Automated Human Vulnerability Scanning with AVA - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/ladynerd/automated-human-vulnerability-scanning-with-ava

<comment><USER2> From the slides:

AVA: [http://www.avasecure.com/](http://www.avasecure.com/)

Open Source Project: [https://github.com/SafeStack/ava](https://github.com/SafeStack/ava)

It seems to be a project that tries to find vulnerable passwords via phishing and/or (maybe?) checking hacked password lists against automatically(?) found accounts.

But I don't really know - what it actually does isn't really written down anywhere.

Seems like it might be potentially interesting though.</comment>


Arel merge, rails' hidden gem - <AUTHOR> http://benhoskin.gs/2012/07/04/arel-merge-a-hidden-gem

<comment><USER2> Comments aren't available on the article, so a couple of quick clarifications here:

Nitpicky, but ActiveRecord::Relation is not ARel. ARel is the relational algebra library that underpins ActiveRecord (>=3.0). See [http://erniemiller.org/2010/05/11/activerecord-relation- vs-a...](http://erniemiller.org/2010/05/11/activerecord-relation-vs-arel/) for more info.

The specific example he used to demonstrate worked transparently because of the has_many :through relationship for users on Article, which requires the collaborations table to filter the users, so joins it. Otherwise, you would need to do the join yourself before merging the scope, and things get messy pretty quickly, especially if you end up with table aliases (which the merged relation knows nothing about -- it will still query against the collaborations table).

I added "sifters" to Squeel (<http://github.com/ernie/squeel>) in order to address the need for a set of reusable conditions on a specific model that could work through an association. I'm not saying Squeel is the solution you're definitely looking for, but I just want to let people know about the things they'll need to look out for when using Relation#merge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, #merge isn't itself an arel method. I say arel because it's the core sitting behind the #merge / #where / #joins frontend -- but AR::Relation deserves credit too :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've never been a fan of Rails' hieroglyphics. "The query is the one you'd hope for" - why do we need to "hope", when the ORM could just allow you to use relational concepts directly ? Here is SQLAlchemy's much less exciting version of what I see here for "merge", just use a hybrid (sorry, we have more verbose config, due to explicit is better than implicit):

        from sqlalchemy import Column, Integer, String, ForeignKey, Enum
        from sqlalchemy.orm import Session, relationship, backref
        from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base, declared_attr
        from sqlalchemy.ext.hybrid import hybrid_property

        class Base(object):
            @declared_attr
            def __tablename__(cls):
                return cls.__name__.lower()

        Base = declarative_base(cls=Base)

        class SurrogatePK(object):
            id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)

        class Article(SurrogatePK, Base):
            headline = Column(String)

            @property
            def users(self):
                return self.collaborations.join("user").with_entities(User)

        class User(SurrogatePK, Base):
            name = Column(String)

        class Collaboration(Base):
            article_id = Column(ForeignKey('article.id'),
                                    primary_key=True)
            user_id = Column(ForeignKey('user.id'),
                                    primary_key=True)
            role = Column(Enum('editor', 'author'))
            user = relationship("User", backref="collaborations")
            article = relationship("Article",
                        backref=backref("collaborations", lazy="dynamic"))

            @hybrid_property
            def editorial(self):
                return self.role == 'editor'

        sess = Session()

        some_article = Article(id=5)
        sess.add(some_article)

        print some_article.users.filter(Collaboration.editorial)

you get the same "one line, DRY" calling style at the end and equivalent SQL:

        SELECT "user".id AS user_id, "user".name AS user_name
        FROM collaboration JOIN "user" ON "user".id = collaboration.user_id
        WHERE :param_1 = collaboration.article_id AND collaboration.role = :role_1

<comment><AUTHOR> Hope was definitely a bad choice of word. By that I meant, the sort of tight query you'd hope an ORM would deliver.

Anyhow, it's a matter of taste, but what may appear at first as hieroglyphics actually is straightforward. It's just that concision here means some packed meaning and some assumed knowledge, so you have to know how to read it. In this case, that's an easy trade-off for me.

I'm not familiar with SQLAlchemy, so I find your example equally hard to read, compounded by there being much more code to spelunk through to understand.

Different strokes and all that, though. There's room for plenty of frameworks :)

<comment><USER4> > I'm not familiar with SQLAlchemy, so I find your example equally hard to > read, compounded by there being much more code to spelunk through to > understand.

If you remove few column definition and setup code, it actually boils down to just:

        class Article(ArticleColumns):
            @property
            def users(self)
                return self.collaborations.join("user").with_entities(User)

        class User(UserColumns):
            pass

        class Collaboration(CollaborationColumns):
            user = relationship("User", backref="collaborations")
            article = relationship("Article", backref=backref("collaborations", lazy="dynamic"))

            @hybrid_property
            def editorial(self):
                return self.role == 'editor'

In which you can now do

        some_article.users.filter(Collaboration.editorial)

which generates similar SQL query as #merge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using Arel directly (with ActiveRecord) for a project. It's 80% of what I want, but then it inexplicably sucks at the last 20%.

The whole point of a relational algebra is that it's closed under all the relevant operations. But Arel's implementation mostly ignores this fact, and you get back different types of objects with incompatible APIs depending on what operations you use and even what order you apply them in.

Concrete example one: "foo.union(bar).union(baz)" explodes because the union operation is not composable.

Concrete example two: you can compose joins from the right but not the left. So "(foo.join(bar)).join(baz)" works but baz.join(foo.join(bar))" explodes -- but not until later when you try to dump it to sql, at which point you get an obscure exception.

When you look under the hood, you see that it's having a hard time with this stuff because it doesn't really implement relational algebra. It's mostly just an abstract syntax tree for SQL.

<comment><USER6> The current version of ARel is not a relational algebra library, it's an SQL compiler according to Aaron Patterson [1]. Many of the concepts and names for internals are based on SQL not RA. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a pragmatic choice for Rails given that ActiveRecord is an RDBMS only abstraction.

I've been working on a relational algebra library for ruby (tentatively) called veritas [2] where the sets are closed under all operations.

Given that it's a higher level abstraction than ARel the trade off is that there's not a 1:1 mapping between it's pure RA ops and SQL operations. I err on the side of producing SQL that will returns the correct results, which means some of the queries are a bit verbose. I consider that only a temporary problem though; I believe I can get to the point where most common queries are identical to what you'd write by hand. I'm focused on correctness before performance.

I've also written an optimizer [3] that takes the RA AST and rewrites it to be smaller and more efficient. It handles lots of the low hanging fruit, but there's still room for improvement. The advantage to this approach is that it simplifies the AST for all targets, not just SQL. There's even room to do per- target optimizations, which is nice because there is often multiple ways to form a query, and some approaches may be more efficient than others on different backends.

[1] <https://github.com/sconover/knit-js#footnotes> [2] <https://github.com/dkubb/veritas> [3] <https://github.com/dkubb/veritas- optimizer>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's one that's been bugging me - anyone want to take a crack at it?

        @dev_configs = DeviceConfig.
        joins("join (select device_id, max(updated_at) as max_updated_at
        from device_configs group by device_id) dc2
        on dc2.device_id = device_configs.device_id and
        dc2.max_updated_at = device_configs.updated_at").
        includes("device").order("devices.updated_at desc")

Each device has many device configurations, and we want to display all devices, along with the latest device configuration, and order the whole thing by when the device was updated. The above works, but is mostly working directly in SQL, rather than with Rails.

<comment><USER8> This is something you should be able to do with Arel (with join_sources) or through the use of to_sql

as a note - you shouldn't use includes and joins, includes hammers joins.

Simplest tidy up though is a scope for the join, something like

        DeviceConfig.joins("#{DeviceConfig.last_updated.to_sql} dc2
                              on dc2.device_id = device_configs.device_id
                              and dc2.max_updated_at = device_configs.updated_at).
                     order(...)

Alternatively maybe something like

        dc_t = Arel::Table::new :device_configs
        dc2_t = Arel::Table::new :device_configs

        inner = dc_t.group.(dc_t[:device_id]).
                     project(dc_t[:device_id].as("device_id"),
        dc_t[:updated_at].maximum.as("maximum_updated_at"))

        dc2_t.join(inner.join_sources).
              on(dc2_t[:device_id].eq(inner[:device_id])).
              on(dc2_t[:updated_at].eq(inner[:max_updated_at])).
              order(...)

im not entirely sure of the on syntax there, the API doesnt look clear.

Atleast, those are the two solutions I have though personally - i think it reads better as straight SQL with select_values. That way, you know what is happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know of merge, but usually I just don't need it. article.users.editorial would usually be enough for my needs.

I'd have great usage of union (which doesn't exist, or doesn't exist in the version of rails I'm stuck in) though.

</comment><comment><USER10> While I can't offer technical feedback like everyone else, I'd say tone down that background a little bit for easier readability. :)

Edit: Instead of #CCC try #EAEAEA. It made a good difference for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you're using has_ancestry merge can let you do some amazing things just by adding .merge(path) or .merge(subtree) to a query.</comment>


How 5-year Wikipedia hoax fooled even the subject's own company - <AUTHOR> http://ken-jennings.com/blog/?p=1889

<comment><USER2> Wait, he's using an ad campaign as proof that somebody believed this stuff. Read his links. I don't think the ad company was fooled. They wrote, "As Wikipedia will attest to, it's all true – even Freed's inflatable shrimp trap." They just liked the article and didn't see any reason to correct it.

</comment><comment><USER3> _How many hundreds (thousands?) of other articles like this are sitting out in the Wiki-ether right now, wreaking havoc and just waiting to be debunked?_

Don't think this is new. For all of history there have been pervaders of disinformation. The only difference now is the media with which it is distributed.

