Google wins book-scanning case: judge finds "fair use," cites many benefits - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/11/14/google-wins-book-scanning-case-judge-finds-fair-use-cites-many-benefits/ <comment><USER2> Law in general, and copyright law in particular, may be applied mechanically or it may be applied with insight, and the results can vary widely depending on which approach is used.

There is a lot in copyright law that would have allowed a judge to reject Google's fair use defense almost out of hand, as it were. Google had the temerity to copy some 20 million copyrighted works without the authors' permission. It did not limit itself to copying select portions for some discrete educational purpose but copied every work in its entirety. And it used those copies in a for-profit enterprise to enhance its business and advance its profitability. Taken as a whole, such factors would have allowed a court to conclude that the uses Google made of the copyrighted works readily failed to meet the requirements of the fair use defense and thus left the book industry, in effect, frozen in an early 20th century analog world.

Judge Chin, however, is obviously a judge who knows how to apply the law with insight and this shows him to be an outstanding jurist. Rather than applying the law mechanically, he stepped back to first principles and thought through very carefully how the copyright law ought to be applied in order to fulfill its intended purpose - that is, as set forth in the Constitution, in order to promote the arts and sciences.

His decision goes through the Copyright Act's four statutory factors primarily used for determining whether a fair use defense exists or not but is grounded in something far deeper than those factors. Yes, Google's use of the copied works was "highly transformative" and this weighs heavily in favor of a finding of fair use (first factor). Yes, the nature of the copyrighted works is that they are all published works and mostly non-fiction, and this too weighs in favor of fair use (second factor). Yes, the amount of copying is of entire works but Google offers search results in carefully controlled snippets, and these factors combined weigh slightly against fair use (third factor). Yes, the effect of the copying on the market or value of the copyrighted works actually enhances the sales of books for the copyright holders by increasing their visibility and making them accessible to potential buyers, and this too favors a finding of fair use.

All this is true, and is pretty carefully analyzed in the decision. But, in the end, this technical analysis is merely the backdrop for what primarily motivated the judge's decision and that was his overwhelming sense that laws must be applied in light of their intended purposes and not used to choke off the results that the very law in question was intended to further.

In other words (and these are my words and my assessment and not the judge's), it is ludicrous in an increasingly technological world that society should not benefit from a project so stupendous as that of a private party investing enormous resources to transform millions of obscure works of literature into a treasure trove of searchable materials made freely available to users of all types, including those who have historically been physically impaired from using them at all, and all the while taking all reasonable steps to ensure that these materials are offered in a way that respects the legitimate concerns of the copyright holders. Copyright gives authors substantial rights to control what is done with their works. It prevents others from exploiting such works commercially without their permission. But this has never prevented others from making fair use of those works for educational goals and the like. In educational settings, it has been possible for a long time now to copy quite freely from copyrighted works for class projects and the like. Such copying is deemed fair because, while not significantly impairing the true commercial rights of copyright holders, it furthers the progress of arts and science. And that is the point of what Google is doing here with its books project. In ways for which many are deeply thankful, it is using all the resources of modern technology to add huge value to otherwise dormant copyrighted works and to use the resulting product in ways that truly advances arts and science. If copyright should be used to defeat that sort of project, then it undercuts the very rationale upon which it exists in the first place. Though if applied merely mechanically, it might be used for such a purpose, it _ought not_ be used that way. And that is, in essence, what Judge Chin concluded.

Here are his words on this point: "In my view, Google Books provides significant public benefits. It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders. It has become an invaluable research tool that permits students, teachers, librarians, and others to more efficiently identify and locate books. It has given scholars the ability, for the first time, to conduct full-text searches of tens of millions of books. It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life. It facilitates access to books for print-disabled and remote or underserved populations. It generates new audiences and creates new sources of income for authors and publishers. Indeed, all society benefits."

This is a soundly reasoned decision that is a highlight of modern law not so much because of any deep legal reasoning as such but because it profoundly captures and applies the spirit of the law in ways that comport with modern technological advancement. The decision protects innovators such as Google while upholding in every fundamental the legitimate interests of copyright holders. In this way, it upholds the traditional framework of the law while allowing it to be sensibly applied to new developments. There is nothing revolutionary here. But it is an encouraging sign that courts are able to adapt to the times and is thus a highly positive development.

<comment><USER3> This is all good, but if it were not Google with its 200 in-house lawyers, but some bootstrapped startup out of Austin, TX that had the temerity to copy 20 million copyrighted books, would judge Chin apply the same constitutional insight?

<comment><USER4> What we can say is that with the Google case as a precedent, it makes it a heck of a lot more likely that a judge faced with similar use from a bootstrapped startup out of Austin will find for fair use, next time.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, when the big powerful behemoths work to improve the world instead of stagnating and monopolizing it, great things can happen. This case is a great example where Google did something no startup would be able to get away with and fought a multi-year battle to make it work.

It's hardly the only example, though. IBM did hard work to defend Linux against Microsoft and SCO's attacks. Apple cracked the carriers' line against useful smartphones with unlimited data, 30% instead of 90% carrier cuts in app stores, and freedom from spyware and crapware; Jobs' sales pitch to AT&T was as big an innovation as any tech in the iPhone. Google fights for net neutrality, fair use, and free speech on the internet. All the big players were active in the effort to organize the users of the internet against SOPA, too.

But the big players can also be destructive. Smartphone patent wars are a danger and a disappointment. If the major players would turn their Washington efforts to our common best interests, we could have excluded software entirely from patent monopolies by now. It certainly would have saved them many billions to do the right thing. Instead they fight to a standstill in courts at great expense and leave startups endangered and exploited in their path.

So let's hope for more of this in the future and tip our hats to Google and Judge Chin this time.

<comment><USER6> I'm not so "thankful" to Google or Judge Chin as you, since you seem to be arguing that "if you're big enough to do whatever you feel like, do it!!!"

Just another example of the "taking economy" that seems so popular these days among the short-sighted.

<comment><USER7> this must truly be for the public good. I doubt Google can profit off the data from millions of books of well-written, gramatically correct writers of the english language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That was a nice turnaround. The earlier decisions by Chin had me thinking he had already decided for the Authors Guild (so tempted to say AG there but that reads 'attorney general' sigh).

Now the next question is whether or not the Authors will come back to the table in being willing to let Google give them money for selling an out of print scan of their book to someone. That should be a no brainer "hey money you would not otherwise get!" but as we've seen there is never enough free money to make it worthwhile.

<comment><USER9> As much as I desperately want out-of-print books to be available, I really didn't like that court case. The idea of a small group of authors being allowed to negotiate away the rights of authors everywhere to one party only (Google) is absurd.

This is something that really needs legislative action.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand why. Any other company now (presumably) has the right to digitally offer out of print books too. No one else wants to do it, either out of lack of motivation, cost or potential revenue. You can't blame Google for that, this is a massive step forward for society.

It's not really a win for free markets if you now need to legislate.

<comment><USER11> I believe GP is talking not about this decision but about what would have happened if [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books_Settlement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books_Settlement) had not been shot down in 2011.

This outcome allows everyone to digitize out-of-print books, whereas the settlement would have granted Google a monopoly on them in exchange for a fee to the Authors' Guild.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Consider that copyright originated as system with which to control people. The types of control sought were those of monetary, and thought/expression of thought.

Monetary control goes back to antiquity, where copying a book required expensive literate slaves to copy a book for about the same price as publishing one. Thought and expression control goes back to the censorship systems of the church, who sought to prevent critical dissent via restricting publishing using licenses - later termed a "monopoly".

These two systems were then combined in practice. Not only were the printers/publishers restricted and licensed, but what they could print or reprint as well. This control over what was published not only served the church and/or state's interests in enforcing dogmatic or state law, but also the monetary interests of the original publishers of a work. In essence, the publisher and the government form a pact to ensure each other's mutual interests, at the expense of the common citizen.

