Ask HN: Today a well-funded competitor launched out of nowhere - <AUTHOR>

We've spent 8 months building our B2B SaaS product in our spare time, doing bespoke work to fund it and working long hours. We have a few initial customers/beta testers lined up and we're starting to test our design in semi-production settings.
Our competitor used to have an awful Windows app that dominated the niche but today their glossy SaaS offering appeared - much to our horror.
In many ways our product is superior to theirs. It's better thought our and has a superior UX.
However:
a) We've got a dev team of 1.5 persons (taking into account our day jobs). It looks like they've got a team of full-timers.
b) We've got no marketing budget to speak of (currently applying for loans)
c) We've got a fairly sizeable technical debt to pay off
If I'm being charitable we're at beta but probably more like alpha. At least a month away from being production ready.
And they're already out there, with an existing customer base from their desktop app to plunder, a known brand and a slick website.
There's 4 of us working - working 60 hour weeks.
Our only chance of competing is to go big, quickly. Not just capital but capital and an experienced organisation to back it up.
Any advice? <comment><USER2> Take a deep breath. Now another one. Sit down. Remember what Maurice said in "Out of Sight": _You know, in a situation like this, there 's a high potentiality for the common motherfucker to bitch out._

Two things you need to remember:

(1) Having competitors, even when they're better than you, is _good_. Competitors validate your space. _Especially_ in B2B products. Businesses want multiple choices. A better-funded competitor is going to blaze a trail through the market for you. Even if they're the only name most people know, businesses will find you just by seeking out alternatives to them --- a lot of times, even if they like your competitor, they'll look for alternatives because they're required to solicit bids. And on a purely tactical level, competitors are a product management gift that keeps on giving: just watch what they do, and each time they do something new, you can choose to match them, outflank them, or ignore them for now.

(2) You have an enormous advantage over a funded competitor, because you don't answer to a board. You can price your products and devise a go-to-market strategy that doesn't have to make sense to a room full of small-time investment bankers. You can trail them, even miles behind them in the market, and still be viable. Not only that, but in some cases you can end up being _more attractive_ for being small: acquirers may see you as an easy to way to buy functionality without paying a premium for a client base which they may already have ready to plug into your offering. (Cisco did this to my last company, buying lame also-ran fast-followers, _twice_ ).

You don't have to change anything. Just keep making smart, near-term business decisions. What happens with the new competitor may _influence_ those decisions, but if they _determine_ the decisions, you're doing something wrong. And applying for loans and going all-out for capital merely in response to a new entrant sounds wrong.

If you're lucky, you get to have a dogfight now. Have fun with it!

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds like a tough situation.

I wonder how well you'll fare if you're looking for capital now, when all you've got is an alpha product, no customers, no growth, no 'functioning business' to speak of.

B2B SaaS products are often only 'pseudo saas', i.e. bigger customers pay for a customised version and personal service. Smaller customers buy the no-frills whitelabel.

Does it make sense for you to target some of the bigger customers with a great deal / customised version offering? It's possible that if sold right, the first customer(s) could effectively pay for you to take it from alpha to live product. Maybe.

The other option that springs to mind is to go do some really slick saleswork off the back of the alpha product demo, and get prospective customers to sign contracts with a really compelling introductory rate. Once they've signed the contract and committed with you (e.g. for a year) then they're off the market and your competitor will have to wait in the wings for a year. Perhaps this is a bit of a fantasy, it depends on your sales skills and the details of the offer you'd be making.

TLDR: you're in the business of selling software, not just writing it. Maybe you can catch a break by really pushing yourselves on the sales work right now rather than coding like crazy.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you believe in your path, product and market ignore the competitor. All they have done is validate you. But time is not on your side if you are all working full time jobs, not saying it is impossible but it makes it really hard to keep up.

Everyone has technical debt, likely in their new offering they put a shiny interface around a bunch of legacy code. That is what I have seen done over and over in established businesses. Part of it is because established businesses have a good revenue stream and nice margins as development has been paid back so they don't want to start over, instead they attempt to ease into the next version.

Someone else mentioned it too but when an existing business releases a new product sometimes the transition to that product is fairly painful for users. Even if they do an awesome job trying to make it a seamless transition for users, some users will have the attitude "If I have to learn something new I'd rather go somewhere else". So take advantage of it, go talk to some of their clients and market to the likely ones that may jump ship. You'll likely be able to find the pattern in the clients wanting to leave.

</comment><comment><USER5> How big is the market? How homogenous is the market? How likely is the market to automatically choose the competitor?

Don't underestimate the capability of an incumbent market leader to screw up a product relaunch and actually end up driving customers _away_ from the service. Enforcing a potentially inconvenient switch to SaaS and/or putting the price up actually increases the temptation for an existing customer base to evaluate alternatives.

And even if the well funded competitor consolidates their domination of the space, many niches are big enough for limited products with limited marketing to consistently generate revenue for the small businesses that run them despite all the efforts of well funded, marketed and developed alternatives. Sometimes the smaller players are profitable _because_ they only need to capture a small market share, and retain their customers _because_ they're able to focus on pleasing a subset of the market all of the time rather than the whole market most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER6> They've just validated your product. Congratulations!

You say they have a installed base of desktop users. Do they have a smooth transition path to their SaaS app? If not, then it's just as easy to move to your app as it is to stay with them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats on the validation . . . don't think about competing or going big, quickly . . . you can continue to grow your B2B app as planned . . . You can watch learn/innovate based on what they are doing . . . you can also make faster decisions being small . . . I would offer a concierge service to migrate their desktop users to your app . . . maybe create a tool so they can even do it themselves with a click or two . . . sounds like you have a good app idea . . . keep working and growing it as planned.

</comment><comment><USER8> Mindset is important: Don't Underestimate Yourself And Overestimate Others. The Tech Frontier is littered with carcasses of well-funded early movers. Amp- up the focus on your customers, stay close to them. That's where you'll win.

</comment><comment><USER9> What do your initial customers think. If they are continuing to work with you than won't their be more you'll be able to find to work with? Seems if they are going to a web based offering too you only lose one of your selling points.

</comment><comment><USER10> Remember Nokia when the iPhone came to market? Remember Lycos when Google came to market? Remember GM, Chrysler etc. when Tesla came to market? Any more answers?

</comment><comment><USER11> If you all aren't in it full time, I would say why try? I tried bootstrapping a startup and doing part time with 3 others... it's too slow of a model.</comment>


Silicon Valley, Housing Villain, Tries to Make Amends - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/us/california-today-tech-companies-bay-area-housing.html <comment><USER2> Finally! This is a problem not only in SF, but NYC, Boston, DC, LA and London for example.

The problem is that zoning laws that restrict housing density make rents higher for tenants while artificially increasing the value of property for landlords. This is one reason why Donald Trump who has substantial property in Manhattan is as wealthy as he is.

The use of politics to create artificial scarcity is a form of "economic rent" which is a "market failure" creating inefficient markets. This was done in NYC with Taxi medallions which had limited the number of medallions to 13,000 creating artificial scarcity with the result that the market value of a taxi medallion was $1.2 million. Thankfully, Uber/Lyft/Gett came along and relieved the artificial scarcity and made taxi-like vehicles more available. Price for taking a taxi are lower and the value of the medallion has dropped from $1.2 million to $700,000 or even lower. Everyone wins but the taxi medallion "landlords" and the banks/credit unions that provide the mortgages.

All that needs be done is to reverse the laws that benefit landlords over tenants by creating artificial, politically induced scarcity. This will dramatically improve the local economy as tenants pay less money on rent and more on goods and services in the area. It will stimulate a housing boom employing construction workers and as more people move into the area, it will further stimulate demand for goods and services helping local business. As housing costs decrease, firms local firms can hire more employees and further stimulates the local economy. Everybody wins except for the wealthy landlords, who like the taxi medallion owners will see their artificially high property prices decrease.</comment>


Saul Klein talks on Seedcamp's present, past and future - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/11/10/exclusive-saul-klein-talks-on-seedcamp's-present-past-and-future/ <comment><AUTHOR> A very long article...

One of the most significant bits for me:

Seedcamp do plan to open source their funding documents.</comment>


J. Crew's Biggest Problem Isn't Clothing. It's Greed - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-07/mickey-drexler-isn-t-j-crew-s-biggest-problem-greed-is <comment><USER2> hmm a working women in Tech who has been shopping/or checking it out, and sometimes buying things from Jcrew for 7ish years. Here are some notes

1\. The biggest decline in Jcrew is regardless, regardless of their struggle related to styling, all the styles have gone down in quality of production.

Things just aren't tailored as well. The best thing about Jcrew, regardless of what your "Jcrew style" was, is that it was tailored well, and this matters alot for professional working women, skin tight pants, or pants that dip too low when you sit down, button downs too tight at the bust, all of these relatively minor things add up to you losing all the focus at your presentation or meeting because whether men are trying to be or not, if they can see through your shirt, or your underwear is showing, its a distraction.

jcrew was a go to place for high quality work clothes well tailored and classy. You obviously looked better being thin, but you did not need to be model thin to look good in the clothes and look professional and classy.