<comment><USER4> Another difference is the low barrier to entry for editing. This, I think, is a more important difference because it not only leads to much faster corrections but also allows almost anyone to participate (in most cases).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it also happens in subtle ways with changing knowledge. I recently got done with "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford. Looking at the Mongol entries in Wikipedia, I wonder how much is sourced from European sources using Mongols as a political statement against their own rulers and how much is taken from documents that came available in the last 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER6> These sorts of things are actually good, and a reason to continue using wikipedia in preference to other sources.

Here's the horrible truth: no other encyclopedia is any more accurate. However, if by using a "professionally edited" encyclopedia you are lulled into a false sense of trust then you are at a disadvantage. If instead you use an encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone and everyone on the internet, perhaps you will retain your senses of judgment and critical thinking. Perhaps you will double-check "facts" that seem a little fishy.

 _That_ , ultimately, is why wikipedia is a better source of information in the long run. Any source of information compiled by any group of people will be full of biases and errors. It's infinitely more important that the public become more savvy information consumers, improving their critical thinking abilities, than that any given source of information is incrementally more "accurate" than another.

<comment><USER7> In some ways I agree with this sentiment, but in others I think it's deeply flawed.

Your argument relies on a couple of deep assumptions, the main one being that the general public know how Wikipedia is made.

Based on my (albeit anecdotal) evidence, I suspect that the vast majority of internet users (non-technical) may not know much at all about Wikipedia. They just look something up on the internet, find it on something that calls itself an 'encyclopedia', and believe it. They know nothing of who has created the page, or the checks (or lack thereof) that go into each page.

Search for a random subject on Google - e.g. 'Canada', and click on the first result (Wikipedia, of course). How would any user know about the methodology behind this encyclopedia? Twice on the page it refers to itself (prominently) as "The Free Encyclopedia" - to me, as a non-technical user, that might sound like a reliable (albeit free) source of information?

<comment><USER8> I don't think there is any need to distinguish between technical and non- technical users. Both generally just go by what is on the page rather than checking the references.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Be skeptical of your sources, always, but keep in mind that the more heavily visited pages that are about more well-known subjects and some people consider important are going to have more educated eyeballs checking them.

For example, I don't think an obviously made up "fact" would last very long on the page for red-black trees.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. The whole story only proves no one really cared about the Julius Freed article in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of some unintentional errors. Neil Gaiman recently noticed something on Wikipedia that he had made up in a novel being treated like fact.

[http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/05/one-book-one- twitter-o...](http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/05/one-book-one-twitter-one- wondering.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Ken Jennings posted a follow-up: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1397287>

Turns out DQ _did_ know the Wikipedia entry was false, but still liked the concept of some of the far-out claims, and wrote a script around them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have possible links between prankster Joe Cassara and ad firm space150 been investigated?

<comment><USER12> Ken Jennings, in his follow-up post, says:

      "They had no connection with the original hoaxer"

<http://ken-jennings.com/blog/?p=1900>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Note that it wasn't actually "the subject's own company' that was fooled. It was the PR department of the company that had acquired the subject's own company. Why they wouldn't just ask them about noteworthy inventions instead of using wikipedia, or at least verify with them, is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wait, I'm seeing a connection here. I can just hear it...

"Some say... that he invented a tiny shower suited for pigeons. All we know, is he's called The Stig!"</comment>


Show HN: A irc client in your web browser, built with node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cjstewart88/nirc

<comment><USER2> Would it be possible to get fish encryption working with this? I was looking at an encrypted chat alternative at my workplace.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no clue what that is, but if it's possible it's definitely something we could look into. The projects open source, so any contributions are welcomed!

<comment><USER2> [http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/mircryption/ind...](http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/mircryption/index.php)</comment></comment></comment>


Will Lockheed Martin Change the World with Its New Fusion Reactor? - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/08/01/will-lockheed-martin-change-the-world-with-its-new-fusion-reactor/#42e870184c49 <comment><USER2> Why do aerospace companies have a fascination with fusion reactors? I worked at McDonnell Douglas Astronautics in the mid 1980s. One of their projects at the time was a fusion reactor based on the "ELMO Bumpy Torus" of the 1970s.

Fusion reactors seem a bit out of LockMart's wheelhouse, if you take my meaning.

<comment><USER3> Don't they make jet engines? Their design is similar to that

<comment><USER2> GE and Rolls Royce make jet engines. It's a very specialized sort of thing to make, single-crystal impeller blades, exotic high temperature alloys, computational fluid dynamics combined with combustion analysis. Lockheed Martin does not make jet engines. Also, a fusion reactor has very little in common with a jet engine. Yes, I said "high temperature alloys", and a fusion reactor is very hot, but they also typically have a lot of magnetism involved. Now,we're talking non-magnetic, high temperature alloys. Jet engine designers do not need to worry about magnetic properties.

Plasma flows are not going to work like just-sub-sonic airflows either, so any CFD expertise is effectively negated. Fusion is not chemical combustion, so any expertise there is also superfluous.

<comment><USER3> Well, in as much as Engineering with complex exotic systems is a specialty, then they are already operating in that domain. Sure its not the same; but both are light-years distant from IoT widgets, household appliances and cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> After they revised the size of the machine its volume increased by two orders of magnitude and its power density fell to 0.5 MW/m^3. This is 40x worse than the power density of a PWR primary reactor vessel (and 200x worse than the power density of the PWR core proper.)

</comment><comment><USER5> NO.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

</comment><comment><USER6> TL;DR

They are going to start trying to build an idea and they have proven nothing so far. Check back in 5 years.</comment>


Amazon EventBridge – Event-Driven AWS Integration for Your SaaS Applications - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/fr/blogs/aws/amazon-eventbridge-event-driven-aws-integration-for-your-saas-applications/ <comment><USER2> If this had launched with Slack support two months ago, I'd have saved a few days development time. Interested to see the pace of partner adoption.</comment>


Nintendo confirms launching new console in 2012, playable at E3 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/nintendo-confirms-new-system-for-2012-playable-at-junes-e3.ars

<comment><USER2> Some of the leaked images have ad copy like "most developer friendly console" and "easy porting from PC and Xbox 360".

All of which suggests one thing.

Nintendo licensed Direct3D.

<comment><USER3> Those are definitely fake. The font for the Nintendo logo in one of the pics is Pretendo with uneven spacing between letters.

This will probably run OpenCL like the 3DS does.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a source on OpenCL being used for 3DS programming? I'm interested but couldn't find anything.

<comment><USER5> I suspect he meant Open _G_ L. 3DS has a PICA200, supporting OpenGL ES 1.1 (which is a bit old-fashioned but workable).

<comment><USER2> But no one actually uses OpenGL for console games. It's all custom libs (which is basically Direct3D on the Xbox).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Nintendo has a new system that will be more powerful than the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360._

I would hope so when competing against consoles that were released 6 years earlier. I'm curious to see how they will implement a "large touch-screen" on the controller, since it calls to mind radically different designs than Wii controllers.

<comment><USER7> The pictures that were leaked ( [http://www.slashgear.com/nintendo- wii-2-stream-leaks-hd-and-...](http://www.slashgear.com/nintendo-wii-2-stream- leaks-hd-and-touchscreen-controllers-in-late-2011-22147801/) ) suggest that they are abandoning the Wii motion control scheme altogether.

<comment><USER8> There are a lot of interesting ideas that you could put together when everyone has a private screen. I wrote up the cons and pros of having such a system and where the innovation will come from when I was looking at tablets as the controllers:

<https://github.com/icefox/tablet_tv_games>

<comment><USER9> The Gamecube already had private screens with GBA adapters.

In Crystal Chronicles each player had their own menu, a secret competitive challenge (in an otherwise cooperative game), and a unique view of the area (one gets a map, one gets a dot for every monster, one gets a dot for every chest, one gets information on monster attributes).

Four Swords also used the GBA screen, but it was basically just so you could go in a dungeon and wander off without splitting the screen on the TV or making you stay together.

There were probably more games that used GBAs for private screens or other multiplayer gameplay, but I cannot recall them off the top of my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm still surprised we haven't heard anything official about a PS4... The PS3 came out 6 years after the PS2 and it has been out for 5+ years already.

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure that both Microsoft and Sony are on a 10 year plan with both of those systems, which means you won't hear anything about a PS4 for another couple years at least.

That said, this seems like a pretty smart move on Nintendo's part. They get to release hardware thats not the most expensive/fastest available, but still beats the current market, and gets to live at the top of the performance chart for at least a few years.

<comment><USER12> From what I understand, the often quoted 10 year plan includes overlap with the release of the next console, similar to how the PS2 still sold quite well at the start of the PS3 era, as well as the PS1 before it.

The PS3 was announced about 18 months before availabiltiy, so we actually should be pretty close to an announcement.

<comment><USER13> The rational thing for Sony and Microsoft to do is to stand down on any new console. Both consoles push 1080p and there's been no mass adoption of 3D or other display technology to warrant a new introduction; Crysis 2 is being released for both platforms and there's no real consumer demand for yet more polygons. Both companies are able to turn profits on their gaming divisions; Nintendo isn't likely to outcompete them on a technical basis, either.

In short, I think the 10 year horizon might actually be _too short_.

<comment><USER14> Please no, both consoles have been holding back PC gaming. Crysis 2 actually has lower system requirements than the original Crysis precisely because they bent over backwards to make it work for PS3 and 360.

<comment><USER15> I consider this a positive.

<comment><USER16> It's Crysis, not World of Warcraft.