It wasn't until 1710 that the game changed. The Statute of Anne ushered in not only the destruction of publishing monopolies, but the argument (in form of law) that "protecting" a work from copying was primarily an incentive for scholars to keep churning out more works - the argument summarized as: _" Why would learned men compose and write useful books unless there was financial incentive?"_ Flash forward to today, and that's basically still the same argument used by anyone lobbying for copyright of anything. If it's copied and nobody gets paid, nobody will make anything [intellectual/creative/etc] anymore.

Consider how amazingly specious this argument is today. Look at Wikipedia. Look at YouTube. Look at all the works being published under all the subversive licenses that are intended to surmount the aged limitations of copyright law. Do we really care to restrict what content you can produce, or if someone gets paid for it? More and more the arguments are about simple attibution, or freedom of use, than anything else.

All this decision finds is that the copying of books is by and of itself no longer a harmful act. But we've known that for decades.

<comment><USER13> The ruling doesn't allow wholesale display of said books on books.google.com though.

<comment><USER12> .....So?

<comment><USER13> So I hope you aren't implying above that this ruling states that is now legal.

<comment><USER12> Nope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We can endlessly argue over the correctness of this decision but I am little surprised that authors guild actually sued Google for this. It is like website owners suing Google for crawling, indexing and increasing visibility of their website.

Clearly, what Google had done was beneficial for the entire book industry.

May be the Authors guild was more interested in some kind of rent seeking rather than actually protecting anyone's interest. I am sure even that must have been noticed by the judge.

<comment><USER4> Well, it was seven years ago they filed the suit. But yeah, they sure are sticking to it.

> It is like website owners suing Google for crawling, indexing and increasing > visibility of their website.

Yeah, that happened. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Google_Inc.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Google_Inc.).

<comment><USER4> oh yeah and it wasn't the only time either: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121213/08013521375/belgia...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121213/08013521375/belgian- newspapers-agree-to-drop-lawsuit-over-google-news-after-google-promises-to- show-them-how-to-make-money-online.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >The decision also comes as a major volte-face for Judge Chin... that the higher court (on which he now sits) wanted him to acknowledge fair use.

I find it very disheartening. The reasons given by the judge are very fair and convincing. If it's true that he ruled this way because higher court wanted him to acknowledge fair use, judge was not objective.

I wonder if his stance, now or previously, was politically motivated. Let's wish that the judge came to this decision solely on the merits of arguments for/against "fair use". The alternative is depressing to think about.

<comment><USER7> i don't think the reasons are convincing. I don't think that it benefits the public is a good reason.

<comment><USER16> So what is your view on the law? Those with a utilitarian view would probably say that what 'benefits the public' is really the main aim of the legal system. I take it you disagree?

<comment><USER17> Usually, whether something benefits the public is a policy question for the legislature, _not_ a decision for the courts to make. OTOH, many specific laws include public interest considerations that require courts to make determination of at least some aspect of public interest to apply the law.

<comment><USER18> And, in this case, the pubic interest aspect comes from the US Constitution ("promote the progress of science and useful arts").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this Google only or anyone e.g. Microsoft and Amazon, can also now start scanning/distributing books?

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure but since this ruling took place in higher courts, lower courts now have a precedent set. Similar cases will tend to lean this way, unless exceptional circumstances.

<comment><USER20> It's probably worth mentioning that this is a decision made in a specific circuit but the general point still applies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can an author choose to opt in to Google selling suitably protected full copies with royalties?

This could be great for authors since Google will have already have done all the hard work of creating the electronic object and providing availability.

</comment><comment><USER22> Google should open up their search codebase.

All the benefits cited for book scanning will apply here too. Come on Google. We know you can do it :)

Nobody will deprive Google of any revenue. It will have lots of public benefits.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Chin also rejected the theory that Google was depriving authors of income, > noting that the company does not sell the scans or make whole copies of > books available. He concluded, instead, that Google Books served to help > readers discover new books and amounted to "new income from authors."

Fire up your torrents. We have a new precedent for the legality of file sharing. As long as the pirates aren't selling you the files, they're helping you discover new movies!

<comment><USER13> Nope. If your torrent only contains a single page from each chapter maybe, but wholesale copying is still against the law. You can't read entire books on Google Books.

<comment><USER24> What if 100 person independently loaded one page of a 100 page book?

The full work is available, but no individual can be blamed with infringement under your interpretation.</devils_advocate>

<comment><USER25> These kinds of tricks hardly ever pass muster. The law isn't that stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would love if in the future Google (or any other company) begins selling digital editions of books that can only be acquired in paper. Digital books are the future.

<comment><USER9> I'd be happy enough if they were only allowed to do that for out-of-print books. If you've pursued an interest in nearly any area of history, you'll know that there are tons of books that are still in copyright but quite difficult to find.

<comment><USER26> To be honest, with out-of-print books I don't care about copyright and I just simply photocopy them, if the publisher wants my money they should reprint the books or release them digitally.

IMHO the copyright should get voided when the work gets out of circulation, but copyright will be extended as long as required to prevent Mickey Mouse to join the public domain...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For a contrasting perspective to the technology-centric, access-oriented view of "public benefits" that is typically dominant on HN, see the documentary "Google and the World Brain":

[http://www.worldbrainthefilm.com/](http://www.worldbrainthefilm.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> As a former Librarian I approve and my former colleagues for some weird reason disapprove :(

</comment><comment><USER29> Eight years for the process. That legal systems seems thoroughly broken.

<comment><USER30> (Sadly, i can't comment on the decision itself, but i can comment on the meta- arguments here :P)

Eight years for large, insanely complex litigation involving hundreds of thousands of pages of documents does not seem that thoroughly broken.

Also, judges have a large number of these complex cases on their dockets at once, because the US in general thinks lawsuits are great way to resolve normal disputes.

This is why most courts order mediation/settlement talks etc in these complex cases (and there was a settlement, it just wasn't approved).

TL;DR If you want serious efficiency, asking it from a bunch of overworked judges trying to oversee a large number of complex cases seems a bit much. They do what they can, and try to get folks to resolve out of court, but often parties just want their day in court, and that takes time.

<comment><USER29> I think you just listed a whole bunch of reasons _why_ that legal system is broken.

It's IMHO quite questionable whether such a law suit must be insanely complex and involve hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. And then subsequently, why judges have to be overworked, etc.

<comment><USER30> "It's IMHO quite questionable whether such a law suit must be insanely complex and involve hundreds of thousands of pages of documents."

There is essentially some minimum amount of documentation necessary to resolve a lawsuit. For something that involves a class of many thousands of plaintiffs, works, and claims, needing essentially 10 pages per person (or whatever) is just not a lot.

I mean, do you expect Google search to be 50 lines of code?

Also note that part of the purpose of discovery is to get everyone's cards on the table. You are often required to produce any possibly relevant info, which in this day and age, includes large volumes of emails. The whole goal here is that there should be no surprises, and hopefully, the dispute should be resolvable without going to trial once everyone's hand is shown.

Judges are overworked because the judiciary is underfunded. We are too busy making useless tanks to add to the collection we have in the desert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Personally, I prefer paper books anyway. E-books don't provide the same experience.

Also, what Google provides is no different than what you get from going into a store and flipping through the book's pages. It's good for the consumer (to know what they're getting) and for the author. Paper book sales would likely be lower if they were all encased in plastic prior to sale...

<comment><USER32> I don't want to go back to a world where I can't carry my entire book library (3K+ books) on a Kindle with me.

<comment><USER31> What would be really nice is a world where you buy the paper book, and get the e-book with it. I like my oversized book shelf at home, but taking books with you is also convenient.

<comment><USER32> Agree 100%. I see us getting closer to this with Amazon's Matchbook program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I read this to say that Piracy is legal if you don't charge for it. There is no difference between putting a full book on line and a full movie. This won't stand for long, MPAA wouldn't have lost this case. Authors are just not as well organized.

<comment><USER34> "I read this to say that Piracy is legal if you don't charge for it."

This statement is not accurate. See my prior post about the four factor test for Fair Use. The judge ruled that this specific use (which doesn't distribute full books online) was fair use. Putting a movie online would almost certainly fail the Fair Use test.