That has gone downhill and the quality of their materials and sewing has just gone down.

2\. A few years back, Jcrew tried an edgier tomboy/working women look that was still sophisticated and classy, slightly leaning androgenous but still you had colors to choose from and it was a way to be tomboyish without wearing black to prove your "different".

They also tried some European influence and I liked all of it alot as a female in tech, and dressing down and androdgenously is comfortable for me. It turned out not to be popular at all.

3\. So here is what JCrew did...they said "ok we can't do the edgy thing" and openly came out with a statement saying they were going back to the classics.

here is what they meant: they went back to housewife classics.

The dresses are for moms on vacation. It's the "sophisticated stay at home mom" look but unfortunately the women buying their clothes are mostly working women, and continually working women who are younger and more progrssive, so the whole "sundress to work" kind of thing was not working out.

They moved their work wear back to 1980's power women workwear, and the rest of the clothing to housewife clothing.

Turns out most working younger women late 20s/early 30's are neither housewives and they reject the queen B power women on wallstreet status style clothing.

JCrew fell flat, got scared in their new explorations and reverted back to the safest and most original lines they had, except this time they were lower quality.

<comment><USER3> It seems Anne Klein agrees with you[1]. Their new creative director has stated they want to be the go to brand for professional (women).

What I don't get in fashion, women's as well as men's, but more notably in women's is the focus on trends/fashion (at the expense of quality and rigor) rather than style + quality. I.e the product looks great from afar, but up close it's shabby construction and poor materials (in many cases).

[1][https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/at-anne- klein...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/at-anne-klein-a- quest-for-the-right-fit-of-fashion-forward-and-the- familiar/2017/05/26/5b59224c-1f9d-11e7-a0a7-8b2a45e3dc84_story.html)

<comment><USER2> Yeh, well thats the problem with Jcrew now, their stuff used to last forever, and it was high quality and was edgy but had more traditional feels.

A good pair of Levis used to be made well too for girls, now everything is this new stretchy material and it's hard to find real denim anymore.

Alot of clothes are made cheaply for high trends and makeup does the same thing.

I don't do makeup and only invest in few high quality clothing and solid colours.

I actually have a really minimal closet, with fewer high quality things and I invest in just a few designers, and wear mostly nice white tshirts with jeans, and sometimes splurge on nice shoes as a girl. If you have a few pair of really nice jeans, and really high quality solid/button down shirts in black white/ 2-3 other colours that complement your eyes/hair/skintone then it's really easy to get dressed in the morning, saves time and I can wear the same thing at night (I don't really go out outside of work, but hypothetically if I did) I could change from flats or tennis shoes which I wear to work, to kitten heels and look like I'm ready for a date.

I'm not into being robbed by clothes and makeup just because I'm a girl. when I was broke in college buying cheap clothes got me by but I was not keeping up with trends.

Now I shop for a few high quality things, and Jcrew used to be a place I could do that.

For high quality minimalist girls clothing I recommend Emerson fry who used to have more tomboy stuff

and

Everlane: [https://www.everlane.com/](https://www.everlane.com/)

I streamline my clothing. I don't make impulse buys, I buy nice jeans.

And anyways most girls who have trendy clothing end up wearing the one thing they like over and over again, so why not make sure everything you buy is that one thing you can wear multiple times.

Overall, I would say its not a conscious decision to be trendy but girls have to learn/decondition themselves to this underhanded sexism pressuring girls to feel like they need to buy clothes 600% as much just to not look frumpy.</comment></comment></comment>


Encryption is less secure than we thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/encryption-is-less-secure-than-we-thought-0814.html <comment><USER2> If you really want to understand this you should read the paper. However, I will try my best to summarize my understanding of what is going on. (Disclaimer: I am not a professional cryptographer, but I know something about crypto-complexity).

Many proofs in cryptography start with the following assumption: assume x is a bitstring of length N drawn from a uniformly random distribution of bit strings. This assumption is then used as the basis of the proof of the cryptographic construct.

For instance in a provably secure stream cipher you start with that assumption then proceed to show that if weak one-way-functions exist then you can construct a secure pseudo random number generator that is polynomially indistinguishable from a true random source. You then use your assumed random bit string, x, as the key to the psuedo random number generator to generate a one time pad to XOR with your message.

Since the secure psuedo random number generator is indistinguishable from a true random number generator (by a polynomial attacker) the message is secure (from a polynomial attacker). However, this is all predicated on the key being drawn from a uniform distribution. If the key is NOT drawn from a uniform distribution than there may be a potential speed-up available to the attacker.

What the paper shows is that often it is assumed that words drawn from an IID distribution of letters can be treated as if the distribution of words is uniform (given a sufficiently large word size). However, this distribution while very flat is not quite uniform. They show how this can be exploited using the "Guesswork" framework to come up with a tighter bound on the time it would take to guess a chosen word. This bound is much better than the traditional bound used.

What this means is that there needs to be more margin given than previously thought when dealing with keys derived from non-uniform distributions. Such keys include passwords.

<comment><USER3> What does "a polynomial attacker" mean? I think I get the idea, but the term is not very well known by google.

<comment><USER4> Generally in theoretical cryptography the adversary is a probabilistic Turing machine that can take K steps to break your encryption, where K is asymptotically bounded by a polynomial function of the length of the input it is trying to break.

You will see this called a 'PPT' in the literature, where PPT = Probabilistic Polynomial Time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TLDR: _Bloch doubts that the failure of the uniformity assumption means that cryptographic systems in wide use today are fundamentally insecure. "My guess is that it will show that some of them are slightly less secure than we had hoped, but usually in the process, we'll also figure out a way of patching them."_

<comment><USER6> the article title is a total troll, thx mit.

for a real world example of failed uniformity assumptions, see cryptocat.

<comment><USER7> How is "Less secure than we thought" a troll title, given that the article is about how one of the fundamental assumptions of cryptography is less secure than we thought? It doesn't say insecure.

<comment><USER8> Maybe he's looking for "Possibly Encryption Might be Somewhat Less Secure Than We Personally May or May Not Have Thought At One Time, Technically."

<comment><USER7> Hmm, seems a bit less snappy, somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder about the practical effect of this in the Real World(tm).

When cryptographers talk about a "break," they mean anything faster than brute force search. So a break of a 128-bit algorithm that allows key recovery in 2^115 is a "break," but still completely impractical.

But as Bruce Schnier says: "attacks only get better." So a break is a good reason to look for a fix or a better algorithm _now_ before the crack widens.

<comment><USER10> This is my question too. How much less secure does it make encryption? Enough to be breakable or not enough to matter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> They quote three papers that supposedly make the mistake of using Shannon entropy to reason about secrets. They all seem to relate to the same algorithm, so it sounds to me (and our local crypto guy) more likely that there's one particular field that is making this mistake, but it's not a common mistake in crypto.

In my understanding Shannon entropy is not very useful for crypto reasoning for more trivial reasons. A password that has a half chance of being "foo", and half chance of being completely random has good Shannon entropy, but it's clearly not a good password.

</comment><comment><USER12> Paper: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6356](http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6356)

<comment><USER13> Thanks, that actually looks interesting.

The MIT press office has a habit of writing press releases that go beyond the usual hype to be so over-the-top they actually make the work sound crackpot. Happens most often in AI, but I guess in crypto now too. Not the scientists' fault, so I usually try to read the original paper to see their own claims, and invariably they are much more specific and legitimate.

<comment><USER14> I think it's not just MIT's press office, but every single one that I've seen. Or maybe there's a selection effect; the more sensational the particular article, the more people see it, so it just seems that all press offices are off their rocker.

<comment><USER12> [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif)

<comment><USER15> This would fit better as a comment for the original submission

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > We establish that for source words originally constructed from an i.i.d. > sequence of letters, as a function of word length it is exponentially easier > to guess a word conditioned to be in the source's typical set in comparison > to the corresponding equipartition approximation.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like a known and fairly trivial result.

I read that as basically saying that if you don't pick the letters in your passwords from an uniform distribution, they are easier to guess.

I don't see what that adds when people are already using Markov chains and dictionary attacks to brute force passwords, and I see no implication at all for secure keys chosen by good PRNGs.

I guess it could have some use in entropy estimation for PRNG state, but assuming uniform distribution of input seems like a naive mistake to make. Is there some application of this that I'm missing?

</comment><comment><USER17> If your input is "perfectly" random then the codebreaker has no chance of determining when he/she has successfully decrypted it (regardless of how weak your encryption is). So the more random your unencrypted data, the harder it is to decrypt it once it is encrypted. It follows that less random data will be easier to decrypt. Now I can't prove the shape of the intermediate function (e.g. might there be a sweet spot in the middle? "Common sense" suggests the relationship would be monotonic, but common sense is often wrong).

