

That's the sort of advantage Paul Graham had by using Lisp in ViaWeb vs. his competition that was mostly writing c++.

<comment><USER8> My criticism wasn't of your comment that Lift was a poor choice because it doesn't scale well. It was of your comments that the technology shouldn't be used because there aren't that many developers to hire that know/are willing to learn scala/lift or that it isn't as mature as some other technologies.

As for your argument on scalability, while I have dabbled in Lift, I am too ignorant to know how much work it would take to scale Lift versus alternative technologies. I find it hard to believe that choosing Lift is really going to make it that hard to scale. David Pollak and the creators of Lift seem like they are pretty smart people to me. However, I have no evidence to prove you wrong and therefore did not even address that point.

<comment><USER7> I don't believe I made that argument.

Here's my point as a startup conjecture:

"Sacrifice the network effects of established languages/frameworks only when it gives your startup an unfair (10x) advantage."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It will be interesting seeing how they deal with stateful servers as they continue to grow.

Does anyone know if they are currently doing session pinning?</comment>


Back to the Future Hoverboard prototype - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Pyy0NUO6E

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to the actual company that built it: [http://www.crealev.com/hoverboard-2/](http://www.crealev.com/hoverboard-2/)</comment>


Show HN: QuicklyChat - A video walkie-talkie for the workplace - <AUTHOR> http://www.quicklychat.com <comment><USER2> You've actually tried to solve one of my personal frustrations, which is good. My biz partner and I do a lot of work remotely while running continuous video.

Skype, which should be the "obvious solution", is a wreck. Every 15 minutes the app goes into some sort of CPU loop consuming >100% cpu on my MBP. It destroys my productivity. Restarting every 15 mins is not going to happen. After a dozen software updates they seem to only be able to make the problem worse.

Facetime is hopeless. Lots of CPU, retarded upright-iphone aspect ratio. Also has problems staying connected.

Google Hangout is ok. It's our current solution. It's something like ten mouse-clicks to get a session started, and drops the connection every couple hours. Still, it's the least annoying solution.

I tried QuicklyChat... and it didn't work. Not even close. Trouble connecting to my partner, trouble getting sound or video working when connected. The UX was terrible. It's way too raw to be called "beta". Sorry.

<comment><USER3> Re: FaceTime on the desktop: If you point at the local video preview thumbnail, a button for changing the orientation of the video you're sending from portrait to landscape will appear. If both you and your conversation partner do this, the problem you describe goes away.

I've never noticed a lot of CPU use from FaceTime, personally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why don't you have a video showing exactly how the chat looks and works? I don't want to download something to see how it works.

<comment><USER5> Same here, I downloaded, and it requires Adobe Air, then I stopped...

<comment><USER6> What's wrong with Air? I've used other apps built on it and they work fine (such as balsamiq).

<comment><USER5> Nothing wrong. Just that I don't have it on my machine and don't want to install air to try the software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is fantastic. I love the status indicators. I would go one step further and show little, live thumbnails of each person on your contact list—sure, you might get caught picking your nose, but that could happen when working with people in real life, and I see these tools as trying to make remote working as real as possible. Live thumbnails would be a very natural way to check if someone is at their computer, on the phone, too busy or stressed looking to disrupt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Live thumbnails are in development. We're working on balancing privacy with utility (we don't want to accidentally expose the text of emails, for example).

<comment><USER8> I think he meant a live thumbnail size video stream of each person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like this idea, good pitch on the page, but it's absolutely critical that it just works. I installed it, opened it, at first it wasn't obvious if I had to make an account, use an existing service, or what, but I finally noticed the create an account and tried to make account in which it says couldn't connect with video server, I tried again and it says account already registered with no apparent change in the form.

After this I closed out, and under any other circumstances I'll never go back and try again. GChat seems to solve this problem for me already but I was tempted to try this out but it just didn't work with the flow and interaction on the first try and to me that's a deal breaker.

So tl;dr for you and anyone else, your product has to absolutely work and must initially make sense flow wise for your first time users. Especially if you're in a market that has many other solutions because getting me to go back find the application and try again sometime in the future is going to be really hard.

<comment><USER10> Sorry to hear that the account creation process didn't work out for you. Based on your description and our server logs, I have a good sense of what broke for you, and it's a case we've never run into before when testing, but we're working on fixing that bug now.