<comment><USER15> It's about market share, not hard core gamers ;)

<comment><USER14> Actually it's about pushing the state of the art and the technology, something hardcore gamers have been the main driving force for in computing since the mid 90s.

But forget all that, you want to make money off of a Farmville clone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting that they are pretty much abandoning their massive lead on casual gaming (which is a way bigger market than hardcore gamers). My parents enjoy playing Wii, but I don't see them buying/playing a console with 4 extra screens.

Sounds like a gimmick to this guy. I have a feeling Microsoft and Sony are giddy as hell because Nintendo is about to drop the ball.

<comment><USER18> They haven't abandoned the casual gaming market, they've conquered it and now they're moving up the tier where Microsoft and Sony have retreated and where those two may meet their doom. See [http://classic- web.archive.org/web/20080325182052/http://mal...](http://classic- web.archive.org/web/20080325182052/http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html)

I've gotten used to dismissing people who dismiss Nintendo's next things as mere gimmicks. "It's a toy" is often the hardest criticism: well so what, we're talking about video games not deadly weapons.

<comment><USER19> Nintendo releases the Wii, Wii stalls next-gen consoles by shifting the focus of other companies to create movement sensing peripherals. The Wii moves on to the next market, that is some good strategy right there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd get one just to play Donkey Kong Country,Zelda,and Metroid in Xbox like graphics.

Though the leak says no 3D now, looks like a classic Nintendo move where in 2 years an upgraded 3D screen controller will be out at ~80 bucks each.

<comment><USER21> I'm guessing that it more has to do with the state of their 3D tech. Maintaining the "sweet spot", and all would be pretty difficult with a handheld controller piloting a console.

Have you watched kids (or maybe even yourself) play a game? Writhing around in your seat, leaning with your virtual character's movements, leaning forward at those particularly tense moments... it all makes for a tough sell when you need to view your 3D screen at a particular angle in order to see anything but a blurry mess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The Ars link says Nintendo's profits have dropped this year but it doesn't say that it's by as much as 66%.

[http://gamasutra.com/view/news/34263/Nintendo_Confirms_Wii_S...](http://gamasutra.com/view/news/34263/Nintendo_Confirms_Wii_Successor_For_2012_Posts_66_Profit_Decline.php)

</comment><comment><USER23> I really hope they release a workable VR console. All the individual component technology exists, we just need an innovative company to bring together into one affordable package.</comment>


5 D3.js resources to improve your visualizations - <AUTHOR> https://learningd3.com/blog/resources-to-improve-your-visualizations/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I had a no idea about several of these resources. Nice job on the layout too.</comment>


Wiretapping the Secret Service can be easy and fun [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c6AADI7Pb4&feature=youtu.be&t=3m25s <comment><USER2> ...And lead to an early retirement!</comment>


Show HN: Twtxt – Decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/buckket/twtxt <comment><USER2> Roughly, the .plan or .project file from finger?

In Unix, finger is a program you can use to find information about computer users. It usually lists the login name, the full name, and possibly other details about the user you are fingering. These details may include the office location and phone number (if known), login time, idle time, time mail was last read, and the user's plan and project files. The information listed varies, and you may not be able to get any information from some sites.

In some cases, you may be able to use the finger command to verify an address or find more information for someone at another institution about whom you already have some information. The finger command is available on most Unix systems. It differs from the whois command, which you can use simply to find the email address of someone at another institution.

To use finger, at your Unix prompt, enter:

        finger firstname.lastname@example.com

Replace node.domain with the appropriate machine and domain address, and username with the name of the person or the person's username, for example:

        finger email@example.com

See: [https://kb.iu.edu/d/aasp](https://kb.iu.edu/d/aasp)

<comment><USER3> I think you're being DV'd because people think you're saying "this is just finger." But I think you're actually reminding people of that old service, which won't be familiar to newer generation, and was ubiquitous back in the day.

<comment><USER4> And there are still 4,000+ servers running it publicly:

[https://www.shodan.io/report/ohcbBDbi](https://www.shodan.io/report/ohcbBDbi)

For comparison: finger[1] is more common on the Internet than Apache Cassandra[2].

[1] [https://www.shodan.io/search?query=port%3A79+idle](https://www.shodan.io/search?query=port%3A79+idle)

[2] [https://www.shodan.io/search?query=product%3Acassandra](https://www.shodan.io/search?query=product%3Acassandra)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check out Freenet ([https://freenetproject.org/](https://freenetproject.org/)), it is the perfect platform for implementing static content social media like this. There is already a decent microblogging plugin called Sone which works out of the box and handles unique names, Web of Trust, etc.

[https://wiki.freenetproject.org/Sone](https://wiki.freenetproject.org/Sone)

<comment><USER6> I've been using Sone for years, and once the Spam-blocking in Freenet is set up (this provides reusable IDs), Sone works great and is a joy to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just hacked together a prototype for a hosted twtxt server in Go: [http://github.com/plomlompom/htwtxt](http://github.com/plomlompom/htwtxt)

This could be used to allow server-less users to login and twt via a browser to URLs hosted by someone running the server. I'm still pretty new to Go and building / setting up web servers, so don't expect too much (expect session/cookie handling to be messy, and security in general to be bad).

I set up a quick testing version at (http) [http://test.plomlompom.com:8000/](http://test.plomlompom.com:8000/) and (https, bad certificate) [https://test.plomlompom.com:8001/](https://test.plomlompom.com:8001/) – just for testing and playing around, don't expect anything hosted there to be up for too long.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems like something like this would be a perfect use case for IPFS[0], although I bet there already is something similar for it out there.

[0] [https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I made a prototype aggregator: [https://twtxtlist.cf/](https://twtxtlist.cf/)

It's written in Nim and is probably good enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, added a link to it in twtxt's README.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also: [https://quitter.se/](https://quitter.se/) (StatusNet/GNU social)

<comment><USER11> So how does this compare to Sone and Twister?

I know both of those services are P2P but beyond that not much.

<comment><USER12> GNU Social isn't P2P, but federated. You don't have to host your own node to be able to use it, which massively raises the barrier to entry, but instead lets you register on any server in the federation as an entry point into the network.

There are both upsides and downsides, of course. It's more centralized along with having censorship by your hosting node. However, it doesn't force you to leak your IP address to attackers or run software and be a sysadmin, along with saving bandwidth. It also doesn't have some of the difficulties that proper P2P does: Twister is on top of Bitcoin (costs to use) while Sone is over Freenet (Sybil attacks and routing issues)

<comment><USER11> Twister is derived from Bitcoin, but actually uses its own fork.

IIRC, the blockchain is used to store account credentials and nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Similar, but based on git: [https://github.com/wilhelmtell/dis](https://github.com/wilhelmtell/dis)

</comment><comment><USER14> is it me or is this going to result in massively long data files that you KEEP having to re-downloading in their entirety every time you want to get an update from someone you follow?

<comment><USER15> This could be solved by archiving/rotating _old_ entries, and have the webserver return the n latest.

For instance, you could let nginx do this:

      location /masukomi.txt {
         default_type 'text/plain';
         content_by_lua 'local tail = io.popen("tail -n 20 ".."/chroot/twtxt/masukomi.txt", "r")
         for line in tail:lines() do
           print(c, line)
         end
         ';
      }

<comment><USER16> The problem is that if you didn't fetch the file at the right time, you will lose some history after rotation happens. At the very least, it needs a standard way to deal with that (like a mandated date-based URL format?), which has to be specified in the format.

Also, no DM and no @-replies. For those, you need a registry of some sort, but decentralized registries enable name-squatting.

Before you know it, you have reinvented the WWW, except limited to 140 chars.

<comment><USER15> > _if you didn 't fetch the file at the right time, you will lose some history > after rotation_

Very true, and that's a trade-off, not unlike what Twitter does today. In my pseudo-code I didn't make the -n part of the url (it easily could be, but that'd add changes to the client). So I agree with your criticism, but a "since" lookup would be a fairly easy extension of the client (i.e. part of query, so unsupported frontends still work), as the data file already contains date.

> _Before you know it, you have reinvented the WWW_

Yes. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are the nicknames created by each follower independently? In other words, would [http://bobsplace.xyz/twtxt](http://bobsplace.xyz/twtxt) be bob for me but bobsplace for somebody else? How do @replies work then?

This looks really neat. I'm put off by the python requirement, but this seems simple enough that I might try to put a C client together, or even something in my new language that I've been meaning to add networking libraries to..

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's up to each user how he names the URLs he's following.

This makes it hard to implement global @replies, therefore there's no recommend way of handling those at the moment. You could just write "@<NICK>:" and hope that the person you had in mind follows you and feels concerned.

<comment><USER17> I see. So by default all @mentions show up on all followers' timeline, just like regular tweets?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, because there is no difference between an @reply and an ordinary tweet. Not technically at least. It's just text. But implementing a filter on your side should be trivial if that's what you want.

Maybe I'll implement something which makes it easy for users to specify custom filters and/or highlights.

<comment><USER18> Given the decentralized nature, it'd be nice to parse any @reply , add metadata that indicates the full URL, and thus translate into a local user's nicknames.

<comment><USER7> Should be easy to add metadata by convention inside the messages, appended to them following some kind of control string, like "META". Clients could interpret anything from that string on by rules yet to be defined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be great if there was a directory of users.

I'd use it if I knew people in my network or people I'd be interested in following were already using it.

<comment><USER20> Not sure I'd want to be in a directory, but wouldn't mind if someone queried based on my email address.

How about a DHT where sha160(emailaddress) would return the URL I use. Could even use the mainline torrent DHT.