Incidentally, it's also clear that if the encryption schema is large relative to the compressed data then it will also be harder to decrypt (of course if the encryption schema is public, e.g. a public key, then this is decidedly not true).

So, none of this should be terribly surprising. What it does suggest is that you should _compress_ data before (or while) encrypting it, and the better your compression algorithm, the more entropy there will be in your data, and the more secure your encryption.

<comment><USER18> This is the obvious intuitive response, but it turns out that it's broken: Compressing data before encryption can give attackers a new side channel to recover the plaintext, by just watching the message length, and seeing when the compression is more or less effective. See, for example, the CRIME attack on TLS.

<comment><USER19> Obvious next step: compress and pad to original length.

<comment><USER20> Obvious? Didn't that word already cause enough trouble?

What are you going to pad it with? Random values? In that case, I'll just make two requests for the same information and clip it where they differ. Some sort of value based on the message? That also has issues, see link below. So far it doesn't seem like there are any obvious crypto ideas that are not also wrong.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padding_oracle_attack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padding_oracle_attack)

<comment><USER21> > _I 'll just make two requests for the same information and clip it where > they differ._

So, byte 0? You're not really using ECB, are you?

<comment><USER20> D'oh. Good point.

At least I can point to it as another example of someone not expert in the field making a stupid statement about crypto...

I think the general problem of padding with random values resulting in non- determinism would still matter in some cases, but IANAC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> From what I've seen, watching security and cryptography from the sidelines for the past 18 years, is that we programmers are still in the myopia of the early days of technology.

It took decades for programmers to come to the awareness of the importance of human factors and user interfaces to reach today's levels. (Really, how useful is computing, if only a very few want to use it?) Yet we're really just beginning to truly get it as a field. (Or as a "not-quite-a-field," to give a nod to Alan Kay.)

It's probably going to take just as long for us to figure out how to account for human factors and economics when it comes to security. Yet, if you are really savvy about security, it should leap out at you that _human factors and economics_ are just about the biggest two determining factors in security.

The big problem is not what algorithm you use to encrypt A or B. It's the employee's and programmer's lack of knowledge about security and key management. It's the secretary who clicks on the phishing link. It's management's misconception that a dozen of BigCo's employees with insufficient peer review can take on the reverse engineering resources of the entire Internet.

The big problems in security have to do with organizational awareness and economics. If you're not accounting for those, you are misallocating your resources, probably by an order of magnitude.

</comment><comment><USER23> The things the mention sound to me just like the standard things cryptographer worry about on a daily basis. I am not sure there is anything new there.

</comment><comment><USER24> Isn't this just a variant of the known plaintext attack?

<comment><USER25> Maybe a good analogy is if you take a "giant" rainbow table, you can usually compress the unencrypted side of the table to something quite a bit smaller than you'd think.

Maybe another way to phrase it is something like encrypting plain text english is now mathematically proven to be not as secure as encrypting a zip (or other format) compressed version of the same english text. (edited to add that its early in the morning and the specific example of a zip file is a great known plaintext attack 0x04034b50 and all that, but "compressing in general" is a good idea. The mistake I made was like calling all photocopiers, "Xerox machines", or all nose tissues "Kleenex").

Crypto is very well taught for algorithms, classes of algos, history, couple other things, but the classes of apps of crypto technology is (intentionally?) very poorly documented and taught. Something that screws up screws up digital sigs probably has little to do with the issues in encryption or authentication or whatever. Its an area ripe for someone to write a book, or a startup to do "something" probably something educational.

<comment><USER9> But be careful when compressing. Never compress something secret together with something that an attacker can repeatedly influence, or you're possibly vulnerable to compressed length oracle attacks similar to CRIME.

<comment><USER26> BREACH is a variation on the theme (compression at a different protocol layer, but again pre-encryption). We're going to see more of these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is just theory getting up to speed with current practice.

Password breakers (when having the hash result) do not assume that the passwords are random strings, they use several assumptions that greatly reduce the time they need to break the passwords.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is an interesting and important result. I was fascinated by the Shannon entropy when I first heard of it in undergrad, and I'm now very tempted to go read all the other entropys people came up with too :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, the guessing probability is the logarithm of the min-entropy, not the Shannon entropy. As for Shannon entropy, it's impossible to get SE with our current code generation because there will always be a small difference from theoretical limit. When the length of our codes get bigger the Shannon entropy/uniformly distribution model breaks down and the Guesswork time isn't as long as we once thought.

</comment><comment><USER30> You can send a key for a pseudo random number generator in the start of the message, use the key to seed it, the then use the output of the pseudo random number generator and xor it with each byte of the message. that would be some kind of 'salt' that would make the message more redundant.

<comment><USER30> I meant sending the seed key the initial part of the encrypted message; all further data would be retrieved after decryption by XORing the PRNG output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> When they say the same number of zeros and ones at maximum enthropy that's not actually true. The obvious case being a single bit file or even just an odd number of bits. Instead there is no bias in the file so each bit could just as likely be 1 or 0 which prevents efective compression.

<comment><USER32> You need an equal number of 0's and 1's, and you can use compressibility to see why. If there are more 1's than 0's, your compression tool could start by assuming that all the bits are 1's, and only storing information about where the 0's are. To minimize compressibility, you have to make sure there's no bias toward certain patterns, even patterns of length 1.

<comment><USER33> Let's say the string contains 100 0s and 101 1s. How would you encode the positions of the 0s without using more than 201 bits in total?

Nearly all random strings of sufficient length have different numbers of 0s and 1s. So if your argument were true, your compression scheme would reduce the average length of completely random strings, which is impossible.

<comment><USER31> Use 200 bit's to encode the message except the last bit which is determined if the message had 100 1's or 101 1's. QED knowing the number of 1's buy's you at least one bit of information.

Edit: You can do better than this by counting the number of 201 bit messages with 100 0's which is well below 2^201 and then encoding which of those corresponds to the original message. Aka if you had an 8 bit message with one zero 11111101 you have a total of 8 options which means you can encode it as 3 bits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd be curious on cperciva's take on this.

</comment><comment><USER35> I bet non-compliance with best practices accounts for 10x the amount of "less secure" than anything else. (Like in birth control)</comment>


Claimed proof of Riemann Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> http://www.researchgate.net/publication/285720971_An_asymptotic_Robin_inequality <comment><USER2> Is there someone here who follows Riemann Hypothesis research closely enough to comment on whether there is any there here?[1] The Riemann Hypothesis is a sufficiently complicated and famous problem that I think it must be easy for a wishful thinker to suppose he has found a solution when he actually hasn't.

[1] This is a reference to a famous quotation from Gertrude Stein's autobiography, "anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein#.22There_is_no_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein#.22There_is_no_there_there.22)

<comment><USER3> That quote makes me feel like I'm having a stroke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On page 4, it says "Now by Robin criterion d(n)<0 for n large enough, yielding lim sup (n->infinity) (d(n)) <= 0". If I understand the criterion from page 1 right, assuming RH is false only implies that d(n) <= 0 for some n > 7! -- not for all n sufficiently large, so the limit superior is not constrained as claimed. In fact, on page 2, the paper claims "Thus, if m is bounded and n->infinity, we see that d(n)->infinity", which, if the falsity of RH did imply lim sup (n->infinity) (d(n)) <= 0, would make for an even shorter and simpler proof.

Disclaimer: I've only got an undergrad in math and don't know much about the specifics of the cited papers, so I might be missing something.

<comment><USER5> Apparently the negation of RH is enough to state that there needs to be infinitely many numbers such that d(n)<=0. That would imply that you can find arbitrarily large n such that d(n)<=0, but I don't think that's enough to claim that "lim sup (n->infinity) (d(n)) <= 0".

I think it's enough to claim "lim inf (n->infinity) (d(n)) <= 0" though, but for some reason they proved that in a different way, that I don't quite understand yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are dozens of papers attempting to prove the Riemann Hypothesis. Here is a list [1]. A joke from the author of the list: "It's easier to prove the RH than to get someone to read your proof".

[1] [http://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin//zeta/RHproo...](http://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin//zeta/RHproofs.htm)

</comment><comment><USER7> Coming from a PhD in math I can give this good trick for assessing grand mathematical claims:

Google the authors.

Maybe unfair to intelligent amateurs, but based on my decade of experience you find out from this whether to take something seriously.

Might need some adjustment of Google terms for hard-to-google names, just use common sense.

<comment><USER8> Except Patrick Sole is a real mathematician who has been working in this area for some years now [http://www.emis.de/journals/JTNB/2007-2/article03.pdf](http://www.emis.de/journals/JTNB/2007-2/article03.pdf) and so it's not easy to dismiss it just based on a name.