I agree that it's absolutely critical that it just works, and in this case, it didn't just work for you. From all the traffic today, we found a bunch of new bugs that didn't show up in our testing, so we're working as fast as we can to fix them and fix our testing process so we find similar issues.

<comment><USER9> Hehe and this is great :)

I sat through a brutal pitch practice session this afternoon and I was in the criticism mode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please add a symbol to red and green so they are differentiable to R/G colorblind people

8% of North American males are Red/Green colorbind

Perhaps thumbs up/sideways/down, or Octagon, square, circle

<comment><USER12> But it's red on green or green on red, not differentiation between the two? I have r/g color blindness, I can't see red berries against green foliage, but I can tell red from green easily.

<comment><USER11> I'll explain what the difference is here. I suggest all software developers learn to use something like <http://www.vischeck.com/> on their UIs:

The colors "Green" and "Red" aren't visible at all to R/G colorblind people. There are actually two different types of cone deficiencies (for R/G colorblindness, the most common one), missing red cones, and missing green cones (Deuteranope and Protanope). Turns out, it doesn't really matter that much which one you're missing, as the world looks much the same to you: All yellow and blue. There are some differences, which do mean the specific yellows you see are different from the other type of R/G colorblind, but for software developers, both types of common colorblindness can be lumped together: Only use Yellow and Blue as indicator colors, or colors that clearly go to yellow or blue, or use secondary markers.

For severe cases, the colors you see are pretty much only yellow and blue. For less severe cases, the person actually is only missing SOME of the red or SOME of the green cones, and can tell some colors, but not very well.

There is also a Tritanope which actually has problems distinguishing blue/yellow, but they're VERY rare.

normal color vision: <http://www.vischeck.com/images//hats_norm_big.jpg>

Each type of R/G colorblindness: <http://www.vischeck.com/images//hats_deutan_big.jpg> <http://www.vischeck.com/images//hats_protan_big.jpg>

Vischeck.com (which I'm just a frequent user of) will also _Daltonize_ images for you. What daltonization does it it takes colors in an image and moves them around in the different color spaces to make it so both normally color sighted and color deficient users can see everything.

I am not an expert, but merely a software dev who tries to do right by the color deficient, 8% of North american males.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So the main selling point for this is that it automatically detects when someone is working. Besides that, how is it different than skype or google video chat? Wouldn't it be cooler/better to write a status plugin for google chat that automatically determines if you are busy or not?

<comment><USER10> In QuicklyChat, when you're available and receive a video chat, your client automatically answers it, and the video appears in an unobtrusive notification window in the corner of your screen. We think this better captures the dynamic of a coworker walking up to your desk and being in your peripheral vision.

Most other video chat clients pop up an answer dialog which steals focus, and makes your computer ring, and that immediately interrupts you from what you're doing, whereas when people walk up to your desk, they generally wait until you acknowledge, or use body language/visual cues to determine whether it's a good time to interrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I installed this, but it turns my video camera on at seemingly random times. Uninstalled rapidly.

<comment><USER10> Sorry that it didn't work for you. There's a bug which happens occasionally for some computers where we try to connect to the camera and fail and retry, and it looks like that's what you ran into. We're working on fixing it right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I felt nervous using an installer on my Mac, but when I go to my PC later today I'll try that version. Sounds like a cool concept.

<comment><USER16> I'm curious why you are nervous to install software on OSX? Mac installers should generate a log of everything that has been placed/modified on your computer.

<comment><USER15> Bad experiences in the past of having to remove many different files from different places.

<comment><USER11> There are apps that do that now, AppZapper, etc.

<comment><USER17> I wish I didn't have to pay for another app to uninstall other apps :/

<comment><USER11> There are free ones too?

Windows and Unix have the same issues with little pieces of apps being everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Having worked with remote teammates, I'm open to anything that makes people feel more like they're part of a common workplace.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think I met this team once; while I was a little dubious at first, seeing how they laid out the page makes me much more interested. I like the concept and I think our team will give it a go.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love the friendly cartoons on the website. It does make a difference!