This case is far too complex to be summed up as "Google putting full books online".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> META: 84 upvotes and no comments? Something smells fishy...

<comment><USER36> Many upvotes aren't organic votes but instead are duplicate submissions which each count as an upvote for the first submitter.

OT hijack: This can lead to news from popular sources being submitted because they are known to generate lots of votes. This leads to lots of people trying to be first to submit which leads to them getting lots of "upvotes", which further contributes to that source being known for upvotes. This leads to certain sources now always appearing regardless of the merit of the actual articles.

<comment><USER8> Interesting side effect action there. I wonder if re-submit votes should be damped in some way. One might use the length of time of the submitting account (avoid spammers who create an account and submit the same day, or create several accounts in one day and all submit the same article (although that one is caught by the software))

<comment><USER36> Part of the problem though isn't that it's artificial accounts generating deliberate spam or shilling, it's disparate uncoordinated users each doing what they think will boost their karma.

If I know that every codinghorror post gets to front page, I know that if I spot a new coding horror post I should submit to HN to get the karma. In an effort to be first I shouldn't check if it's previously been submitted, I should just submit.

Therefore I will submit. If it turns out I'm not the first I'm just upvoting the article, if it turns out I am first I "win" a lot of karma.

There's no way to differentiate between a genuinely interesting coding horror post that is getting submissions from people because it's a good post (of which there are many) and between a coding horror post that is getting submissions because people expect them to get submissions.

After a while, even low quality sites that are known to have people who post them for this effect can get trapped into this cycle.

This isn't an effect of spammers, it's an effect of a community who know how each other behave.

If you can't differentiate between this and more "genuine" activity then you cannot dis-incentivise the activity you wish to prevent.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GoDaddy isn't as pretty as you thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/godaddy-isnt-pretty-you-thought

<comment><USER2> Did any of you think you were going to get real tech support for a GoDaddy shared hosting account? Well, uh, now you know.

<comment><USER3> Seriously, as soon as he said he was hosting his code there I thought "Well we found the problem, end of post".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only thing worse than this is imagining a world in which el-cheapo shared hosts _did try to fix your webapps_.

</comment><comment><USER5> The title is flat wrong, my opinion of GoDaddy actually improved from reading his rant.

What I don't understand is how someone with a modicum of technical skill could expect anything from a GoDaddy shared hosting account.

</comment><comment><USER6> I know two people who work for GoDaddy. In their training for Tech Support they stress the upsell. This is why the web page control panel for their shared hosting is so horrible from a usability perspective. So that people will become confused, have to call in and then GoDaddy has an opportunity to upsell them. This is why I always advise "anyone but GoDaddy", even though my friends could get commision from my referral.

<comment><USER7> Seconded. GoDaddy might be ok for domains or SSL, but that's about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not just GoDaddy--I've had similar experiences with half a dozen other shared hosting companies.

GoDaddy is one of the few that actually has free phone support, which is a lot nicer than an automated email and a response 48 hours later.

<comment><USER9> With both HostGator and ASmallOrange I've generally found an automated email and a reply within 6 hours.

Actually, with ASO I usually have a reply from a human being within 15 minutes to an hour, and I don't think I've seen any counterexamples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10>
        So here's the bottom line, guys.  GoDaddy has some of the worst support in the business. [...]

So here's the bottom line, guy. You get what you pay for.

<comment><USER11> _So here's the bottom line, guy. You get what you pay for._

And the same ppl who tell you that will then say that you shouldn't use the MS stack, and only use free tools :-)

<comment><USER12> Free (as in beer) software isn't actually free, it's just that _you_ don't have to be the one paying for it. Check out the percentage of the kernel written by paid kernel hackers sometime.

<comment><USER13> Well, not with money, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I got the same runaround with their VPS service. I started seeing really high disk latency - on the order of tens of seconds to create a file. I emailed them, along with the results of a script that measured how long it took to create a new file over time.

First they told me that they checked and everything was OK, maybe I should contact someone who knows about systems administration. Then they said the performance I was seeing was within their acceptable standards.

I asked them for their standards, they said they didn't have any published standards.

Thank goodness I found Linode.

<comment><USER15> _I started seeing really high disk latency - on the order of tens of seconds to create a file._

That's not _disk_ latency. That's _filesystem_ latency.

It's entirely possible that the disk latency was high, but you really should have measured it directly to rule out filesystem problems.

<comment><USER14> I would have loved to do more in depth measurement, but I couldn't get to any disk stats under /proc. Even iostat was crippled.

I'm also not sure the distinction was that important in that case. With their VPS implementation there were no knobs I could turn. The root cause of the problem had to be on their side of the fence. "Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with axe"

<comment><USER15> Well, one common issue is filesystems slowing down if data structures (e.g. directories) get big. Creating a single file doesn't take a constant number of disk operations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every time you host a website on GoDaddy or NetworkSolutions, God kills a kitten.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is the TL;DR of this "Boo hoo my super cheap shared hosting stopped working and they didn't give me platinum level support"?

iWeb has the same sort of super-cheap hosting, but they fix your stuff on a "best case" basis. I don't blame them. Spend a few hours on a customer problem and you're losing a ton of cash when it's a $3/mo. plan.

<comment><USER18> If I pay for it, it should at least function. If you can't keep it functional at a certain price point, don't offer that price point.

<comment><USER19> Clearly it _just works_ for a lot of people. I really tire of the "if it doesn't work for me it shouldn't work for anyone" attitude.

These sorts of complaints are ridiculous. It's one thing to host some little family site on GoDaddy shared hosting, but for anything real...come on. You get what you pay for.

<comment><USER11> _Clearly it just works for a lot of people_

Why do you say that? Do you have data? It seems just as likely that it doesn't work for a lot of people, but they can survive on the churn from new customers (and subscriptions) -- or convincing people to provide a poorer service.

<comment><USER3> It's a reasonable inference that it was working for enough people. Either that or this guy is the only person on GoDaddy Shared, or everybody who uses it is too dumb to know working from not working. Either way the moral seems to be: Not enough people complained to warrant a real investigation.

<comment><USER11> Who is supposed to investigate? The way a lot of these companies work, like DirecTV, is that they know what the practice is, but as an individual you have little power to stop them.

It doesn't have to work for anyone for this to be succesful for GoDaddy. They just have to be able to collect on enough people, with decent churn for new blood.

<comment><USER3> What are you talking about? Clearly it has to 'work' in the sense that when you upload your code and go to look at it you get a result back for the initial people. This guys app did not work at all. Are you saying GoDaddy has a product they sell that doesn't work even in the slightest? If this one guy noticed something broke it is not unreasonable to think that if it is across the entire product that more people would complain and it would escalate. It may not be true but it's not unreasonable. But this discussion is almost full retard.

<comment><USER11> Clearly you don't know WTF you're talking about. But lets end this full _retard_ discussion. Done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Using godaddy for shared hosting is bad, their dns/domain hosting and dedicated hosting is good. Basically shared hosting is bad just about everywhere, especially with .NET because it is so tied to the OS.

Crappy shared hosting is a big reason that PHP is still as big as it is as you need a specialized provider or server control when you want to run python, ruby, .net, java.

Just buy a dedicated server or slices next time that are either virtual or dedicated servers that you can configure yourself.

</comment><comment><USER21> After a recent HN thread discussion on HN, I migrated all of my DNS names registered on GoDaddy to Name.com.

GoDaddy's commercials are moronic, and that was the principal reason. Their horrible domain management web console also played a big part.

I question the intelligence of anyone who's used their web interface, who's then decided to host servers with GoDaddy.

Avoiding even one incident like this is worth whatever extra I'd pay with a decent hoster.