The most plausible explanation is [https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/3vnrqj/two_authors_cl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/3vnrqj/two_authors_claim_a_proof_of_rh_using_an/cxpg7b9) here: "Zhu sent Sole some questions about his Robin inequality paper, including Zhu's ideas for proving RH. Sole responded, but there was some communication breakdown that led to Zhu thinking Sole endorsed his ideas. Zhu typed up his idea and added Sole's name to it in order to get the paper read. This is of course unethical, but given that Zhu thought his proof was correct, in his mind he was doing Sole a favor."

This was published on Saturday so my best guess is Patrick Sole on Monday will either post a refute or will claim it is true and everyone will shit a brick (unikely).

<comment><USER7> I wasn't clear enough. I was responding to the flow of comments of the form: "Riemann hypothesis is hard, this is unlikely to be true." Sure it's true, but doing a little more research could inform that opinion well past the zeroth- order approximation of "it's a hard problem."

I didn't actually take my own advice, I just wait for Terence Tao to write a post then I know it's true :)

<comment><USER8> I think the average HNer will hear when a proof happens for real in just the everyday channels of theirs: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, HN etc will be FULL of it (with good reason). Remember the Higgs boson?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The description on researchgate says "work in progresswork in progresswork in progresswork in progresswork in progresswork in progresswork in progresswork in progresswork in progress". It seems unlikely that the author would write that if they really believed this was a complete work. It's just not worth posting purported proofs of the Riemann Hypothesis. There are dozens of them. Until someone serious comes forward and says, "we think this is a proof", it's not.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm just going to say "no way". No way that a 4-page document is the proof, and no way it's on any site other than a university or Arxiv.

<comment><USER11> Arxiv detracts from, does not add, to credibility. it's an open preprint platform after all. This is like saying "No way such an important project would be anywhere other than github." That's not much of an argument.

As for flaws, it's four pages. They can be written up in an afternoon, if the paper makes sense to its intended audience. Of course, that's not exactly HN.

EDIT: Very interesting replies. I'll leave this up, though apparently quite wrong.

<comment><USER12> There are vast areas of research where every credible paper gets posted to the arxiv. So even though being on the arxiv does not imply credibility, not being on the arxiv implies lack thereof.

<comment><USER11> I'm incredulous of:

>There are vast areas of research where every credible paper gets posted to the arxiv

due to your word "every" which from context you mean literally; no exceptions. So, what would these vast areas of research be? The statement would not be true for any areas of research I know about.

EDIT: Thanks for the replies - fascinating. That in certain fields, no paper is worth reading if not on arxiv.

<comment><USER12> For the areas I used to work in for many years, high energy physics and quantum gravity, I can't think of a single exception.

Of course I don't have total knowledge of these fields, only my corner of them, and I'm sure you'll find a counterexample if you dig deep enough, but if counterexamples are remarkable and rare, then the heuristic: "Not on the arxiv, not likely to be credible" stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At the end of Lemma 2, "[9, Th. 8, (39)]" seems to be referring to corollary 1 of Theorem 8 on page 70 of [1], equation (3.30). Maybe "(39)" is meant to be "(30)".

Their argument for Theorem 1 seems not-crazy, and quite accessible.

[1] [https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdf_1/euclid.ijm/12556318...](https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdf_1/euclid.ijm/1255631807)

</comment><comment><USER14> The paper uses results from "Grandes valeurs de la fonction somme des diviseurs et hypothèse de Riemann" by Robin, which is not available online, as far as I can tell.</comment>


When can we test everyone? - <AUTHOR> https://whencanwetesteveryone.org/ <comment><USER2> What we need now is antibody testing, not testing for Covid-19.

All the antibody studies in the US so far are showing that antibodies are present in at least an order of magnitude greater number of people than the official number of people with Covid-19.

This has huge implications for our response. Given this new data, LA is suggesting [1] that ~5% of the population of LA has already developed antibodies, which would mean the fatality rate may be as low as 0.10-0.20%. (For comparison, the seasonal flu is 0.05%-0.10%.)

Knowing if this is really the case for the entire nation would have huge implications for our response.

1\. [https://www.facebook.com/countyofla/videos/537241533852930/](https://www.facebook.com/countyofla/videos/537241533852930/)

<comment><USER3> Number of deaths in NYC divided by total population is 15,000/8,000,000. This already puts the fatality rate at at least 0.2.

But the consequences are far from over and the number of deaths will keep climbing, so your "fatality rate may be as low as 0.10-0.20%" is completely off the mark.

edit: I am sorry if my tone was interpreted as confrontational. I otherwise agree with the parent's post that we need much more antibody testing.

<comment><USER2> Feel free to take it up with the Stanford researchers and the LA county health commissioner. I'm simply sharing their reports.

<comment><USER3> I am simply trying to slow the spread of non-sensical numbers. The total population divided by number of deaths provide a factual lower bound and arguing against that is not sensible.

Flaws in the Stanford study has already been highlighted extensively, see for instance [https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal- flaw...](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaws-in- stanford-study-of-coronavirus-prevalence/) and the insightful comments. The issue is not to take it up with the authors but whether the authors might listen and take back what they claimed on popular political TV shows. [1]

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NjCitwKJSQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NjCitwKJSQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there different tests for antibodies vs. active infections? Or is it just that if you have symptoms and antibodies, that means you have an active infection? For example, many of us who want to see family, etc. at some point may want to test to make sure we're not currently contagious, even if we don't have any symptoms. If we have antibodies and no symptoms, that doesn't necessarily imply that we're not currently contagious.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the tests are different.

The tests that look for the virus are probably more accurate than the antibody tests, at least right now.

<comment><USER6> I have read that S. Korea's disease control center has not approved antibody tests because antibody tests are not accurate enough.

Multiple S. Korean companies submitted test kits for coronavirus for approval, and not all were approved because of insufficient accuracy.

Mainly antibody tests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Testing is only really useful for a handful of things:

\- Identifying people who are carriers so they can be isolated

\- Contact tracing (pointless at the moment, there are hundreds of thousands of people in the US who are infected)

\- Ruling out other diseases or conditions that are treatable

Testing basically doesn't help anyone who has covid, it helps the people they would have spread it to if you can prevent that spread. There is no treatment for covid whatsoever, knowing you have it doesn't help you live longer or become healthy sooner. Knowing you don't have it, if you are already sick, might help if that lets them invest in further testing or treatments for other, non-covid, conditions.

Testing is easy to point at, but at the moment more testing would have limited impact. Even if we were to test everyone in the US, it would have to be done in a relatively short window of time to allow for a significant impact, and it's unlikely that there will be enough testing capacity to use this strategy before we reach saturation levels of infection. If they test me today and I'm negative, then they test you in 6 weeks, what does that get you and me? I was very likely infected in the meantime. This could be used socially like an negative AIDS test, except instead of a few months or years the validity of a test as a social currency is about a week, making it more or less useless as a way to avoid being infected.

<comment><USER8> The biggest benefit would come from antibody testing.

If we could end social isolation for people who have antibodies, which is probably a very large number of people, that'd be a big win.

<comment><USER9> That could be dangerous - especially if things like theme parks open up. People without antibodies might risk getting infected just so they can go out and "have fun".

<comment><USER8> That risk already exists.

I think we need to be realistic about containment. A full lockdown until a vaccine is released is the safest option, but it isn't a sustainable strategy.

The main thing we should focus on is keeping high risk people away from people likely to have active infections, determining hotspots/where to increase/maintain blanket lockdowns, and detecting people with active infections early/getting them to self isolate when they're just getting sick.

If someone really wants to expose themselves, there isn't much you can do to stop them short of martial law, which starts a feedback loop of escalating civil unrest. I think you're likely to have more success keeping people worried about being infected away from people who either don't care or have antibodies than keeping all the people that want to go out indoors for a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> FWIW, I think this is a useful idea. But I think it would be more helpful if you clearly explained why you choose those stats and rethought what you are trying to say. I personally care about "When can I feel safe going out?" Testing is just a means to that end.

* I would lead with the % of the population tested (not the total) and make it in the last 7 days, since I really care how likely they are to detect a current outbreak.

* I think to be really useful, it needs to be localized by county, since what I really care about is how likely I am to get infected, and that means I are about testing in my area.

* I would go with the positive rate in the last 7 days. It's important to explain that a high positive rate indicates they are probably only testing people with symptoms, and so they are probably missing lots of infectious asymptomatic cases.

* Then, I think I would drop the recent growth rate in testing, because I suspect that the growth rate is not going to grow consistently, and also that testing growth will be unevenly distributed. I am skeptical that it is meaningful to try to predict when testing will achieve specific milestones.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why would you want to test "everyone"?

For epidemiological purposes, you only need a statistically valid sample, which is much smaller than "everyone".

For medical purposes, you only need to test people who are sick, which is hopefully also much smaller than "everyone".