</comment><comment><USER21> Awesome idea. We previously had audio/video quality problems with all tools but Skype. How do you solve this problem? As I understand providing high quality video and audio is still quite a bit challenge.

Is there any only mic version? Or do you think it defeats the purpose?

Finally, a small suggestion, make question lines bold in the FAQ which will make it much easier to read.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! Video/audio quality is definitely challenging. We use a third party platform to handle our video connections, and sometimes the quality is great, but sometimes it isn't.

The QuicklyChat client doesn't work completely correctly right now if you don't have video, but I've heard a lot of feedback today asking for audio-only functionality, so we're going to look into building that in the next couple of days.

Thanks for the suggestion about the FAQ. I'll go ahead and make that change now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's good to see someone work on the one touch videchat problem. No one seems to do it well.

Can more than 2 people participate in a video chat?

<comment><USER10> Not currently, although we're working on implementing that feature right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I do like this concept, but the interface is awful. I had various issues with contacting the server when signing up / signing in (as other users have reported). I've finally got in and am looking forward to checking out my first chat.

<comment><USER10> Sorry about the registration/login problems you and a lot of our other users have been seeing. We've been running into a few issues with logging in and our video servers that we didn't find in testing before because of the load from all the HN traffic. We're working as quickly as possible to resolve those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> QuicklyChat looks awesome - good job guys! The program runs fine on my machine too.

</comment><comment><USER25> When am I EVER at work and "not busy"??? If that EVER happens it means I have literally run out of things to do at work, and I should go home and do something non-work that I want to do (and then I'm "busy" again). Maybe I'm sick in the head, but for me there is no such thing as "I'm available to be interrupted" time. Interrupt me, fine, and then I have to do a little mental triage, which is more important, what I'm doing now, or what you are interrupting me with? Life is too short and too precious to sit around waiting for people to chat with you. I guess what I'm saying is that there should be "online" and "offline" but I don't get it wrt the yellow neutral symbol.

PPS yes, people find me prickly

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if you're busy any time you're at work, in most modern workplaces, engaging with your coworkers is part of the job. Over the course of your workday, there are probably some periods where interruptions are less of a setback. We'd like to see conversations happen during those times, rather than when you're untangling some tricky knot of a problem in your head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I really like this idea, but is it possible to include an easy way to do screen sharing as well? I want to easily describe the error that I have on my screen to my co-workers.

<comment><USER10> Screen sharing is definitely in the works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I feel like this has a lot more potential than the workplace... perhaps a mobile app where people can leave their friends short video messages?

<comment><USER28> I've been working on something that is very similar to this. <http://askbox.me> will be released (mobile version being worked on as we speak).

Our product AskBox and QuicklyChat are very similar in essence, but ours is not a desktop application at all- it's browser/mobile based.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> cool. I will give it a shot. I use google video chat regularly. Also, if you can add a way to easily share my screen (or even screenshots), that would be amazing. I have been wanting a way to 'push' my screen to coworkers, even within the same office.

<comment><USER10> Sharing the screen is definitely in our plans for functionality we're building next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> No Linux support? Shame. That's my work OS and I really love the idea of this.</comment>


Show HN: Howmanyconfs.com – Compare Security Between Proof-of-Work Blockchains - <AUTHOR> https://howmanyconfs.com <comment><USER2> How is equivalent confs calculated?</comment>


Newsstand Sales of Magazines Shrink 11% - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123421984485965291.html

<comment><USER2> On a related note, magazine subscriptions are very cheap now. Sure you're getting maybe 50% of the content but you're also not getting 80% of the typical ads.

Nothing beats a new, glossy, National Geographic (or Playboy if you prefer) for bathroom reading. Yes, it beats even surfing their websites on your iPhone or updating your Twitter status.</comment>


Google refuses to pay French privacy fine in a battle of company versus country - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/07/google-appeals-against-france-privacy-fine/ <comment><USER2> Well this isn't going to go well for Google. At least I sure hope it doesn't. When corporations trump nation-states, we're all screwed.

<comment><USER3> So then I suppose Google should have just given in to the Chinese government's demands for censorship, or the US government's demands for access to private data?

<comment><USER4> Yes.

I don't agree with either of those things, but there is a point at which globalisation comes into conflict with sovereign nations.