<comment><USER22> I've been using DomainSite.com for a decade (at least) now. I don't know when Name.com bought them, or what happened there, or if they were always Name.com. Either way, I just always go back. The UI is simple, it's fast, doesn't get in your way. It just works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I feel the same way about Network Solutions, they deliberately delete my PHP Conifg files and host me on servers without enough memory. Whenever I call tech support, they just say that they're relocating my files but "cant tell me when it will be done". I can't even get a basic install of Drupal to work reliably on their Unix hosting accounts because the servers time out after one hit, and its not because of my skills. My google analytics figures are horrible because the hosting is down 45% of the time. Its also amazing how horrible their admin account interfaces are with booby traps to try to get you to "opt in" to services as well. And mysteriously, the "Auto Renew" option selected itself just this year when I've always had it off since I started the account years ago. It charged my credit card, not even worth trying to get that undone... The concept of Ethics is lost on the web hosting industry. _sigh_

<comment><USER24> Sometimes it's worth either paying someone for the convenience (ie. paying a decent provider) or doing it yourself.

55% uptime is horrible, but I'd suggest that instead of complaining you either shell out some more & move away (Drupal doesn't require anything special) or set up a VPS with a decent provider like Slicehost or Linode and go from there.

I don't mean to preach, but I read so many 'hosting horror stories' where the end-user just doesn't seem to want to do anything about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> GoDaddy has an "Office of The President" and this is where I have gotten results in the past when I had shared and dedicated servers there. When the front-line tech were really giving me the run-a-round and Managers were not listening I simply call that office. They have people there that take the information and start making phone calls to Managers to figure it out and get you back to where you need to be. I hated having to call there but when you are paying $175/month and your site has been down 2 weeks you start to get a little pissed off.

<comment><USER26> If I'm paying $175/month and their front-line support can't be bothered to help me, I'll take my business elsewhere. No second chances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't do any hosting with godaddy, and I would NEVER recommend their hosting services for anything other than the MOST basic of site.

Having said that, for domains and DNS, nobody does it better. If I ever have any problems with the services I purchase from them I can very easily get a tech on the phone.

</comment><comment><USER28> Godaddy hosts websites? I kid, but it's so clearly not their core business. Their advertisements have one single message: register your domain at GoDaddy. And they do that great. Now that you have your domain name, go find a business whose core business is hosting! Wow.

<comment><USER29> The domain reg is a 'loss' leader for the shared hosting packages. The whole business model is based on the idea that all 95% of people need to do is get Registration + DNS + POP3 + host some static HTML. The pricing is inline with that. GoDaddy keeps the 95% of people who can be served on that model. The other 5% should know well enough that they won't be served well by that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I use GD's DNS and domain management. I would _never_ consider hosting a site with them.

</comment><comment><USER31> Bad support is one huge issue for sure. Consumerist says they do not outsource tech support. Maybe they should.

Has anyone else noticed how much is going on within the frames? They've privatized almost every aspect of building a website. A single dropdown has enough links to comprise an entire site.

I can imagine this has implications on their support centers in that they can never train one agent to throughly understand the complexities of a single issue. Instead, they must teach them a little about everything.

</comment><comment><USER32> You can get a VPS really cheap these days. Less than 200 bucks a year. I highly recommend it. It costs more than shared hosting, but the complete control makes up for it. I've been using Linode since Oct and have been very happy.

For cheap shared hosting, I've had great luck with nearlyfreespeech.net.

<comment><USER33> _Less than 200 bucks a year._

Indeed, less than 30 bucks a year [1], with unmetered bandwidth (if slow). I thought it _had_ to be a scam, but I tried it out of curiosity... and it works!

[1] For example, <http://rubyringtech.com/vps-solutions/linux-vps/>

<comment><USER34> I'd hate to put that "unmetered" thing to the test with a suddenly popular website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The value of ones time comes to play here. If you are spending hours to resolve an issue with a $5/mo account it just isn't worth it. He should have just cut bait and gone elsewhere the second the marginal savings in hosting was expended. I believe the technical term is "Penny wise, pound foolish".

</comment><comment><USER36> boo hoo and 2 second google search:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/475318/how-do-i-get- httph...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/475318/how-do-i-get-httphandlers- to-work-on-godaddy)

</comment><comment><USER37> Why would you host your website with a company whose core competancy is DNS? It's like getting your car serviced at a carwash.

</comment><comment><USER38> of several experiences with godaddy, there are none i can classify as "pleasant"

</comment><comment><USER39> It's 2011, I am in shock that I'm still reading articles like this.</comment>


The Free Software Foundation is now accepting Bitcoin donations - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/bitcoins-a-new-way-to-donate-to-the-fsf

<comment><USER2> You can see their transactions with Bitcoin Block Explorer:

[http://blockexplorer.com/address/1PC9aZC4hNX2rmmrt7uHTfYAS3h...](http://blockexplorer.com/address/1PC9aZC4hNX2rmmrt7uHTfYAS3hRbph4UN)

</comment><comment><USER3> Serious question: how is the FSF going to turn its Bitcoins into dollars? The one thing that's been keeping me away from Bitcoin is the fact that I haven't seen any really large Bitcoin -> "real currency" sites pop up.

<comment><USER4> Also, how do you declare bitcoins on your taxes? It's taxable income, right?

<comment><USER5> Aren't transactions that occur on bitcoin p2p and "anonymous"? I think Neal Stephenson once predicted such a system would lead to the end of nation states (since they could no longer collect taxes)...

<comment><USER6> Many, many people have used "p2p" and anonymous means to attempt tax evasion. Nation states are pretty good at passing laws to illegalize their activities and throwing those people in jail.

Nation states will simply make anything that threatens them illegal. See Open Internet in China for instance. Fringe and criminal types will always get around it (always have). But the mainstream, the masses will remained controlled by nation state.

<comment><USER7> _> Many, many people have used "p2p" and anonymous means to attempt tax evasion_

Suitcases full of used nonconsecutive notes have always done up until now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix introduces Lemur: x.509 certificate orchestration (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/introducing-lemur-ceae8830f621 <comment><USER2> I had a look at Lemur a couple of months ago for certificate orchestration, but settled on Hashicorp Vault as it has a more solid API and seems more active community-wise. It's fantastic for managing a PKI with an external (offline) Root Certificate Authority.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, Vault and Lemur cover slightly different use cases. Lemur is nice for controlling the distribution of certs from a variety of issuers, including Vault.

<comment><USER4> > let's create something that can control the settings for our component that > control the setting for other components.

<comment><USER3> User-operated self-service for certificate issuance isn't exactly a cut and dried proposition for most orgs. Lemur helps in a lot of ways.

<comment><USER4> I know, but now, what controls credentials and instance bootstraping for that?

it will always be the "not invented here" type of deal. you can always add something else to bootstrap it further. I can't think of a use case where lemur/athenz/other x509 brokers adds real value (or convenience) versus a well defined process and bare bones things like etcd and such.

Thinking you can bypass the well defined process step is just an illusion. what most CTOs do is offload that to the few devops handling their abstraction. when that team grows too much, add another layer on top with a smaller team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Could we add a (2015) tag here? Lemur's been around for quite a while.

<comment><USER5> It's in the title, fwiw.

<comment><USER6> It probably wasn't when the OP posted it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Typo in the title. Should be "Netflix"</comment>


Users Do the Damnedest Things - <AUTHOR> http://manofhustle.com/2014/11/17/users-do-the-damnedest-things/

<comment><USER2> Great sentiment. Thanks for writing this. Always check your assumptions at the door.</comment>


Being Lazy Is the Key to Success, According to the Author of 'Moneyball' - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/why-being-lazy-makes-you-successful-according-to-the-bestselling-author-of-money.html <comment><USER2> I'm a firm believer that if you can make laziness work for you in a way that is productive and makes you successful without infringing or being a burden on anyone, than go for it.

For example, I'm lazy when it comes to exercise. If I could, I wouldn't do it ever. How did I overcome this and lose 70 - 80 pounds in 3 years? I tricked myself, all while being lazy. Instead of driving my car to work, I rode my bike. 2 1/2 miles to work. Then how do I get home? I have to ride my bike back home. 2 1/2 miles. 5 days a week. (Feel free to read more about my weight loss here if you are interested: [https://mypost.io/post/no-bullshit- diet.](https://mypost.io/post/no-bullshit-diet.))