<comment><USER12> For medical purposes, you don't even need to test the sick. We don't have treatments available at this time, so the course of treatment doesn't current vary. IE, if you have COVID-like symptoms and are moved to the ICU, the course of treatment is the same with or without a positive test.

I've seen it argued that instead of testing the sick (as we currently do), we should be testing individuals who are "high touch" and likely to infect others (even lacking symptoms). Medical staff, first responders. Pharmacy and grocery employees. Bus drivers. Etc. I don't know enough to argue this is a better approach.

<comment><USER13> Since an infected person can be contagious for days before showing any symptoms, it'd be ideal if we could regularly test everybody, regardless of whether or not they are currently symptomatic. That way we could get them isolated early, which would prevent them from infecting X other people before they even realize they're sick, as well as cutting down on the number of contacts they've had that would need to be traced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We don't have anywhere near enough tests. We also don't know how many tests are actually available or will become available as the administration has repeatedly thrown out incorrect numbers without coming anywhere close to them.

</comment><comment><USER15> >everyone

In the us.

Nice.

<comment><USER16> As a european I immedietly suspected this before clicking the link. Was not disappointed.

This is very funny.

<comment><USER17> OTOH, most of Europe is probably ahead of the US. Italy and Germany are certainly doing a lot more tests per capita. So I guess it's not so bad...

<comment><USER18> And parts of the US are ahead of Italy and Germany.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Guidelines for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles at Burning Man - <AUTHOR> http://blog.burningman.com/2013/08/news/guidelines-for-unmanned-aerial-vehicles-at-burning-man/

<comment><USER2> I wonder what law governs the airspace above the Burning Man property.</comment>


Google already runs realtime crash reporting system, it's called Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://blog.binaryage.com/crash-reporting-in-binaryage/

<comment><USER2> The gist thing isn't a good solution at all. You're now dependent on github to be up to receive crash reports (...) both when they're generated and when you want to look at them.

Furthermore the user doesn't have an option to first look at the report before uploading it to the gist server. That's not very friendly.

If the only reason you use gist is because you don't know how to attach a file to an email message, I think you should just spend a bit more time on it.

<comment><USER3> Furthermore, gists are public. How long until someone reports a crash in /home/me/tmp/coretools-2.1.3/src/lesbians_and_horses?

<comment><USER4> He's creating an anonymous, private gist. The only way people are going to know about your lesbians_and_horses folder is if you pass around that url.

<comment><USER3> Yes, you are right. Sorry; too late to edit my post, sadly.

I'd still prefer if no mention of the lesbians_and_horses folder would leave my computer, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Slightly off-topic but anyone know what SCM tool is pictured in <http://blog.binaryage.com/images/crash-development.png> ?

<comment><USER2> That's GitX

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Pieter, thanks a lot fot GitX! Really nice git tool.</comment></comment></comment>


Brain stimulation increases monkeys' ability to quickly perform tasks (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/darpas-new-brain-device-increases-learning-speed-by-40 <comment><USER2> Title should sound more like this:Increased learning speed in monkeys. It's also from 2017. As we are now two years later, have these findings been replicated with humans?

<comment><USER3> It seems to be following the same path as ECT, LENS, TMS, etc, electric or magnetic stimulation showing improvements in memory, and cognition, especially in those with deficiencies from issues such as severe depression, bipolar, ADD/ADHD, schizophrenia, PTSD, and I want to say TMS helps with autism symptoms too?

In any case, it's purpose is mainly for those with disorders, although I'm sure we'll see plenty of people sell it as a nootropic.

It's worth noting that these improvements from current therapies I mentioned seem to mostly benefit those with disorders and not neurotypical people (don't expect a 40% improvement if you're normal. But if you can't get out of your home because of depression then yeah it might be a bigger improvement)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Should be tagged (2017)

</comment><comment><USER4> tDCS is not a new technology by any means.

I did a week long retreat last year using a prototype tDCS device made specifically as a beta for helping mindfulness practice. I found it useful as an aid definitely in relaxation and as a byproduct for focusing. I would do it more often if they figured out a cheap, sustainable way to put the electrodes on the head without all the gels/sponges/etc.

<comment><USER3> > without all the gels/sponges/etc.

I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon. ECG/EKG/EEG's require the probes to have a good electrical connection to your skin. And dry skin is a pretty terrible conductor.

The gels help the probe adhere to you skin and provide better conductivity. You'd still need something to hold it in place anyway.

Protip for removing the gel: Warm water helps a lot :D

<comment><USER5> Warm water for sponge electrodes? I can't imagine water being helpful for gel electrodes.

<comment><USER3> Sorry I should've explained, warm water helps remove the gel afterwards.

If you ever have a sleep study for example they place them all over your head and it's a little messy, warm water lets it wash right out.

<comment><USER5> Ah ok I thought you meant using water as a medium for stimulation with gel electrodes. But yeah sadly I know exactly what you mean, I've had to clean a lot of gel electrodes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be nice to know what the potential long term damage of something like this is. Relate it to exercise. You work out one group of muscles all the time as much as you can, and the rest of the body is near worthless.

At best you have someone who is basically an idiot savant. At worst, you have someone who has forgotten basic life functions, but handles being a soldier like the best of them.

<comment><USER7> > _At best you have someone who is basically an idiot savant. At worst, you > have someone who has forgotten basic life functions, but handles being a > soldier like the best of them._

From both an industrial and military perspective, this seems like a feature, not a bug.

In fact, it really brings to mind a similar fictional concept, stylized Focus, from Vernon Vinge's _Deepness in the Sky_. Here, Vinge describes how teams of these "idiot savants", specialized in a certain area, are led by neurotypical managers who direct their output toward broader strategic goals.

If this was repeatably and broadly applicable in human learning, I could definitely imagine this achieving widespread usage, especially in developing countries willing to exchange personal well-being for collective (familial or societal) success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would be cool if implants like Neuralink could include features like this or interact with technology like this somehow.

</comment><comment><USER9> Most notable thing about this link is that it hijacked the back button on my phone.

<comment><USER10> Can you elaborate on what you mean by "hijack"?

<comment><USER9> Upon finishing the article, I tried to click the back button. It reloaded the same page I was already on instead of going back to HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Frankly, I could never trust the motives behind anyone who made this sort of thing without the most intense scrutiny.

Maybe in the early stages when no one really knows any better, but as things get refined, I have severe doubts that "little tweaks" here and there would not be attempted in search of ways to engineer people\brain matter that agrees with you (the maker/auditor)'s sensibilities.

In fact, scratch that, this reeks of the idea of nerve stapling in the early stages. Hard pass.

Sometimes, it just isn't worth opening the box. Hate coming off as a Luddite, but I've read enough to know where this type of thing inevitably strays into.</comment>


Steam Hardware and Software Survey: December 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey <comment><AUTHOR> >Simplified Chinese 37.87% +14.43%

>Windows 7 64 bit 33.04% +14.57%

Crazy how visible is the Chinese launch in the stats</comment>


How Scared Should You Be of the Wuhan Coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/20/virus-china-coverup-government-how-scared-should-you-be-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> I would guess the average person shouldn't be scared, especially living in North America and Europe. First let the CDC, et al worry about it before we do.</comment>


New functional language - C# - <AUTHOR> http://www.xoltar.org/cms/node/17# <comment><USER2> Congratulations to the .Net team. C# - which started as a Java look-alike - has come a long way.

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, the majority of C# programmers are either not aware of these features or don't know how to use it.

What stops me from praising C# is its ridiculous verbosity. A language in which the shortest possible form of a character array literal is

      new char[] {'a', 'b'}

is doomed to be low-end, low entry-level, low-respect language, despite all efforts to bring some high-end features into it.

<comment><USER4> It's actually possible to write _slightly_ less verbose code with C# 3.0. For example:

      //...

      char[] someChars = {'A', 'B', 'C'};

      var moreChars = new [] {'D', 'E', 'F'};

      SomeMethod(new[] { 'G', 'H', 'I' });

      //...

I do, however, agree with your sentiment. The language still has some aspects that are quite verbose when compared with dynamically typed languages. You are also right in pointing out that these new features are irrelevant if programmers are not taking advantage of them.

<comment><USER3>
      new [] {'D', 'E', 'F'}

I thought it was impossible at least in 2.x, is this something added in 3.0?

<comment><USER4> You're right - it has been there since at least 2.0. I threw that in there as an example. I apologize for not clarifying that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great for some C# developers, but I wonder how well it will be adopted. C# is mostly used for "enterprise" development. In my work I'm still using 2.0. Worse yet, some of my former coworkers are still using .NET 1.1 at their jobs.

Why must corporate development be so cumbersome? And more importantly, why doesn't this hinder C# where it seems to keep Java so far behind?

</comment><comment><USER6> Why can't Java people do something like this?

I really like what C# people are doing and the language starts to sound really good but unfortunately my work is done with java and *nix so C# is not an option.