The status of a company is one that is granted to it by a sovereign country, and sovereign countries establish through their legal and government systems how companies can act within their borders.

Once you're there... yes, Google should comply to any legal request. And in fact, they do... as requests for data issued under legal order are in fact complied with.

Companies are not above the law (and laws tend to exist at country level or through treaty across many countries). And if the law of a country says pay, then Google need to pay unless another law can trump it and says not to pay.

There's no two ways about it, companies must comply with the laws of whatever land they operate in.

<comment><USER5> What gives the state's law making capacity the magical ability to trump morality and ethics?

There exist laws so hideous and offensive to human dignity, that they should never be obeyed.

EDITED: I am not talking about the google privacy case specifically, previous posts in this thread had widened the scope beyond this point.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. If you feel that you cannot obey those laws, you should cease doing business in that country.

<comment><USER5> What if that is the sole country you do business in and you are legally forbidden from closing your business (as can happen to a business that produces essential war materials)?

The problem that is that companies are not above the law, but they are even less above ethics. The primary reason that we argue that companies should follow the law is ethics and when ethics and the law are in conflict ethics _always_ trumps the law.

<comment><USER6> You're running a hypothetical munitions factory whose sole client is the government and you're worrying about the ethics and morality of having to comply with the laws of that country?

Let's worry about the morals and ethics of operating that munitions factory before we get concerned with "unjust" laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Actually, the Conseil d'État just released its decision a few minutes ago: Google have to pay. See [http://www.conseil-etat.fr/fr/communiques-de- presse/sanction...](http://www.conseil-etat.fr/fr/communiques-de- presse/sanction_prononcee_par_cnil_a-l-encontre_google_inc.html) (in French).

<comment><USER8> Le Conseil d'État is a French institution whose decisions can be broken (sadly) by European courts.

I think Google is not fighting for its reputation, but if they pay now they will open the door to more fines from over countries.

<comment><USER7> > Le Conseil d'État is a French institution whose decisions can be broken > (sadly) by European courts.

It's not as simple as that. From what I have understood, there is a precise hierarchy of courts and the Conseil d'État is at the top of the administrative courts hierarchy. The only way to appeal their decision is to go one step higher which would be the European Court of Human Rights, and I don't see how Google could find a valid reason to get there with this issue.

<comment><USER9> With piles of money involved it's possible that the ECHR would find for a reduction of citizen's rights, but AFAIK that'd be a first. Usually they go the other way around, and pretty seriously so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > accepting the fine would have also involved making a public admission of > guilt (...) and the company feels this would have "irreparably damaged" its > reputation.

It probably would've. But if they don't want that loss of reputation, perhaps they should have followed the appropriate laws in the first place? Seems like this is kind of the point of a punishment.

<comment><USER11> I think the feeling is that the "appropriate" laws were not, in fact, appropriate.

<comment><USER9> Of course Google's feeling is that they should be able to do whatever they want with user's data and shouldn't have to tell anybody anything, and thus they believe privacy and data protection regimes are inappropriate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is partly about the insane European cookie directive [0] (cf. [1]). A problem with forced apologies is, when the crimes you're apologizing for are actually controversial political issues, it takes on the character of political speech.

"I'm sorry I stole from that guy" is an apology. "I'm sorry I hacked your computer without your consent, in violation of privacy law" \-- meaning you set a browser cookie -- that's something else.

[0] " _According to the watchdog, Google didn 't adequately inform users about its data collection processes, nor did it obtain consent or tell users how long cookies would be installed on their machine._"

[http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/08/google-privacy-cnil- fine/](http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/08/google-privacy-cnil-fine/)

[1] [https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=eu+cookie&sort...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=eu+cookie&sortby=points+desc&start=0)

</comment><comment><USER13> _> ...its sorrows in a bottle of beaujolais..._

You'll have more sorrows after drinking some Beaujolais. It's incredible that this is one of the best known wine regions in France. At most barely- drinkable, Beaujolais is inferior to most French wine.

<comment><USER6> What would you recommend? I don't drink a lot of wine so I tend to just buy $14ish bottles of American Pinot Noir or Reislings.

<comment><USER9> Bordeaux and Bourgogne (Burgundy) are the big ones[0]. Loire and Alsace are also known for more specific wine types.

