Dark net drug markets kept alive by great customer service - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-08/21/buying-drugs-on-the-dark-net <comment><USER3> As far as I'm concerned, all of these drug markets are an absolutely fucking wonderful thing for society. Even if you think drugs should be illegal, incredibly violent cartels still exist. Markets like Silk Road can take all their power away.

100,000 people have died so far in the 8-year Mexican Drug War. How would you like if that number turned into 0 without any need for political intervention?

This is what Ross Ulbricht described his goal as on LinkedIn:

"I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind."

Is that clear enough? The guy studied organic solar cells and EuO thin-film crystals for 5 years as a grad student, describing his goal then as to expand the frontier of human knowledge.

Do you think a person like that would suddenly plunge himself into a crazy get-rich scheme? Let's be honest here: that kind of person meticulously plans these kind of things, and they do it ultimately to help the world in an abstract way -- not constantly empathetic of each individual person, but ultimately concerned with the total human condition.

<comment><USER4> _This is what Ross Ulbricht described his goal as on LinkedIn: "I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind." Is that clear enough? The guy studied organic solar cells and EuO thin-film crystals for 5 years as a grad student, describing his goal then as to expand the frontier of human knowledge._

And then twice paid money to (what he believed) have somebody killed that was causing him a problem.

<comment><USER5> I still use reiserfs on my drives, ever after knowing Hans Reiser is a murderer. Doesn't make his contributions any less valid.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but the comment I replied to claimed he was "ultimately concerned with the total human condition." I'm saying he isn't, or is at minimum a hypocrite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a breeding pool for techniques that are resistant to state security measures. Fed would have been smart to leave SR 1.0 up as it had dominated that environment and would have suppressed "evolution".

</comment><comment><USER7> I often posited/mused that one of the main reasons hard drugs haven't been legalized yet is that there is very little variety in them. Let me elaborate a little. With alcohol, there are hundreds/thousands of different flavors/types/process/names/combinations. But, with most of the hard drugs, it's pretty much "a chemical". That's it, nothing to it. No "Alabama Whiskey" or "Russian Vodka No 5." to make it into a giant favor-winning game.

Now, I don't know how the state of such a product range would change if it were legalized. Who knows, they might even come up with ingenious ways to spice things up without increasing dosages. Flavors, combinations, negative- effect suppressants, whatever. Or how about people come up with ingenious places/ways to take drugs that prevent addiction, or simply enhance the setting.

I don't know. What I do know is that we should let people use/do what they want to their bodies. Will this have negative effects? Sure, they might, they might not. Personal choice trumps any sort of wide/vague societal benefits, otherwise society is just a bunch of tyrants. As long as what individuals do doesn't physically harm anyone, then they should be allowed to do it.

<comment><USER8> > I don't know. What I do know is that we should let people use/do what they > want to their bodies. Will this have negative effects? Sure, they might, > they might not. Personal choice trumps any sort of wide/vague societal > benefits, otherwise society is just a bunch of tyrants. As long as what > individuals do doesn't physically harm anyone, then they should be allowed > to do it.

Eh, I dunno. I can see both sides of it. I worry that heroin is basically an advertiser's wet dream and you'd see all sorts of shady shit encouraging addiction. On the other hand we've already semi-successfully navigated those waters with tobacco. But then, I don't see people on the street in the bronx willing to blow someone for a cigarette. Maybe that's because it's legal. I dunno. Seems like something we should investigate before making policy decisions.

There're a lot of factors to be considered and "personal choice trumps all" is just as silly of an axiom as the opposite. There's a plethora of disallowed personal choices that the vast majority of people would agree are net positives for society, if only because "doesn't harm anyone else" is a very gray area.

<comment><USER9> Do you think those advertisers will be more effective than the current generation of street pushers that try to get your high school kids addicted?

As a high school kid (a decade ago), it was FAR easier to get marijuana, opiate pills, shrooms, and other drugs than it was to get alcohol, because alcohol required that we go through someone we knew personally not invested in the criminal market for their income, and was vaguely watched by the government (since they could regulate the caution the stores took).

> There's a plethora of disallowed personal choices that the vast majority of > people would agree are net positives for society, if only because "doesn't > harm anyone else" is a very gray area.

And being gay should be discouraged because it spreads AIDS.

The simple fact is that drug use doesn't require any risks to the public that we don't allow already for other substances, drugs are already being used by almost everyone who wants them, and our prohibition has cost us being able to effectively deal with the reckless uses of drugs because people are hiding all uses of drugs.

That you're trying to argue against the facts - prohibition is a failed policy that makes drug use more dangerous than treating it as a social health issue - seems awfully reminiscent of people who don't like gays inventing reasons they're dangerous.

Edit:

I made a several off-topic replies in my posts, including this one, to the person above me. For a more complete discussion of it, see here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218789)

<comment><USER8> I'm not really talking about kids getting addicted. Not sure why you thought I was. I think we've done a pretty good job of regulating legal substances for minors.

> And being gay should be discouraged because it spreads AIDS.

Wow! That's incredibly homophobic. Unprotected sex spreads AIDS. Being gay has nothing to do with it. If you didn't get the memo, in the 21st century we don't fear 'the gays spreading evil diseases' anymore.

> That you're trying to argue against the facts - prohibition is a failed > policy that makes drug use more dangerous than treating it as a social > health issue -

I wasn't arguing for prohibition. Where did I argue for prohibition? Did I say the word 'prohibition' anywhere? In fact, you touched on exactly my point:

> The simple fact is that drug use doesn't require any risks to the public > that we don't allow already for other substances,

We very greatly vary in our regulation of those substances. And of everything, for that matter. Alcohol's sold in corner stores, Percocet is only (legally) available through a pharmacy with a prescription. Owning a concealed firearm requires a permit. If we're going to legalize 'harder' drugs, where should they fall on that spectrum?

Should we allow people to buy heroin at the corner store? Maybe! Should advertisers be allowed to buy huge billboards advertising their brand of crack? Possibly. We should evaluate what's going to provide the most overall utility for us as a society. If the answer is to legalize cocaine but disallow advertising of it, then that's what we should do.

We don't know where that maximum utility is though, because it's taboo to talk about. People immediately see the word 'drugs' and froth at the mouth and go off on tangents either about personal choice and cartels or conversely they go off about 'think of the children!'.

> seems awfully reminiscent of people who don't like gays inventing reasons > they're dangerous.

Actually, you're the one who did that in this conversation :).

<comment><USER9> The rest of your post misunderstood a hypothetical I raised to compare and contrast with your argument, and I won't be addressing it. However, there was one part that I feel I should respond to:

> We very greatly vary in our regulation of those substances. And of > everything, for that matter. Alcohol's sold in corner stores, Percocet is > only (legally) available through a pharmacy with a prescription. Owning a > concealed firearm requires a permit. If we're going to legalize 'harder' > drugs, where should they fall on that spectrum? Should we allow people to > buy heroin at the corner store? Maybe! Should advertisers be allowed to buy > huge billboards advertising their brand of crack? Possibly. We should > evaluate what's going to provide the most overall utility for us as a > society. If the answer is to legalize cocaine but disallow advertising of > it, then that's what we should do.

Three points on this:

1\. When we talk about making drugs legal, we mean for recreational use. It's already the case that all drugs with a "demonstrated medical use" (let's ignore for a moment how that gets decided) are legal to use for medical purposes, and additionally, most of the laws have as a affirmative defense that your actions were medically necessary in some way.

2\. The two legalized recreational drugs that we have (alcohol and tobacco) are sold in a variety of ways by jurisdiction, and our debate about removing the "only for medicine" requirement doesn't require that we resolve the debate about how we're going to realize that change in a uniform way. It's certainly not the most important question for if we legalize wider recreational drug use or not.

3\. "Maximum utility for society" is a notoriously hard way to make a decision, because we don't necessarily agree on what the metric is. Taking my hypothetical from before again - is it of maximum utility to prohibit gay marriage because it encourages straight couples to have more kids? Well, that's incredibly hard to assess, even once you pin down several of the subjective aspects. Instead, courts have been deciding the merits based on the impact this has to freedom and how consistently that reasoning is applied across similar cases. I greatly approve of this method of decision making. It's generally better to start from first principles of the things an individual should and shouldn't be allowed to do on a whim, by getting permission from his peers, only with permission from a specific person the action is happening to, or never. It's similarly reasonable to look at how people raising objections apply those same objections to similar cases - <USER2> they're consistent, then perhaps they have a real objection; if they're not, they need to explain this either by differences between the two cases or concede that's not their true objection.

<comment><USER8> > The rest of your post misunderstood a hypothetical I raised to compare and > contrast with your argument, and I won't be addressing it

No, I didn't misunderstand it. It was dumb at best, and incredibly insensitive at worst (I'm sure the gay community appreciates you appropriating their plight).

> When we talk about making drugs legal, we mean for recreational use. It's > already the case that all drugs with a "demonstrated medical use" (let's > ignore for a moment how that gets decided) are legal to use for medical > purposes, and additionally, most of the laws have as a affirmative defense > that your actions were medically necessary in some way.