<comment><USER18> Brute-forcing email addresses doesn't seem particularly hard, and a mechanism like that would then allow checking for email address validity and corresponding URL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's really cool. What happens if you add a new tweet with a date in the past? Isn't a bit weird to be able to change the history?

<comment><USER22> It hasn't proven to be a problem for email, where the dates are also completely up to the sender to fabricate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Has there ever been a product or service which has billed itself as "X for hackers" which has actually been successful?

<comment><USER20> How about hacker news?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand why anyone would want to go to the trouble to do this. It feels like a huge step backwards.

<comment><USER25> Yeah. What is the benefit of using twtxt? Ok, it's decentralized, but what actual benefit does that bring? Just anybody can't see what you are saying? But is the communication encrypted somehow?

Don't get me wrong, this is a cool idea and I'm all for building stuff 'just because', but I wouldn't it be just simpler/better to create cli wrapper for Twitter? (which probably exists). That all being said I'm not a big Twitter user, so maybe I'm missing some vital point here that is obvious to regular 'microbloggers'

<comment><USER22> > What is the benefit of using twtxt? Ok, it's decentralized, but what actual > benefit does that bring?

Right now Twitter is up in arms about proposed changes which make users not have control over their feeds; there will be algorithmic curation so you only see the most popular content from your followers. "Just create a CLI wrapper" only works assuming the APIs are not effected by the changes they are making to the main product, which doesn't really make sense.

<comment><USER25> So why not just make a Twitter clone? As in a website that had same functionality? This extra CLI abstraction will just make it harder to adopt, which again might be by design, but at that point a question comes to mind: why not just start a newgroup-ish email feed?

Again I don't quite get what Twitter is for, so maybe I'm missing something, but at least the publicity isn't an issue here since this seems to make it pretty hard to actually find people to follow.

<comment><USER22> > why not just start a newgroup-ish email feed?

Have you ever tried to run a mail server before? It's a nightmare wrapped in a fiasco.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> i really hate the bells and whistles in most apps these days. even as i build them.

hack chat is kind of nice. same "minimalist" feel [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10036770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10036770)

</comment><comment><USER27> "Decentralised"? How is this different from a static site generator and an RSS reader?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's simpler, but it shares similarities, no doubt.

<comment><USER14> actually... it seems more complicated. Existing tech: use existing tools written in your language / usage style of choice to generate a site. Consume with one of probably hundreds of RSS readers from which you can pick the one you like the most. this: new tool, not supported by existing apps, glaring limitations, requires non-default python dev environment, etc. etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It asks you to enter a username when you set it up, but when you follow someone you have to set a username for them yourself. Am I missing something? It seems that the username is never exposed

</comment><comment><USER29> Is the name related to TUWAT.TXT[1] by any chance?

[1]: [https://berlin.ccc.de/wiki/TUWAT.TXT](https://berlin.ccc.de/wiki/TUWAT.TXT)

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny thinking about it, but no. It's just a combination of "twitter" and "txt".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Made me think of [http://bitcoinmegaphone.com/](http://bitcoinmegaphone.com/)</comment>


Unleashing the Power of Synthetic Proteins - <AUTHOR> http://alliance.nautil.us/article/150/unleashing-the-power-of-synthetic-proteins <comment><USER2> This is our software to help you build your own novel synthetic proteins if you want to give it a try yourself right now in your browser (built with Go and Ember!):

[https://serotiny.bio/](https://serotiny.bio/)

No knowledge of DNA or cloning techniques are needed to use it. Drag and drop protein domains with the functions you want to produce a single protein with those functions. And if you wish, we can help place the order for your design with a DNA synthesizer so that the DNA that encodes your new protein arrive in the mail. Entire companies are founded on single good ideas for how to assemble these protein parts. Come up with your own.

It's also a great place to learn about how others are designing their synthetic proteins. The intent is to build up a plain language app-store for all of these various capabilities, as well as keep track of how the various proteins get used. At the end of the day it's not the DNA that does anything in an organism, it's the proteins that are really the machines of your body. If the DNA is the source code, the proteins are the apps themselves. DNA is cool and philosophical, but proteins are useful.

Here is a list and short description of proteins as they've come up on HN in the past few months. I've been trying to keep a list of 'proteins of interest' that have some social, economic, or medical interest to Hacker News:

[https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/)

<comment><USER3> How often do fusion proteins fail to work? I see a lot of "just stick this catalytic domain to dCas9" and I am not really sure why that works.

<comment><USER2> More times than not protein fusions work just fine for the desired definition of 'work'. If you are trying to tune the very last efficiency out of an enzyme, or push one organism's survival efficiency past another's, then yeah smashing domains together is not the way you arrive at an evolutionarily polished machine. However if you need to test or create new functionality it seems to work just fine. Biology is extraordinarily robust. A common technique is to combine these to approaches - build out a rationally designed functional protein by fusion, then run it through a few rounds of directed evolution to have the organisms themselves iron out the kinks. This strategy has been very successful.

Just smashing GFP onto every protein in the yeast proteome resulted in ~80% successfully turning green without noticeably affecting the yeast growth.[1] Check out eCD4-IG - it's four components fused to become an extraordinarily effective anti-HIV drug. It is of a different kind and a different order of effectiveness then the small molecule drugs of the 20th century.[2]

[1] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6959/full/nature0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v425/n6959/full/nature02046.html)

[2] [https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/ecd4ig/](https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/ecd4ig/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some context: the author, David Baker, is a preeminent figure in the world of protein structure prediction. His lab has consistently had the best protein structure prediction software out there (Rosetta). They recently released a paper detailing the structures of a large number of unknown proteins using their technique as an aid [1].

Some of the ideas in this article are quite cool, but I think it's important to add a caveat: we don't often know what structure will yield what result. In other words, if I want to do X, I don't know what protein structure will get me X, which makes it hard to engineer such a protein.

Nevertheless, when you have some understanding of the problem, you can in fact engineer proteins. Baker gives several examples in the article. In many of those cases, the best approach is to start with a variety of engineered proteins, then use in-vitro simulated evolution to pick the winners and get pretty substantial improvements over the original design.

Protein engineering is quite a cool area, and hopefully over time we'll get better at understanding the other parts of biochemistry so that we can more effectively design useful proteins.

[1] [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6322/294](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6322/294)

<comment><USER5> I'm convinced that synthetic proteins are the most viable way to Drexler type nanotech. Biology demonstrates that it works, we "just" have to understand how.

<comment><USER2> At the sub 10nm scale you need stiff linkages to have predictable and consistent structures. Covalent 'organic' bonds give you stiff linkages at that scale while metals are goopy and electronically inconsistent. Proteins _are_ organic nanotechnology where the 3D feature sizes of the (wet) tools is measured in fractions of angstroms. The best Intel can do is ~ two orders of magnitude larger resolution, 2D, dry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could somebody with more expertise explain how modern day protein folding simulations work? (Like Rosetta) I'm only familiar with the folding@home method of brute force molecular dynamics simulation. What kind of computational power does it take to go from an RNA sequence or polypeptide chain to stable protein with these algorithms?

This has always been a subject that has fascinated me, ever since high school when my biology teacher told us about folding@home. I went into computer hardware, so I always saw this problem as a computational power problem. I always believed that if we could figure this out, we could do a lot of cool things like make nanotubes and cure diseases. I saw it as the key to the nanotechnology revolution.

<comment><USER7> Rosetta is a software for protein structure prediction, not for protein folding simulation. There are a lot of hipothesis about protein folding, but the mechanism is unknown yet. So simulations using molecular dynamics can help us to understand how proteins fold.

On the other hand, protein structure prediction methods like Rosetta try to create high quality atomic models of proteins without follow a physical model. The goal is a good final model, not the fold event.

Rosetta uses a method of fragment assembly where fragments (few amino acids) of proteins with structure solved experimentally (usually X-ray crystalography) are assembled to create the new structure. The fragments have sequences of residues (amino acids) identicals or similar to the protein being modelled. This is an optimization process and uses methods like Simulated annealing. So, computational power is very important to explore a lot of protein conformations.</comment></comment>


Ideapad: The Internet you didn't know - <AUTHOR> http://www.netwert.com/ideapad2/2009/02/the_internet_you_didnt_know.html

<comment><USER2> The original Slate article basically says "almost all the web pages you go to now didn't exist then". That's true. But that doesn't mean there was no Web. The Slate article's argument is like saying that there were very few restaurants in 1996, because almost all the restaurants currently open weren't open in 1996. (I'm actually not sure of the distribution of restaurant lifespans, but there's surely a year you can replace 1996 with where my criticism makes sense.)</comment>


How microbes survive clean rooms and contaminate spacecraft - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-06-team-microbes-survive-rooms-contaminate.html <comment><USER3> This is kinda my space right now - remarkably hard-to-kill bacteria. Some fun stuff:

1) Ralstonia pickettii doesn't really need much to eat, and thus thrives in ultra-pure water systems. Like, you know, the ones used to make medical devices.

2) Stuff in the Burkholderia cepacia complex is naturally resistant to lots of antibiotics, but also tolerates chlorhexidine gluconate and various quaternary ammonium disinfectants. Well, ok, more than tolerates - they'll happily colonize the disinfectant solutions, and then infect whatever you're trying to "disinfect".

3) Deinococcus radiodurans seems almost engineered to survive interstellar travel, but that's probably just a coincidence. Anything that can survive 15,000 Gray is scary.

4) Bacillus altitudinis is pretty weird too - like the name says, it's been found up to 40ish-km, which is an odd place for things to grow.

<comment><USER4> Wow that's very interesting. What do they do with 1) and 2)? Just accept it or kill it another way?