<comment><USER3> This article explains why: <http://mindprod.com/jgloss/closure.html>

Upd: just found an interesting discussion on the topic: [http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=1...](http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=173181)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool.

Now, if only ASP.NET was "cleaner" and didn't have all that "event-driven" ugliness.

More widespread usage on Linux would help too. Mono just hasn't taken off in terms of mainstream production use.

<comment><USER8> +1. I quite like C#, but it's not enough incentive for me to switch to Windows.

<comment><USER9> <http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page>

<comment><USER10> The article is covering features in C# 3.0. Mono is perpetually playing catch up to Microsoft's implementation and according to the Mono site the "Mono API today is somewhere in between .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5". Besides the fact that the language implementation is behind, developers also have to deal with the fact that the standard library isn't 100% compatible either. It seems pretty clear that C# developers that are not on Microsoft's implementation are basically second class citizens. I don't think Mono can be taken seriously if we're talking about being compatibility with Microsoft's implementation. It's not all bad, though. Mono seems to be a perfectly good platform when evaluated on its own.

That said, I have little experience with Microsoft .NET and Mono so these are the observations of someone only casually acquainted with either project. Can anyone here share any experiences with Mono?

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I personally think it's not the risk to put yet another layer in your stack that has the potential to royally fuck things up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah! Finally an excuse to do something interesting at work instead of at home.

</comment><comment><USER12> i don't know C# but i found this and i thought it was hilarious:

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=z99EHyG2jQA&feature=related](http://youtube.com/watch?v=z99EHyG2jQA&feature=related)

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=528BCJiRkks&feature=user](http://youtube.com/watch?v=528BCJiRkks&feature=user)</comment>


Foes of Russia Say Child Pornography Is Planted to Ruin Them - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/world/europe/vladimir-putin-russia-fake-news-hacking-cybersecurity.html <comment><USER2> I remember a legal case a few years back when the Pirate Bay guy was arrested in Cambodia for hacking into a government computer. They found hacking tools and stolen data on his machine. He used the legal defense that since his computer was also found to have malware on it that anyone could have put those tools onto his computer and could have used it as a jump-off point for the attack.

It didn't end up working, he was found guilty. But it's an interesting defense, especially if there isn't any other evidence or motive pointing to the defendant.

Given the insecurity of desktop operating system's and the prevalence of malware that any infosec expert could attest to this could become one of those common fallback legal defenses (similar to "my rights against unjustified searches were violated") when there aren't other good options.

</comment><comment><USER3> Now consider "pizzagate," a claim that John Podesta and possibly Hillary Clinton were somehow involved in some kind of child trafficking ring based on a few cryptic out of context sentences in their e-mails. Clinton was known for being anti-Putin, while her rival Trump seems pro-Putin.

Can I be forgiven for thinking we're in the midst of a full-blown cyber war assault by Russia against political opponents abroad?

If this is indeed the case, I really think the best thing for US intelligence to do would be to take a page from the Russian playbook and leak everything they have on this and "doxx" everyone involved.

<comment><USER4> What's more likely, Podesta getting phished or "a full-blown cyber war assault by Russia against political opponents abroad"?

<comment><USER5> Podesta _was_ phished. That is a fact.

But every Pizzagate claim relies on _interpretations of_ the emails that were (accurately, to the best of my knowledge) leaked, not what's in the emails. The "evidence" is stuff like a handkerchief with a map that seemed "pizza- related," plus the claim that this must be coded language because obviously people don't have pizza-related-map handkerchiefs, plus 4chan and UrbanDictionary references to "pizza" and "hot dog" being coded language used by pedophiles.

It's the same as with the "spirit cooking" nonsense. Yes, he was invited to a "Spirit Cooking dinner". No, there's no reason to believe that a "Spirit Cooking dinner" really means a Satanic ritual. It _could_ be, in theory, yes; there's no way to prove that it isn't. But it probably isn't.

<comment><USER3> Is there even any evidence that he attended this dinner?

... that and having a taste for pretentious shock-art is not a crime last I checked. I've had a little bit of contact with East Coast elite circles before and that kind of vapid modern "aaaaaht" is par for the course. Never saw anything quite as over the top as Abromovic but I definitely saw things in the same shock-jocking coated with art school babble genre. I always figured it was a stuff people pretended to like for social signaling purposes.

I don't consider all the pizzagate claims _impossible_. Blackmail has historically been a tool of political manipulation and so a high placed blackmail ring is not unthinkable. I just consider them unlikely, especially in light of the (IMHO rather obvious) existence of an intentional cyber warfare and propaganda campaign against the Clinton presidential campaign.

I've become even more suspicious after listening to one or two interviews about "pizzagate" and hearing the following names and sources mentioned repeatedly: Brietbart news, gab.ai, 4chan, and the Washington Times. The latter is owned by a front for the Unification Church. The first two are pretty well known alt.right outlets, and 4chan is not exactly known for being a forum for unbiased rigorously vetted investigative journalism. (Nor is Reddit.)

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

The sources for this seem to have negative credibility.

I'm being equal opportunity here. If there was a massive push to label Trump as head of a child abuse blackmail ring and all the info came from hard-left rags and people known for supporting Clinton I'd be just as skeptical.

<comment><USER6> I think you're pretty spot on with this. A handy thing to keep in mind when it comes to things like these is that we can only speculate. It happens too often that speculation and assumptions are presented as fact, or that someone retelling what another person says fails to use the same qualifying language and states something as fact.

I've personally come to speculate that there is some dodgy and disgusting acts occurring at this pizza joint. I'm not going to get dogmatic and explain why.

The media, through negligence or design, seems to almost always picks the weakest arguments and presents them as the best there is, if by design it's akin to strawmaning in my book. It works to drum up insane amounts of controversy and/or presents the opposing narratives case as weak. This is why we have 4chan and reddit with these rabid 'citizen journalists' that do all this investigation and forget how stupid it, and they, can be made to sound, it's also why we're going to get more of them, they can navigate through information that allows them to speculate (with good judgment in some cases IMO) that the MSM will just not cover.

<comment><USER7> > I've personally come to speculate that there is some dodgy and disgusting > acts occurring at this pizza joint.

There was only one "dodgy and disgusting" act that occurred at Comet Ping Pong. That was when a man, misled by totally fabricated nonsense, brought an assault rifle into the store to, _at best_ , intimidate and threaten innocent people.

The people spreading this conspiracy theory should be ashamed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "May have returned"?

Friends, in the eastern block it never went away in the first place. </slavic accent>

</comment><comment><USER9> Did "No politics for a week" not end up happening?

<comment><USER5> That ended early: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251)</comment></comment>


Russian hackers exploited a Google flaw the company has refused to fix - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2017/09/24/russian-hackers-exploited-a-google-flaw-and-google-wont-fix-it/ <comment><USER2> The account cramforce has locked comments on the github page reporting this bug

[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/6210](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/6210)</comment>


AWS cuts in half the price of most of its Lightsail virtual private servers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/23/aws-cuts-the-price-of-most-of-its-lightsail-virtual-private-servers-in-half/ <comment><USER2> Hopefully this won't be taken as an anti-MS rant. I've been developing exclusively on Microsoft's platforms for over 20 years.

But, if developing and hosting in a cloud environment doesn't convince you to go Linux, nothing will.

While for the most part as far as feature parity and development tools, AWS treats Windows developers like first class citizens. The "Windows Tax" is clear in AWS when you can see the cost difference between running the same instance size with Linux as Windows.

Even worse, realistically, running any Windows instance with less than 8GB of RAM is painful. Your minimum cost is $70 a month.

Being in the Windows world so long, I was amazed when I started using AWS and found how much you could do with relatively few resources in the Linux world.

I never cared before, I was using other people's money.

But I'm not leaving .Net Core, its made transistioning to Linux hosted development less painful.

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-lightsail-update- mor...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-lightsail-update-more- instance-sizes-and-price-reductions/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest adding Scaleway[0] to the list. I've used their server a bit and it worked well. I know them because of their parent company (Online) which I've been a custom for quite a few years now.

[0] [https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/](https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is probably based on the new T3 release. [https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/aws-announces- avai...](https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/aws-announces-availability- of-t3-instances-for-amazon-ec2-2018-08-21)

I'm guessing they're able to do burstable offerings with better baseline and burst at a lower cost than before.

<comment><USER5> That would make sense. But T3 are comparatively speaking, much slower than DO and Linode. When Lightsail were first released those benchmarks won't any good at all.

The only reason for using Lightsail is you want all those Amazon Services, which your LightSail can hook up free of transfer using Private Network.

<comment><USER6> Wait, so you can read from an S3 bucket for free using LightSail but egress at LightSail prices?

<comment><USER4> Yes, but I think lightsail egress is more expensive than s3 egress. On my phone, but isn't lightsail 9 cents a GB to S3 being 8 cents? Think regular ec2 is 8 cents as well, or is that 12?