My point is that we vary greatly in our legal attitudes towards those substances, even recreationally. Tobacco at 18, Alcohol at 21. Can't advertise tobacco much, but beer commercials are literally everywhere. What are we going to do with cocaine? Heroin? Is there any difference in our stance towards those two?

> 2\. The two legalized recreational drugs that we have (alcohol and tobacco) > are sold in a variety of ways by jurisdiction, and our debate about removing > the "only for medicine" requirement doesn't require that we resolve the > debate about how we're going to realize that change in a uniform way. It's > certainly not the most important question for if we legalize wider > recreational drug use or not.

Well, ignoring that there are tons of other legal recreational drugs (caffeine comes to mind), there are actually some pretty general laws regarding them (e.g. tobacco at 18, alcohol at 21) and more specifically, advertising them. Implementation details of how we're going to transition those drugs into the general populace is actually THE most important question in my mind.

> 3\. "Maximum utility for society" is a notoriously hard way to make a > decision, because we don't necessarily agree on what the metric is.

Horse shit. Deaths caused by drug warfare, death rates caused by complications (e.g. liver cirrhosis). Two metrics right there that nearly everyone cares about.

> Taking my hypothetical from before again - is it of maximum utility to > prohibit gay marriage because it encourages straight couples to have more > kids?

Your continued gay analogies are really just exposing your ignorance of homosexuality.

> It's generally better to start from first principles of the things an > individual should and shouldn't be allowed to do on a whim, by getting > permission from his peers, only with permission from a specific person the > action is happening to, or never.

"by getting permission from his peers" is essentially what we do with alcohol and tobacco (hence the age restrictions, if we think of minors as individuals). "should be allowed to on a whim" is what we do for caffeine. They're treated differently. What should we do for other drugs?

<comment><USER9> I'm just going to say this: I'm actually bisexual, and your insistence that gay/queer issues are taboo for analogies, and that I personally mean clearly conjured examples of things that other people have said in the public arena (which I, many others, and federal judges think are flawed arguments), are both a form of ad hominem/strawman weakening your other points considerably and incredibly offensive.

I was otherwise enjoying our conversation, but far from it being me who seems to have an issue with topics involving gays, I think it's you. You're unable to have a real discussion about the logical fallacies of well trodden, publicly expressed arguments from recent years (eg, I've seen all of these expressed by people fighting against gay rights in the past 5 years published in major news articles), and how they're similar to the argument you're making about drugs.

> Your continued gay analogies are really just exposing your ignorance of > homosexuality.

I'm not ignorant of homosexuality in any manner, I just think you're advancing arguments on the topic of drugs with the same flawed logic that I routinely hear trotted out against me when discussing people I have sex with or might want to one day marry. That I chose personal examples of flawed arguments doesn't tell you anything about my stance on those topics.

Again, it's very unfortunate that you've chosen to attack me personally rather than address the topic, but I'm going to have to stop conversing with you.

<comment><USER8> I see you're conveniently ignoring my other points (that you're arguing against a straw man, that implementation is a key issue) besides your incredibly dumb appropriation of the gay rights plight as an analogy for drug legalization.

I'll take that to mean you're sufficiently embarrassed about grandstanding for no reason. I hope in the future you read more carefully =).

<comment><USER9> I was debating making one more reply to apologize for that, actually, when you pointed it out in our other thread of comments.

I'll do so here and edit my original reply (if I still can): I'm sorry for my replies to you, they were partially off topic, and I think I initially misunderstood your point.

I still think you're overly focused on kids' safety, which is one of the main things the regulation you're talking about implementing as the main question we face is actually supposed to deal with. (The other things it deals with is other kinds of verification that you're buying appropriate amounts, eg, not reselling.) I do agree that how we implement such decisions is one of the key questions about how we implement a decision to legalize drugs, but I'd argue it's entirely irrelevant (and a variation on "think of the children!") to the decision of whether or not to go about legalizing more recreational drugs.

> your incredibly dumb appropriation of the gay rights plight as an analogy > for drug legalization

Gay rights isn't an analogy for drug legalization, nor have I ever tried to claim the two were analogous. It just happens that many good examples of clearly fallacious arguments which are widely known come from people arguing against the rights of gays, and I elected to use two arguments that have been told to me personally as examples of poor arguments which have a similar structure to ones you were making. There is no deeper link nor analogy between the two topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In my experience the people that I know that are on "safe" drugs such as Prozac, Adderall, Ritalin, Xanax are the ones having the tougher problem with addiction compared to the people I have met that have used illicit drugs such as Heroin. Companies like Shire Pharmaceuticals selling amphetamines to kids are no better for society than your average heroin dealer. I mean atleast the heroin dealer is honest with the fact that the drug he is selling is absolutely going to have an addictive effect whereas giving kids speed or even methamphetamine (prescription brand Desoxyn in the pharma world) to treat ADHD is somehow a more noble profession.

</comment><comment><USER11> How is it that these drugs make it through international mail? Doesn't the US government have ways to detect drugs that are shipped in this manner?

<comment><USER12> When I was a teenager a friend used to send me LSD through the post, it always arrived (Royal Mail).

I've also purchased Zopiclone and Valium through Silk Road which has been shipped from the U.S. without issues (Hyperdontia, so with frequent toothache I need to know I can get to sleep at night so that I can work the next day, and I've had better experiences with the vendors on SR than I have with doctors and dentists.)

<comment><USER13> Out of general interest, has the state of the NHS dentists got so bad that you can't see a dentist, or do you have a fear of dentists?

FYI if you have an abcess then you should really get it seen to!

[http://worldental.org/teeth/abscessed-tooth-complications- an...](http://worldental.org/teeth/abscessed-tooth-complications-and- dangers/350/2/)

<comment><USER14> As good as the NHS is - they hate to dole out drugs unless all other options have been exhausted.

I went to my GP asking for a single Ambien (Zolpidem) to help me sleep on a long haul flight and they said no as it 'could cause dependency'. So I bought 60 over the counter with no prescription in Thailand.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I always thought it a bit dumb that you can't get a couple of sleeping pills for a flight / jet lag. They could always limit it to say 20 a year so you can't get addicted. I bought my Ambien in Vietnam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How are you guaranteed to actually receive your $5,000 worth of drug XYZ while purchasing from an anonymous network? What if the guy mails you a box of baking soda?

<comment><USER7> _Reputation_. People don't necessarily just go out and buy $5000 worth of goods from an unknown seller. They start small, with a value they're willing to lose. Say $20. Over time, the seller consistently delivers the goods requested, and so their trust in the seller increases.

You can imagine that with a consistent system, this reputation can be transmitted/communicated to new parties. Think EBay for a clear example. Perhaps not the best of analogies, as EBay has money back guarantees/insurance, etc. But as long as drugs remain in the dark underbelly of government-hate, don't expect much protection from conventional institutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Url changed from [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/dark-net-drug- mar...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/dark-net-drug-markets-kept- alive-by-great-customer-service/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER18> _and are accessed using a special browser called "Tor"_

Tor is a browser now?

<comment><USER19> It's a browser bundle. They were close.

<comment><USER20> Your commented helped me. I'd heard of Tor of course but I didn't know what the user interface was. When the article said that it used a Tor browser I didn't know any better.</comment></comment></comment>


Coronavirus: France imposes 15-day lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-france-lockdown-cases-update-covid-19-macron-a9405136.html <comment><USER2> And in Sweden here we are. Schools still open and people going about their life as normal. Boggles the mind

</comment><comment><USER3> >Similar measures are currently in place in parts of Northern Italy.

Actually WHOLE Italy, only for the record.

<comment><USER4> One thing that has become very clear in this crisis is how little the anglosphere media is willing to actually read Italian material. 65m people, EU founder, a culture that influences most of the Western world, the seat of Catholic heads, an industrial heritage with peaks of excellence - and nobody cares to learn enough Italian even to read simple newspaper articles. What a shame.

<comment> chupa-chups This amplified by the availability of really good translation tools today. bing translate really rocks and seems not to be as prone to censorship as google translate at the moment.

E.g. [https://www.translatetheweb.com/?ref=TVert&from=&to=en&a=Cor...](https://www.translatetheweb.com/?ref=TVert&from=&to=en&a=Corriere.it#)</comment></comment></comment>


Review of New Apple and Google Contact Tracing Protocol - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@OpenTrace/review-of-new-apple-and-google-contact-tracing-protocol-7696c9203967 <comment><USER2> Documentation on the Apple site:

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/exposurenotificati...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/exposurenotification)

[https://www.apple.com/covid19/contacttracing/](https://www.apple.com/covid19/contacttracing/)

Exposure Notification - Cryptography Specification v1.2:

[https://covid19-static.cdn- apple.com/applications/covid19/cu...](https://covid19-static.cdn- apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact- tracing/pdf/ExposureNotification-CryptographySpecificationv1.2.pdf)

The revision history of Cryptography Specification:

v1.2 - April 29, 2020

• Renamed EKRollingPeriod to TEKRollingPeriod.

• Renamed Associated Metadata Encryption Keys to Associated Encrypted Metadata Keys.

• Made grammatical corrections.

v1.1 - April 23, 2020

• Renamed "Contact Tracing" to "Exposure Notification" throughout the document.