Why is 3) so resistant against radiation? Does it repair DNA damage faster than it occurs?

Do you mind me asking if you're working in industry or are in academia/research? :)

<comment><USER3> Kill it some other way, and frequently test things that should be 'sterile'.

I don't actually study (3) particularly, nor am I a biologist. As far as I understand, the "how" question is pretty well studied, and is because it's pretty aggressive with DNA repair, and has lots of various tricks to facilitate that and minimize damage from occurring in the first place. The question of "why" is (in my mind) more interesting, and less understood - <USER2> may be due to evolving to deal with prolonged dehydration, which is a much more useful ability for life on earth. IDK.

R&D at a startup.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the reply – I actually thought there was some stuff no bacteria could live in and that probably exists, but then you also get problems with the things you are trying to desinfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has there been a study addressing whether these clean rooms are completely counterproductive to their stated goal?

It seems intuitive to me that if you're maintaining such a clean room the only bacteria that are going to live there are ones hardy enough to survive in those extreme conditions, you're just going to be running an accidental breeding program for bacteria likely to survive on a spacecraft.

As opposed to just assembling all this stuff in a room open to the elements. It would then be completely inundated with bacteria, but none of them would have any selective advantage in being hardy. You could even feed them on purpose by spraying food for them everywhere.

Then when you launch the spacecraft those fat comfortable bacteria would all instantly die because vacuum isn't an environment that's anything like what they've had to deal with, unlike the hardy ones in the clean room, and the few survivors would have no time to develop hardiness. They'd all die within hours from launch.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately that is not the way the microbes of this world (and now other worlds) work. The form that is really tough is the bacterial spore (spores are one of the lifecycle stages of some bacteria). These spores can survive in a complete vaccuum for years. The more bacteria you introduce into a system the more spores you will end up with contaminating everything.

I personally doubt that this contamination is much of a problem. The planets of the solar system have been dusted in earth rocks containing bacterial spores thrown up by large asteroid strikes for billions of years.

<comment><USER7> It's certainly a problem when the spacecraft's job is to detect life on other planets. If the spacecraft is contaminated with Earth microbes then it will get a false positive which is a huge problem.

<comment><USER8> There's zero chance any scientist will mistake the DNA of an existing Earth microbe with alien life.

<comment><USER9> There's an open hypothesis that life may have evolved elsewhere in the universe and then brought to Earth by some means. DNA would probably have diverged by now, but who knows?

<comment><USER10> As I understand it DNA and RNA store their information in the form of certain amino acids. If other life uses amino acids in a similar fashion they may not use the same ones that life on Earth uses. Life here uses I believe 20 different amino acids and there are several hundred known.

So there's potential there I would imagine in regards to testing that hypothesis. However what mainly bothers me with it is that it doesn't explain the origin of life and why Earth couldn't have original life begin on it.

Unless we can rule out that early Earth conditions would have been too inhospitable for life to start but was sufficient to sustain it I see no reason to think an extraterrestrial origin to Earth life is more likely.

<comment><USER11> > As I understand it DNA and RNA store their information in the form of > certain amino acids.

Actually, information is stored as RNA, with DNA as long-term storage (mnemonic: RAM nucleic acid vs disk nucleic acid) and then amino acids are assembled into proteins (hardware) based on that information. Proteins only function as information storage in pathological cases like prions.

But yes, if 'alien' life used the same 20 amino acids, and especially if it has the same mapping from 64 nucleic acid triplets to 20 amino acids, then that's confirmation that it's actually just a earth microbe that escaped or was left behind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know what Kleenol 30 is, but I would have thought it obvious that ethanol and isopropyl alcohol are insufficient to sterilise.

My immediate thought with regard to cleanliness is always moulds.

It's not clean until it's been soaked in sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide, UV sterilised, gamma irradiated, then parked in a decaying orbit above the sun.

<comment><USER13> " _I would have thought it obvious that ethanol and isopropyl alcohol are insufficient to sterilise_ "

Especially since no hospital would rely on just ethanol and isopropyl. You'd think they'd at least try to live up to the standards of a hospital.

<comment><USER12> Consider also that hospitals are a good place to hang out if you _want_ to get a cleaning product and antibiotic resistant bacterial infection.

<comment><USER14> This is why I covered my existing procedure "wounds" with loads of vaseline and securely bandaged them, before I went in for another, longer, procedure. The nurses and doctors were completely understanding and made sure to tell anyone involved, which was good to hear.

Of course, I'm not sure how effective that sort of prep would be, but I hope I reduced my risk, at least.

<comment><USER12> That's probably a really good idea, smart thinking.

It's a wonder hospitals don't require existing wounds to be dressed in touch a way prior to admission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apollo 12 landed right next to the Surveyor 3 lander, and the astronauts removed a few pieces from it and returned with them. When NASA disassembled the video camera later they found microorganisms still alive on the device.

This article asserts that this was the result of a clean room failure after the parts were returned to Earth: [https://www.space.com/11536-moon-microbe- mystery-solved-apol...](https://www.space.com/11536-moon-microbe-mystery- solved-apollo-12.html).

This is not as exciting as the notion that some bacteria might have survived for years inside the lander on the Lunar surface, but it still illustrates the risks of failing to maintain a proper clean room environment.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well I guess that answers the question if there is life on mars.

<comment><USER16> What are you trying to say?

<comment><USER17> I suspect his point is that due to sending rovers to mars, there likely is life there, now at least.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Actually it is near certain that there is life on Mars now since we know the spacecraft sent were not sterile.

<comment><USER16> Why are you so sure? Are you an expert in extremophile metabolism? I find it very unlikely that an Earthling could survive in Mars, microorganism or not, it would be a chain of miraculous events for an Earthling metabolism to find enough processible energy in Mars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tl;Dr: consuming ethanol from the cleaning products and surviving the corresponding oxidative stress

</comment><comment><USER19> Is it possible that in millions of years the microorganisms we have inadvertently sent to Mars will evolve? Even in the short term, that seems like an interesting experiment in itself.

</comment><comment><USER20> The politics of this discussion is amazing in the sense that we can have a non-political discussion of if bacteria born on earth and growing on mars are earth life or mars life or is it morally right or wrong to transport life or "contaminate" existing cultures. However the analogy is nearly perfect if we're debating if someone born in Syria and living in England is a Syrian- lifeform or a English-lifeform and is it morally or ethically OK to "contaminate" cultures. Its interesting in that without political agitation this relatively calm and straightforward discussion is what immigration debate would look like, but we're not allowed not to be politically agitated to a certain outcome, for some reason. Or, with a hundred years of political "progress" and parallel technological advance, immigration to Mars will have a political dimension such that sterilizing in satellite-grade clean rooms and talking about contamination fears will sound like pro-nazi death camp talk to future politically active young multicultural people living on Mars and the legacy Earth.

</comment><comment><USER21> Rather than try to remove all contaminants, is it possible to mark them with an indicator of their origin?

</comment><comment><USER22> So we need bacterivirous nanobots ...

(We'll probably make self-replicating ones that destroy all life.)

<comment><USER23> Nature already invented those and they kill off 30% of life in the oceans every day (of course, by the end of the day the bacteria on the other end of this battle have replicated again).

Bacteriophages are what you want, you just need to find the right strain.

<comment><USER22> Bacteriophage means "bacteria eater" but my understanding was from a brief review that they don't eat them so much as use them as host?

Roundworms, acari, springtails, and such eat bacteria though; they're apparently known collectively as detritivores.

<comment><USER23> They don't really eat them, correct. Instead they force the bacteria to produce new phages until it explodes under internal pressure and dies.

Plus, phages are viruses, unlike roundworms and the like, they can survive centuries without food.

They also, as mentioned, account for 30% of death in marine life every day, biggest killer organism on this planet.

There is phage-therapy too, an alternative to anti-biotics, where you are given a dosage of phages in an infected area. Due to their nature they only attack specific strains of bacteria and can easily eradicate the entire population within a few hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I assume they mean _sterile_ when they say clean. Why do we still insist only on sterile environments? Shouldn't we focus on creating small eco systems that are suitable for humans, where probably lots of different microbes that are beneficial to us are included..

<comment><USER25> The point is, we don't want to start ecosystems on the planets and moons of the solar system until we're good and ready - and have checked that nothing was already there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if this is the wrong way to go about it. You could design a spacecraft so it's heat resistant, and then once it's fully assembled, stick it in an oven and heat it to say 200C and just let it sit for a couple of days, or however long it takes to heat all the way through.

I'm sure this would present some design challenges, but it doesn't seem to me like it would be insurmountable.

<comment><USER26> Heating something doesn't necessarily kill all life:

[https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/life-in-extreme- heat.h...](https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/life-in-extreme-heat.htm)

<comment><USER15> I think you can pretty much kill anything if you heat your spacecraft enough. Of course, you might kill the spacecraft too. It might be very difficult indeed to destroy certain types of spores, and the "cook the spacecraft until they're all dead" approach might be possible but completely impractical for any real budget. Obviously any temperature that's hot enough to melt standard space-hardened circuit boards is going to be difficult. On the other hand, it sounds like the clean room approach is no panacea either.

As an interesting tangent, the engineering used to design a heat-resistant spacecraft might be re-used to design a long-lived Venus surface probe.</comment></comment></comment>


Court Finds No Fair Use by Meltwater in News Aggregator Case - <AUTHOR> http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Court-Finds-No-Fair-Use-by-Meltwater-in-News-Aggregator-Case-88854.asp

<comment><USER2> The linked Website needs serious help in its layout and font size choices.</comment>


Neighborly Raises $5.5M to Transform the Municipal Debt Market - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/15/neighborly/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found this fascinating. One of the best ideas for a new marketplace I've heard in a long time.</comment>


See what happens when you start charging for your free iPhone app - <AUTHOR> https://img.skitch.com/20110218-n5965t6cguqj14p2rpfp475mmq.jpg

<comment><USER2> Why didn't you transformed your free app in a "Lite" version and add some levels for a paid one ?