That doesn't necessarily help much as within each regions exist complex classification systems (e.g. Bordeaux uses _Châteaux_ , essentially winemakers, while Burgundy uses an m:n mapping of _domaines_ (a winemaker) to _terroir_ (a geographical area), there's quite a bit of variation across winemakers (and within one especially on generational shifts) and price is essentially useless a data point. And _then_ you've got to decide whether you want "drink" wine drunk within a few years or "keep" wine which you'll grow over 5, 10, 20 years or more.

[0] Bordeaux is bigger, Bourgogne has more controlled designations of origin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This isn't company versus country. We're not talking about some arbitrary bureaucratic regulation.

This is corporation versus civil rights in a free and democratic Western nation.

This is a level of greed driven arrogance that makes 90's Microsoft look like saints.

</comment><comment><USER15> Compared to the amount they owe from tax evasion (the 1 billion € mentioned in the thread), 150k is almost a drop in the bucket.

</comment><comment><USER16> Let's just wait for the time when US will sue a number of french companies for some sort of privacy violations and force french to drop their lawsuit against Google.</comment>


To The "A" Round Go The Spoils - <AUTHOR> http://106miles.net/convo/435/to-the-a-round-go-the-spoils

<comment><USER2> I disagree with a key point in this article that postulates that Series A investors have taken on as much risk as Series B investors.

The mere fact of knowing that other investors - especially if they are large and famous ones - have already invested in a business by itself reduced your risk. Having 3 years worth of information about a company vs 2 years worth of information reduces your risk. There is more to risk than the binary "unproven business model" vs "proven business model" that the author seem to make it out to be.

The author's own words: "Having said all that, I believe that it requires a lot of courage to be the first to invest in an unproven business."

Why? Because there is more risk.</comment>


Show HN: We made a Buy Button for real estate - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/buy-this-home-with-open-l/bldldniiddmphkkghbibggfampdgpefc Hi HN!
At Open Listings, we build technology to make buying a house simpler and more affordable. Ultimately, we want to make buying a house as simple as clicking a button. Our core technology is really our transaction process.
While we also provide some shopping tools for house hunters, we recognize that people don't just use 1 site when they're searching for a home. In the spirit of supporting our clients even if they'er shopping on other sites, we made a "buy button" that we hope will work anywhere. When you click, it looks for address and MLS# on your current page and fills them in on our offer form. It's the fastest way to make an offer on a piece of real estate.
Also it's open source, so if you find a real estate site that this doesn't work on, feel free to send us a pull request: https://github.com/openlistings/open_listings_chrome
Fun trivia: pg suggested we call it "Buyjacking" but we thought that sounded too much like we were stealing someone else's business. We're just trying to build tools to make the buying process less painful and thought this was a fun idea in that spirit. <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

We build software to make buying a house simpler and more affordable. Ultimately, we want to make buying a house as simple as clicking a button. Our core technology is really our transaction process.

We recognize that people don't just use 1 site when they're searching for a home. In the spirit of supporting our clients even if they're shopping on other sites, we made a "buy button" that we hope will work anywhere. When you click, it looks for address and MLS# on your current page and fills them in on our offer form. It's the fastest way to make an offer on a piece of real estate.

Also it's open source, so if you find a real estate site that this doesn't work on, feel free to send us a pull request: [https://github.com/openlistings/open_listings_chrome](https://github.com/openlistings/open_listings_chrome)

Fun trivia: pg suggested we call it "Buyjacking" but we thought that sounded too much like we were stealing someone else's business. We're just trying to build tools to make the buying process less painful and thought this was a fun idea in that spirit.

<comment><USER2> Alex here (OL founder), we whipped this up as an experiment this week, so would love any feedback. I hadn't created a Chrome extension before and the docs were really out of date in places, I didn't find a lot of guidance out there outside from the samples Google has up. We ended up putting most of the logic into a library file (main.js) that can be loaded up and either: run by the extension, run by the test suite, or minified and exported to a bookmarklet. I was pretty happy with this solution, take a look at the source if you're building an extension and looking for ideas on how to organize it.

The bookmarklet version (works on all browsers) is available here:

[https://www.openlistings.co/extensions](https://www.openlistings.co/extensions)</comment></comment>