I also love swimming.. absolutely love it, and its like the easiest sport, so a few laps in a pool for a half hour... no big deal! It all comes down to tricking your mind (and body) into doing things that you don't mind doing.

So I feel the author is definitely not wrong, but it all depends on the laziness type and style. I could have probably laid on the couch all day and prayed to lose weight, but I'm guessing that it wouldn't have done anything for me. Instead, I just turned my laziness into something I had to do. Rode my bike to work... uh oh, how do I get home? The same way I got to work! :)</comment>


Be Proud of Your Accomplishments, Not Your Affiliations - Daniel Gulati - HBR - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/be_proud_of_your_accomplishmen.html?goback=.gmp_2825093.gde_2825093_member_113690303 <comment><USER2> Name dropping gets tiring and does not help build product. Agree with the post.</comment>


US government makes it legal to reverse engineer code - <AUTHOR> https://www.preemptive.com/blog/91-dotfuscator-ce/obama-signs-trade-secret-legislation-codifying-an-open-season-on-app-reverse-engineering/851 <comment><USER2> Not surprising a company producing obfuscation tools would use this for advertising. My question is, does this reduce the risk of getting sued for creating IP after looking at previously existing IP via reverse engineering or other methods?

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder about the interplay of this with the DMCA. I suspect that the statement that it's "legal to reverse-engineer code" may still have significant caveats...

Then again (thankfully ;-), IANAL.

</comment><comment><USER4> And yet thanks to Oracle v Google it may become impossible to use information gained from reverse engineering to create a compatible replacement without violating copyright.

One step forward, two steps back...

<comment><USER5> Oracle v Google won't change much, because the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit does not set copyright precedent. Details in earlier comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11377318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11377318)</comment></comment>


You've Won The Nobel Prize -- Wait, Don't Hang Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=130457548&m=130458684

<comment><USER2> Link to the actual story, [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1304575...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130457548)

<comment><USER3> This is one thing I find very interesting about NPR. They almost have to multi-task listening to the interview and reading the article at the same time. Each add to eachother in their own way.

I hope this isn't planned, sometimes it is impossible to listen to the interview while reading the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should have warned that it was an audio link.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Schmuck" was changed to "shnook".

</comment><comment><USER6> That last interview with the laureate asking if it was really necessary to stop his experiments was particularly sweet.</comment>


FBI Taps Hacker Tactics to Spy on Suspects - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323997004578641993388259674-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwMTEwNDEyWj.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email <comment><USER2> Interesting paragraph here: "The FBI develops some hacking tools internally and purchases others from the private sector. With such technology, the bureau can remotely activate the microphones in phones running Google Inc.'s Android software to record conversations, one former U.S. official said. It can do the same to microphones in laptops without the user knowing, the person said. Google declined to comment."

<comment><USER3> Yep. Also see my article from 2006:

[http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html](http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html) "The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is amazing is that the same government that is funding these activities has also drummed up the fear of Chinese attacks on our computer systems. The same techniques being used by the FBI could be used for industrial espionage or to spy on government officials. We cannot have it both ways -- either we give up on expanding law enforcement power like this and encourage computer security, or we give priority to the police and accept attacks by foreign powers (and ironically, criminals) as collateral damage.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is just using FinFisher/Spy malware to turn on the mic it's in their advertisement that was leaked by Wikileaks to youtube. Typically deployed as a fake update or some other popup screen the user has to agree too. They could also use Playstore to download/install whatever apps they wanted and unlock the phone if Google cooperates with investigations (they probably do) without needing your approval.

Another method would be to send binary OTA SMS messages to the carrier's closed simcard and turn on the mic, or camera, or ping it with type 0 sms so everytime your sim ackknowledges they can track you regardless of gps being disabled.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Google declined to comment".

So, does the FBI now use National Security Letters as part of their regular law enforcement operations or does Google keep quiet about this just because this sounds bad?

</comment><comment><USER7> This could mean a multitude of things. I wish the article had reference to some source. I seriously doubt that FBI can choose to record from any brand new Android phone - the entire OS being open source and routinely disassembled by the folks at xda.

More likely the source of this is some malware/virus/app that when installed, grants FBI the ability to activate the mic at will. In which case, the article would be somewhat misguided.

</comment><comment><USER8> So does this bug show up on [http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list](http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list) ?</comment>


How the Government Helped Frequent Fliers Make a Mint - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126014168569179245.html

<comment><USER2> I had a student in one of my classes explain this to me at one point. Every semester when it came time to pay his tuition bill, he would simply max out all of his credit cards paying the bill. The university system would let you pay as much as you wanted, and if you had a balance a week after tuition was due they would send you a check for the balance. While it was primarily in place for students receiving scholarship money, he used it to rack up huge rewards on his credit card.

By the time he was a junior (when I had met him) it had gotten him good enough credit he had over a $15,000 limit, so 3 times a year he would pay that to the school, they would pull out their $15 credit card fee, and then deposit it straight into bank account, which he would use to pay off the credit card.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, I haven't done the US Mint hack, yet....

But, I have spent the last 3 months buying the longest, cheapest round trip fares that I've been able to find, also called "mileage runs". American Airlines has had a "Double Elite Qualifying Mile" promotion, which means that I can reach Executive Platinum with American while flying only 50,000 miles instead of the usual 100k miles. This fall, I've done weekend trips to Madrid, Frankfurt, Florida, visited family in the Mid-West, and this upcoming weekend, a I'm finishing with a round trip to Barcelona. I'm flying out from San Francisco on Friday morning, spending 2 days in Barcelona and I'll be back home by Monday.

All told, I've spent $2200 on flights, and a bit more for hotels + food. What I get in return is being able to upgrade to first class for free on any domestic flight on American, 8 upgrades on international flights (worth $300-400 each if I sell them), and enough earned miles to buy two tickets worth $1100 to visit family in Central America this spring.

I have a hunch, though that after flying first class all next year on American, I'm going to have a really hard time flying coach again. I'm afraid this might be a bit addictive.

A friend of mine, (mcargian on hn) hosts a podcast about this stuff at <http://upgrd.com>. He turned me on to it.

<comment><USER4> But you actually have to sit in the plane and go to Madrid and Frankfurt to pull this off, right? $2200 is nothing, but days and days of time in an airplane isn't worth it.

<comment><USER3> I have a netbook with my full dev environment and 15 hours worth of battery life. I actually get a lot of good work done on the plane. And, I get a lot of uninterrupted time to code in my hotel.

Its also part of the way I'm wired. I grew up as a nomad of sorts, and I've been really stationary for the last 3 years, so getting to travel scratches an huge itch for me and it clears my mind so I can get into flow and code.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if I could find someone willing to fly on fake papers to take the actual trips to Spain and Germany. Airline security blows; they'd use their own papers in (say) Spain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very clever hack.

Still, they're in the minor leagues compared to the civil engineer who racked up 1.25 million frequent flyer miles ten years ago by purchasing over 12,000 pudding cups:

[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,996450,00.h...](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,996450,00.html)

<comment><USER6> adam sandler?

<comment><USER7> Punch-Drunk Love for those of you that don't get the reference.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My guess is that the credit card merchant fees cover the cost of the miles. So it's the US Government (i.e. all of us) getting screwed here, not the credit card company or the airline.

<comment><USER9> Not really, the US Govt gets the seignorage instead of the Federal Reserve getting it.

<comment><USER8> Huh? No, forget about the coins. I'm talking about the fees that credit card companies are charging the federal government.

<comment><USER9> They make much more on the seignorage than they lose to the CC companies. Don't believe, go look up what it costs to make the coins in question.

<comment><USER8> Again... huh? The cost of producing a modern US coin has nothing to do with its value.

<comment><USER9> Obviously you do not understand what seignorage is, how it works, and the difference between getting coins from the US Treasury vs. Federal Reserve Notes from the Federal Reserve. Why don't you read up on the subject so you can understand what I am talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> ~10 years ago, you could buy inflation protected bonds on a credit card for no additional fee. I bought $10k worth on a card that gave miles and then redeemed them to pay it off.