• Temporary Exposure Keys (previously known as Daily Tracing Keys) are now randomly generated and no longer derived.

• AES is now used instead of HMAC<SHA256> for improved performance.

• Encryption of associated metadata is now provided.

• Reformatted the title page and table of contents for consistency across documents.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the interesting side effects of this is what happens after the pandemic is over but the technology is still implemented. What other things could be worth tracking?

I once did a hackathon where we used ShotSpotter to generate an array of house addresses that should be prioritized after a shooting occurs. The idea was to connect students and parents who witnessed gun violence with community resources (i.e. not just the cops) that could provide guidance and therapy. This same protocol could be adapted to notify everyone "exposed" to the shooter's phone and provide those resources on the fly.

One other semi-dystopian possibility is using the protocol to apprehend criminals. Most people would not accept real-time location tracking by the government, and so such functionality is out of the question (or at least not publicly available to the majority of citizens, local LEO included). However, what if the police could go to Apple and Google and ask them to "blacklist" your phone, so that everyone around you gets a notification with your description, alleged crime, and cash reward? Your phone becomes a walking WANTED poster. And of course, they'd start with AMBER alerts first, and maybe work their way down to trespassing and petty theft. Which is not to say that this world would be far worse off than it is now, but it will be different.

<comment><USER4> In the semi-dystopian scenario: Supposing I'd committed some crime likely to attract that level of tracking/response... How long do you think I'd actually walk around with that phone? Or would I be more likely to dump it/leave it in some random taxi?

Going further, how many ways can we come up with to use this as a way of swatting someone else?

nth-order consequences matter.

<comment><USER3> > How long do you think I'd actually walk around with that phone?

Sure, you could also just turn the phone off completely. The problem is that you'll need a phone eventually, and buying a new one would be a no-no if the Feds are watching your bank account (which is more or less accepted practice at this point). Even if you manage to secretly get a new phone, all it takes is one person to report you to burn that one too. Having a cyber-warrant out for your arrest effectively bans you from owning any smartphone ever again.

<comment><USER4> I'm more entertained by the notion of having the LE chase after some car performing a random-walk around the countryside... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> On April 24th 2020 Apple & Google have announced a new version of the Apple & Google Contact Tracing Protocol which they programmed in a joint effort. Now it's to be called "Exposure Notification Technology", since this name better describes the nature of the protocol. On 29th of April Apple released the first iOS 13.5 beta implementation of the protocol. This beta version targets developers for API testing and collecting feedback. The access to the API will be limited to apps authorised by public health authorities. This update is a reaction to the criticism (most of which was baseless) as well as several technical changes implemented in versions 1.1 and 1.2 of this protocol. We are going to discuss these changes in this article.

</comment><comment><USER5> One possible deficiency is that the time of the possible exposure is not revealed, which may make it hard for manual vetting. Only the date is revealed.

Regardless, the fact that no location is revealed will make it hard for manual resolution of false positives. On the other hand, if location was revealed, likely fewer people would opt-in, so there are both advantages and disadvantages of not using location at all.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure if you understand, but your phone keeps a record of when it encountered *other users who were infected, and the time of contact as well. If another user becomes sick, we can assume they were contagious for the whole day.

<comment><USER5> I mean when the exposure occurred. I reviewed the API, and it seems that it only gives the date. So, if we want to try to manually vet false positives, such as through drywall, etc., it may be harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me one attack vector that they aren't accounting for is the person who maliciously uploads a fake positive diagnosis, causing unnecessary panic and possibly wasteful extra testing.

I guess it's possible to mitigate this attack through controls in the app that reports, but that doesn't stop a rogue developer using a test app, unless even they are prevented from accessing the APIs without approval.

<comment><USER8> That is why this protocol is only allowed to be used by local official governments where they would have access to test data, each person need add an id to declare themselves pos and is matched against the Covid test db

<comment><USER7> I think people are missing my point.

Sure you can't publish an app that does this, but unless I'm mistaken, you can access any API you want in your own dev setup, or on a jailbroken phone.

What stops a malicious actor for triggering the API in a dev or jailbroken environment?

<comment><USER9> > What stops a malicious actor for triggering the API in a dev or jailbroken > environment?

Server side authentication stops this.

Sure a jailbroken device can call whatever local APIs they want, but to have a non-local effect you have to update some centralized server where the list of infected keys/users is stored for downloading by other devices. Given that, it's straightforward for the server to require some admin-level credential specific to their service.

The source of truth for covid-19 positive devices/keys is still centralized and gatekept by each state/national agency's contract tracing service. (But identity/location info isn't centralized)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can easily see specific hardware being included in future devices to support improved contact tracing – especially if COVID-19 becomes endemic. That could be new low-power proximity detection hardware, or extensions to BTLE protocol and hardware.

Also likely this gets baked-in with a vendor app (like Apple's Health) and not rely on 3rd parties if it's going to part of life for the foreseeable. Maybe opt-in like the "Emergency Alerts" notification functionality?

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this API opt in or out out by the user of the device? Or does the app installed by the user determines that?

It's not clear at all from the write up.

<comment><USER12> > Each user will have to make an explicit choice to turn on the technology. It > can also be turned off by the user at any time.

[https://covid19-static.cdn- apple.com/applications/covid19/cu...](https://covid19-static.cdn- apple.com/applications/covid19/current/static/contact- tracing/pdf/ExposureNotification-FAQv1.1.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would it be available for the public testing or just developers?

<comment><USER14> Apple and Google aren't making an app, just a framework apps can use to do contact tracing and exposure notifications.

You'll need to wait for your local health jurisdiction to make their official app.

I also remember reading something about Apple and Google only allowing 1 app per country (or more with special permission, I'm guessing 1 app per US state or something like that)

<comment><USER15> Yes, in the US, it will be one per state (assuming that there isn't some state that thinks that this sort of thing should be handled by county or municipal health departments). One hopes that there won't actually be fifty separately developed codebases, but that states will pool resources and share the cost and effort of developing apps. If only there were some sort of governmental entity at a level above the states to coordinate these things.

<comment><USER7> My guess is that the western compact states will share an app, and the eastern compact will share an app, or possibly even coordinate on a single app.

At that point one app will cover 1/2 the US population, and there is a good chance many other states would just adopt that one app.

But you're right, it would be nice is there were some authority one level up that could coordinate this.

<comment><USER16> The US has turned into a broken version of the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Am I misunderstanding this? My phone would broadcast a daily unique key that could theoretically be used to track my location?

<comment><USER18> No, the daily key is not broadcast; instead it's used to generate a series of rolling identifiers to broadcast. The rolling identifiers change much more frequently. The daily keys don't leave the device until/unless filing a positive diagnosis report.

<comment><USER19> As we know from the Bitcoin wallet problems, generating random private key and verifying that it's random is an extremely hard problem. For this reason I wouldn't use any contact tracing app that is not open source.

<comment><USER6> You should be happy to know that it's opt in

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This has absolutely no chance of working in the US.

Imagine you go into an average grocery store with 100 average Americans. What percentage of people in that store have this app on a phone in their pocket?

20% of Americans don't even own a smartphone. Some non-zero percentage have old phones that won't work, keep their phones at home, don't use Bluetooth, don't know what Bluetooth is, don't want to use this, don't trust this, and on and on and on.

In Singapore that grocery store would have had approximately 20 contact tracing app users and 80 non users.

The end result of this will be....

1\. No confidence that when you receive an alert that you were actually in contact with someone who had Covid. Could have been a troll, someone in a car next to you, a neighboring apartment, etc.

2\. No confidence that you weren't in contact with someone who had Covid.

The end result for every user will be the same ambiguity we live with now.

We need human contact tracing with real, trained, people making phone calls to other real people based on actual diagnoses of Covid. Not some Silicon Valley pipe dream waste of time that unnecessarily gives people a false sense of hope. This contact tracing app idea will NEVER work in the US.

<comment><USER21> > 20% of Americans don't even own a smartphone.

20% of Americans are children. According to most recent estimates, there are 270.66 MM smartphone users in the US — roughly 82%[1]. Assuming that literal toddlers and poor teenagers do not have smartphones, the vast majority (easily 90+%) of American adults are smartphone users.

You also only need ~60% of contacts for contact tracing to be effective [2].

[1] [https://internetinnovation.org/general/research-peek-of- the-...](https://internetinnovation.org/general/research-peek-of-the-week- smartphone-users-in-the-us-expected-to-reach-over-270-million-by-2020/)

[2] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6491/eabb6936](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6491/eabb6936)

<comment><USER20> You used the 2022 number for your calculation. The estimated number for 2020 is 257 million and we can assume that is an EOY number so the actual number would be somewhere between 248M and 257M. If we assume absolute linear growth from 2019 the number as of today would be around 251 million.

That's out of ~330 million US citizens for a rate of ~76%. Toddlers, children, and poor teenagers are people that also exist and can be in a grocery store as asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus. I was generous and went with 80%.

Your second link is just a study that suggests contact tracing COULD work. But the fact that something could work in theory doesn't mean it will work in practice. I don't know where you got your 60% number from because that number isn't mentioned in that study. I don't think it matters anyway because we won't get anywhere near 60%.