<comment><USER7> Lightsail includes a data transfer allowance, starting at 1TB, though importantly both data in and out is counted against the allowance. In the vast majority of cases, the allowance is enough. If you do use all the allowance, data transfer out charges are $.09/GB in most regions, the same as EC2 and S3, at least for the first 10TB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> On the far low end, BuyVM has a $15/year plan (1 core, 128M ram, 15G disk, 500G bandwidth).

Has been working well so far (a few years), though haven't really been close to any resource limits (yet).

<comment><USER9> Depending what core that is, you get more on the Google Cloud free tier (600MB RAM, 30GB disk). But: only 30GB outgoing bandwidth.

<comment><USER10> Thought it was 1G transfer max (not sure which direction or both)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can I have everything be as simple as Digital Ocean but still use their Managed Services like RDS?

<comment><USER12> OVH provides Cloud Database[1], but only up to 4 GB RAM / 64 GB storage.

[1] [https://www.ovh.co.uk/cloud/cloud- databases/](https://www.ovh.co.uk/cloud/cloud-databases/)

<comment><USER13> OVH is a horrible company if anything goes wrong or if you have a billing issue.

Their tech and pricing may be good, but if there's any problem you'll spend a lot of time trying to deal with them or you'll just give up a let your wasted payment fly away...

<comment><USER12> OVH is dirty cheap, because it is a fully automated service, and if you are using it for anything serious, you need to order a VIP support package[1]. People complain about their terrible support without realizing, that they only paid for the infrastructure, which costs 10x less than AWS.

[1] [https://www.ovh.co.uk/support/](https://www.ovh.co.uk/support/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So a regular EC2 T2.medium with 4GB RAM is $39 while a LightSail 4GB is $20. Damn. Need to switch some EC2 workload to LightSail.

</comment><comment><USER15> great news, I love spinning up Lightsail instances for new projects!! my current running instances are not updated, I suppose I have to recreate them then..

Edit: It seems they have added new instance types. My current instances are now 3.50$

[https://snag.gy/3Q1fL0.jpg](https://snag.gy/3Q1fL0.jpg)

<comment><USER16> Wow, tree fiddy.

How is cpu usage on these nodes? Aren't they oversubscribed as hell?

<comment><USER15> I havent noticed it any. I deploy .net core application + loadbalancers and db.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is there only 3 providers there ? This should probably include others like OVH, Scaleway, Vultr,

<comment><USER18> Also hetzner cloud

I dont know about the cores that hetzner provides and how they compare to the competitors, but ~3$ for a somewhat usable VPS is damn competetive

(not affiliated with hetzner in any way, other than I have one of those 3$ instances)

<comment><USER19> I'm a Hetzner customer, too, but I'm quite sad that Hetzner doesn't really allow DNS configuration via a centralized REST(-like) API. You can configure DNS via an email interface but there are no officially supported libraries available and it's very clunky [1]. You effectively have to roll your own DNS servers or chose another DNS provider if you want to manage a lot of servers dynamically.

1: [https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/E-Mail- Schnittstelle_Domai...](https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/E-Mail- Schnittstelle_Domain_Registration_Robot/en)

<comment><USER20> The feature I would really like is some kind of virtual networking. Even a basic VPC would be welcome, with access rules and a virtual address space. It wouldn't have to be as comprehensive as AWS. Then again, it's cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One quick question about LightSail Load Balancers: Is the outbound traffic from the Load Balancer to the Internet is charged separately or it is taken from the instances quota?

Scanned through the FAQ but couldn't find a clear answer.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wouldn't use Digital Ocean for shit, there are multiple stories of users were they cancelled accounts (actual production systems) because of sustained use or bogus DMCA claims.

<comment><USER23> I wouldn't use a service for VPS either if they reacted to DMCA/Takedown Notice claims. As the operator of the server on that VPS the DMCA/Takedown Notice is _my business_ not the providers.

Otherwise it's a way to convenient method to cripple the competition or shut someone's personal website down for shits and giggles.

<comment><USER24> Yeah but that's not how the law works. A service provider risks losing its safe harbor status if it delegates a DMCA complaint to a party and then that DMCA complaint is ignored. Providers have an incentive to shut down services on the terms of the DMCA to protect their business. And even if you have a registered copyright agent for your business and a form on your site to report infringement, lawyers love to blast out DMCA claims to you, your agent, and your provider, as high in the chain as they can go. It's a huge headache.

Do you colo, or use non-US based providers?

<comment><USER23> I'm not in the US and use a non-US based provider.

The EU notice&takedown procedure does not entail that you loose protection for simply forwarding such notices, all that matters if someone responsible is actually reading the contents. If I don't give a shit about the notice then you can send a C&D and if I still don't give a shit, you can sue me. Or you make someone at my provider somehow care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Kimsufi has dedicated servers starting at 5$ per month. Yes, it's an atom, but it's yours alone, and is going to beat these on performance, memory and riskspace.

<comment><USER26> No ECC RAM, also their network isn't exactly top tier and many complain about support. You will get what you pay for.

<comment><USER27> Kimsufi gets de-prioritised compared to other services on OVH's network and there are capacity issues.

This is probably due to the fact that a lot of people use them for cheap 24x7 torrent boxes rather than the cheap personal VPS alternative they were intended as.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What does "Consistent 100% CPU usage" means? Does it mean that if I get the instance and use CPU on 100% it will shut it down?

<comment><USER29> No, lightsail is less well documented; but are based on EC2 burstable instances. These have a baseline performance where you can use 5%-30% of the CPU, and accrue credits to burst up to using 100% for short periods.

[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/t2-credi...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/t2-credits- baseline-concepts.html)

If you are out of credits your CPU is just slower, you don't get turned off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wish Google Cloud could have this kind of price point. 1vCPU + 1GB RAM on GCP is $19.22

<comment><USER31> wtf

2 vCPU + 2 GB RAM is about € 2,50 ($3.00) on [https://hetzner.cloud](https://hetzner.cloud). (Not affiliated, just a happy customer.)

<comment><USER32> I have one of these too, run a PostgreSQL server. You get fantastic fsync performance for that price too. Not Optane level, but almost at the same performance as a dedicated Intel S3700.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> LightSail is the only vendor in this space to offer Windows hosting.

<comment><USER34> I know they're not listed in the comparison, however Vultr has superior Windows Server hosting as compared to LightSail. Their network is a lot faster and their servers are better. I aggressively recommend Vultr over LightSail if you're using Windows for something.

<comment><USER35> I have nothing but good things to say about Vultr. Plus they're one of the few providers with a Sydney datacentre presence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Meh. Look at the bandwidth pricing. If bandwidth is the Soda. DO is coke and lights sail is McDonald's selling coke. You can get it direct at wholesale or buy it in a bottle for 5x more.

</comment><comment><USER37> Still no IPv6.

</comment><comment><USER38> DO and Linode are very expensive compared to OVH, Scaleway or Hetzner. So this reads as "Lightsail announces 50% price drop, will still be very expensive"

(From another comment: [https://snag.gy/3Q1fL0.jpg](https://snag.gy/3Q1fL0.jpg)) -> $3.50 for 512 MB of RAM is a fucking rip-off compared to this: [https://www.scaleway.com/](https://www.scaleway.com/)

<comment><USER34> Scaleaway is meaningless unless you're located in Europe.

If you're in the developed world, $2 vs $5 etc does not matter in most cases. The most important factor is that your host does what you need it to do, that the network is excellent and your servers are located where you need them to be.

If you're an American business you'd be foolish to host your servers in the EU. Locating your servers in the EU opens you up to their jurisdiction, which is a mistake, you'd be unnecessarily exposing yourself to multiple jurisdiction compliance. That problem is only going to get dramatically worse in the coming years. It's not worth worrying about saving a couple of dollars over.

<comment><USER38> I am European and it's 11 here; I'm talking to an European audience.

OVH has got a datacenter in Canada with good prices, compared to the rip-off Linode is.

<comment><USER34> Your point about OVH still falls flat for a US audience, unless saving a few dollars is a critical concern.

$20 for 4gb of ram, 4tb of bandwidth and 2 cpus at Linode is a rip-off? I guess if someone were quite lacking in funds and needed the absolute most cut- rate VPS prices they can get, it might be viewed as a rip-off. That's a legitimate issue if so, sure. By all counts Linode in fact provides a tremendous service at a low cost, as with DigitalOcean. I'm guessing that for most people, $3 vs $7 (or a similar ratio) simply doesn't matter very much, especially when you consider laws and latency.

To compete fully, Scaleaway and OVH will eventually need multiple US data centers, otherwise the price gap by itself isn't going to be enough and the world's largest economy will remain the domain of DO/Linode/Amazon/etc. Those companies already know they'll have to charge more for service in the US, which is why they don't already have lots of US data centers after all these years, they have no competitive advantage to bring to the table.