</comment><comment><USER11> I met a guy who would register for dozens of free credit cards offers that included air miles on sign up just to get the air miles. He was retired and used this technique to fly around the world. He always canceled the credit cards a few months later. Funny thing is apparently when he called to cancel, they would often offer him more air miles if he chose to keep the card. It those cases he would take the air miles and cancel a month later.

<comment><USER12> This is probably a good strategy if you are older. But its definitely bad for your credit rating, so might not be a great idea if you are younger or otherwise trying to maintain a good credit score.

<comment><USER8> Thanks to the utterly bizarre credit scoring system, the part that could really hurt you is _closing_ the cards. Keep them open and it may well improve your score (certainly your debt to credit ratio would get a boost)

<comment><USER13> Not really. FICO dings you for having more than 2 installment loans, or more than 4 revolving accounts. Plus you get dinged for having more than 2 "outside" inquiries in a year. More points disappear from your FICO for having a balance, or for having revolving accounts that have been opened in the previous year. Having a dozen accounts opened in a year (if even possible) triggers a high abuse potential and can even get existing accounts closed in a pre-emptive strike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> i'm surprised flyertalk, and specifically the 'mileage run' forum, on which most of these obnoxiously good deals appear, isn't more popular with this crowd as there's an obvious overlap in terms of personality types. There are plenty of HN types with the proper skillset and aptitude to find travel deals, who would enjoy the occasional hacking of the travel-industrial-complex.

I guess having sufficient understanding of the subtleties of the fare rules and booking systems really only comes from reading a lot and traveling enough to have a vested interest in learning and there are a lot of deskbound hackers.

however in the past few years, i went to NYC from SEA for USD $1.26, Romania for $200, Toronto for $0.00 in first class (with my family of five) and a few others i can't remember all due to the joys of reading that site every day...

</comment><comment><USER12> You have to wonder how much of an increase the mint will see in this behavior now that its in the WSJ. I'm pretty tempted to sign up for a virgin america credit card right now just to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to the FlyerTalk thread (which is over 400 pages!! apparently, this has been going on since sometime last year...), credit card companies are becoming wise to this trick and are starting to treat purchases of the coins as cash advances (thus subject to fees and no rewards). I'm sure the WSJ front page article will only speed this along...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ha, awesome.

It's interesting to watch as people systematically exploit all pricing discontinuities and loopholes. Of course, this is what also gets us spam.

I wonder if at some point all pricing ends up having to be flat because of arbitrageurs operating in this manner.

(I feel slightly bad - I rarely deal with frequent flier miles even when I do fly, and I've canceled a credit card that offered frequent flier miles because they mailed me such an unbelievable amount of shit.)

<comment><USER16> I can't bring myself to do these kinds of corporate exploits. It just makes me feel like I'm spending my life learning about a bunch of bullshit arbitrary rules rather than something I care about or something that helps the world.

So I end up paying full price for first class, lol. What a chump.

<comment><USER15> Me too. OTOH I do like to find regular routes that are nice but cheap. SJC -> EWR on continental used to be $700ish in business class.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's the original thread on FlyerTalk: [http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milesbuzz/833911-buy- presiden...](http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milesbuzz/833911-buy-presidential- dollar-coins-cc-face-value-free-shipping.html)</comment>


The Distracted Developer: Tactics and Workarounds for a Fast Paced Scene - <AUTHOR> http://lispy.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/the-distracted-developer-tactics-and-workarounds-for-a-fast-paced-scene/

<comment><USER2> I tried to read this, but the text was too dense for me to concentrate on from this noisy coffee shop. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER3> This guy is way too critical of himself.</comment>


Ask PG: What made you change your mind about crowdfunding? - <AUTHOR>

Paul,
Four months ago, in a thread about crowdfunding (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3893783) you said that "having a very large number of inexperienced investors is the worst scenario possible."
FundersClub is a YCS12 company, so I´m curious: what made you change your mind? The whole scenario? A different approach if an entity works like a proxy? Is there any secret sauce you can share? <comment><USER2> There are two different business scenarios and I doubt PG has changed his views radically (and if he has, it's secret sauce anyway).

The question to which PG responded [<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3893783>] was along the lines of "Why not open up YC to crowd funding?" The answer was that there nothing for YC to gain by encouraging a rabble of investors jump into YC's pudding. In other words, PG believed that accepting crowd funding would be a distraction to YC companies (and implicitly therefore lower the value of YC's investment).

On the other hand, funding a startup through YC which makes money by providing services to people who think crowdfunding is a great idea (and perhaps solving some of the problems along the way), may be a profitable investment for YC.

In other words, PG didn't advocate crowdfunding as a better source of capital than the sources of capital YC has been using for YC companies . However, this does not mean that crowdfunding services are not a potentially sound investment for YC's partners.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not trying to answer for PG, but the reason I think FundersClub is different from other crowdfunding options is that it does NOT result in the company having a large number of inexperienced shareholders. Rather, the company has just one shareholder -- the FundersClub fund. That way the entrepreneurs don't get distracted by having to deal with a ton of individual shareholders -- no updates, no chasing them down for signatures/approvals. The company gets the benefit of a much larger base of capital but only has to deal with one experienced shareholder.

<comment><USER4> "but only has to deal with one experienced shareholder."

Otoh it also gets a potentially vocal group that can create much noise if they disagree with the actions of the company (and much more quotable by the press for that matter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sillicon Valley investors are interested in funding markets being non- efficient. They are not interested in making themselves a commodity.

Commoditize your complements: make startups commodities but preserve early stage funding a non-commodity.

I wrote about this years ago when pg gave a talk about opportunities to make markets efficient:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1655800>

I guess FundersClub makes some kind of 'secondary investors' a commodity while preserving Sillicon Valley investors 'primary investors'. Also funding at FundersClub seems to be not in the very-early-stage, so the funders are already not competitors to Y-Combinator.

</comment><comment><USER6> FC aggregates the investors the same way a mutual fund does.

<comment><USER7> This seems like a non-answer to me. There is still the problem that "For startups, having large numbers of investors is bad, and having inexperienced investors is bad." Even in the FC model of being a mutual fund, there are still lots of investors, and they are still inexperienced.

A much more satisfying answer would be along the lines of: "I don't want the startups I fund to be croud funded because I believe they wont get the support they need, however I have no problem personally funding a company which manages the crowd-funding movement because that could be profitable"

<comment><USER8> I suspect pg is suggesting that start ups don't need the distraction of dealing with a large number of investors directly. It seems FC solution is to combine and handle the "investor relations" for the crowd of investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure what the proper etiquette (lot of upvotes but no one including pg has responded here) but I'd certainly be interested in a discussion around crowdfunding.

My take on this: Crowdfunding will be hard to execute -- novice investors, multiple sources of bad advice, selection biases (the worse companies will attract the 'worser' investors).. the list goes on.

With that said there is a lot of genuine interest in the model and there are bound to be atleast a couple of platforms that get traction . If you were YC with access to pick the best possible team to make this happen -- why wouldn't you invest ?? Its such a small portion of your investments and you get that diversification.

Second does not matter what your personal convictions are, the only way to know for sure is by trial and error -- who knows crowdfunding maybe the model of the future.

Finally you are supporting a good cause -- there is a lot of populist rage against the investor class (not VC's in particular but more wall st types),, allowing companies to go around 'wall st' and giving the lay person a chance to be a part of the next facebook is a great story.

My 2 cents. Thanks

<comment><USER5> "giving the lay person a chance to be a part of the next facebook is a great story"

Not necessarily lay person. For example maybe a world-class database technology expert in Russia wants to invest some thousand dollars into a database technology startup. Maybe he has more understanding about the technology/market than so-called 'experts' (Sillicon Valley investors).

<comment><USER10> That begs a couple of interesting questions regarding how crowdfunding LPs will be able to add value to their investments, and what companies will be inclined to disclose.