Singapore tried this idea and they made it voluntary just like it is being made voluntary in the US. 20-25% of people used it. Now they are trying to make it involuntary by forcing businesses to scan phones at entrances to businesses, schools, and healthcare facilities. Do you really think Americans will accept this? No way. I doubt the legality of this approach in the first place.

It would take Donald Trump signing a law to get to 60%. People want this to work because it makes them feel better. Reality has other ideas.

<comment><USER21> > That's out of ~330 million US citizens for a rate of ~76%. Toddlers, > children, and poor teenagers are people that also exist and can be in a > grocery store as asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus. I was generous and > went with 80%.

Okay sure, but nit-picking that number doesn't change the core argument: you only need 60% for contact tracing to work, according to the most recent research. Remember that the goal here isn't to ensure that NOBODY gets COVID, it's to drive R0 down to < 1\. People in grocery stores will still be exposed, but if R0 < 1, then the disease will eventually die out.

> Your second link is just a study that suggests contact tracing COULD work. > But the fact that something could work in theory doesn't mean it will work > in practice. I don't know where you got your 60% number from because that > number isn't mentioned in that study. I don't think it matters anyway > because we won't get anywhere near 60%.

You need to read the full article before attempting to refute it, but I'll help you out.

"The efficacy of contact tracing (the y axis of Fig. 3) is the square of the proportion of the population using the app, multiplied by the probability of the app detecting infectious contacts, multiplied by the fractional reduction in infectiousness resulting from being notified as a contact."

I've taken a screenshot of the diagram for you: [https://imgur.com/ZXPLLxk](https://imgur.com/ZXPLLxk)

The solid black line shows the threshold for epidemic control.

While you're right that the paper doesn't claim that it is CERTAIN to work, nobody is sure. In fact, it's odd to me that you are so positive that it WON'T work. "This has absolutely no chance of working in the US." Even scientists don't make claims like this with that level of comical confidence.

> Singapore tried this idea and they made it voluntary just like it is being > made voluntary in the US. 20-25% of people used it. Now they are trying to > make it involuntary by forcing businesses to scan phones at entrances to > businesses, schools, and healthcare facilities. Do you really think > Americans will accept this? No way. I doubt the legality of this approach in > the first place.

> It would take Donald Trump signing a law to get to 60%. People want this to > work because it makes them feel better. Reality has other ideas.

Okay but what happens when Apple and Google build this into the operating system, and contact tracing is always on, like the bluetooth radio, the push notification service, or OS-level location services?

<comment><USER20> Hate to say I told you so, but...

[https://www.axios.com/axios-ipsos-coronavirus- week-9-contact...](https://www.axios.com/axios-ipsos-coronavirus- week-9-contact-tracing-bd747eaa-8fa1-4822-89bc-4e214c44a44d.html)

66% of respondents said they would not use a contact tracing app developed by a tech company. The remaining 33% may give it a go before they find out how worthless it is and then it will likely settle into the same levels of adoption as Singapore.

This is obvious to I guess everyone outside of HN and Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER21> I'm not really sure what this proves. All it tells us is that majority of Americans will not download a contact tracing app.

There is nothing stopping Apple and Google from rolling this out in the OS, and they've both confirmed that they intend to do this[1]

"Later this year, Apple and Google will include the tool in software updates, meaning users can log contacts without having to download an app."

They have every right to make it involuntary if they want to, and the only recourse users have is to decide to stop using iPhones or Androids. I'm sure there will be some people that choose to do that, but not nearly enough to keep adoption below the necessary 60%.

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- apps-f...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-apps- factbox/factbox-the-race-to-deploy-covid-19-contact-tracing-apps- idUSKBN22Q2KU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I ponder whether Google and Apple (aka Big Brother) should have given this work to another group and promised implementation/integration. I appreciate that your group is working on making it open source but as you pointed out:

> It is not clarified what [the metadata] will contain and who will have > access to it, so let's try to guess.

At the least, I would want Apple/Google to fully disclose these technical details before I would accept its terms & conditions. If they even put their logic in an open source format (i.e. GitHub), I would feel more comfortable. Google is a much worse player in the game of "making money from users by tracing their every move" than Apple.

<comment><USER23> Google and Apple have collaborated in the open on this, publicly shared specs and taken feedback.

The framework itself has to be implemented by them because it is part of iOS (in Apple's case) or Android Services (in Google's).

The apps themselves are being implemented by 3rd parties.

There will always be critics but it's hard to see how they could have rapidly developed this much better.</comment></comment>


Dissecting Bert - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dissecting-bert <comment><USER2> This desperately needs a "What is BERT" section. I've been reading for 5 minutes, skimming for 10, and I'm still not sure.

Edit: OK, now I've clicked the correct random link and got the earlier paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.04805.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.04805.pdf)

BERT is a "new language representation model".

People, when you write papers, give your readers a chance to come up to speed - a list of links to previous reading is essential. Make it prominent, and early.</comment>


A tool for exploring each layer in a Docker image - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wagoodman/dive <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18528423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18528423)</comment>


Show HN: I built a browser based interactive React course - <AUTHOR> https://react-tutorial.app <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I would love to get your feedback on my new course for React. It's an interactive platform (built on top of learnjavascript.online) that teaches React in the browser by explaining concepts step by step. The lessons are byte-sized and are followed up by practice challenges as well as flashcards that help you persist your knowledge. I also made it work on mobile so that students can read some lessons or even solve challenges while taking the train/metro. The whole platform is custom built (the text editors are open source projects).

<comment><USER2> Great site jadjoubran! This one and your JavaScript site look very nice.

I would recommend allowing one or two pages for free without a login so anyone can try without the need for signing up. Then if they want more than a few pages they can sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback! Funny that this was a feature I had before deploying but the designer told me it's a bad idea I should have kept it Working on adding it soon

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can I ask is compilation happening inside the browser, or does it talk to a backend. I like the idea that it happens in the browser and it is served from a static page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's pretty much in the browser!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just got started and I particularly like the flashcards, seems like a nice and simple way to practice regularly. The free tier of the app is also a nice and complete way to get to know the ecosystem, I'm surprised with the amount of content

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I was actually debating how much of the content should be free but then I realised that the First Project (Project I) __has __to be part of the free content to show a feel of the entire platform

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll take a look. I have just finished courses on scrimba.com which sounds like a similar idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> cool, let me know if you've got any comments/suggestions

<comment><USER3> looks very sweet! I like the UI more then Scrimba. One suggestion is the ability to skip forward to future lessons using the navigation on the left. I wanted to do that to see what the React stuff was like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What editor are you embedding?

<comment><AUTHOR> On desktop this is [monaco-editor]([https://github.com/microsoft/monaco- editor](https://github.com/microsoft/monaco-editor)) It's actually the same editor behind VSCode but this is a version that runs in the browser rather than Electron</comment></comment>


Ubuntu's new Amazon integration displays NSFW results - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1054282

<comment><USER2> Why do people even use Ubuntu these days? Unity was bad enough, but I can't fathom why anybody capable of using Linux would stand for nonsense like this. There are so many alternatives out there, too. Debian or Linux Mint are often more than sufficient replacements, without the headaches.

<comment><USER3> I think it's because it's a popular 'entry-level' linux distro. Almost every problem is well documented around the web with copy-paste solutions.</comment></comment>


Are You Making These 10 CSS Mistakes? - <AUTHOR> http://nettuts.com/articles/web-roundups/are-you-making-these-10-css-mistakes/ <comment><USER2> The link to <http://browsershots.org> is the best part of this. I fed one site into it and already feel much better that it renders correctly on 35 OS/browser/version combinations and is at least acceptable in IE 4 and IE 5.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you do code reviews without getting silly over little things? - <AUTHOR> I've had good experiences with code reviews where someone corrected my logic, saw an easier way to do something I was doing, stopped me from being lazy, etc. I've also had a lot of dumb code reviews where I used a variable name that conflicted with one of ten conflicting standards or I did something in five lines instead of one because it was easier to read.
The problem I see is once code reviews are in place and you have a big enough team you get code review specialists who don't add any value but create an awful lot of work. I've literally seen companies consider any change made in a code review to be a bug fixed so you get folks who pride themselves on flagging things in code review even though there is zero, and often negative, substance to the flag.
How do you get the good parts of a code review without the bad parts? <comment><USER2> Do you work at my company? :)

I don't know how to solve it, but it's insane. Especially for teams with high churning (typical in Silicon Valley where everybody constantly leaves for better opportunities), the code review culture changes from month to month depending on who's the latest "super picky specialist" on the team, with terrible dips in productivity.

The managers are not too involved with the code review process themselves and they pat themselves in the back just for seeing "very active and healthy code reviews", as measured in terms of review comments.

The problem is that code that 100% functionally works, with proper tests and good readability, gets blocked for weeks by __completely__ unproductive people who don't do anything other than driving a personal agenda of demanding abstract levels of refactorings. Everyone in software should have learned at this point that your fancy abstractions don't provide any benefit, since they won't solve your future problems anyway. Just make sure you refactor where you would otherwise be facing physical duplication of code/logic, and you'll be 100% good.