I think this will be a better approach than simply start to charge for a free application. You can think at the Lite version as a way to attract peoples to your app.</comment>


SEC Commissioner's "safe harbor" proposal for ICOs will only enable scammers - <AUTHOR> https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/02/08/sec-commissioner-hester-peirces-safe-harbor-proposal-for-icos-will-only-enable-scammers/ <comment><USER3> Not many ICOs led to efficient product development, but most of them were also not scams. Most teams that ICOed had a profile similar to early stage tech startups. The outcome was usually what you'd expect if you gave a bunch of inexperienced seed stage companies series B-sized piles of cash. They didn't have the urgency developed by running on a shoestring in an earlier stage of the company and they didn't have the direction of having actual users, so they generally have been puttering along and taking their sweet time on the tech.

That being said, most ICOs were not put together by scammers, and many of them have made an honest effort to produced technically advance systems that are often not useful in the real world.

The fact that this author needs to insist that every single ICO was totally fake and has stock photography portraits of fake developers shows that he has an axe to grind and casts doubt on the article.

<comment><USER4> Name one single ico that produced a useful product.

<comment><USER5> MakerDAO.

<comment><USER6> A _useful_ product. It's a stablecoin. Your wallet is full of them already.

<comment><USER5> ...a stablecoin not tied to any major fiat currency with over $600MM of value locked in the contract. That's an extremely successful product by any definition.

<comment><USER6> value locked inside is not a metric of success. By that metric Bank of America is thousands of times more successful, with 1.081 trillion dollars locked in.

<comment><USER5> Does Bank of America have a stablecoin not tied to any major fiat currency with over $600MM of value locked in the contract? (Hint: no, no they do not.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FYI: I've put together some classic ICO myths in the "Awesome Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) Truths" page [1] with the subtitle "The Art of the Steal - <USER2> Scammers' Big Lies". [1]: [https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-ico- truths](https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-ico-truths)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the link. That's a resource I'll find useful to share in the future.

<comment><USER9> :D I also got so annoyed that I started curating blogs and videos (as myth- busters) to help me bring the point across in discussions. My experience with this is sadly that changing anyone's mind who has already made it up is _really_ hard.

Here is my list:

Blockchains Are a Bad Idea (James Mickens) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15RTC22Z2xI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15RTC22Z2xI)

Hacking Blockchain (Konstantinos Karagiannis, Chief Technology Officer, Security Consulting, BT) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gL6DsR6vGg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gL6DsR6vGg)

Myth Busting: Can a blockchain save healthcare? [https://blog.andreacoravos.com/myth-busting-can-a- blockchain...](https://blog.andreacoravos.com/myth-busting-can-a-blockchain- save-healthcare-d398cdebf0c1)

Blockchain Graveyard [https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain- Graveyard/](https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/)

Response to Blockchain & Blockcerts Critiques from Privacy Researcher [https://community.blockcerts.org/t/response-to-blockchain- bl...](https://community.blockcerts.org/t/response-to-blockchain-blockcerts- critiques-from-privacy-researcher/308)

Blockcerts: Using blokchain for identity management is (mostly) ridiculous [https://blog.xot.nl/2017/09/06/blockcerts-using-blokchain- fo...](https://blog.xot.nl/2017/09/06/blockcerts-using-blokchain-for-identity- management-is-mostly-ridiculous/)

Blockchains from a Distributed Computing Perspective [https://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2952-a/papers/perspective.p...](https://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci2952-a/papers/perspective.pdf)

Do you need a Blockchain? [https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf)

IOTA Tweets from cybergibbons: [https://twitter.com/search?q=iota%20cybergibbons](https://twitter.com/search?q=iota%20cybergibbons)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a big cryptocurrency supporter, and I even wrote a chapter about some possible benefits of tokens in my book[0], but I agree that ICOs are almost always pump-and-dump schemes or straight up scams. This is also acknowledged by many cryptocurrency supporters, and I can't really understand why the SEC would do this.

[0]: [https://whycryptocurrencies.com/tokens.html](https://whycryptocurrencies.com/tokens.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> People are caught in a local maxima of thinking securities laws alone stop scams. Theranos, Madoff, Enron were all securities. There are 3 ways to stop scams. 1\. Better enforcement of the laws we have (doesn't work in harsher parts of the world.) It's usually post-facto and rarely recovers funds from those harmed. 2\. Yell at people to be smarter. Your speech isn't funded as well as the scammers, and your pitch isn't as compelling, you often bring awareness to the scam and thus victims for free. 3\. Out-compete the scams for money by marketing to their would-be victims things that aren't scams. Maybe that's an index fund, maybe it's a business opportunity, that can scale, and work everywhere. The only scalable solution to the scamming problem is similar marketing tactics for honest projects. Starve the scams of resources.

<comment><USER4> > The only scalable solution to the scamming problem is similar marketing > tactics for honest projects.

The only way for honest projects to use similar marketing tactics is for them to lie. It's worthwhile to invest in a vanguard fund but it's not a get rich _quick_ scheme and never can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, this guy is biased! Brief selection of non-scammy ICOs:

MakerDAO [https://makerdao.com/](https://makerdao.com/)

Ethereum [https://ethereum.org/](https://ethereum.org/)

Cosmos [https://cosmos.network/](https://cosmos.network/)

Augur [http://www.augur.net/](http://www.augur.net/)

Binance Coin [https://www.binance.com/](https://www.binance.com/)

Basic Attention Token [https://basicattentiontoken.org/](https://basicattentiontoken.org/)

By non-scammy, I mean projects that 1) Raised money via ICO, 2) Delivered what they promised, and 3) [a huge bar!] are succeeding! Even if 99% are scams, the successes make up for the failures, which appears to be similar odds to normal startups.

I would absolutely say that ICOs are way too founder-friendly, but to say every single one of them is a pump-and-dump scam is ridiculous.

I would also say that VC funding is far too investor-friendly, and it makes me happy that the pendulum swung in the opposite direction for once. I think the market will find a better medium, which is what the SEC is proposing with their safe harbor.

This author seems extremely unhappy that Bitcoin is about to hit $10,000. The "never-crypto" people are losing their minds...

<comment><AUTHOR> > Even if 99% are scams, the successes make up for the failures

If you think regulators will put up with any field that's 99% scams, you are deeply incorrect in your understanding of anything about the world of actual money.

I mean, seriously - you're going to go to the SEC and say "you should enable our fabulous investment field, it's only 99% crooks"? Not even Hester Peirce would give that one a pass.

Everything you listed there is to squeeze yet more of the increasingly rare actualdollars from the most degenerate of crypto day traders. It's a "use case" insofar as it addresses problems created by using crypto in the first place.

<comment><USER12> The impression I get from you is someone who has made a niche career out of bashing this technology, but it will continue on regardless. Blockchain is unstoppable by the SEC or any other government regulator because it is decentralized. The blockchain / cryptocurrency industry is building a parallel financial system - one that requires no government intervention for capital allocation, money transfer, ownership, debt, and so on. Every year it gets more powerful and easier to use. You don't have to use this parallel financial system, but as the use-cases expand some people choose to use it.

I'm very happy that neither regulators nor your whiny posts are capable of shutting down Bitcoin. It is an exciting experiment!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Horribly written article -- doesn't go into any detail about the proposal, uses anecdotal data, and author is extremely biased. Seems like the author has an axe to grind. The proposal from Peirce is novel and much superior to the current SAFT framework; The SEC proposal is definitely worth a read.

<comment><USER6> Anything in particular you disagree with or think is an unfair characterization? It all seemed right to me.

<comment><USER5> You don't think it's a bit biased...?

> "The field was literally composed of BS."

> "I think I've literally never seen an ICO white paper idea that wasn't > palpable nonsense."

<comment><USER6> That's all fair because crypto is a solution in search of a problem space. When all you've got is a bicycle you're going to try and ride that bad boy everywhere even if it's not at all appropriate. Blockchain folks are enamored by the technology and have no concept of the problems they're trying to solve with it so naturally fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article doesn't even bother to explain the proposal

<comment><AUTHOR> Summarised in the second paragraph. That's all it has for substance.

<comment><USER13> You wrote that tokens in the safe harbor will need less registration and disclosure, but no comment on what that registration or disclosure will entail, or why it is less than sufficient.</comment></comment></comment>


Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ASQ <comment><USER2> Well, the NASDAQ[0] and DJIA[1] are both off 3% for the day right now, along with every other index around the world. Or, to talk about price movements that are probably a bit more noteworthy, crude oil futures on NYMEX[2] are down ~7%.

It's been kind of a (minor) bloodbath so far in the markets today. So, a 10% drop for a young, growth-oriented company is not terribly surprising on a day like today, I'd think.

0: [https://www.google.com/finance?cid=13756934](https://www.google.com/finance?cid=13756934)

1: [https://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX%3A.DJI](https://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX%3A.DJI)

2: [http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/future/clg6](http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/future/clg6)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, for some people, myself included, the not-going-so-well recent IPOs (Square, Box, etc.) would help deflate the pressure on housing prices in SF/BA. I feel for the workers at these company, but it's becoming impossible to raise a family here when the rent/mortgage is creeping up to more than half of most people's salary.