Again, if you locate in Canada you're opening yourself up to multiple jurisdiction compliance. You're going to have to comply with both Canadian and US laws in that case if you're a US business. The complexity and burden of doing so will only continue to expand.

Saving a few dollars by locating with OVH in Canada might be fine if you're just running a test setup and have no intentions of running a real business on it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone 4S Review by Steve's favorite reviewer - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20111011/the-iphone-finds-its-voice/?mod=tweet

<comment><USER2> The improvements in the 4S are likely 100% due to Sprint's faster data network and not due to the phone's processor, etc.</comment>


Decentralized Blockchain-Based Electronic Marketplaces - <AUTHOR> https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/1/223888-decentralized-blockchain-based-electronic-marketplaces/fulltext <comment><USER2> There are four reasons I think decentralized marketplaces are inevitable:

1) Throughout history middlemen have suffered a common fate. They get squeezed out at every opportunity. We have a chance to cut out the rent-seeking middlemen, with revolutionary new business models that allow fees to go to ~zero.

2) Blockchain technology gives us a censorship resistance. Not only from governments that like to ban certain types of marketplaces, but also from centralized marketplaces which like to pick and choose who is welcome on their platforms. Just look at Uber and Airbnb as examples. They have been banned in cities all around the world & have likewise banned certain individuals for life from ever using their marketplaces.

3) We can redistribute value to the people who actually contribute the most value in the network. Uber and Airbnb wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for the first 100 drivers/hosts, but what did those drivers/hosts get in exchange? Meanwhile, the early employees, investors and founders get filthy rich. New token economics give us a "better than free" business model that incentivizes people to use a platform that rewards early participants in the network.

4) Blockchain powered marketplaces are instantly global. This is a non-trivial advantage over anyone who attempts to create a centralized marketplace and has to wade through the local laws and banking regulations for each and every jurisdiction in the world where they wish to operate.

<comment><USER3> I consider network censorship to be a feature, not a bug. I want airbnb to be able to enforce that hosts are not able to deny service to black people. I want my uber driver to have insurance and a quick background check. From the perspective of somebody in the marketplace I _prefer_ having people who break the social contract removed. Now there can be marketplaces that screw this up and perhaps there is some place for a truly censorship immune marketplace but they will be niche rather than taking over existing systems.

Development is not free. Users generally want new features over time. A distributed 2000-era netflix service where people mail each other dvds wouldn't survive in 2018. Who does development without a middleman? Part of the reason why something like uber works is because drivers do not have the technical capacity to build their own system.

The idea that cryptoassets and associated systems is going to bring about a revolution that frees people from capitalism is insane to me. Wealth is amazingly concentrated among early adopters and difficulty curves are generally weighted hard towards benefiting a few early people. Why would a distributed marketplace suddenly bring the power to the people? You still need the capital to buy a car to be a distributed-uber driver after all.

<comment> dane-pgp The feature you are looking for is not "censorship" but "reputation metrics" (in fact, they should be "uncensorable reputation metrics"). If a trusted third party (not necessarily Uber) told you whether a given driver had insurance, then your decision to transact with the driver could be based on that. (More likely, whoever made the app you use would do the "has insurance" check for you, and not show you any drivers that don't have insurance, and they would list this filtering as a feature of the app).

As for who is going to pay for this, the users can still pay money for the individual apps (perhaps they would get a commission from each ride they enable, unless a Free Software alternative emerged), and the app makers could pay a licensing fee to the third party that provides the insurance check or other reputation metric.

The real unsolved problem is how to decentralise a reputation system without it being subject to Sybil attacks or breaching people's privacy.

<comment><USER4> This only shift the responsibility. Now those with the authority to provide a good reputation decide who gets to sell their goods. For example you would probably have a problem with dangerous electronics in a decentralized market. Only experts can tell you whether the USB charger you're looking at is safe, so whoever moves first to become the defacto authority for electronics safety in that marketplace effectively controls who can sell.

Not that I think that this is a bad thing. As a consumer I want somebody else to take care that the things that I can buy don't kill me and I wouldn't trust some random commenters on the Internet for that kind of information.

<comment><USER5> The world/internet as a whole is trying to figure out how to manage delegating authority(trust) aka fake news etc.

I think we are in the process of transferring from institutional authority to algorithmic authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aren't you guys tired of this whole blockchain thing? I'm a bitcoin proponent and love the technology, however it's becoming a truly "fake news" type of environment where new cryptocoins are so complicated to understand that only the creators know how they work.

I'm mind blown by the fact that none of these new-cryptocoins are getting hacked - there's an enormous bounty out there for who's able to figure out how to double-spend these things! How's it possible that they all work well, but are based on different principles? My conclusion is that there are hackers that are currently double-spending to their advantage: without telling anybody and without making it clear that it's happening.

Also, the whole idea of "scarcity" (which was my main attraction to this field) doesn't exist anymore because of forks: if a group of people decides to fork the software, your coins are duplicated and aren't scarce anymore, so it's not even like gold anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if we'd be better off without a blockchain, and instead with a system where we trust lots of big entities to record the ledger in a way that still allows us to get some level of freedom-of-use, anonymity, censorship-resistance and anybody-can-enter kind of system.

<comment><USER7> Scarcity still exists because the fork creates another coin than the original but a fork. Keep in mind that scarcity is due to trackability (history).

<comment><USER8> Scarcity doesn't exist because anyone can start their own blockchain and pretty much anyone who can has. There's nothing preventing anyone from relaunching an exact duplicate of bitcoin with all of its strengths and weaknesses at any time other than inertia.

<comment><USER7> You are missing the point here. It's about the history of the individual coin not about the technical properties of coin in itself.

You can build as many cryptocurrencies as you want to. They aren't bitcoin as they don't have the history of bitcoin which means that they aren't the same.

Only bitcoin is bitcoin, because only bitcoins has the history they have.

<comment><USER9> Bitcoin forks like Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold use the same block chain history as Bitcoin.

<comment><USER7> You are also missing the point here. You can't get the same for bitcoin cash as you can for a bitcoin. So no they don't use or have the same history after the fork and they aren't the same which is why one is 4 times more worth than the other.

<comment><USER9> Of course you cant get the same for them! It is expected that a fork that creates new coins out of thin air will lead to cheaper coins.

<comment><USER7> And so scarcity still exists which was the original point I made and which was being challenged.

Each coin has a unique history. You can create as many forks of bitcoin as you want it doesn't change the fact that there is only one bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A decentralized marketplace based on cryptocurrency already exists and has thousands of users right now. It's called OpenBazaar.

<comment><USER11> Another big decentralized exchange is BISQ

[https://bisq.network/](https://bisq.network/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok, maybe I missed something, but can someone explain to me why a decentralized marketplace is an important thing to have?

Apart from the fact that you can pay there with Bitcoin (which you can also do at other e-commerce stores), it seems similar to Shopify from a merchant's (or vendor in OB slang) perspective.

So I get that makes it simpler to use for products that are not simple to get otherwise (e.g. drugs), because of censorship and outdated governing (I know you can in theory buy and sell anything, but I just downloaded it and searched around and most products were either tests products, or drugs and sex- related), but I don't see what other benefits there are.

I mean most people who want to _sell_ stuff over the internet struggle with the fact that nobody wants to actually _buy_ their stuff - the fees or monthly costs don't seem to be the reason for the failure of these shops. Furthermore I would guess most people go to a central place like Amazon, because they have some kind of reputation (although expectations are getting lower) and their support ("where's my package") is quite OK (from a customer's perspective) - although the customers _could_ go to small indie shops and buy stuff there.

Outside of products and services that are illegal to sell or buy because of jurisdictions (if these jurisdictions make sense is an orthogonal question I would say) what is the additional benefit for buyers and sellers?

<comment><USER13> The logic is usually that decentralized system allow greater innovation, faster development, third-party integration. By taking no centralized control, allowing everyone be partly owner of the network, they will have much greater network effect than the centralized counterparts. The analogy is usually the free internet vs proprietary CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> For a community of technology enthusiasts, it's surprising to see the amount of misconceptions people here have about blockchain, as it pertains to cryptocurrencies, as well as general angst towards a new technology with a ton of future potential.

</comment><comment><USER15> A decentralized marketplace could avoid the problems with near-monopolies like Amazon because the cost overhead on transactions could be made minimal. The problem is that in order to not become the black market like OpenBazaar, the decentralized market would need to be able to comply with local and regional laws and regulation; laws and regulations which change over time. That is a tall order, and in not easily reconcilable with decentralization.

<comment><USER16> How does a decentralized marketplace make transaction fees minimal? Currently transaction fees are the hot topic and seem exorbitantly high.

I guess both customers and merchants want to buy or sell stuff and not read about things like the lightning network.

<comment><USER15> You could be right, but I was mostly referring to the Amazon take.</comment></comment></comment>