I've been victim of this myself lately: I'm known for writing code that is as simple as it can be, while maintaining functionality, scalability and correct handling of corner cases: I don't do abstract interfaces for the sake of it, I couldn't care less about factories, ...

Sadly, it's forcing me to likely look for opportunities out of my current company.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nitpicky code standards should be the realm of automated sniffers and fixers.

Besides that there is no magic wand here. You have to do the work to create a good culture of code reviews in your team. This is not science, this is your engineering lead promoting good review practices and cracking down on harmful ones.

</comment><comment><USER4> My experience with code reviews is that they always became adversarial. I tried to implement code reviews in my group many times and it didn't provide a lot of value.

We finally did it by using GitLab and requiring that every merge request to master must be reviewed by two team members. This provided code review on every piece of code instead of only on select pieces. GitLab allows us to enforce it easily, but the process can be done anywhere.

The nit-picky code reviewer gets overwhelmed defending his point of view and starts being a little more selective. The lazy programmer gets overwhelmed with constant changes and actually starts paying more attention. Somewhere along the way it has actually balanced out.

Discussions have allowed us to identify poor practices, new techniques, and implement some standards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where I saw it be successful it was a pretty good team actually. Like pretty much everyone on the team was a reasonable person. The way they did it was before you check into any branch (other than master) you need to get a code review from one other person. So you'd go into the chat room, ask for the review and either get a :shipit or an email/notification on github about whatever was flagged. That worked pretty good but idk if the main reason it worked is because it was a reasonable group of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great question and thank you for making the rest of us think about it because it can become unnecessary or burdensome when used inappropriately.

I personally eschew the trivial or otherwise stupid company standards in favor of more language/community set standards (think PEP8). When I do criticize I will lead more with "what was your reasoning behind <this block of code>" because you get a more honest response and sometimes you'll get the author to admit to "oh I was just being lazy there" or "do you have a better way of writing that". Code reviews are a necessary evil but how you approach them can change the outcome.

</comment><comment><USER6> > I've literally seen companies consider any change made in a code review to > be a bug fixed so you get folks who pride themselves on flagging things in > code review even though there is zero, and often negative, substance to the > flag.

Do you not push back when this happens? You should be allowed to ignore some review comments. I think marking comments with priorities help (e.g. must fix vs could fix). When the reviewer knows you'll be reviewing their work as well this can help stop them being unfair.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do I push back? If I care, yes. But I'm asking from the point of view of a team, not an individual on the team.

How do you decide that something must be fixed?

<comment><USER6> Just some ideas:

\- Have a code review wiki document you can refer to for clear cut cases of things you have to fix without debate (e.g. naming convention issues) and things that are more subjective and don't have to be fixed (e.g. there can be more than one return per function).

\- Code review suggestions should come with priority levels. Ignoring "nice to fix" problems shouldn't be a big deal if they're too time consuming and have little merit. This also helps draw attention to people that flag low merit issues as high priority.

\- Use linter tools and autoformaters to stop people wasting time with certain nitpicks.

\- Ongoing team discussions and training with concrete examples of which code review nitpicks aren't good uses of time might help.

If you've got team members saying nitpicks are high priority and making no considerations about how much time certain fixes are going to take then it's a training and experience problem you're going to have to address.

Can you give some examples of code review feedback you're not finding useful?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Subasub – Learn Languages with Translated Subtitles - <AUTHOR> http://subasub.com <comment><USER2> I could not understand what I was supposed to search while looking at this on mobile, it seems the text below the search is missing.

Anyway: neat! Good idea and works quite well.

But it does look like the matching text is wrong sometimes, i.e. third example here

[https://subasub.com/?lang=hu&query=%20juh%C3%A1sz](https://subasub.com/?lang=hu&query=%20juh%C3%A1sz)

The HU sentence is 'Beszéltünk a juhásszal' the corresponding IT sentence is 'Abbiamo parlato con il pastore' but it gets a much longer one.

Similarly, example 9 here [https://subasub.com/?lang=hu&query=puszi](https://subasub.com/?lang=hu&query=puszi)

has "Adj egy puszit!" ("give a little kiss") on one side, which should match "Dammi un bacio!" but on the other side it matches the previous sentence ("…Vieni qui!" is "…- Gyere ide!").

Maybe a "report error" could be added although I fear it would be hard to support.

<comment><AUTHOR> First example is actually more of an UI issue which I will fix asap.

Filtering out or fixing (where it is feasible) the bad quality stuff (alignment-errors like your second example) is very high on my list. Of course it's less trivial to do it right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Superb idea, it makes so much sense to look up foreign words this way that it's suprising we weren't learning languages this way already.

<comment><USER4> Pretty soon there will be even less reason to learn (so many) foreign languages, because automated translation is going to get very good, unless you need it on the street.

<comment><USER5> Shame some people have such a negative view of learning a foreign/new language. You're not just learning a language, but a whole culture. New ways of thinking, interacting and connecting with the world.

Such intense focus on computer-based solutions robs us of genuinely fulfilling life experiences, swapping them out for quick dopamine hits and thousands of completely forgettable 'oh cool' moments.

<comment><USER4> I personally subscribe to your view, but was thinking outside my perspective. I have learned a couple of foreign languages pretty well and enjoy comparing cultures and ways of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice work! Translators use this kind of tool every day, known by them as concordance searching, where finding other uses of a term in context can give nuance and new word-choice options. I can see how this can be used in language learning but it really helps to know the multiple uses of any given word, and that assumes prior knowledge.

One way to incorporate this prior knowledge could be to add dictionary definitions to the search results. Is there a way to scrape or API the wiktionary? That might be one way to do it on the fly without the impossible task of building a dictionary.

<comment><USER6> "Translators use this kind of tool every day,"

Can you name a few of them?

<comment><USER5> Sure, it's actually a feature of the major tools, rather than a tool in itself (in most cases). Look up MemoQ, Trados and the newer EU project Matecat. Dozens more besides, take a look at the Wikipedia page for CAT tools [0].

\--

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer- assisted_translation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer- assisted_translation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really awesome idea! Bookmarked it.

PS. Searching could be faster =(

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the encouragement! :)

I will definitely think about some tweaks to make it faster. I had to invalidate the cache (new version) like a week ago so the problem might at least partially solve itself. Also I might step over to some kind of document store instead of a transactional db in the future.

<comment><USER3> Search was speedy enough for me, 1 second at worst, no complaints here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I couldn't think of movie names, would be cool to have a "browse" mode of discovery as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, actually it works more as a contextual dictionary now, so you can look up words or expressions and you get dialogues in which these occur (with some movie metadata as an extra). There is no functionality yet to search for dialogues in a given movie. It seems though that there is quiet a demand for such a feature, so I might add it soon. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I developed a similar product a few years ago.

[http://lingomill.appspot.com](http://lingomill.appspot.com)

I would love to connect with you. The product uses subtitles and vice video segments to teach people a language. Dual subtitles are the key.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am really surprised Japanese is not an option.

This is awesome by the way.

<comment><USER11> Japanese subtitles are hard to find for various reasons, one of which is that Japanese DVDs and blurays often come without them.

<comment><USER12> What about fansubs? The right people could tell you which sub groups are the most trustworthy.

Perhaps another option could be incorporating music lyrics, as there are many sites that list Japanese, romaji (romanized Japanese), and English lyrics beside each other that you can scrape.

In case you didn't already know, subs.com.ru is a great source of anime fansubs (no video, just the subs).

There's also opensubtitles.com, but I'm not sure how to heuristically determine what the quality subtitles are.

I can understand if you're hesitant to use unlicensed translations, but I've found that licensed subs hardly compare to a quality fansub group.

<comment><USER11> That relies on you wanting to watch things that tend to get fansubs, though. As a mostly-deaf foreigner living in Japan, I tend to watch/want to watch a lot of things that don't get fansubbed, like news, foreign shows/movies, variety shows, cooking shows, and tons of domestic-only movies/shows that don't get much international attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have a 504 error (Gateway Timeout) while sending a request for searching something ;-(

Please repair it =)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Service is responsive again :) I really didn't expect to get on the frontpage.

</comment><comment><USER13> Awesome idea! Though there could be an option to search by a movie

</comment><comment><USER14> What's the backend?

<comment><AUTHOR> The backend is in perl using the Dancer framework ( [https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Dancer/bin/dancer](https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Dancer/bin/dancer) ). The db is Postgres with Full Text Search. Everything is on AWS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Could you add Finnish?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to, but it might take some time until I get to it. I actually added Portuguese and Russian just recently and I plan to stay with the current 9 languages for a little time to see if there is enough interest in this product (and maybe I can break even in server costs - I don't really have any monetization model atm, I might add a donate button though). But yeah I would love to add new languages :). Same goes for Japanese.

<comment><USER7> Could donate several dollars or provide an account on my dedicated server for free

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow so many good suggestions. You are really cool :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Upvote/downvote buttons!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea!</comment></comment>


Passive Cooling: XFX RX 460 Heatsink Edition vs. Palit GTX 1050 Ti KalmX - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/passive-cooling-geforce-radeon-test,4960.html <comment><USER2> I recently got a graphic card that stops its fans when not needed. Now I effectively have a passively cooled card that can instantly convert itself into an actively cooled one.</comment>


Stack overflow command line client - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gautamkrishnar/socli <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Done: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11961938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11961938)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow! This saves a lot of time!