<comment><USER2> Ha, yes. I don't own a home, but I would like to someday, so I'm always confused how news about falling home prices is treated as "bad" in general in the media. For me, I celebrate the news. I want housing prices to go kaboom so I can afford one.

<comment><USER3> The problem with that though is that housing prices are tightly tied to surrounding economic factors. You could go to some crappy neighborhood in a depressed area of the USA and get a great house for "nothing" (relative to, say, CA). If housing prices go kaboom, it's likely because there aren't as many people moving there, and people aren't moving there because there aren't jobs that can support people.

And be careful what you wish for, because once you _do_ own that house, if the prices continue to fall, you could be underwater fairly easily. If a $1m place falls to $750k, which you can afford, but then the economy continues to stutter, it could fall to $500k or $350k. Remember that your mortgage doesn't reflect what you could sell your house for, once you sign the papers, you're on the hook for it.

<comment><USER4> > The problem with that though is that housing prices are tightly tied to > surrounding economic factors

I really question what those economic factors are though. For SF it's clearly the availability of high paying jobs. However in Portland, OR (where I live) there are little to no high paying tech jobs available, and yet the housing prices are sky rocketing to levels never seen before.

Given my basic understanding of economics the current climate makes absolutely no sense. Wages have been stagnate for years, college grads have no career outlook (outstanding student debt is now $1.2 trillion), and prices for everything (except for oil) are higher than ever. I've seen friends empty their bank accounts just to pay rent. The concept of savings or retirement for millennial might as well not even exist.

<comment><USER5> > The concept of savings or retirement for millennial might as well not even > exist.

Probably not a popular view, but I think there's some truth to it. Check out the Harvard JCHS article [1], more households are paying 30, 40, and even 50% of their salaries for rent than ever before.

Major shifts like this can only be explained by culture, IMO. Maybe the US is undergoing a major shift toward wanting to live in city centers, even at the cost of saving for the future? Or people in certain metros just think they're that exceptional / special / etc. that they "deserve" to live in a certain place? Or everyone in a high-ambition career think they don't need to save because they'll "make it" (maybe true?) and will have fuck-you money in a few years?

It's a big change from the past, that's for sure.

[1] [http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/research/publications/projecting...](http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/research/publications/projecting- trends-severely-cost-burdened-renters-2015%E2%80%932025)

<comment><USER6> Tangentially, the cost of paying a mortgage is comparable to or cheaper than paying rent in the metro areas I've priced. The problem is getting enough of a % downpayment saved to "unlock" the house purchase option.

People I've known who bought houses look at it as locking a "rent rate" in for 30 years and assuming the burden of maintenance rather than riding the fluctuating markets. Right now, they're locked in at lower rates than other people I know are paying in rent to live in a similar area.

I willing to wager part of the problem is the lockdown on lending after 07/08 and more people got pushed into the rent market because they couldn't get the loans to purchase a house which has led to the inversion of the cost of owning vs renting. Historically, owning has been more expensive than renting in most places

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All the food trucks, street and market vendors, estate and yard sales, handymen, etc I see accept credit cards using Square. If they figure out how to hang on to this market and grow as these little vendors grow then they're in good shape. Being down 10% when the Dow is down 400+ points for days on is not unusual.

The big question is - who is Square competing with.

<comment><USER8> If the tech bubble bursts I'm not sure who is going to be buying the $15, undersized lunches that the new wave of food trucks is flooding the market with.

<comment><USER9> Maybe in SF, but not in the rest of the world. Even here in Silicon Alley, we're a small piece of a very large pie.

<comment><USER10> It's the opposite surely. Some of the companies and concepts that seem to survive in SF are considered barmey in other wealthy western cities. Startups whose customers are other startups..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For comparison, Paypal is down 5%, Capital One is down 5.24%, Intuit down 2.24%, Visa down 3%, Amazon down 4.4%.

Not to say that a 10% drop isn't notable, but the whole market is taking a beating today.

<comment><USER12> Additional noteworthy drops are Tesla (-5.93%) and Netflix (-7.12%).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Everything is down. This is almost certainly related to macro signals and not Square itself. Smaller cap stocks tend to have higher volatility and will normally take a heavier beating than larger cap ones.

<comment><USER14> Coins are up 8.3% on the day, which is strange considering all the bandwagon press universally condemning it.

Some of it is correction, but I think generally more people are starting to treat it as a hedge against general global markets--as a haven like gold.

<comment><USER15> You mean Bitcoin? Probably best to refer to it unambiguously.

<comment><USER14> I was being intentionally coy to avoid replies from people not interested in what i was actually saying, but in bitcoin flamewars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Someone with a little more knowledge of financial markets, help me out here. Is it really news if a tech company's stock drops 8-10% on a day when NASDAQ is down over 3%?

<comment><USER17> Mostly if we're discussing how equity compensation might not be the best option. Or how preferred investors and founders took what they could from the workers (in response to "refragmentation").

The Square IPO was less than employees who started after their last round and preferences made it even worse, meaning even though there is a liquidity event, employees who took options are out. With this significant drop, other employees who exercised their options (and paid taxes) are also out.

<comment><USER18> How did preferences make it worse? Generally, preferred shares convert to common in the event of an IPO, so preferences are discarded.

<comment><USER17> > With Square, investors were guaranteed a 20 percent premium on their > investment, which would be worth $18.56 a share, meaning Square had to issue > more shares to those investors, further devaluing the stock owned by > employees.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-19/square- emp...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-19/square-employees- find-some-of-their-stock-options-under-water)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Shopify is down more than 50% from its high and below its IPO offering price as well:

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ASHOP](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ASHOP)

</comment><comment><USER20> Does this have anything to do with Square? Everything looks bad right now. I'm surprised MSFT hasn't tanked like all other Tech stocks.

<comment><USER21> $MSFT is still down ~12% from late December: [http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=msft](http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=msft)

It's not doing too poorly today, but it's not been immune to the larger macro trends of the last month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can someone help explain what this means? Is there something about Square that we can attribute this to? Did they make a mistake? Were they overvalued to begin with?

I've spent the last year trying to understand the whole private-to-public process and I'm curious what this means for Square and other companies like Etsy who are experiencing the same drop in stock price.

<comment><USER23> I don't think Square was overvalued at IPO. As for today's drop: the fall in oil has hit everyone, unfortunately Square's fall of around 8% is worse than most. For Example today AMZN saw a drop of around 4% and TSLA is down 5.5%.

Don't be wary ;)

<comment><USER22> Interesting that a drop in oil price would correlate. Why is this and how does it impact a completely unrelated industry?

<comment><USER2> I'm not an economist, but my understanding is that the price of oil does not directly impact the valuation of these companies, per se, but that growth- oriented companies (especially) and oil sales depend on a strong global economy.

When the price of oil falls, that indicates that people are pulling back on oil/gas/etc purchases due to constrained budgets, reduced business/operations, etc. (and/or that people buying the oil predict that others will cut back on those things in the near future)

<comment><USER24> I'd think its because of the increased supply of oil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> To be fair, google is tanking too [http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog](http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog)

Whole market is going nuts over the possibility of $10/barrel oil and overly strong US dollar

</comment><comment><USER26> What's Square going to do when Apple gets rid of the headphone connector?

<comment><USER27> They already started to move away from the headphone connector completely, well assuming you have NFC or a chip'd card.

[https://squareup.com/contactless-chip- reader](https://squareup.com/contactless-chip-reader)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As stock market valuations of recently public companies like Square go, so do private market valuations of pre-IPO companies.

In other words, as you read this, unicorn valuations are getting less "unicorny," so to speak.

</comment><comment><USER29> And now they're down 1.3%. Whole market bouncing back.

</comment><comment><USER30> more like rectangle - cut in half</comment>


Gift hunting a chore? - <AUTHOR> http://www.giftless.com/?utm_source=Hacker%2BNews%2Byc&utm_medium=link%2Bsubmission&utm_campaign=Hacker%2Bnews%2B9%2Bmay%2B5.10pm

<comment><AUTHOR> Takes too long, feels more like a chore than a joy, can't find anything meaningful...</comment>


BMW, VW, Ford, Daimler team up for electric vehicle charging network in Europe - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/11/bmw-vw-ford-daimler-team-up-for-electric-vehicle-charging-network-in-europe/ <comment><USER2> Before even reading the article I was about to say that I hope they chose the 350 kW charging standard. If they are going to join together to create an Europe-wide network, then it better be future-proof as well, because it's probably going to be quite hard to upgrade those networks drastically for 10-15 years after they're deployed. They probably wouldn't have the will to do it again soon together.

Plus, 350 kW charging may seem like "a lot" now, but I think it will barely be enough by 2025 or so. Most EVs should have at least 100kWh batteries by then, and assuming some loss, and only 300kW charging (maybe even less), and the fact that the batteries only charge fast to 80%, then it would still take most EVs ~25 minutes to do fast-charging.

Also, consider all the future EV trucks and buses with 300+ kWh batteries, for which 350kW charging will actually be quite low. Hopefully at least the fast- charging standard creators will continue to do their research, so we can eventually get to 1+ MW fast-charging, so we can charge large EVs relatively fast, and most small cars within minutes.</comment>


Redesigning the United flight search interface in Photoshop - <AUTHOR> http://nathanbarry.com/redesigning-united-flight-search-ui-photoshop/

<comment><USER2> You must understand why this is not possible to do. D.O.T. rules apply to any agency that collects money for air travel. Everything on that page is subject to rules that change continuously and you can get fined massive amounts if you guess wrong. My employer's lawyers are incredibly paranoid about any UI change as we in the past had to pay a huge penalty because a few words were incorrect. So we wind up being stuck with all sorts of idiotic messaging and other crappola.