At the onset of crowdfunding, less sophisticated transaction arrangements are likely to not prioritize those two scenarios. But it makes sense when we think of crowdfunding at its maturity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> FundersClub has 2 important elements, I believe, (PG correct me if I'm wrong) that probably made it click:

1\. It's not dependent on the JOBS Act. It's like Angellist, in that they vet to see if you're a legitimate investor, except you can actually invest right there on the platform. With the proliferation of standard seed docs, this makes a ton of sense.

2\. It's curated. It's not a free-for-all, it's going to make impactive differences in targeted companies. That's dope.

3 would be their secret sauce and their plans, which I'm sure are awesome.

</comment><comment><USER12> My guess is FundersClub gives equity as a perk - but not necessarily voting control or a board seat?

</comment><comment><USER13> To me, I see things like kickstarter have uncovered a massive market of 'investors' that don't want a monetary return. The extra benefits are more than enough for most people on kickstarter. I guess we'll see some back lash in a couple of years when some of those companies start selling for millions. But for now, if I fund a game...all I really want is the game. The APP.net 'investors' seem to be happy with access to the system.</comment>


SSH Key-Signing: Never ssh-copy-id ever again - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/the-container-store/SSH-Key-Signing <comment><USER2> Nice! Seems like this solution uses only OpenSSH tools.

My company is offering another solution to centralized SSH access management: 'CloudGate Key Manager', which comes with a nice UI. [https://www.cloudgateglobal.com/keymanager](https://www.cloudgateglobal.com/keymanager)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Accompanying video presentation: [https://youtu.be/XvE65TrGNpM](https://youtu.be/XvE65TrGNpM)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome presentation. Been looking for something like this for our teams.</comment>


DBLog: A Change-Data-Capture Framework - <AUTHOR> https://netflixtechblog.com/dblog-a-generic-change-data-capture-framework-69351fb9099b <comment><USER2> I'd love more info how Netflix propagates schema changes to downstream stores. How do you apply migrations to heterogeneous databases? Applying binlog messages only works if downstream stores are the same flavor database as the source. And common message formats like Avro don't have a guaranteed migration strategy like protobuf.

I suspect it's more of a process solution than a technological solution. Are non-backwards-compatible migrations scheduled in advance, and broadcast to dependent teams? Are downstream consumers expected to have a replay/dead- letter queue?

<comment><USER3> This is a great question :) We may share details about that in a future blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was nice to read. According to you, what would be the minimal change to push to postgresql and mysql in order to reduce complexity and better support tools like DBLog?

</comment><comment><USER5> Added a kafka layer to make this real time capture. I guess lot of people are trying to do this. I guess what is the keypoint i am missing here.anyone ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Kafka or similar is already used by the existing solutions mentioned in the post.

I think what this adds is a better way of dump processing without using database specific features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this similar to Debezium ([https://debezium.io/](https://debezium.io/))?

<comment><USER7> Debezium is mentioned in the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This depends on row-based binlog replication, correct? Has netflix had to deal with systems with statement-based replication?

<comment><USER3> correct. This way we can capture create, update and delete events of individual rows. binlog_format must be set to ROW in order to make this work in MySQL. For Postgres we are using replication slots which provide row based events.

We use MySQL RDS and it has "mixed" as the default binlog_format. Mixed uses statement based logging for some event types (see MySQL docu for details). Hence statement based replication is part of the mix unless one explicitly switches to ROW based replication (which is required for DBLog).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting article thanks. Maybe add a link to the previous article in the "Blog Series" like it does in part 1.

<comment><USER3> This is a good point, we will fix that. Thx for the feedback</comment></comment>


Why Most Blockchain Projects Are Bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/helloitsmagic/why-most-blockchain-projects-are-bullshit-2e3918439270 <comment><USER2> HAH! So true.

"I refer to this as the MySQL Test—if your project can be implemented in MySQL it's probably a bullshit blockchain project."</comment>


Pay Your Programmers $200/hour - <AUTHOR> http://www.abtinforouzandeh.com/2011/12/30/Pay-Your-Programmers-200-Per-Hour.html

<comment><USER2> The author mixes work as a contractor and work as a full time employee in the same article. Further, there is no evidence he is working (or has worked) as an employee.

"As a programmer, I treat _contracts_ that pay me $200/hr differently from _jobs/contracts_ that pay me $65/hr [...]." (emphasis mine)

FWIIW, I work as an employee and I do a huge amount of self-education nor do I charge every hour I work (if I punched a timeclock, I would find many days I work more than 8 hours, but some days I don't). As a full time employee, I expect a level of employment stability and, more importantly, I expect others in the company to do stuff I don't particularly care to do (benefits / insurance shopping, billing, accounting, payroll including all the rules and tax crap, marketing, etc.). I'm happy to trade off a sizable per-hour amount for someone else to remove those hassles from my life.

As a salaried worker, I am making enough money for my family to live comfortably. Where I am in life, I could be making more money, but my quality of life would be worse. For me, for now, the answer is salary at a competitive market rate.

<comment><USER3> I'm fairly sure he is not mixing full-time / contract here, but strictly referring to contract work.

<comment><USER4> I disagree, the section quoted by GP continues "[...] $65/hr _equivalent salary_ [emphasis added]" which makes it even more clear that a full-time position is being referred to.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How are you tracking discussions on HN? - <AUTHOR> What tools/methods are you using to track followup comments to comments you have left? (besides refreshing :) <comment><USER2> [http://hnnotify.com/](http://hnnotify.com/)

<comment><USER3> Not reliable, it hasn't worked me for the past month or two.

<comment><USER4> As a side note, it's been working for me during that time.

<comment><USER3> I got a notification for your comment, but not for the sibling comment by jaredsohn.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's all it really does. It's not a "subscribe to thread" unfortunately.

<comment><USER3> Yes but as jaredsohn had also replied to my comment directly, I had expected to receive a notification for their reply as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I click the "threads" link up top.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://hnapp.com/](http://hnapp.com/)

<comment><USER7> Once comment support is added, this could be used by tptacek for doing vanity searches that no longer work with the hn search engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> copy link and reference it as often as I remember to/stay interested in the topic</comment>


GPS jumps of -13.7us - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/msg76731.html <comment><USER2> dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10977609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10977609) (tho barely any discussion there either...)</comment>


Leaf-Node Weakness in Bitcoin Merkle Tree Design - <AUTHOR> https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2018/06/09/leaf-node-weakness-in-bitcoin-merkle-tree-design/ <comment><USER2> Note that this is a mostly theoretical weakness: the cost to attack is orders of magnitude higher than cost of simply creating fake blocks, which are almost just as good at defauding SPV clients (particularly when you have a pile of money left over by using the cheaper attack!).

Anyway, not many SPV clients actually exist these days - instead it's much more common for "lite" wallets to actually use trusted servers.

<comment><USER3> Then these so-called 'lite' wallets should be referred to with a much more contextually pertinent description such as 'trustful' wallets.

<comment><USER2> I wish they were frankly. Unfortunately there's endless dishonesty and fraud in the blockchain world in projects denying that their solutions involve huge amounts of trust; that's just a mild example out of many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Mining several blocks in private to confirm the fake transaction may be > needed to prevent the other miners from reorganizing the blockchain in order > to steal the fees and output of transaction T. If the attacker is not in > collusion with 51% of the miners, then this may cost the attacker millions > in rented hashing power ...

Does this mean that this exploit only has value to an attacker who is already capable of sustaining a 51% attack?

<comment><USER5> No, AFAIU it only implies that such an attacker would have to face the multi million dollar cost of renting enough hashing power to guarantee that no-one could steal the 'loot' before the attack has settled. I didn't study the article a lot, but it seems the attack transaction(s) previously crafted can essentially be stolen by any node working with it, and that the costs sunk by the attacker to craft the could then be avoided by THAT attacker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some discussion from the author's twitter post: [https://twitter.com/spudowiar/status/1005551128233299968](https://twitter.com/spudowiar/status/1005551128233299968)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you are interested in Sergio's insightful trip don't miss his story: [https://bitslog.wordpress.com/about/](https://bitslog.wordpress.com/about/)

Disclaimer: he co-founded one of my companies.