I've currently set up a custom search in Chrome to do only siteoverflow site search with the "I'm feeling lucky" in the parameter which helps me get to the first answer.

But being able to do this from the command line makes it so much easier.

I wonder whether socli is getting the answer via their analysis of Google redirects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, It is using the stack overflow search...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From a browser, you can also use bangs to search a specific site from duckduckgo. Stackoverflow is !so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I <3 DDG

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like for quick easy searches.

I always have a tab open with Google search with this added to the search box:

"site:stackoverflow.com"

<comment><AUTHOR> :D

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Guys i am letting you know that the socli now more interactive and colorful...</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best combination for a simple multiplayer game - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I want to build a simple multiplayer game about stickman fight (no previous game development experience, no mobile native code experience)
Which technology should i choose for the best efficiency? Platforms : web,ios,android
I think i should choose html5,node.js,socket.io for web and i think i can build mobile versions via phonegap.
I am trying to find best solution for me (because of my experience), how does it sound?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> If you have no experience don't try to start coding a multiplayer game. Start with simple things and then you'll know what environment feels better for you. If you want to start with multiplayer try to code a simple chat. If you can do that then a pong clone, etc... Hugs!

<comment><AUTHOR> "If you want to start with multiplayer try to code a simple chat" ok, what is your advice for choosing technology?

<comment><USER3> Do you know Object Oriented methodologies? If so (or if you want to learn), consider something like java or python. Are you coming from front end web? Learn node.js, it will have the most transferable knowledge.

Find the best, clearest tutorials that lead you to something similar to what you want to build, and use that tech. Personally, I'll use python/django for my next webapps because I like the tutorials and the programming style/environment. But I don't do games, and django probably isn't the best game framework.

I'd definately use HTML5 for the front end, I love the api's and the skillset is very valuable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, steveinator.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Github.com unavailable due to a large DDoS attack - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/?1 <comment><USER2> The second in two days, github is getting increasingly unreliable - [https://status.github.com/messages](https://status.github.com/messages).

Also, I'd be interested to know how complete lack of service is 'mitigating a DDOS attack' \- to me it sounds like 'successful DDOS attack'.

<comment><USER3> For a large DDOS attack there aren't any easy ways to only drop the DDOS traffic - especially if it's hard to identify the DDOS traffic in the first place. If they're getting more 'bad' incoming traffic than their connections can handle I don't know how they'd drop that stuff - they have to receive the packets before they can filter them. Maybe their bandwidth provider has tricks for this...

<comment><USER4> They're using Prolexic by the looks of things.. You'd think a company that specializes in mitigating DDoS attacks would be able to mitigate DDoS attacks. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the word mitigate

<comment><USER5> It's not their fault, we were in the middle of provisioning and service validation with them but it wasn't completed. We're had to work through some issues on the fly that we were trying to do non-disruptively, but they're mitigating well for us now that we've got it dialed in.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough. In that case at least it's not a Friday

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Again...

personally I can't see why anyone would want to DDoS github unless they are just being an asshat.

<comment><USER7> Many would just do it as a challenge, Yes they are being a asshat, but they just don't realise that.

<comment><USER8> great advertising for DDoS protection services.

<comment><USER9> Considering that Prolexic isn't exactly keeping Github up, not really!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised there's only one "git is distributed" comment thread so far, but as a reminder: [http://rubygems.org/gems/deus_ex](http://rubygems.org/gems/deus_ex) _may_ help with getting deploys running during a GitHub outage. Usage instructions are at [http://rubydoc.info/gems/deus_ex/0.0.2/frames](http://rubydoc.info/gems/deus_ex/0.0.2/frames).

<comment><USER11> The github issue tracker and wiki is not distributed as far as I know, though.

<comment><USER12> The wiki is a git repository, so in effect it is distributed.

The issue tracker is not, unfortunately, but neither are most issue trackers.

<comment><USER13> The solution is to use a bug tracker within the SCM:

[http://bugseverywhere.org/](http://bugseverywhere.org/) (my personal favorite, but there are 3/4 other options that you can look into).

Not only it does offer distributed bug tracking on the command line (without breaking your workflow), but it _implicitly_ allows to isolate bugs to branches. You can fix a bug in a branch, and a subsequent merge of the changeset will automatically fix the current branch.

I don't understand why these projects are so underrated. In "early git times", distributed bug tracking on top of git was quite a hot subject. They solve _many_ issues nicely.

Github might be a "nifty" viewer, and I _do_ host projects on github for added visibility (by simply using a second push remote), but that's about it. I find "tig" and "bugseverywhere" to complement git nicely and work much better than any web browser could.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> DDOSing Github reminds me of a study I read about a while ago. It showed that many burglars tend to break into homes close to their own instead of targeting wealthier neighborhoods.

Many of the reasons for that will be very different from this attack on Github as there is no money in attacking Github. But one reason may be similar: Lack of imagination, or in other words stupidity.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hmm, it's scary how much this affects us.

We can't push latest bugfix to GitHub. Azure cannot deploy it. I cannot run bower_install on the project I would be working on in the meantime.

<comment><USER16> inb4 "GIT is distributed".

While GIT is distributed, working collaboratively with others still requires a central platform where everybody working on that GIT repo can connect. GitHub is a very convenient central platform.

To GITs credit; you can, with a little server know-how, set up your own git server and give all previous contributors access. However for a small downtime this could be overkill.

<comment><USER17> you don't need server know how, you can just use another of the available git hosting (e.g. bitbucket)

<comment><USER18> And even if you don't want to use a dedicate git hosting service, good site hosting platforms (Webfaction) make it incredibly easy to install a git server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I bet they DDoS GitHub with use of tools obtained from GitHub

</comment><comment><USER20> I think it's interesting to note how people have gone to expecting 5-digit reliability out of an internet service. Not only is GitHub under fire, but the whole IPSec industry gets blamed.

Back when my dad installed physical PBXes, the big ones that could be the size of a mainframe, uptime the biggest argument: they had to have reliability to five nines (99.99999%, if you don't get it). Then when cellphones first came out, everyone got lackadaisical about dropped calls. And overnight an entire industry worried about reliability "to five nines" changed, and "whatever, it's a new service, you've got to expect some difficulties."

The internet started with relatively low reliability. No web host I've ever seen has truly been able to achieve 99.999% uptime. And yet, when GitHub goes down under a "large DDOS attack" but still manages to maintain 99.85% uptime over the last month (with several DDOS-caused outages) everyone comes out of the woodwork to complain. After all, it isn't as-if hosting a massive service while keeping everything secure _and_ running happily is an easy thing.

If you're tired of GitHub outages, then get a Bitbucket account, or host your own Git repository for backup. What serious developer, or service, would keep all their eggs in one basket if they really depended on the uptime of just one centralized service?

</comment><comment><USER21> Out of curiosity, to those who prefer Bitbucket to GitHub, how often (if ever) does it (Bitbucket) go down due to DDoS or otherwise?

<comment><USER22> Bitbucket has had it's own fair share of issues, let alone the "we're pulling Bitbucket offline for 5hrs to move to a new datacenter" debacle not so long ago. I understand why they had to do it but it is indicative of some issues with their architecture.

They probably haven't gone offline through a DDoS yet because they're just not that popular to warrant an attack but I wouldn't bet on it that Bitbucket would fare any better.

<comment><USER23> It's not fair to compare scheduled downtime with being down for a few random hours because of an attack (or any other reason)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> oh thank fuck, I was getting annoyed that it was me, who was screwing up my homebrew install. For once it's not my fault!

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm a rookie so how does Github being down for a few hours cause problems? I push to Github a few times a day, but if I don't, I just push to Github the next day.

Are there teams that need to be in constant sync pushing and pulling multiple times an hour?

<comment><USER26> If you deploy from git, like many of us do, and you're in the middle of pulling down dependencies from github ..

It's happened a couple of times. We moved to our own private server with forks of any dependencies we need.

<comment><USER27> Anyone dealing with production code should do this, in my opinion. Hope for the best but plan for the worst.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> These problems coincided with me trying to get started with Git and GitHub for the first time. I had a perplexing, frustrating day.

<comment><USER29> Try BitBucket, same stuff productivity-wise plus private repos.

<comment><USER30> Bitbucket: $10/month for 10 users and Unlimited private repositories.

Github: $200/month for Unlimited users and 125 private repositories.

If you're a team of 10 or less, have a few dozen clients and dozens more supporting libraries in a small company Bitbucket blows Github out of the water.

For the same $200/month Bitbucket also offers unlimited users (again, with unlimited private repositories).

I wouldn't call Github's pricing unreasonable. But I have learned to appreciate Bitbucket's service (they're really on top of things on their Twitter feed) and their pricing is lunch money for a day (as opposed to skipping lunches for a month).

Highly recommended.

<comment><USER31> We switched from Bitbucket to Github because of Bitbucket's reliability issues. YMMV.

<comment><USER30> I've seen a lot of stuff in their Twitter feed they seem to work through, but I've never actually run into any issues. So I've interpreted that as transparency I guess.