Now anyone who does not collect money is exempt, like Google Flights or Hipmunk, and they can design anything they want. But an airline or OTA that collects the money has to deal with the DOT and its insane rules and the paranoid lawyers.

I like the design though, very nice.

<comment><USER3> Then why do all the different airlines have different UI's?

While what you say is correct, you can easily redesign UI and follow the rules.

<comment><USER4> I think his point is more along the lines that regulatory burden and concern for the possible cost of error disincentive for change that effectively borders on paralysis rather than it being a physical reason preventing changes. The same sort of obstacles you see with large companies, but with an extra layer of possible fines on top.

A few years back, a designer blogged about a similar redesign for American Airlines. He was contacted by one of AA's in-house designers, who wrote about the internal politics and hurdles that get in the way of changing things. AA later sacked the designer for violating his NDA and the articles were deleted from the blog, but the entire episode was pretty interesting. If you're interested:

 _Copies of the Dustin Curtis & Mr. X posts_ [http://www.flipthefunnelnow.com/dustin- curtis-%E2%80%93-dear...](http://www.flipthefunnelnow.com/dustin- curtis-%E2%80%93-dear-american-airlines/)

 _Aftermath_ [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0337536829.shtml](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0337536829.shtml)

Even if a redesign doesn't touch any of the regulatory verbage and requirements, it still has to go through largely the same pipeline of internal approval as if it did. So even minor changes are viewed the same as significant ones.

Take the boarding pass. Given the limited amount of information present, redesigning them for a better experience should be a fucking no-brainer. No matter how long you search, I doubt you'll find anyone genuinely satisfied with their boarding pass. They're big, ugly, and reasonably unclear at a glance. You see tons of redesign experiments online, but no airline ever seems to take the hint or be inspired by them. Here's a semi-recent one that I love:

[http://petesmart.co.uk/rethink-the-airline-boarding- pass/](http://petesmart.co.uk/rethink-the-airline-boarding-pass/)

Beautiful typography, perfectly sized for your passport, and easy to read at a glance. Throw in the time difference and predicted weather for your destination, and the redesign is utterly perfect. What's not to love? And yet, nothing.

I see two big problems with the status quo in that regard: first, you the almost reactionary mindsets that seem to become not only more common, but also even _more_ reactionary, as a company grows. Self-deceptive thoughts like "change is scary/costly/will scare away all the customers" are pretty damned powerful. Along with a lack of genuine demand for the change in the first place: bad UI hurts customers and drives away sales, but quantifying it directly in a way that makes it a priority in itself is difficult. They're all the more powerful by the fact that they originally stem from genuine concerns. And these attitudes are practically everywhere. Hell, even apple.com took the better part of a decade to see a significant shift in its UI + design:

[http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/graphics-roundups/the- evolu...](http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/graphics-roundups/the-evolution-of- applecom/)

It's really no wonder nothing changes. Until we start to see shifts in those attitudes, we're going to be largely stuck with the same bad UX in far too many places. :(

<comment><USER5> Can confirm, redesigns are scary on the money machine. The more cash your engine cranks out, the less likely you will be to experiment. Experiments will fall on low-risk categories, not something as significant as ticket purchase.

<comment><USER6> Not as scary as how much money your losing because of abandonment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Remember when the American Airlines employee got fired for giving feedback to an unsolicited re-design? Also, here are some other examples of airline website re-designs [2].

I can't find it now, but the AA designer's response discussed the challenges of re-designing these sites, would be appropriate to relate that here.

[1] [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0337536829.shtml](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0337536829.shtml)

[2] [https://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2010/08/02/please-let-me- red...](https://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2010/08/02/please-let-me-redesign- your-airline-for-you/)

<comment><USER8> After reading through, the author of the redesign was Dustin Curtis, creator of Svbtle.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, unfortunately I can't find those articles in google cache or wayback machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Guys, you are missing the point. This is not about redesigning the United website, it is about how to use Photoshop to design a web interface.

2\. Nathan, why would you design something in Photoshop instead of directly prototyping it in html/css? I think designing straight in html/css is already pretty fast.

You also run into the danger of adding some nice looking effects that are easy to add in Photoshop but not so easy to implement in CSS.

<comment><USER10> 1\. Yes, you are right. This is more of a tutorial than an redesign for the sake of doing a redesign.

2\. Because Photoshop is far faster and I create much more visually interesting designs when I use it.

Everything in the design is very easy to recreate with CSS. But I agree, sometimes it is better to design in the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like what you did here. I like your photoshop tutorials. I think you should stick with those.

Your book on iOS design was, quite frankly, a waste of money. You touched the surface of interesting design topics and then never dived in. It's a lot harder to teach the principles of design and how to break down features into UI than it is to show pictures of successful designs. Your terminology for the standard controls in iOS was also incorrect.

You never went into why you design the way you do. By just putting up photoshop videos, you are able to deliver by not overselling what you have to offer. Please keep doing more photoshop videos.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just off the bat, it looks a lot easier to read and understand. The current design might be done to support older browsers but I think most of the users should not be punished for the few who still use older browsers.

<comment><USER13> For what it's worth, I don't think there's any intentional support for older browsers with their current design, so much as a failure to care about any newer design.

United's current website is Continental's website pre-merger. It's the same design they've used for nearly eight years and it's really showing.

[http://imgur.com/a/RZtRH](http://imgur.com/a/RZtRH)

United's pre-merger site wasn't anything really spectacular, but it was still better than what they're putting up there now.

<comment><USER14> Do you have your font settings changed? My mm/dd/yyyy fit's within the frame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Fi did something way more advanced[1] and even implemented it in HTML/CSS/JS as you can see from the demo. There are a lot of reason to redesign an company website, but there are even more not to. These are ones that come to mind:

-retrocompatibility (the website has to work for the widest possible audience)

-legacy code (you can't waste tens of men-hours for something unproven and of dubious impact on your business. I mean, people have no problem booking flights with the current website)

-implementing in code a photoshop design presents its own challenges and would require a considerable investment of resources. Usually the result would be worse than what planned due to intrinsic limitations of web technologies

-even the smallest change has to be approved by a committee, this is a big corporate entity, not a startup. A radical redesign is likely out of discussion.

[1] [http://www.f-i.com/fi/airlines/](http://www.f-i.com/fi/airlines/)

</comment><comment><USER16> These redesigns are always nice to look at, but there are usually a lot of functional considerations they ignore.

<comment><USER10> Yep, there are always things missed. This redesign is actually for teaching Photoshop techniques more than it is about getting the best possible United search screen. For example, I didn't make any major changes to the flow or UX side of the design (which is needed for a real redesign!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the redesign could benefit from better organization and more contrast. I felt like "search by" was unnecessarily cramped in a corner, the input fields weren't standing out, and the options at the bottom could be better visually organized.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a redesign, but not really a re-think. Check out Bret Victor's "Magic Ink" for a completely new interface for the task: [http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#p227](http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#p227)

(and if you like it, read the whole article; it's fantastic).

</comment><comment><USER19> Really well done. What's now painfully obvious to me that I hadn't realized before seeing your design is how much easier cognitively it is to place the destinations horizontally. Makes a ton of sense and you rarely see that.

</comment><comment><USER20> Slightly OT but quite interesting: [http://petesmart.co.uk/rethink-the- airline-boarding-pass/](http://petesmart.co.uk/rethink-the-airline-boarding- pass/)

</comment><comment><USER21> As nice as this might be, it looks approximately nothing like the rest of the site, which is pretty jarring. That shade of purple isn't even in United's color scheme.

</comment><comment><USER22> Photoshop is meant for photo manipulation. For user interfaces and web design in general, Flash is a much simpler and intuitive option.

</comment><comment><USER23> lol hello! Let me 'redesign' your site without a brief, knowledge of the business, or any idea about the demographics/market/technology involved. I'm a designer with photoshop woohooo! /end snarky attitude

All that aside, a photoshop comp 'redesign' (re-skin may be more accurate) without a brief or objectives besides 'make it easier to use/prettier' is not design. At best it's speculation, at a glance it's just a different layout, at worst it's a grab for traffic to your blog so you can sell more of books.

A design is a solution to a problem, if you don't start with a well defined problem you're not designing...

<comment><USER9> You are totally missing the point of his videos.

<comment><USER23> I realize the main purpose is to teach someone how to use photoshop. Guess what else it's doing? Teaching them that designing without spec is a part of the job. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> why does your redesign not work? I press on the drop down arrows...nothing! Tabs don't work?...

<comment><USER25> Because it's an image.</comment></comment>


Zoom treats you like a child - <AUTHOR> https://team.video/blog/zoom-child <comment><USER2> Just FYI, at the bottom of your homepage ([https://team.video](https://team.video)), the first "Pricing" link is broken and actually goes to the blog.

<comment><USER3> Fixed, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I never thought I would ever be defending zoom, but the fact that they don't let you start the meeting without the meeting owner means that waiting attendees cant be zoom-bombed by griefers who just want to hurt other people because they think it's funny.

Zoom does a lot of stupid stuff, but most of the things being raised against here aren't actually in the list of the really stupid stuff that zoom does.

You're missing the mark.</comment>


Bernard Bailyn, Eminent Historian of Early America, Dies at 97 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/books/bernard-bailyn-dead.html <comment><USER2> I took an entry-level lecture course, taught by his son Charles, on current topics (as of 2007) in astrophysics, and it was wonderful and engaging. Quite the family.

<comment><USER3> I viewed what might be the same course online. It's a great class: [https://oyc.yale.edu/astronomy/astr-160](https://oyc.yale.edu/astronomy/astr-160)</comment></comment>