</comment><comment><USER8> The very popular Gnutella/DC TTH algorithm was distinguishing between Merkle tree and leaf nodes for security/correctness in circa 2000, so it's not clear why Bitcoin (2009) left it out.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting to see how much intellectual rigor is in the theory of Bitcoin, and how little in the long term market. It's the exact opposite of most startup sectors.

</comment><comment><USER10> Other resources related to this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree#Second_preimage_at...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree#Second_preimage_attack) [https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/2106/what-is- the-...](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/2106/what-is-the-purpose- of-using-different-hash-functions-for-the-leaves-and-interna) [https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/43430/what-is- the...](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/43430/what-is-the-reason- to-separate-domains-in-the-internal-hash-algorithm-of-a-merkl/44971#44971) [https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=102395](https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=102395)</comment>


Show HN: Screenshot manager (macOS) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/s/tk22vvtue272t3n/Screenshot%20Manager.app.zip?dl=0 <comment><USER2> I don't download anything without more info than on this web page.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Google stops printing results after page #1,000 - <AUTHOR> For a "hello world" query on Google without filtering [1] I get around 60,300,000 results with 10 entries per page. Logic tells me that there is a total of 6,030,000 pages. Google allows to pass an additional parameter "start" with a numeric value to modify the page that I want to see, where page 10 corresponds to start 90, page 20 to start 190, and so on as seen in this table:

    Page | Start | (Page - 1) * Max
    -----|<comment>-|</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----
      10 |   90  | (  10 - 1) * 10
      20 |  190  | (  20 - 1) * 10
      30 |  290  | (  30 - 1) * 10
      40 |  390  | (  40 - 1) * 10
      50 |  490  | (  50 - 1) * 10
      60 |  590  | (  60 - 1) * 10
      70 |  690  | (  70 - 1) * 10
      80 |  790  | (  80 - 1) * 10
      90 |  890  | (  90 - 1) * 10
     100 |  990  | ( 100 - 1) * 10
 This means that going to "start=990" should return a set of 10 results from page #100 [2]. However, it returns an error message saying "Your search - hello world - did not match any documents." and the pagination ends at page #77 with a link pointing to "start=759". If you go to this page the pagination will stop showing the "next" button, but the subtitle still states that there are "60,300,000 results".
Skipping the joke of "no one goes past page #2 in Google" what is your theory about the missing pagination buttons? Why do they not allow the inspection of the results past 1,000 [3]? — In this case Google shows this message: "Sorry, Google does not serve more than 1000 results for any query. (You asked for results starting from 1000.)" Why not simply print "More than 770 results" considering that 77 is the last page in the pagination that you can inspect, at least with the "hello world" query.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=hello+world&filter=0
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=hello+world&filter=0&start=990
[3] https://www.google.com/search?filter=0&q=hello+world&start=1000 </comment><comment><USER2> To understand this you need to understand a bit about the way a search engine works. (I used to work at Google on the search engine but I am not revealing anything besides information retrieval 101 here.)

Roughly, there is a database of the entire internet that is broken into 1000 "shards". The database has a really complex indexing scheme. You can think of each shard as having one "worker" process, and then there are some "merger" processes that combine the results from workers.

So there are basically four phases: retrieval, scoring, merging, and display. In the "retrieval" phase, each worker uses the complicated indexes to retrieve a bunch of documents that are relevant to the query. In the "scoring" phase, each worker puts a specific score on each document, using more information about the document to get a more accurate score than the retrieval phase did. Finally, in the "merging" phase, the results from all the shards are combined by the mergers and you get your eventual top list.

When you ask for the 10th page of results, it actually only affects the final "display" step. Everything before that is just producing a list of the top 1000. That way you can reuse caches in all the expensive places.

Why does it drop everything past the top 1000? In fact, you probably aren't getting the precise top 1000 in the first place. The retrieval and scoring phases use a lot of heuristics to determine when it's worth sending a document on to the next phase. Each shard might only need to send back its top 5 or so documents. Since it's very rare to go past the first 100 documents, going a bit faster by sacrificing the quality of responses 200+ will almost always be a good tradeoff.

There's a product-centric reason as well as an infrastructure-centric reason to not go past 1000. Who actually wants those results? Normal people are almost never looking at the 100th page of results. Viruses looking for vulnerable webservers, spammers, scrapers, all of these malicious actors still do want that 100th page of results, though. At some point it's not actually helping the world to provide the nth page of results.

<comment><USER3> ^ Great answer. So far, this is the only correct one in the thread.

I took Information Retrieval 101 in grad school and it was an interesting course. If you're curious to learn more, term frequency–inverse document frequency (tf–idf) is a good place to start. The underlying idea is surprisingly simple.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf–idf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tf–idf)

Likewise with the core of Google's (original) ranking algorithm, PageRank, which is inspired by ideas like h-index.

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

Also, the "standard" book which we used is quite readable: _Introduction to Information Retrieval_ by Manning, et al.

[https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Information-Retrieval- Ch...](https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Information-Retrieval-Christopher- Manning/dp/0521865719/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Why do they not allow the inspection of the results past 1,000_

It's probably a lot more work sorting the 1000th best result than the top 10 or 100. Imagine a stadium full of people (your search results) and a guy at the podium asking for the tallest 10 people (top 10 results). You can do this efficiently by getting the tallest person from each section of the stadium, and then lining them up by height and taking the first 10 (sharding). But if you ask for 10 tallest people between 5'7.5613" and 5'7.5614" you're going to have thousands of people to sort, and very little to differentiate them (long tail).

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I follow your example; what if the ten tallest people are all on the same section?

<comment><USER6> If 100% accuracy is important then getting the top 10 from each section and then sorting then would be necessary. If you were willing to trade performance for accuracy then getting the top 1 from each section would probably give you a decent approximation.

In the perfect accuracy case, if you were grabbing the range of 990-1000, you would need to grab the top 1000 from each section, which is 100x more data transfer. I don't work for Google, but given the amount of money they spend on building their own routers, they probably want to minimise that number.

<comment><USER4> The approximation is better in this case since you only have the results I return and you can't independently audit every section to see if I'm accurate. Say I return the 7 foot guy from each section, but one section only had a 6'8" guy. Meanwhile there is a section that had 10 7 footers. You can't verify that without seeing my data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Results come from multiple sources (backend servers) and it would be too computational expensive to look for duplicates before the user paginates. That's also the reason why Google used to print "about XY results".

I've seen genuine users click 'next' on 50 or even 100 pages, the absolute majority is scripts and scrapers though. I used to work on web search analysis for a large search engine.</comment>


Chest pain triage via chatbot - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/DrMurphy11/status/1019852229866676224 <comment><USER2> What could possibly go wrong?</comment>


Show HN: Open-Source Performance Metrics and Benchmarks for Machine Learning/NLP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/codeforequity-at/botium-samples-nlpanalytics <comment><AUTHOR> Recently we had to evaluate if chatbot we built for an Austrian telecommunication provider would perform better on other NLP engines than the one we had in use (a cloud-based one). We took the training data and calculated common performance metrics, confusion matrices and accuracy scores for a bunch of the blockbuster providers (IBM Watson, Google Dialogflow, Amazon Lex, Microsoft LUIS, Rasa and some more).

We published the scripts in a Github repository and a blog article with instructions: [https://medium.com/@floriantreml/tutorial-benchmark-your- cha...](https://medium.com/@floriantreml/tutorial-benchmark-your-chatbot-on- watson-dialogflow-wit-ai-and-more-92885b4fbd48)</comment>


Ask HN: Moving to the bay area, any tips? - <AUTHOR> I'm from Canada and I'm moving down to the bay area for work. I was wondering, is there any advice/tips/stories/recommendations you wanna' give to people who are moving down there? <comment><USER2> People on craigslist will happily accept your deposit and write you a lease whether or not they have any legitimate authority over the property.</comment>