Been with 'em for maybe a year now? Never had a failed push or pull. That's happened a number of times with Github but I wouldn't suggest it's been damaging to the business. Only a minor inconvenience at times.

So with your anecdote and my anecdote, we get to call this "data" now right? :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there a git tool which syncs remotes? I could set up a second remote for the times github is down, but how do i share it with my team members? Does everybody need to add it manually? That could become tedious with larger teams or more remotes.

Plus: There are a bunch of decentralized issue trackers, can any of them sync with github? Is that possible with their api?

<comment><USER33> > Plus: There are a bunch of decentralized issue trackers, can any of them > sync with github? Is that possible with their api?

Last time I looked, their issues are not stored in git itself. This is something that has kept me from using their issue tracker for my projects as it encourages lockin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The great thing about GitHub is that it's still Git. If GitHub is down, that just means that your central publishing site is down. It doesn't mean that you're developers can't work. They can still share amongst themselves. Like they probably should be doing even when GitHub is up.

<comment><USER35> How would this work? (This is a serious question.)

Would each of us set up each other's internal IP addresses (192.168.0.101, etc) as remote repositories? Would each of us run a git repository on our own boxes? Or would we set one up on our own AWS box or something?

<comment><USER31> Yep, you set up each developers machine as a remote, but you pull from them (rather than push). Helps to pull to a separate branch though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> They are back up for me now.

<comment><USER37> ... although trying to download a zip of a repo is giving me a 500 error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If online code availability is _that_ important for you then just push code to both GitHub and BitBucket.

<comment><USER38> Since the VCS are distributed, you could always mirror a repository on a NAS at home or something.

Edit: I might have misread the parent's comment. If CmonDev was referring to public availability, just a local repo won't do. It depends on who needs access to the code etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> maybe the fact they have to deal with non http incoming traffic makes them an easier target?

</comment><comment><USER40> Can anyone explain why Github is a DDoS target?

Seems a bit pointless

<comment><USER41> Testing resources is one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Quick blame it on Ruby.

<comment><USER42> But hurt anyone? lol</comment></comment>


The Holy Grail of Battle Re-enactments - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/sports/battle-of-the-nations-a-holy-grail-of-battle-re-enactments.html

<comment><USER2> While this is a very cool sport and the armor is very nice, I think it is important to point out unfortunately the techniques these guys use are not historically sound. Historical manuals such as the German Fechtbücher clearly describe how to fight in and out of armor (harnischfechten and blossfechten) and what these guys do is neither. This is for the simple reason that the harnischfechten would still be lethal and blossfechten ineffective. If you see a "reenactment" or movie and people are swinging sword against someone wearing armor, they are "doing it wrong" from a historical perspective.

I think its interesting that something like BoN, which is like SCA on methamphetamines, gets so much attention when actual martial arts events such as Swordfish are ignored by the media. [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Swordfish+2012+...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Swordfish+2012+HEMA)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a wide variety of active martial arts groups, and each one has to find its own balance in various ranges: fun, safety, historical accuracy, thresholds to participation (cost of equipment, time to become competent) and ongoing costs (equipment, travel, practice time).

The BotN techniques are heavily influenced by the origins of this particular organization - most of the earliest teams come from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Since many US team members are in their 40s (average age 37) and are competing with generally younger opponents, one of the concerns was to look for medical insurance policies or riders that covered the risks of this martial activity.

Getting attention or coverage seems more like a matter of making contacts and offering images and narratives that appeal to the producers of media - in a world that contains professional wrestling and other forms of "reality" TV, finding a hook for a story can be more important than having a story to tell.</comment>


Picking a place to intern: Google vs Microsoft vs Fog Creek - <AUTHOR>

So with less then 24 hours until one of these offers expires, I can't make a decision.  I already turned down one project at Google because I wasn't interested in it, so I am awaiting another team.
I would be a part of the OS group at Microsoft, but I don't know exactly what I will be working on.
And Fog Creek, is well, Fog Creek.
I already worked at another big name tech company as an intern this past summer, so I don't need the brand.  I want what I do this summer to be able to stand on its own, no matter the name above it.
So if you were in my position, where would you go and why?  If you interned at one of these places, what was your experience like? <comment><USER2> You've asked us to give you advice not based on the brand, and yet, all you've really given us for information is the brands. "The OS group" at Microsoft is thousands of people and probably hundreds of projects, ranging from cool glorious shit with smart people to mundane drudgery.

I interned at Microsoft, and later Google. Google absolutely trumped Microsoft in my experience. I think of the atmospheric difference between them as similar to that between university and high school.

If your previous intern experience did not include free food: go to Google. I find it impossible to overstate the mental and material difference that removing any thought of groceries made to my life. It was huge. Unlimited, healthy, and varied. The people at Google were wonderful and the level of support available to you for personal and career growth is immense.

You do need to get a good team, but if you've been accepted by more than one already, your recruiter will have high confidence in placing you and probably be helpful in finding the best fit. They are strongly motivated to get you hired.

Microsoft was not an interesting place to work. I met two or three insanely smart people there who joined years ago when Microsoft was more like Google is now (or, was, a few years ago), and they were all swamped and cramped and not in a position to be good mentors.

I don't know anything about what working at Fog Creek would be like. Trello is nice. Joel Spolsky's old blog posts are pretty good reading. Does that make it a good place to work?

Are you a *nix or a Mac or a Windows person? Even if not for your daily use, what about for your programming environment? What technology do you want to work with in the future?

At Microsoft, you'll probably be writing C# or C++ in Visual Studio on Windows. At Google, you'll be writing C++, Java, Python, or Go, in vim/emacs/sublime, on a Mac or on Ubuntu. I'd imagine Fog Creek would be JS/C#/C++ in Visual Studio in Windows, but I really don't know.

The offer probably won't expire, by the way. People don't invest money and time interviewing and vetting you and then seriously put a pointless clock on it. If they do seriously mean it: don't work there. That level of bullshit should signal a lot of bad HR experiences down the road.

grain of salt, your mileage may vary, all that. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it wasn't much info, but it's literally all I have. I have the offer letters too, but they are all about the same.

As far as platforms go, it doesn't matter to me, Mac, *Nix, Windows, I use them all, and I am fairly language agnostic, but C and Java are my goto's. I'm a really big algorithm and data structures guy. I'm big on implementing them, understanding them, and making them run faster, but other then that, I am interested in OS, compilers, and languages.

Anyway, thanks for the insight, that's what I was really trying to get out of this post, what other people's experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi dlp211,

My name is Jude and I'm one of the developers at Fog Creek Software. I'm obviously a bit biased, but I'd be happy to talk to you if you have any questions about Fog Creek. Feel free to ping me at email@example.com if you're interested.

I was an intern at Fog Creek 5 years ago, and at the time I was also choosing between Microsoft, Google, and FC. At my final interview at each of Microsoft and FC, I asked each person (at Microsoft, the head of the Windows Live team; at FC, Joel) to tell me about why I should work with them instead of my other options.

I came away deciding that they'd both be great places to work. I ended up choosing Fog Creek because of a few aspects which were more appealing to me. The biggest lure to me was that Fog Creek was (at ~15 people) and still is (at ~50 people) a small company. It meant that I'd get to see more of how a software company functions. It meant that I could get involved with more of the steps of shipping a software product, and I could have my feedback and actions directly impact the products I worked on.

Those were some of my draws. Plus, it's an internship... it felt to me like a great opportunity to explore NYC without committing myself to it for years. I felt confident that Google and Microsoft would be largely unchanged if I waited a year, but I felt like Fog Creek was a little different. I still think it is.

Whoever you choose, it sounds like you've got some great options. I'm sorry you've got an exploding offer to deal with. If you're still undecided, keep in mind that the recruiter will likely extend the window if you ask them to -- the deadline is forced so that you'll be more likely to choose them, not because they're actually trying to cut you off ;-)

Best of luck, \- Jude</comment>


Great Set of Sequence Diagrams Explaining HTTP over TCP/IP - <AUTHOR> http://www.eventhelix.com/realtimemantra/networking/ <comment><USER2> The diagrams are informative and makes me appreciate the fact that I don't usually need to worry about UDP and TCP/IP low level things anymore (different in the 1980s, at least for the work I did back then).

BTW, a comment on UML sequence diagrams: I used to be a proponent of UML (Paul Harmon and I wrote a UML book together in ancient history) but sequence diagrams are the only type of UML diagram that I use anymore in my work: the most bang for the buck, communication wise.

</comment><comment><USER3> i was expecting something about the tcp/ip illustrated volumes. i wish more people would read those.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was looking for something on TCP/IP and this was the best I could find online:

a) with diagrams b) that weren't ascii

<comment><USER4> _b) that weren't ascii_

On the other hand PDF's don't let you extract structured information without effectively reverse OCR'ing it.

For example Alan Kay's _Steps Toward the Reinvention of Programming_ project generates it's TCP/IP stack from the ascii art in RFC 791:

[http://www.moserware.com/2008/04/towards-moores-law- software...](http://www.moserware.com/2008/04/towards-moores-law-software- part-3-of-3.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Header diagrams work just fine in ascii sequence diagrams, not so much.

<comment><USER4> They could release the original file formats in addition to the pdf. This is like a picture of a thing; it seems like you could get at it but you can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The web caching diagrams were super informative.</comment>


Pixelapse is joining Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pixelapse.com/post/109225261685/pixelapse-dropbox <comment><USER2> Props, but this should've been the lead sentence in the post:

        Pixelapse as a standalone product will
        continue to operate and be supported
        for the next year as we work towards
        this goal, at which point we'll offer
        a migration plan for your work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pixelapse looks similar to what Drew described in his YC application, responding to the question "If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, feel free to list them. One may be something we've been waiting for.":

His response: ..."a wiki with version-controlled drawing canvases that let you draw diagrams or mock up UIs (Thinkature is kind of related, but this is more text with canvases interspersed than a shared whiteboard) to help teams get on the same page and spec things out better (we use Visio and Powerpoint at Bit9, which sucks)"

</comment><comment><USER4> It's worth noting that Pixelapse is YC W12, and has only raised a little seed money since then. ([https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pixelapse](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pixelapse))

Seems like a little bit of Y Combinator vertical integration.

<comment><USER5> I had never even heard of them, but seems like a pretty cool product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know if any open source alternatives exist, hosted or self-hosted? We were planning on moving away from Subversion for tracking changes to design related PDFs and PSDs and this seemed appealing due to the extra metadata that could be displayed with revisions but now we're back to square one.

<comment><USER7> github supports psd

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the worst things at my previous job was when the designers forced pixelapse onto developers' workflow. It was so clumsy and there just wasn't any benefit over Google Drive.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not even close to decent source control.

</comment><comment><USER10> >We started Pixelapse with the mission of building the definitive version control and collaboration platform for creatives.

Ugh, stop calling them that.

<comment><USER11> I'm with you on that. I seriously hate the term "creatives", I've only seen it used in a derogatory way (either by or against). I just can't take anyone seriously when they use that word to describe themselves or their clients.

Could also be a trigger for me, I word with a lot of designers, artists, and videos guys/gals. Most are pretty good, but all the ones that call themselves "a creative" are guaranteed to be pretty elitist about it.

<comment><USER12> What would be a better word? "Creative professionals" comes to mind, but then that seems to exclude hobbyists, who could still derive a lot of value from a program like this.

<comment><USER10> Designers design. Artists create art.

Almost every job requires creativity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Joining or was bought by?

<comment><USER14> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Our Incredible Journey claims another.

Interesting though, Dropbox appears to be on a buying spree. They just claimed Cloudon last week, now this.

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure Dropbox has been buying a company every few weeks for the last few years. You just haven't heard about most of them.</comment></comment>


Verizon Will Reduce Speeds of Repeated BitTorrent Pirates - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/verizon-will-reduce-speeds-of-repeated-bittorrent-pirates-121115/ <comment><USER2> I was at the open panel where they talked about this. You can watch it on livestream[1]. Also my raw notes[2].

Basically, I got the impression that Verizon was being forced into this, and they we going to do the absolute minimum that was required in the agreement.

One moderator pressured the Verizon guy, asking what happens after 6 strikes and you've been throttled for 2-3 days. The Verizon guy said that that was it and they had fulfilled their contractual obligations. Basically, he was saying that if you survive the throttling, nothing happens after that.

The MPAA and RIAA people on the panel didn't seem to like that, and then stressed that they still could do the old-fashioned sue you for damages way if you kept doing it.

[1] - [http://www.livestream.com/internetsocietychapters/video?clip...](http://www.livestream.com/internetsocietychapters/video?clipId=pla_c5770d77-22f2-4a1b-8430-c8fa7cae1b3c)

[2] - <http://pastebin.com/CqEM0D6Y></comment>


Paul Kedrosky: Online Video Explodes Some More - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/07/17/online_video_ex.html

<comment><USER2> If video is exploding then why can't I get my self made music videos viewed!!!??? Maybe because I need to make them more like this... (Warning: Maybe NSFW)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dq6o_NT-IU></comment>


Supreme Court Rips Up Campaign Finance Laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122805666

<comment><AUTHOR> Combine this with the announcement that lawmakers are signing petitions to let through the A&T/T-Mobile merger after $1 million in donations and at least we have a better picture of what Washington is going to look like in the future:

1\. Politicians vote "NO" on corporate-friendly policies as a way to extort more campaign finances from the corporations.

2\. Corporations pony up additional campaign donations.

3\. Politicians change their minds and vote "YES" saying that it is good for America after taking a second look at all the details of the proposal.</comment>


Minimum Viable Vue App with Parcel Bundler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rohitkrai03/vue-parcel-example <comment><USER2> That's pretty cool. If Parcel is promising, I hope it will be an option soon to the vue-cli</comment>


Docs.com (Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps + Facebook integration) - <AUTHOR> http://www.docs.com/ <comment><USER2> I am looking forward to sharing excel documents with my friends, they are going to have so much fun reviewing my formulas and charts mapping out the quality of our friendship.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm, Microsoft using Facebook connect and not their Passport system, interesting.

<comment><USER4> Seriously, it's time for MS to just buy Facebook. I really don't get why they didn't snag it a year or two ago. They tried to spend 3x as much as it would have taken (probably 2x now) to buy Facebook in order to buy Yahoo. Even if Facebook never monetizes as well directly as Yahoo (which it quite probably will) it'd be worth more in the grand scheme of things.

Facebook connect is everything that Passport tried (and largely failed) to be. Yahoo+Bing is still only bordering on relevant in search, FB owns social networking.

Put it this way, MSFT shares would rise greatly on the news of a Facebook acquisition.

<comment><USER5> I'm not quite so sure share price would rise if they bought FB. Why? FB is in no way related to any of Microsoft's core competencies. They would be much better off buying companies that make online collaboration tools in order to capture lost revenue from lost Office sales. How would FB help their bottom line? Ad sales are nice, but at the end of the day MS is a company that makes software - specifically Windows and Office. They should be focused on buying companies that complement/replace that revenue stream.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that Windows and Office have little long-term potential as profitable products. So what do you do when your core competencies become obsolete? You have to get new ones. You could try really hard to learn new ones, but when you have the money you can also just buy them...

<comment><USER4> People have been saying that for over a decade about Windows and Office, and they've kept chugging along. I have a strong feeling the same will be true of the next decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hated scribd, now I hate docs.com. I don't like docs inside docs.

The web page is the doc, don't try to force another doc area with another scrollbar to mess the whole UI experience.

<comment><USER6> What if there was no outside scrollbar? Would you still accept an inside toolbar/menubar and 95% of the screen filled with a scrollable doc pane like Google Docs (except perhaps with a little less toolbar)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A bit disappointing that they are using Silverlight.

Not being able to use this on iPad seems to limit its utility.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. Just fired it up in Chrome on my Mac and got the notification that there is a new version of Silverlight available.

Back Button.

<comment><USER10> Oh how awful that they used silverlight when you have it installed!

Funny that it works fine on linux/chrome+firefox without silverlight. They do display the message "Improve Your Experience: Documents load faster and text looks clearer when Silverlight is installed. [Install Microsoft Silverlight]"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Microsoft just doesn't get the web at all...

What exactly is the usecase for making excel spreadsheets that I can post on my facebook wall? They even copied the "beta" thing from Google.

</comment><comment><USER12> The facebook tie-in makes zero sense to me. Why isn't this aimed at business users?

</comment><comment><USER13> It seemed to work pretty well on my Ubuntu system without having Silverlight installed. But there was a little notification that said documents would load faster if it was installed. I'm always up for a good laugh and was wondering how I would run that Silverlight .exe file on Linux. Well lo and behold there is "Moonlight" which is available as a Firefox plugin that I'm guessing is a way to allow Silverlight apps to work in Linux. Well now that I installed it and restarted my browser, I can't open up any of the Word docs now. Oh well, guess it's back to running Word in XP in a VirtualBox window.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that's pretty cool. I wish I had this when I was doing some fundraising not long ago. I had to use docstoc, which seems the best of the web-based ones at not mangling a powerpoint but is still kinda sucky.

</comment><comment><USER14> I heard you like walled gardens, so I put a walled garden in your walled garden.

As if Facebook didn't have enough lock-in, privacy, and data integrity concerns, they now want me to add this 'docs' thing to the equation, so that literally all of my important information is in a walled garden I cannot make private backups of.

Yes, I can make individual backups of the documents, pictures and messages, but I can't view them in their original context, so they're worthless outside of the garden.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's behaving a bit too much like the desktop version: <http://ugg.is/docs.com.fail.png>

<comment><USER16> Yeah. I got an endless loader the first time. The second time I tried it loaded, but when I tried to open a doc I was told I don't have the right version of Office (Word 2008 for Mac).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Docs.com got auto-authorized to use my Facebook account the moment I loaded the page. This is not acceptable, I should have been at least given an Ok, Cancel dialogue to confirm linking my personal Facebook account with some random document sharing service.

</comment><comment><USER18> Their top menu looks very similar to scoutapp.com's

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if this works on a Zune.... ;-)

</comment><comment><USER20> Uhh .. It's like Google docs, but without that obnoxious "Don't be evil" part.

I wonder what they paid to get that domain?</comment>